CIA Activities in Russia and Europe - Western Europe

Western Europe

Main article: CIA activities in Belgium Main article: CIA activities in France Main article: CIA activities in Germany Main article: CIA activities in Greece Main article: CIA activities in Italy Main article: CIA activities in the Netherlands Main article: CIA activities in the United Kingdom See also: Strategy of tension

After World War II, there was serious concern that the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, would attack and overrun Western Europe. From 1945 to 1948, there were ad hoc military stay-behind plans (see Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action). In 1948, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was formed, under interagency but not CIA direction, to run behind-the-lines operations, probably including covert action behind the Iron Curtain. The separate Office of Special Operations had intelligence-gathering responsibilities.

A clandestine "stay-behind" operation was set up to counter a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe, using US and UK unconventional warfare specialists in the NATO participants. "Gladio" specifically referred to the network in Italy. Various Wikipedia articles assert the creation of Gladio-linked operations, see the articles for Belgian stay-behind network (Belgium), François de Grossouvre (France), Column 88 (UK), Grey Wolves (Turkey), and Projekt-26 (Switzerland).

Note that Switzerland was not in NATO. Projekt-26 personnel took courses from MI6, but there is no indication that MI6 had any operational control over Projekt-26.

In 1952, the CIA Directorate of Plans was formed from the merger of OPC and OSO. United States Army Special Forces were established in June 1952, with the 10th Special Forces Group deploying to Bad Tölz, West Germany, in September. Special Forces had stay-behind unconventional warfare as one of their basic missions.

In 1967 it was revealed that the Congress of Cultural Freedom, founded in 1950, had been sponsored by the CIA. It published literary and political journals such as Encounter (as well as Der Monat in Germany and Preuves in France), and hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers; it also gave some assistance to intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain. The CIA states that, "Somehow this organization of scholars and artists — egotistical, free-thinking, and even anti-American in their politics — managed to reach out from its Paris headquarters to demonstrate that Communism, despite its blandishments, was a deadly foe of art and thought".

On 24 January 2006, Dick Marty, the Council of Europe (CoE) Rapporteur on secret detentions and transport of alleged "enemy combatants" by the CIA, delivered his interim report concluding that European countries were almost certainly aware of CIA activities in Europe. On 22 February, the CoE Secretary General Terry Davis announced that most member states had replied to his questions concerning alleged CIA activities in Europe and that he would present his analysis on 1 March.