FM 30-31B, Stability Operations, Intelligence

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26 February 2005. See transcription of the 1980 House Intelligence Committee hearing on Soviet Covert Action (the Forgery Offensive):

http://cryptome.info/cia-FM30-31B.htm

20 Febuary 2005. Cryptome today has made an FOIA request to the Central Intelligence Agency for information on the authenticity or falsity of FM 30-31B.

19 February 2005

Excerpt of Congressional Record statement on July 15, 1994, by Senator Strom Thurmond challenging the nomination of Morton Halperin (of Pentagon Papers fame) to a Defense Department position:

CAIB 1/79: "reprints a top secret U.S. army memo on infiltrating and subverting allies--although the Army continues to deny it was an official document.''
[Fact: the Army did more than deny it was 'an official document.' The alleged 'army memo' ['F. M. 30-31B'] was exposed as a KGB forgery. See House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, hearing, 'Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive),' February 1980, pp. 12, 13 and Appendix: 'CIA Study: Soviet Covert Action and Propaganda,' pp. 66 and 67; 176-185.]

A February 18, 2005, report in the Moscow Times refers to a book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser [excerpt on FM 30-31B below]. The report states:

Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which details the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion." Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic process. It is then that "U.S. army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the document warns.

A hardcopy of "FM 30-31B, Stability Operations, Intelligence - Special Fields" was among material provided to Cryptome in May 2001 by the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) responding to a Freedom of Information Act request for a dossier entitled "Disinformation Directed Against US, File Number ZF010868W:"

http://cryptome.org/inscom-foia02.htm

Among the material provided is a Memorandum for the Record, dated October 7, 1976, which states, "LTC Harvey has been able to determine, after checking with various Army agencies, that there is no FM 30-31B, and that therefore, the attached document is not authentic."

This is not to say that this dossier and the memorandum are not themselves disinformation nor that there is not some other version of FM 30-31B, authentic or bogus, to which the Ganser book refers. Nor should this diminish the importance of examining claims about Operation Gladio.

Images of the Memorandum for the Record, label and letter to Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, and the 11-page FM 30-31B (originals poor quality):

[Note bottom of Page 7: (Reverse Blank) Page 8]

http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/secret_warfare_and_natos_stay_behind_armies.htm

Secret Warfare: Gladio

by Daniele Ganser

from

Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies

[Excerpt]

Field Manuals (FM) of the US Pentagon, designed to advise US military officers, do not usually mention the stay-behind secret armies. Yet there is one exception: the top secret FM 30-31B which describes “internal stabilisation operations” and is dated 18 March 1970, Headquarters of the US Army, Washington DC, and signed by General of the US Army William C Westmoreland. FM 30-31B is maybe the most important Pentagon document with regard to the stay-behind armies. It explicitly stresses that the Pentagon and the CIA, in order to be able to carry out clandestine operations in Western Europe, must depend heavily on the cooperation of Western European secret services: "The success of internal stabilisation operations, which are promoted in the context of strategies for internal defence by the US military secret service, depends to a large extend on the understanding between the US personal and the personal of the host country.“

The evidence now available to researchers confirms that the secret stay-behind armies in Western Europe were in all countries run by the respective national military secret service, many of which cooperated closely with the US: "However high the mutual understanding between US personal and the personal of the host country might be, the option to win over agents of the secret service of the host country for actions is a much more reliable basis for the solution of the problems of the US military secret service,” FM 30-31B notes. “The recruitment of senior members of the secret service of the host country as long time agents is thus especially important." In order to establish a solid working relationship the US officers in FM 30-31B were instructed to cooperate with European military secret service officers with close links to the US: "As for the recruitment of long time agents the members of the following categories deserve particular attention: [...] b) Officers, that had the opportunity to familiarize with US military training programs, especially those which had been trained directly in the United States.”

The most sensitive part of the Pentagon Field Manual concerns the passage which describes how the “internal stabilisation operations” were to be carried out in practice, hence how the Pentagon advised the European military secret services to fight what the Pentagon perceived as the “communist” or “socialist” thread. In what seems to be a description of the operations which some stay-behind armies actually carried out during the cold war, namely terrorist attacks in public places which were thereafter wrongly blamed on the communists and socialists by planting false evidence, is described by FM 30-31B like that: "There may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger."

Ongoing research now investigates whether the United States have according to this directive promoted terrorism in Western Europe carried out through the network of the secret NATO armies in order to convince European governments of the communist threat. "These special operations must remain strictly secret", the US Field Manual FM 30-31B concludes. "Only those persons who are acting against the revolutionary uprising shall know of the involvement of the US Army in the internal affairs of an allied country. The fact, that the involvement of forces of the US military goes deeper shall not become known under any circumstances." [20]

Still today it remains very difficult to fully understand the crucial document FM 30-31B. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and NATO’s secret armies asked former CIA director William Colby on the sinister FM 30-31B directives, whereupon Colby denied that the United States had engaged in such operations in Europe: "I never heard of such a thing. Frankly, I don't know the origins of the statement - and you can find any statement in any country, I mean you can find jack-ass statements anywhere." Journalist Francovich also interviewed Ray Cline, CIA Deputy Director from 1962 to 1966, who replied: "Well, I suspect it is an authentic document. I don't doubt it. I never saw it but it’s the kind of special forces military operations that are described. On the other hand you gotta recall, that the defense department and the president don't initiate any of those orders, until there is an appropriate occasion."[21]

The history of FM 30-31B itself is remarkable. The Pentagon document first surfaced in Turkey in 1973 where the newspaper Baris in the midst of a whole range of mysterious acts of violence and brutality which shocked the Turkish society announced the publication of a secretive US document. Thereafter the Baris journalist who had come into the possession of FM 30-31B disappeared and was never heard of again. Despite the apparent danger Turkish Colonel Talat Turhan two years later published a Turkish translation of the top-secret FM 30-31 and revealed that in Turkey NATO’s secret stay-behind army was codenamed “Counter-Guerrilla” directed by the Special Warfare Department. From Turkey the document found its way to Spain where in 1976 the newspaper Triunfo, despite heavy pressures to prevent the publication, published excerpts of FM 30-31B upon the fall of the Franco dictatorship. In Italy on 27 October 1978 excerpts of FM 30-31B were published by the political magazine L'Europeo, whereupon the printed issues of the magazine were confiscated. The breakthrough for the document came arguably not in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, when in Italy the secret anticommunist P2 Freemason lodge of Licio Gelli was discovered. Among the documents seized by the Italian police ranged also FM 30-31B. The Italian parliamentary investigation into P2 decided to publish FM 30-31B in the appendix of the final public parliamentary report on P2 in 1987.

_____

[20] Regine Igel, Andreotti. Politik zwischen Geheimdienst und Mafia (1997), p. 346. Igel offers in her German translation the full text of the top secret US FM 30-31B in her book on Giulio Andreotti and the US subversion of Italy (Appendix, pp. 345-358). The English quotes offered above are the author's translation of Igel's text. Igel's source is the original English version of the FM 30-31B as contained in the collected documents of the Italian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the US-linked P2 secret lodge which was discovered in 1981 (Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sulla loggia massonica P2. Allegati alla Relazione Doc. XXIII, n. 2-quater/7/1 Serie II, Vol. VII, Tomo I, Roma 1987, pp. 287-298). The document FM 30-31B is dated 18 March 1970, Headquarters of the US Army, Washington DC, and signed by General of the US Army William C Westmoreland.

[21] Allan Frankovich, Gladio: The Foot Soldiers. Third of total three Francovich Gladio documentaries, broadcasted on BBC2 on 24 June 1992.