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(Prof. Tjeerd Andringa) All right, people: welcome.
Welcome to this fourth lecture in a series on resources.
Today we have a speaker from Japan, James Corbett.
James Corbett is well-known among some circles,
So I am actually a little bit interested in who of you
already knew James Corbett and his work before: before this.
OK, that is about... wow: that's more than half, I would say.
OK, so the other half basically comes for the topic,
instead of for James Corbett.
So, for those people, I think it's useful that I explain a little bit
about what type of journalist James Corbett is.
What he does: he calls himself an open source journalist,
so basically he looks at all the available information and then he synthesizes it.
But you could also call that open source intelligence.
He is, basically, a one-man intelligence agency
who integrates information from pretty much any source
and then comes up with a narrative
that is usually a story that is very easy to understand.
Well, not so easy to understand,
but it helps you to understand how the world might be working.
So for me,
and for, I think, for many other people,
listening to his media -- especially his podcasts --
is extremely empowering.
You learn things that you would not normally learn
from the regular, mainstream media.
And that is kind of special,
and for that reason we have invited him tonight here.
So I think I shouldn't talk too much, and let James do the talking.
James, please.
(sustained applause, cheers)
(distant voice) All right. (laughter) All right.
(James) OK. So, thank you very much. Thank you very much.
First of all, thank you, Tjeerd for the lovely introduction,
and thank you for setting the ball in motion
for me to come here to Groningen.
I appreciate that.
And let me also thank Studium Generale and their Dutch hospitality
that I've been shown so far on this trip.
I very much appreciate it.
And of course, lastly but not leastly,
thank you to all of you for showing up tonight.
I really do appreciate you coming here for this lecture.
And as you can see, of course, this is a lecture entitled:
The Secret War: Gladio and the Battle for Eurasia.
So why don't we start by talking about what we're going to talk about,
namely: Central Asia is one of the regions that we'll be talking about tonight.
And Central Asia is a vast expanse of the map
whose defining characteristic is its ability to defy characterization.
Stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea on the west side
to the border of China in the east,
and from Iran and Pakistan’s doorstep in the south
to Russia’s in the north,
it encompasses everything from the snow-capped slopes
of Victory Peak in Kyrgyzstan
to the remarkable “Door to Hell” in Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert...
-- which, if it is not on your list of things to see before you die,
you should put it on that list --
to the sprawling grasslands of the Kazakh Steppe.
And settled by migrants from the Persian, Turkic, Chinese and Slavic civilizations,
its inhabitants speak Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Russian, Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen;
and include Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and assorted others.
The much smaller Caucasus region,
is a narrow land bridge sandwiched between the Black and Caspian seas,
and is equally diverse.
In fact, the region contains over 50 ethnic groups
and is home to three local language families...
-- which is something that linguists still puzzle over
and is very fascinating in and of itself --
...and there are several dozen languages spoken in the region,
from the obscure Bohtan Neo-Aramaic tongue,
which has less than 500 native speakers,
to the more widely-spoken Azerbaijani and Armenian languages.
But despite the rich culture and the history of the region,
it is still completely off the radar screens
of most of the general public.
“Tajikistan," “Abkhazia," and “Astrakhan Oblast"
are hardly names to conjure by in the popular imagination, after all.
But the fact that those names do not resonate with us
is perhaps something that is part of a grander strategy
that we're going to talk about tonight.
And those names that do resonate with us
tend to be the names that we have seen
in various media stories in the West.
For example, Dagestan equates to “The Boston Bombing"
in the minds of most Americans,
And Chechnya might be familiar to Europeans
as “that place that Russia is at war with.”
But just because these -stans, and Oblasts,
and autonomous republics and autonomous regions in this area
do not resonate with the general public, for the most part,
does not mean that they are not important squares on the global chessboard.
And just because they may not be on the radar of the general public
does not mean they are not on the radar
of some of the most powerful players in global geopolitics.
And as evidence of that, I present to you
the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce,
which sounds about as important to global geopolitics
as the Groningen Chamber of Commerce. (laughter)
But when you actually look at some of the current and former advisors,
directors, and board members of this organization,
you encounter some of the richest and most powerful players in global geopolitics.
For example, former Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney;
James Baker III, a Bush family advisor,
and his son, James Baker IV, for those of you keeping track at home;
Henry Kissinger, of course;
Brent Scowcroft; Richard Armitage of the US State Department,
and perennial Washington insider and former National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski,
along with many, many others that are, I think, worth checking into.
So, the question becomes: What is it that these people...
-- some of the most influential people
in the field of global geopolitics over the past 50 years --
...know about this region that the general public doesn’t?
And I think there are at least two answers to that question.
The first answer is the old real estate adage:
"Location, location, location!"
The region’s key location in the backyard
of some of the key players and powers of the Eurasian landmass,
Russia and China foremost amongst them,
has made it a geostrategic prize stretching back thousands of years.
Dominated at different times and in varying degrees
by Persian empires, Chinese dynasties,
Mongol invaders and Soviet forces,
the region has a rich history of being acted upon
and a relatively short history as a geopolitical actor in its own right.
Its position has long made it a key transport route,
from the Han Dynasty’s Silk Road
connecting China to Persia thousands of years ago
to the current attempt by Xi Jinping
to make a New Silk Road of the 21st Century
that includes connecting China to Turkey and beyond,
straight through the heart of this region.
But more important even than its location and strategic value
are the region’s vast, largely untapped resources.
The oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea region are particularly sought-after,
containing the third-largest reserves of any fields on the planet.
Azerbaijan in the Caucasus and Kazakhstan in Central Asia
both have direct access to Caspian Sea oil,
with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan providing ample gas reserves.
The dream of a Trans-Caspian pipeline has been in the works for years now
to transport Central Asian reserves across the Southern Caucasus
and the so-called “BTC” pipeline
funneling the energy through Azerbaijan and Georgia
to Turkey, and then off to Europe:
that has been equally prized as a way for Europe to find an alternative
to Russia’s increasingly-threatening stranglehold over energy
known as Gazprom.
The region also contains strategically important deposits of uranium,
as well as industrially useful minerals
such as copper, manganese, tungsten, zinc, et cetera.
And also gold: don't discount gold.
Another equally important -- although seldom acknowledged --
resource in this region revolves
around the extensive opium trade, especially in Afghanistan.
The Afghan opium trade is estimated to bring in
as much as $200 billion annually,
accounting for as much as 92% of the world supply.
As we shall see, control of this region
involves domination of the especially lucrative business
and all of the attendant economic benefits that result from from this connection.
The importance of a long-term US presence in the region
to establish Western dominance over this location and its resources
is no secret.
In fact, it has been written about
extensively and repeatedly, time and again,
by the think tanks that typically serve as the mouthpiece
for NATO’s foreign policy interests.
Case Exhibit Number One:
Take, for example a 1992 analysis of the region
from RAND’s National Defense Research Institute entitled,
Central Asia: The New Geopolitics,
which was written shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union
while the newly-independent republics of the region
were still orienting themselves to their new geopolitical reality.
And it was penned by Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul
whose name will come up again later in our study:
so keep that face and that name in mind.
He wrote: “It is primarily Central Asia’s strategic geopolitical location
-- truly at the continent’s center --
and the broadly undesirable course of events that could emerge
if the region were to drift toward instability,
that constitute the primary American interest (in the region).[…]
Thus, given the potential
for untoward developments in the region for Western interests,
modest hands-on American influence in the region is desirable.” .
Hmm
This “modest hands on American influence” gained momentum, and by 2004,
we had an article published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs
called “The United States and Central Asia: In the Steppes to Stay?”
Svante E. Cornell of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute
raising some of the key reasons for increasing US involvement in the region:
“As US engagement in Central Asia becomes more permanent,
it will increasingly become a factor in both regional politics
and the domestic politics of the several Central Asian countries.
That role raises a host of questions.
Chief among them is how regional powers such as Russia and China
will react to the US presence.
A second concerns the implications
both for the political development among the region’s states
and for the future of radical Islam.”
Also, in 2011, the Project 2049 Institute,
which includes Zbigniew Brzezinski’s son on its Board of Directors,
published a document proclaiming
“An Agenda For the Future of U.S. – Central Asia Relations”
which contains this interesting passage:
“U.S. policymakers have been careful to avoid the metaphor
of a 'Great Game' in Central Asia.
Yet it has been often invoked by others,
not least by observers in Moscow, Beijing, and other neighboring powers.
The U.S. must continue to reject this metaphor,
for such notions are based on flawed assumptions
and fraught with risks for the United States."
Intereresting.
So what is this “Great Game”
that the think tanks like the Project 2049 Institute
are so eager to avoid comparisons to?
The 'Great Game' refers to the struggle for supremacy
between the British and the Russians in the Central Asia region,
primarily in the 19th Century.
The Game broadly took place
from the signing of the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813
until the Anglo-Russian convention of 1907,
but although the term was coined in the early 19th century
it didn’t hit the popular imagination
until Rudyard Kipling’s Kim was published in 1901.
It was three years after that, in 1904,
that The Geographical Journal published an article
that articulated the reasons these great powers
were engaged in the struggle for this piece of the globe.
The article was called “The Geographical Pivot of History,”
and it was written by Sir Halford John Mackinder PC,
-- don't forget the PC. "Privy Council:" very important! --
the Director of the London School of Economics
that was founded by the Fabian Society
and folded into the heart of the British establishment
in the University of London in 1900.
And just as an example of that,
the cornerstone of the Old Building on Houghton Street
was laid by King George V himself, interestingly.
Mackinder is considered the father of the study of geopolitics,
and The Geographical Pivot of History is the document
that is often said to be the founding document of geopolitics,
and constitutes the first formulation
of what would come to be Mackinder's "Heartland Theory."
This theory states that the division of what Mackinder called the “World Island”
into inherently divided isolated areas
was the principle by which we could understand the evolution of history
and the future of the world.
Each of these areas had its own part to play
in the unfolding of that history,
with the area he called the “Heartland” of the central Eurasian landmass
being the pivot point from which a civilization
could derive the geopolitical and economic leverage
with which to dominate the world as a whole.
This was summarized in a famous dictum
from his 1919 work, Democratic Ideals and Reality:
“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World-Island commands the World.”
Looking at the map of what Mackinder had in mind for the Heartland,
it’s apparent that the “heart” of this Heartland
is indeed the Central Asia- Caucasus region.
This is what Russia and Britain were so intent
on wresting from each other's control
in the 19th century Great Game:
control of the region from which
the building of a world empire would be possible.
And this is why the Project 2049 Institute
and the other mouthpieces for the Establishment in the US,
NATO, foreign policy interests,
want to downplay this idea.
They don’t under any circumstances want you to think about the idea
that the US and its NATO allies are building regional domination
in a part of the globe from which they plan to project world dominance.
But fast-forward to 1997.
And in that year, our old friend Zbigniew Brzezinski released his book,
The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives:
because, evidently, Zbigniew Brzezinski was not so shy
about proclaiming the quest for world domination.
He also did not mince his words about the Eurasian Heartland
and how important it is to America's “global primacy":
“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia.
For half a millennium, world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers and peoples
who fought with one another for regional domination
and reached out for global power.
Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia
-- and America’s global primacy is directly dependent
on how long and how effectively
its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."
He goes on to refine Mackinder’s “Heartland” notion
down to a specific area that he calls the Eurasian Balkans.
And this area is precisely the Central Asia-Caucasus region.
He explains its importance thusly:
“The Eurasian Balkans,
astride the inevitably emerging transportation network
meant to link more directly
Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities,
are also geopolitically significant.
Moreover, they are of importance
from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions
to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors,
namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran,
with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region.
But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important
as a potential economic prize:
an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves
is located in the region,
in addition to important minerals, including gold."
The use of the metaphor of the Balkans is doubly evocative for students of history;
it represents not only the strife and ethnic conflict
we saw in the “Balkanization” of Yugoslavia
at the end of the 20th century,
but also the powder-keg of tensions that ignited the First World War
at the beginning of the 20th century.
Subsequently, Brzezinski predicted that the first great war of the 21st century
would take place in this Eurasian Balkans region,
and lo and behold: four years after The Grand Chessboard was published,
the first great war of the 21st Century was being waged in Afghanistan
by the United States and its NATO allies.
Meet the New Great Game, same as the Old Great Game.
This time, it's NATO against China, Russia,
and what might loosely be termed a "resistance bloc,"
but the idea is almost the same:
dominate Central Asia-Caucasus
and use it as pivot point to dominate the world.
The Old and the New Great Game are similar in many ways.
The Old Great Game sprang from the British fears
that Russian incursion into Central Asia would threaten
to topple their hold over the crown jewel of the British Empire: India.
The New Great Game springs from the fear
that Russian and/or Chinese dominance over Central Asia and the Caucasus
would prevent NATO from achieving its goal of “full spectrum dominance.”
The Old Great Game involved the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1838
in attempt to install a puppet regime.
The New Great Game involved the NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001
in attempt to install a puppet regime.
The Old Great Game relied heavily on espionage, spycraft and subterfuge
to undermine Russia’s sway over the Heartland;
and as we shall see, the New Great Game also heavily relies on covert means
to undermine Russian and Chinese influence in the region.
To understand the way that subterfuge is being used in the New Great Game today,
we must first understand an important clandestine operation
which is commonly known as “Operation Gladio."
In very brief and rough terms, “Operation Gladio" was a NATO plan
to use “stay-behind” paramilitary armies
to counter a potential Soviet invasion of Europe.
Although this is the way that “Operation Gladio”
is commonly understood amongst the general public,
almost every piece of that description is technically incorrect.
Firstly “Operation Gladio” was not a name for the overall program,
which involved 12 NATO member nations
-- Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg,
The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Turkey --
and four neutral countries
-- Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland --
but the program Operation Gladio referred specifically
to its most famous incarnation in Italy.
In Belgium the operation was codenamed “SDRA-8.”
Sweden had its “Projekt-26.”
In Greece it was... -- apologies to Greek speakers --
"Lochos Oreinon Katadromon” (Λόχος Ορεινών Καταδρομών)
and here in the Netherlands it was “GIIIC” later rebranded as “G7.”
Thankfully, for those of us who have problems
saying "I" three times in a row.
Secondly, the operation was not inherently a NATO one.
It was first coordinated in 1948 by a trans-Atlantic body based in France
known as the “Western Union Clandestine Committee.”
After the creation of NATO in 1949
the body was folded into the organization’s
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)
and under the revised name of the Clandestine Planning Committee.
The plan’s origins stretch back, arguably, even further,
to the creation of MI6’s “Section D” in Britain:
a ramshackle group of recruits from England’s North Sea coast
that would commit sabotage and guerrilla warfare
in the event of a Nazi invasion of the British Isles.
The central role of the CIA’s “Office of Policy Coordination”
and Special Operations Branch of MI6 in establishing the operation,
as well as the training of stay-behind forces
alongside British SAS units at Fort Monckton
and American Special Forces at the infamous School of the Americas,
needs also to be stressed.
Thirdly, although the individual stay-behind programs
were organized in Europe,
the scope of their operations were not limited to Europe
and strayed far from any supposed mandate to prepare for a Soviet invasion.
As we shall see, “Gladio” operations included -- and include --
everything from drug running and money laundering
to terror attacks and political assassinations.
I won't get into the specifics
of how these stay-behind units operated in the various countries
or the various incidents that they participated in.
If any part of the “Gladio" story is well-known,
-- and I hope it is --
but if any part is well known, it is the operations in Europe
and their role the events of Italy’s “Years of Lead.”
These topics have been covered in great detail
by very capable writers, filmmakers, historians, researchers, documentarians...
And I’ll refer you to some of the most valuable English-language resources
on the overall program,
including Alan Francovich’s groundbreaking documentary,
-- that you can't really see very well in that picture --
Gladio: The Ring Masters;
Daniele Ganser’s seminal work, NATO’s Secret Armies;
Richard Cottrell’s Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe,
and the various resources available at sites like Operation-Gladio.net.
What is important for our study today
is the strategic doctrine employed by Gladio operatives
known as the “strategy of tension."
This doctrine involves the creation, encouragement or exacerbation
of political, religious, ethnic or other forms of conflict
in order to incite fear in a population and manipulate public opinion.
An oft-cited example of the strategy of tension
are the “Years of Lead” in Italy
that rocked that nation with a wave of terrorist atrocities,
from the 1969 bombing of the Piazza Fontana
to the Bologna railway station bombing of 1980.
The story of the links between NATO Gladio operations
and the various paramilitary groups
whose bombings, kidnappings and assassinations terrorized a nation
is a fascinating one, but far too detailed for today’s study.
The takeaway point is that the national psychosis
caused by spectacular terror attacks
can be used to turn public opinion against certain groups
and make actions that were formerly politically inconceivable
virtually inevitable.
It isn't difficult to see how this strategy
could be used in some form in a region as linguistically, ethnically,
culturally and religiously diverse and divisive
as Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Indeed, as Brzezinski points out
in regards to his “Eurasian Balkans” concept:
“Every one of [the Eurasian Balkans] countries
suffers from serious internal difficulties,
all of them have frontiers
that are either the object of claims by neighbors
or are zones of ethnic resentment,
few are nationally homogeneous,
and some are already embroiled
in territorial, ethnic, or religious violence.”
With regards to the Central Asia-Caucasus region in particular,
Gladio operations in Turkey are of primary importance.
Noting that the Turkish Gladio operations
relied on cooperation with the nationalistic,
racist, baldly expansionist Pan-Turkism movement,
Daniele Ganser describes the Turkish secret army
as “more violent than that of any other stay-behind in Western Europe."
He describes the origin of the Turkish stay-behind,
known as “Counter-Guerrilla,” thusly:
“Under the headline ‘The Origins of “Gladio” in Turkey’
the Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter
reported in 1990 that they had obtained
one of the recently declassified original strategy documents
engendering the Western European "stay-behind" or "Gladio" network:
US Army General Staff’s Top-Secret
March 28, 1949 Overall Strategic Concepts.’
In an adjoining document, JSPC 891/6, section ‘Tab B,’
a specific reference is made to Turkey
highlighting how the Pan-Turkism movement
could be exploited strategically by the United States.
Turkey, according to the Pentagon document,
is an ‘extremely favourable territory for the establishment
of both guerrilla units and Secret Army Reserves.
Politically the Turks are strongly nationalistic and anti-Communistic,
and the presence of the Red Army in Turks
will cause national feeling to run high.’
Intelligence Newsletter thereafter correctly related
that the Turkish secret army called Counter-Guerrilla
was run by the Special Warfare Department and consisted of five branches:
‘Training Group, including interrogation and psychological warfare techniques;
Special Unit, specialised since 1984 in anti-Kurd operations,
Special Section, special operations in Cyprus;
Coordination Group, also called the Third Bureau;
and Administrative Section.’"
The violent atrocities committed by Counter-Guerrilla
are beyond the scope of this investigation,
but they include a September 1955 ‘false flag’ bombing
of a key Turkish target in Greece
which was blamed on the Greek police,
participation in three military coups against Turkey’s own government,
the torture of political opponents in the torture villa of Erenköy,
and assorted robberies, assassinations, kidnappings, sabotage,
and other terrorist activities.
In the vicious Turkish nationalist movement,
with its interest in uniting all of the Turkish people
into one Pan-Turkic nation,
NATO found a convenient ally in its quest
to counter Soviet influence in the Caucasus region
and to gain a toehold in the Eurasian Balkans.
In order to understand how this alliance operated,
let’s examine one particular person who has been identified
as one of the top Turkish “Gladiators”: Abdullah Çatlı.
Probably the single most famous members of the Counter-Guerrilla,
Abdullah Çatlı’s remarkable and highly improbable career
tells a story of assassinations, terror attacks,
drug running, daring prison escapes
and international intrigue outrageous enough
to make even the most imaginative Hollywood script writer blush.
Beginning as a petty street thug with the nationalist movement,
Çatlı rose through the ranks to become a brutal enforcer
for the dreaded Grey Wolves “youth organization”
connected to the Turkish Gladio movement.
By 1978 he had become the second in command of the organization
and a top Counter-Guerrilla operative,
implicated in multiple high-profile assassinations,
including the murder of Abdi İpekçi
the country’s most well-known newspaper editor.
Forced underground by his growing notoriety,
Çatlı became an important international Gladiator,
participating in the 1981 assassination attempt of the Pope.
He traveled with Italian Gladiator Stefano Della Chiaie
to Latin America and Miami in 1982
and then headed to France where he planned the bombing
of the Armenian Genocide Memorial at Alfortville,
and the failed assassination attempt against activist Ara Toranian.
In 1984 it seemed that the long arm of the law
had finally caught up with him.
Paid by his Turkish intelligence handlers in heroin,
Çatlı was arrested in Paris for drug trafficking
and sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
By 1988 he was sent to Switzerland, where he also wanted for drug trafficking,
but in March 1990 he was sprung from prison
in a nearly unbelievable prison break that involved the use of a helicopter.
Le Monde Diplomatique, in an explosive report in 1998 on the Turkish Deep State,
referred vaguely to the “mysterious forces"
who helped him to escape,
but others have specifically identified the escape helicopter
as a NATO vehicle.
In subsequent years,
while still an international fugitive on INTERPOL’s “Most Wanted" list
and wanted by authorities of multiple countries for a series of crimes,
Çatlı returned to Turkey
where he was recruited by the police for “special missions"
and entered and exited the United Kingdom and the United States
with complete impunity.
This is the character profile of an Operation Gladio gladiator.
And I hope we can realize that when we see
this type of remarkable, amazing, unbelievable career
of someone who is consistently, at every turn,
able to evade every type of police authority,
every type of law of the land,
every type of Constitutional rule wherever he travels,
and is always protected and always busted out,
I think we understand that there is a Deep State
that is working to lay the groundwork
and to prepare the way for someone like this.
So, this is a confirmed Gladio operative who had a really remarkable career.
So keep that in mind as we proceed with our analysis tonight.
Returning to the question of Gladio interference
in the Central Asia-Caucasus area of operations,
one lowlight from Çatlı’s ignoble career is particularly instructive.
In 1995 Çatlı participated in a planned coup attempt
against Azerbaijani president Helmar [sic: Heydar] Aliyev,
the father of the country’s current president.
The planned assassination failed,
but Çatlı, as usual, was not caught or brought to justice
for his participation in the scheme.
But while the assassination itself did not result in the death of Aliyev,
it did have a desirable effect for NATO’s designs on the South Caucasus.
From that point on, Azerbaijan began to leave the diplomatic orbit
of its old Soviet-era Russian masters
and has since become a staunchly Western-oriented nation
with an all-star roster of power players on its US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce
and ongoing relations with Chevron, Texaco, BP, Pennzoil,
and every other major oil conglomerate you can think of.
In fact, the country has been a NATO partner
and prospective member of the alliance for several years now,
a potentially important NATO ally right in Russia’s backyard,
and one with access to the prized Caspian oil and gas field reserves,
and the pipelines that will help to transport that out of there.
But all careers, no matter how remarkable, come to an end,
and the end of Abdullah Çatlı’s career
was, perhaps fittingly, almost as amazing as his career itself.
At approximately 7:25 PM on the evening of November 3, 1996,
a Mercedes 600 SEL crashed into a truck
near the Northwestern Turkish town of Susurluk,
killing three of the four passengers.
But this was no ordinary car crash.
Among the dead: a senior police chief, a former beauty queen, and Abdullah Çatlı.
The survivor: a Turkish MP who came away with a fractured skull and a broken leg.
A 1998 LA Times report on the crash described the scene this way:
“Strewn amid the roadside wreckage
was evidence of Çatlı’s collusion with the Turkish secret service.
Along with several handguns, silencers,
a cache of narcotics and a government-approved weapons permit,
Çatlı was carrying six photo ID cards, each with a different name,
and special diplomatic credentials issued by Turkish authorities."
The importance of this car crash to the course of Turkish politics
is difficult to overstate.
For many, it conclusively confirmed the “deep state" connections
between terrorists like Çatlı and the upper reaches of government power
that many had long believed existed.
The resulting scandal led to a series of investigations and reports,
as well as arrests, convictions, resignations, reforms,
promotions, and the death of several Susurluk investigators
in car crashes that mysteriously resembled the Susurluk crash itself.
And according to at least one FBI whistleblower,
Susurluk marks the beginning of a transition
from the original Gladio operations using ultranationalist operatives
to a Gladio “Plan B” involving Islamic terrorism
as the conduit for the strategy of tension.
The whistleblower in question is Sibel Edmonds,
hired by the FBI to work as a translator in the Washington Field Office
in the wake of 9/11.
She worked with agents around the United States
helping to translate intercepted communications
in a number of counterintelligence cases,
including Agent Joel Roberts in the Chicago Field Office
whose targets included Abdullah Çatlı and some of his Gladio associates.
While there, one of the translators she was working with was Jan Dickerson,
who had worked for both the American Turkish Council
and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations,
organizations that the FBI publicly confirmed
were targets of FBI counterintelligence operations.
Her husband, Douglas Dickerson, was a Major in the US Air Force
who had served in Ankara working on weapons procurement
for the Pentagon in the Central Asia region.
In December 2001, the Dickersons visited Edmonds and her husband
at their home in Alexandria, Virginia,
and attempted to recruit them into a Turkish spying ring
that had penetrated the FBI, the Pentagon and the State Department.
She refused, and her complaints about the Dickersons
and their involvement with Turkish lobbying groups
eventually led to her firing.
After years of fighting this dismissal
and attempting to go on record with her knowledge,
first through official FBI channels and then through the court system,
the FBI was eventually forced to admit that her claims had “some basis in fact,"
a judgment later bolstered
by a Department of Justice Inspector General report
that concluded, "Many of Edmonds’s core allegations relating to the co-workers
were supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds"
and noting that “the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds’s allegations"
about Jan Dickerson’s work problems.
Despite all of this, a little-known evidentiary rule
known as the “State Secrets Privilege"
was invoked by the Justice Department to remove her First Amendment rights
and prevent her from going on record about many of the specifics of her case.
This led to her being labeled
“the most gagged person in American history"
by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Edmonds paints the story of the FBI’s counterintelligence operations
against a Gladio network that had contacts and operatives in the United States
but protection from powerful Washington players
like some of those on the board of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce
and similar organizations.
After the turning point at Susurluk,
these operations started to focus on Islamic terrorists and radicals,
who presumably could equally well be used to maintain a strategy of tension
and help accomplish foreign policy goals in Central Asia and the Caucasus region.
Again, it's important to look at some of the careers of some of those
who have been identified as part of this “Gladio B" plan,
in order to better understand whether or not they are, in fact,
what has been claimed about them.
However, we have to note that, unlike in the case of Abdullah Çatlı,
we have no official, independent confirmations
of the existence of the Gladio B operation or its various operatives.
Here we are relying on information in the public record
which corroborates Edmonds' claims
and paints a vivid picture of the intersection
between Muslim extremists, drug runners, terrorists and money launderers
with the upper levels of the US State Department,
Pentagon and NATO.
One such person is Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish imam
who fled political prosecution in Turkey
for advocating that an Islamic state replace the existing Turkish government.
Interestingly, he fled to the United States,
eventually settling in Pennsylvania.
He then set up an educational foundation, the “Gülen Movement"
and within four years had opened up 350 madrasas
in the Central Asia-Caucasus region.
His network would go on to include Islamic schools in over 140 countries,
with an estimated net worth of over $20 billion.
In January 2001 a Turkish prosecutor,
citing an Ankara University report whose author was subsequently assassinated,
claimed that “there is a link between Gülen and the CIA"
which included Agency help in securing passports
for the school’s English teachers in the Central Asia-Caucasus region.
This claim was bolstered by former Turkish Intelligence Chief Osman Nuri Gündeş,
whose memoirs revealed that 130 of these “English teachers”
-- in Kygyzstan and Uzbekistan alone --
were actually CIA operatives,
issued special diplomatic passports
under a program codenamed “Friendship Bridge."
Interestingly, the Washington Post attempted to deny the allegations
by seeking comment from Graham Fuller,
who you might remember as the author
of the Central Asia: The New Geopolitics report that we referred to earlier.
Fuller was a former CIA Station Chief in Kabul
who claimed that the idea of a CIA-Gülen connection was “improbable”
despite admitting he has,
“absolutely no concrete personal knowledge whatsoever about this." (laughs)
Even more interestingly... -- talk about non-denial denials!
Even more interestingly, Fuller himself wrote a letter of reference for Gülen
that was used in Gülen’s ongoing legal battle
over his immigration status in the US.
The remarkable rise of this imam
with no particular background or accomplishments
to become the head
of a multi-billion dollar Islamic school network
operated from a secret compound in Pennsylvania
that appears to be working with the CIA
in the highly sensitive Central Asia-Caucasus region
appears to fit in line with what we know about the “deep state” actors
in this covert battle for influence
in this highly prized square of the chessboard.
Another extremely interesting figure is Yasin al-Qadi.
He was an alleged financier of Islamic terror
that was the subject of an intensive investigation
by FBI Agent Robert Wright.
Wright’s investigation, codenamed “Vulgar Betrayal,”
discovered evidence that implicated Al-Qadi
in a terrorist financing ring centered in Chicago
that linked to the 1998 African Embassy Bombings,
but when he proposed a criminal investigation,
his supervisor flew into a rage, yelling:
“You will not open criminal investigations!
I forbid any of you!
You will not open criminal investigations
against any of these intelligence subjects."
Wright was taken off the Vulgar Betrayal investigation one year later
and the investigation itself was shut down the following year.
In 1999 and 2000, the UN placed sanctions on al-Qadi
who was identified in UN Security Council resolutions
as a suspected associate of al-Qaeda.
At the same time, al-Qadi was also a key investor
in a company called Ptech,
which marketed “enterprise architecture software"
designed to provide complete "god’s-eye view"
of an organization’s structure,
from transactions, systems and processes
to inventory, transactions and personnel.
And Ptech’s client list included
some of the most sensitive databases in the United States,
including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, in the Pentagon;
the FBI; the Secret Service; the White House,
the Navy, the Air Force,
the FAA -- the Federal Aviation Administration --
and NATO.
According to Ptech’s own business plan,
the company had a contract to work on modeling the FAA’s:
“network management, network security,
configuration management, fault management,
performance management, application administration,
network accounting management, and user help desk operations"
that was operative on the morning of 9/11 -- and FAA's "failure."
After 9/11, Ptech’s offices were raided,
and the company’s CEO and CFO were eventually indicted,
and Yasin al-Qadi was placed on a special terrorist finance watchlist
by the US Treasury Department.
Despite being watchlisted by both the UN Security Council
and US Treasury Department,
al-Qadi continued to operate internationally with an Albanian passport,
spending time in Turkey.
He has since been revealed to have engaged in numerous meetings
with then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
and the Turkish Intelligence Chief,
and earlier this year, the ex-Istanbul police chief revealed
that Erdoğan had helped al-Qadi to enter the country several times
despite being banned by the Cabinet.
And for those who are wondering, yes: this is actual surveillance footage
of al-Qadi meeting with Erdoğan,
the Prime Minister of Turkey at the time, in 2012
Another figure of importance
whose name comes up in connection with this investigation
is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, formerly Bin Laden’s right hand man
and the current nominal leader of the al-Qaeda organization.
According to Edmonds, he appeared as a figure
in several FBI counterterrorism investigations in the 1990s,
turning up in Turkey, Albania, Kosovo, and Azerbaijan.
He traveled to the Balkans in the mid 1990s,
and that makes sense given al-Qaeda involvement
in the so-called Yugoslav Wars,
but his involvement in Turkey and Azerbaijan
is of particular relevance to this study.
Edmonds claims that he worked with the Turkish arm of NATO
and NATO itself during this period,
meeting several times with US military attachés
in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the 1997-1998 window.
There are numerous such leads and clues in this investigation
that point to... oh, sorry. One more:
Other tantalizing connections present themselves
in figures like Hüseyin Baybaşin,
known as “Europe’s Pablo Escobar" for his heroin operations
smuggling heroin to the UK.
After his imprisonment here in The Netherlands for drug smuggling,
he contacted Edmonds with details about Turkish NATO involvement
in the drug smuggling operations he had been a part of.
There are numerous such leads, connections
and clues in this investigation
that point to a deep tie between NATO and US covert operations
and this important area of the globe.
But what does it all mean?
It would be a satisfying conclusion to this investigation
to present to you definitive proof, documents or testimony
positively linking the increasingly deadly terror attacks
and incidents taking place in the Central Asia-Caucasus region
to a Gladio “Plan B" group being directed by NATO and the Pentagon.
Everything that we have seen today has demonstrated that:
A. There are vital strategic interests for the US and its allies
in the Central Asia-Caucasus region
that make it a prime target for covert operations;
B. Such “strategy of tension” operations have been conducted in the past
by people we definitively know were linked to NATO’s covert army; and
C. That there are a number of influential people
operating in and around the region
and in close cooperation with the Turkish deep state,
American intelligence, the Pentagon, and NATO
who seem to be involved with ongoing operations today
related to the fostering of religious extremism in the region.
As I say, it would be satisfying to conclude definitively
that A, B, or C persons were connected to X, Y, or Z events,
but obviously that isn't possible at this time.
The very nature of these covert operations
means that, without some explosive new evidence
or surprising new testimony from other whistleblowers,
it is unlikely that Gladio B will be revealed
in the way the original Gladio operations were...
-- another fascinating story that we could get into; but it would take too much time.
This does not mean, however,
that we are completely powerless to identify these operations
or to counteract the psychological effects
that they are aimed at producing in the public.
The characters, events and storyline painted in this presentation
are almost completely available in the public record
through news reports, government investigations,
think tank documents, court filings,
interviews, and dozens of other sources.
Those parts of the story that cannot be independently verified,
like some of Edmonds’ claims,
can be corroborated by the sources in the public record.
The task of piecing these bits of the puzzle together
is a nearly overwhelming one,
but it can be accomplished by a concerted effort
by an informed and motivated public.
This is the principle of “open source investigation"
which I am attempting to further with my work at CorbettReport.com.
And next week this lecture will be published to my website
along with a hyperlinked transcript
sourcing every single document in this report
and other evidence used in the creation of this presentation.
From that point, the public is encouraged to use that source information
to begin investigating other aspects of this case
and to see how this narrative meshes or clashes
with other pieces of evidence in the public record.
Members of the Corbett Report community are, of course,
invited to participate in this investigation
by logging on to the website
and posting their own comments, analysis, links and replies
at the posting on CorbettReport.com.
This task is critical because,
in the quest to control the resources of the Central Asia-Caucasus region,
a strategy of tension is being employed.
We see a nearly daily parade of terror attacks
in the Northern Caucasus region on Russia’s doorstep
and in the “New Silk Road” area of Chinese interest.
Just this month, the head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization
-- often seen as a counterbalance organization to NATO --
claimed that instability in the region
was being deliberately fostered by the West,
citing a disproportionate increase in US Embassy staff
and influx of Western-backed NGOs into the region.
“The West crudely interferes in the internal affairs of other governments,
trying to manipulate public opinion,
economically and financially affecting the government and population," he said.
If this is, indeed, the case,
then one of the key ways to counteract this effect
is to simply retain our skepticism
when it comes to spectacular terror attacks in the region.
With an increased awareness of covert operations,
false flag attacks,
and other acknowledged instruments of terror in the strategy of tension,
we thereby disarm the effectiveness of these tools.
The psychological manipulation that these geopolitical machinations rely on
is only possible if the public is kept in fear and ignorance,
and the answer to that can only be understanding and openness.
And with that,
I thank you for your time and attention during this very detailed lecture,
and I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much.
(applause)
Hello, friends. James Corbett here, back in the sunny climes of Western Japan.
I hope you appreciated that presentation.
That was the culmination of what has, so far,
been almost two years' worth of investigation into Gladio B,
going back to early last year, when we, of course, conducted
that original Gladio B interview series with Sibel Edmonds.
If you haven't checked out that series yet, and if you are interested in Gladio B,
of course, that interview series is the gold mine
of information that you should check out.
And of course, the link will be in this video so you can go check that out.
And the transcript of that has recently been provided
by an anonymous Corbett Report user,
so thanks to that person, we now have the transcript of that series.
An extremely valuable resource for those
who are looking to get more into this information.
If you do realize how important this information is,
and if you do realize that,
if this operation is as it is being portrayed in this lecture,
it really is one of the most important geopolitical operations
ongoing in the world today,
then you might realize how uncomfortable it is for me to be in the position
of realizing that I am one of only a handful of people in the world
who has ever talked about this
and who is investigating it at the moment.
So I certainly hope that you'll do your part
to help pitch in with that investigation.
As I say, we do need more people posting links, vetting sources,
talking about this information, analyzing it.
Of course, if you're a Corbett Report member, please sign in to the website
and start leaving your comments on this post.
But also, in any way you can, to help spread this information:
of course, greatly appreciated.
Because the more people who are thinking about this, talking about this,
the better it will be for everyone.
Trust me: you don't want to leave it in the hands of a few people.
We want this information to spread far and wide.
So once again, please start helping out with that
in any way that you can help spread this information.
And once again, obviously, this entire investigation
and everything that I do is brought to you by you guys.
So I do appreciate your... all of your support:
whether that be moral support,
whether that be the support of helping to spread the information,
whether that be monetary support -- which of course, I also need.
And on that note, since it is December of 2014
and we're approaching Christmas,
for the month of December, I am doing a 20%-off DVD discount
for any DVD at the Corbett Report shop.
Once again, you can go there and take a look at all of the DVDs:
the Data DVDs, the Video Archives,
Last Word DVDs, Century of Enslavement:
All DVDs 20% off.
Just enter the coupon code "XMAS" at checkout,
and you'll get 20% off your DVD purchase.
It makes it even cheaper and easier for you guys to get these DVDs,
give them out as gifts or however you want to distribute them.
And of course, you are free to make copies of them
and hand them out that way as well.
And let's get this information out to as many people as possible.
Once again, I do thank you all for your support,
and if you did enjoy this presentation,
I should note that there is going to be a posting of the audio only:
the Q&A after the presentation.
I'll be posting the audio of that up on the website
in the next couple of days.
I hope you'll stick around for that.
Thank you again for all your support.,
I'm looking forward to talking to you again real soon.
[Subtitled by: "Adjuvant"] [CC-BY 4.0]