Due to the graphic nature of the story, listener discretion is advised this episode includes discussions of kidnapping and assassination that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13.

On May 13th, 1981, St. Peter's Square in Vatican City was filled with 10000 devoted Catholics. The crowd milled about in the shadow of the basilica, eagerly awaiting the pope's weekly blessings. People cheered as dozens of Swiss guards marched through the square. Then an open top jeep arrived carrying Pope John Paul. The second excitement filled the air as the holy icon stood on the back seat, reaching out to clasp the hands of the people. But then the unthinkable happened.

Gunshots rang out. The crowd screamed in horror as John Paul the second collapsed. Simultaneously, they realized that someone had just tried to assassinate the pope.

A nun saw a man with a pistol fleeing the scene.

She grabbed him by the arm and called for Vatican security shortly after the assassin was arrested while surgeons worked furiously to save the pope's life.

Vatican authorities interrogated the man who shot him. His name was Mehmet Ali Agca. He claimed to be a Turkish leftist who was outraged at the pope's anti-communist agenda.

But when Italian investigators reached out to Turkish intelligence, they heard a different story. Ojha was actually a member of a far right terrorist group, one fighting against the communists. Something didn't add up. So the question remained, who really wanted the pope dead?

Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify original from Paşa cast every Monday and Wednesday, we dig into the complicated stories behind the world's most controversial events and search for the truth. I'm Carter Troy. And I'm Molly Brandenburg.

And neither of us are conspiracy theorists, but we are open minded, skeptical and curious. Don't get us wrong. Sometimes the official version is the truth, but sometimes it's not.

You can find episodes of conspiracy theories and all other Spotify originals from Park asked for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is our second episode on Operation Gladio, this secret military program hidden stay behind operatives and weapons throughout Italy during the Cold War. Officials said they would only activate the program if the Soviet Union invaded.

In part one, we discussed how Operation Gladio was inspired by the resistance movements of World War Two. For decades, it remained a closely guarded military secret. But in the 1970s, an Italian terrorist group used explosives found in a Gladio weapons cache.

Investigations into their subsequent attack then revealed the clandestine program to the world. This time, we'll examine the theory that terrorist groups were given those weapons by the CIA, Swiss historian Daniel Ganzer believes he found a secret manual that instructed Gladio agents to commit acts of terror and heighten the fear of communism, not just in Italy but throughout.

Europe will also examine whether the CIA recruited right wing terrorists and former Nazi officers for Gladio finally will investigate if they ordered them to carry out assassination attempts like the one on Pope John Paul the second. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us.

For years, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti assured the world that Operation Gladio was never activated, but author and historian Daniel Ganzer believed there was more to the story.

Dancer always found it odd that the CIA would contribute millions to a foreign military program, especially one they hope to never use. When terrorists accidentally stumbled on the operations hidden weapons stash dancers, suspicions escalated. He searched for a link between the CIA, Operation Gladio and these extremist groups.

But the details were always vague or redacted until Ganzer discovered a controversial document that made everything fall into place. CIA Field Manual 30, Dash 31 B..

This brings us to conspiracy theory number one, Field Manual 30, Dash 31. B instructed CIA and Gladio agents to perform covert operations and blame them on communist groups. It was also a playbook on how to plan and fund terrorist attacks.

Field Manual 30 Dash 31 B is said to be an appendix to a real military document, one that was published by the United States Pentagon in 1970 titled EFM 30 Dash 31. It taught American officers how to maintain stability in allied nations during the Cold War.

It detailed how to foster local informants, identify insurgents and perform counterintelligence operations. The goal was for users of the manual to infiltrate terrorist organizations undercover in order to prevent attacks and save lives.

This manual was distributed to military operatives all over the world. It was the instruction booklet for how to survive and hopefully win the Cold War. But a few years later, rumors of a secret appendix surfaced EFM 30, Dasch 31 b. This part of the manual wasn't about stopping terrorism. It was an instruction booklet on how to cause it. According to answer, a Turkish newspaper called Burish published the first reference to the secret appendix in 1973. They claimed one of their journalists acquired a copy from an anonymous source.

Allegedly, its contents revealed the true nature of the CIA.

However, before an investigation into their allegations could proceed, the journalist who wrote the piece disappeared, as did their copy of the manual. They were never heard from again. But a few years later, EFM 30, Desh 31 B resurfaced in 1976, a full copy of the appendix was left on a bulletin board in the Philippines embassy in Thailand. It had a note saying it was left by a concerned citizen.

The 11 page document contained clear advice about sabotage, bombing, killing, torture and fake elections.

It also suggested that a communist movement was most dangerous when its members renounced violence.

That's when the movement was most likely to win public support from 30 Desh 31 B claim that the CIA would step in whenever communism was growing prevalent in an allied nation. Their goal was to make sure both the government and the people feared communist ideology.

To achieve this goal, the manual suggested a two pronged approach. First, agents had to infiltrate existing terrorist groups and encourage them to carry out public bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. Second, it instructed operatives to say communism was their motivation.

If all went as planned, the public would disavow communist movements, associating the organizations with death and destruction.

The manual was very explicit. It said, quote, The involvement of the U.S. military shall not become known under any circumstances.

It was allegedly signed by Army Gen. William Westmoreland, who was President Nixon's army chief of staff in 1970. His signature was on every other official manual released by the Pentagon during this time, which made from 30 dash 31 b seem authentic. Over time, Ganzer connected the dots.

The strategy laid out in the manual perfectly described what happened in Italy during the years of Liebe when terrorist attacks plagued the country. Most of the events were blamed on communists, and officials use the attacks to arrest anyone associated with the political party. No one in Italy understood why political terrorism was so rampant during the 1960s and 1970s. But Ganzer felt this document was a smoking gun and it was approved at the highest levels of government. That is, if the memo was real.

In 1980, Congress launched an official inquiry into Field Manual 30, Dash 31, b, they call the CIA's deputy director for operations, John McMann, to testify before the United States House Intelligence Committee. The American people wanted to know if the CIA was, in fact financing terrorism when McMahon was asked about the manual.

His answer was simple. The CIA had nothing to do with it. Field Manual 30, Dash 31 B was a blatant forgery.

McMahon claimed that the Soviet Union had a massive Cold War misinformation apparatus. Its sole function was to sully the reputation of America, both at home and abroad. The CIA estimated that the Kremlin had an annual budget of three billion dollars for this campaign. That's more than nine billion dollars today.

Field Manual 30 Dash 31 B was not one of a kind. The CIA presented around 150 other fake documents drafted by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They were designed to appear as memos or a classified communications, and these forgeries usually undermined political relationships. For instance, in 1977, an anonymous source leaked a speech penned by President Carter to several newspapers. In it, Carter criticized the Greek government for not contributing financially to NATO. It angered Greek citizens and threatened to sour their relationship with America.

The problem was Carter never gave that speech. It was definitively proven to be a KGB forgery.

Another example came from Naples, Italy, in the late 1970s. At the time, its citizens were suffering from a mysterious illness.

The press received a letter from a U.S. official that implied a secret American nuclear waste facility was to blame.

Italy was outraged, but an investigation found that no such place had ever existed.

The letter was another KGB fake, but it was harder to prove that EFM 30 Desh 31 B was a fabrication, unlike the speech and the nuclear waste site. There was no evidence to point to suggesting this document was faked. But McMahon claimed there were several small errors.

For starters, the document was marked top secret. McMahon claimed that the CIA would never use that classification for a field manual. Also, the signature of General Westmoreland was a forgery.

Lastly, McMahon noted that there was no clear source for the leak. It was never found in a U.S. embassy or linked to an American government official like some of the others had been. It could have come from a KGB printing press just as easily as the Pentagon's.

It was also suspicious that the manual was distributed to news outlets anonymously and always given to journalists with communist ties.

According to McMahon, Fernando Gonzalez was one of the reporters who received Field Manual 30, Dash 31 B. He was also a member of the Communist Party and had close ties to confirmed KGB agents.

Nearly every journalist who wrote about the document had a similar background.

As a result, the manual never originated from a nonbiased source.

These rationales satisfied Congress. The investigation was closed in 1980 and the manual officially labeled a fraud. The claim that the CIA was instructing agents to incite violence was considered debunked.

But a year later, Italian authorities raided the home of a right wing extremist named Lico Jelly. Among his hidden trove of papers, they found a copy of EFM 30 Dash 31 B, which he claimed the CIA gave to him directly.

This discovery cast doubt on whether it was Soviet propaganda after all.

Today, the United States maintains that this field manual is a forgery. After all, it does seem like a brilliant piece of misinformation. Most of Western Europe feared communism because of these terrorist groups. It was a PR problem for the USSR, so they decided to blame their issues on the CIA. Exactly the kind of spy thriller scheme you'd expect from the Kremlin during the Cold War.

But let's say for a second that the.

It was real, it would explain why the CIA was funding Operation Gladio, they needed a clandestine network to organize these terrorist attacks and it appears they were successful in thwarting communism.

If you remember from last episode, authorities arrested around 200 communists after the 1972 pizzano car bombing in Italy.

My problem is that there's no clear source for EFM 30 Desh 31 B, as we mentioned, it could have come from the KGB just as easily as the CIA. It was always distributed anonymously, but in the same pattern as other KGB forgeries. And in the nearly 50 years since it was leaked, not a single U.S. official has verified its authenticity.

But if it was KGB propaganda, they had nothing to gain from giving it to right wing extremists like Liturgically.

So on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the most believable. I'm giving this theory a five out of 10.

I agree with that rating, especially because there's evidence for both sides of the story.

But unfortunately, there are even more disturbing details about Operation Gladio that go well beyond a training manual.

It appears the organization may have filled its ranks with war criminals.

Coming up, the CIA may have recruited Nazis to run Operation Gladio. Listeners, do I have a mystifying new show for you, it's called Superstitions, and it explores the varying beliefs people around the world fear and follow. It's so eerie. I know you'll love it. Every Wednesday, step inside stories that illustrate the horror, weirdness and truth behind humanity's strangest codes of conduct. Why shouldn't you say Macbeth in a theater? What evil gets triggered when you walk under an open ladder?

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Now back to the story. In 1998, historian Daniel Ganzer uncovered an alleged Pentagon document titled EFM 30, Dasch 31, be it instructed Operation Gladio agents to carry out attacks that turned public opinion against communism.

The authenticity of FMP 30, Desh 31 B is questionable. But what isn't up for debate is the fact that Operation Gladio resources did end up in terrorist hands. According to the official story, Extremist's found these weapons stashes by accident.

But there's another possibility, which brings us to conspiracy theory.

Number two, the CIA actively recruited, trained and armed right wing terrorists and former Nazis as part of Operation Gladio to explore this theory.

We have to go back to the very beginning of Operation Gladio, the end of World War Two. In 1945, the allied powers such as France, Belgium, Denmark and Italy formed stay behind networks in case of Soviet invasion. But there was a problem. Many of those partisans were communists themselves. These groups fiercely fought against the fascist Nazis, but allied leaders weren't sure they do the same against the Soviet Union. In fact, many groups may have welcomed an invading communist force.

They needed men who are staunch anticommunists trained to use weapons and explosives.

Ironically, Germany's former Nazis were exactly the kind of people they were looking for, according to answer.

On March 28th, 1949, a top secret U.S. Army general staff memo identified the value of recruiting former Nazi officers. It read, Germany has an excellent potential of trained men for both underground and secret army reserves.

Effective resistance can and should be organized in the years after World War Two, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, or CIC, spearheaded this recruiting effort.

One of six directives was reportedly to create an information network in West Germany that kept an eye on communist activities. Ganzer believes the CIC also had a hand in forming Germany's stay behind force as an extension of Operation Gladio. Er hard to bring.

House was one of the CIC agents stationed in Germany during the Cold War during his service to bring House learn that some of his informants had a sordid past. One of the most infamous was Klaus Barbie, also known as the Butcher of Liohn.

Barbie was an official of Germany's secret police, called the Gestapo. He was stationed in France during World War Two and personally tortured and killed members of the French Resistance. He also sent hundreds of French Jews to concentration camps. Historians estimate he's responsible for nearly 14000 deaths. After the war, Barbie fled to Germany. France demanded they extradite him for his crimes. So a desperate Barbie approached American intelligence agents. In 1947, he offered to become an informant on communist activities in East Germany in exchange for their protection.

They accepted his terms, but Bring House had no idea that the CIC was aware of Barbie's past when he learned about the man's crimes, he went to his superiors to bring house, believed they should turn him over to the French authorities.

Instead, his bosses told him to keep quiet.

They knew exactly who Barbie was and what he'd done, but he was a valuable asset.

They were willing to protect this war criminal as part of their secret anti-communist force.

Proponents of this conspiracy theory believe the CIC hired Barbie because of his violent past. They wanted Operation Gladio to have members who were experts in torture and resistance tactics.

On the other hand, Barbie may have been valuable because he was a high ranking German officer, he had contacts in Soviet controlled East Germany who kept him updated on KGB and communist activities. Either way, America wasn't willing to give him up. For two years, the CIC shielded Barbie from French prosecutors, and in 1949, they smuggled him and his family to South America. He was tracked down by Nazi hunters and extradited to France in 1983, where he was sentenced to life in prison.

Only then did America formally apologize for protecting the butcher of Lyon during House said that Barbie wasn't the only Nazi on the CIA's payroll.

He met with another crucial asset named Colonel Gunther Bernau three times a week. Like many Nazis, Bernau was also fanatically anti-communist.

In a 1992 BBC documentary, Dobrin House recalled how Bernau took him to an abandoned building in Stuttgart, Germany. There, he told the Brighouse to dig. The two men soon uncovered a box filled with rifles, pistols and grenades.

They are now said this stash was part of a secret plan to resist a Soviet invasion, Bernau claim there were thousands of crates all over Europe just like it. And with a single phone call, he could activate 200 former SS officers from Hamburg to Munich to fight alongside him.

Concerned to bring house went to his superiors again. He believed that Bernau was part of a secret army, but officials told him to keep quiet. They already knew all about it. This was further proof that Operation Gladio wasn't confined to Italy. The CIC had set it up in Germany as well, with Colonel Bernau as one of its leaders.

Problem is, this evidence is anecdotal, but America does have a proven track record of hiring Nazis.

After all, it's how we got to the moon.

Following World War Two, there was a race to recruit Germany's brightest engineers and physicists. On October 22nd, 1946, the Soviet Union forcibly relocated 2200 German scientists and their families to the USSR in a bid to compete with the Soviets.

The CIC launched Operation Paperclip in America.

Agents recruited sixteen hundred Germans, including former Nazi party members, and brought them to the United States.

Many of these recruits even joined NASA operation paper clips.

Most famous find was Wernher von Braun, an engineer who helped develop the Nazi's infamous V2 rockets. Over 1000 of these missiles were launched in England in 1944 after von Braun arrived in America.

He became director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. There he designed the Saturn five rocket that took Apollo 11 to the moon.

But Ganzer alleges that the CIC and the CIA didn't stop at Nazis. He believes they recruited right wing terrorists into Operation Gladio as well. Then they trained them, armed them and protected them from prosecution.

Ray Klein was a deputy director of the CIA in the 1960s. He publicly stated it's not unlikely some right wing groups were recruited and made to be stay behinds.

He claimed using right wingers not politically, but for intelligence is OK, meaning the CIA received information from these groups but supposedly never controlled or used them as soldiers.

If you remember from part one, right wing extremists were authoritarians. They wanted the public to rely on the state for protection. They opposed the communists who hoped to overthrow the state. According to Klein, the CIA may have worked with these groups despite their violent nature.

Colonel Oswald Le Winter, CIA liaison based in Europe, took this possibility a step further.

He asserted that secret accords were written into the NATO agreements and signatories pledged not to prosecute right wing or anti-communist activities within their borders, meaning if a country wanted the security NATO provided, it had to let its right wing terrorists run wild.

So if the CIA was taking advantage of these groups, they could do it without the risk of an investigation. It should be noted that there isn't a lot of evidence supporting these secret clauses. In fact, Colonel Oswald LeWinter was proven to be nothing more than a con man. In 1998, he reached out to a journalist in Austria.

He said he could prove the CIA and MI6 had orchestrated Princess Diana's death if he was paid four million dollars.

The journalist reported LeWinter to the authorities. He was later arrested in Vienna, where the police discovered he was actually a poet and a professor of literature. LeWinter had never worked for any intelligence agency despite his claims.

Even without the winter's testimony, it's clear that the CIA was willing to work with Nazis and right wing extremists. It was all justified as long as it countered the Soviet Union and communism.

It's been proven that America recruited former Nazis into government programs like Operation Paperclip. It seems plausible that they do the same for Operation Gladio, even CIA deputy director Ray Klein ignored. Alleged that it was OK to use informants from right wing organizations, that's true, but dancers claim is that the CIA hired these people because they were extremists and they wanted to use them to incite terror. But I think the reality is they just hired operatives they knew wouldn't have communist sympathies.

For that reason.

I'm giving this theory a six out of 10.

I have to read this a little lower with a four out of 10. The United States did appear to recruit former Nazis and have right wing informants, and they likely played a role in Operation Gladio. But it's not clear that the agency went as far as hiring these extremists to commit acts of terror. Right.

And supposedly those relationships were just for gathering intelligence.

But others believe that the Dormont Operation Gladio, was, in fact activated and the CIA may have used it as a tool by assassinating some important global figures.

Coming up, we examine the CIA's role in European terrorist attacks.

Now back to the story. At the end of World War Two, the CIA was believed to have recruited former Nazis into Operation Gladio, but these operatives may have battled homegrown communism as well.

In his book, NATO's Secret Armies, Daniel Ganzer examined Europe's worst terrorist attacks. The official story is that these events were carried out by communist groups, but a closer examination exposes some glaring irregularities.

Some of these incidents didn't make sense if they were carried out by communists, but they did if they were planned by the CIA. This brings us to conspiracy theory. Number three, the CIA used Operation Gladio resources to assassinate political enemies in Europe.

If you listen to conspiracy theories for a while, you may be familiar with one of the most famous examples, the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.

Aldo Moro was Italy's prime minister from 1963 to 1968. He belonged to the Christian Democratic Party. This was a centrist political group that embraced capitalism and opposed the Italian Communist Party. It led to a very divided government.

After Moral Left office, he spent much of his time trying to mediate between Italy's Christian Democrats, socialists and communists. He wanted a unified government that represented all of the nation's people.

By 1978, he had successfully formed a coalition between these three political groups. However, on his way to a parliamentary debate in Rome, Mauro was ambushed, two cars boxed in his fiat and forced him to stop. Then a team of assassins leapt out and killed his five bodyguards.

They dragged Mauro into their car and fled the scene. It immediately became a national crisis. A committee was formed to direct the rescue effort.

A communist group known as the Red Brigades took credit for Mauro's kidnapping. They contacted Italian authorities and said they'd return Moro unharmed under one condition. Several imprisoned Red Brigade members had to be released.

The committee tried to negotiate. They didn't want to hand over dangerous terrorists.

Days turned into weeks.

As the talks went nowhere. The authorities were unable to find anyone with information about the kidnapping.

The Red Brigade was frustrated that officials wouldn't concede to their demands. Letters from Moro were delivered to the press. In them, the former prime minister urged the government to listen to his captors and release the imprisoned communists.

The United States allegedly sent a hostage negotiator from the U.S. State Department named Steve iconic. He was to join the crisis committee and helped facilitate Morel's release in Italy.

But when Picknick arrived, he noticed something odd. It was as if the Italian government didn't want Morreau returned alive.

The members of the committee were more concerned about Morell's public statements than organizing his release. They wanted to put an end to Morel's dispatches to the press as soon as possible, even if it meant Morrows execution.

According to Picknick, they also feared that morale would start divulging state secrets to the Red Brigades. So on April 18th, 1978, the committee apparently did something strange.

They forged a letter from the Red Brigades claiming the terrorists had finally killed Moro. The news was leaked to the press and Italy mourned. The former prime minister, except Aldo Moro, was still very much alive.

I cannot claim this was meant to send a message to the Red Brigades. The government would never concede to terrorists demands in the eyes of the state. Moro was already dead, but the ruse didn't work for long. On April 20th, the Red Brigades released a photo of Moro holding a newspaper to prove he was still alive when it became clear the government wouldn't release their comrades.

The terrorists held a people's trial for Moro. Then, on May 9th, 1978, after being held captive for 55 days, the Red Brigade found Moro guilty for crimes against the communist movement. He was executed. Then his body was dumped in a car in central Rome, several redbrick.

Eight members were captured and put on trial, but as prosecutors made their case, some things didn't add up.

For instance, targeting Morreau in the first place, the prime minister's efforts in 1978 were actually helping to ease tensions between Italian communists and other political parties. While Morell may have been a good bargaining chip to free their comrades, executing him actually hurt the communist cause it turned Italy against them. The group that really benefited from his death was the United States. Allegedly, several U.S. intelligence agencies were unhappy with Moreau's efforts. They didn't like that he was bridging the divide between Christian Democrats and the communists, mainly because it gave communists more political influence throughout Italy.

Reportedly, Morrow's wife testified that the prime minister was warned to stop on multiple occasions. President Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, allegedly told Morreau, you must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration, or you will pay dearly for it. Even stranger, the bullets recovered from Moreau's body allegedly had a special paint on them, the same chemical coated bullets placed in Gladio weapons stashes.

But the testimony of Red Brigade members was the most disconcerting part of all. Halbertal Franceschini was one of the founders of this organization. He had a startling remark about Mauro's kidnapping.

Franceschini claimed that the Red Brigades weren't capable of such a professional military style operation. He believed the organization had been infiltrated and was being directed by the CIA. This fit the strategy Garmser had found in EFM 30 Dasch 31 b. In the disputed manual, Gladio operatives were instructed to gain access to an existing organization.

Then they were encouraged to direct the extremists there in to perform a radical act of terror, one which advanced American interests.

It also explained why the Crisis Committee wasn't concerned with getting Morell back alive. Perhaps these government officials were aware that this was part of a glaring omission. If this was the case, the former prime minister seemed to be well aware. Morreau didn't believe the government had his best interests at heart.

In his final letter, Morreau expressed disgust for the Christian Democrats who refused to save him.

He demanded that no one in the Italian government attend his funeral. What stranger is that? They obeyed his wishes.

Pope Paul the sixth expressed his sympathies to the moral family. He said the prime minister's death had been planned, calculated and carried out secretly and without any pity. It had horrified the whole world. Little did the pope know that three years later, one of his successors would find himself as the target of a similar assassination attempt. And it began with his support for Poland during the Cold War. Poland was under the control of the Soviet Union, but the country's largest workers union, called Solidarity, was chafing under communist rule.

And in 1981, Soviet security forces brutally beat several Polish workers. When news of the attack spread, a reported 14 million people staged a warning strike in protest. As the Solidarity Trade Union planned a general strike, the Kremlin prepared to invade the country. They'd end the protest by force. Pope John Paul the second, intervened. He urged union leaders to call off the strike they needed to resolve their issues without bloodshed.

The leaders listened and canceled the strike after Pope John Paul worked to mediate between Polish leaders and the Kremlin. The Solidarity Union toned down its anti Soviet rhetoric. John Paul made it clear he supported their movement, but not if it meant people would lose their lives.

Supposedly, the pope's interference angered the KGB by diffusing the conflict. He'd undermined the power of the Soviet state. As a result, the Kremlin sent a statement to all Soviet schoolteachers they needed to teach children. That the pope is their enemy. Then they allegedly hatched a plan to assassinate John Paul. The second has the story goes.

KGB agents reached out to a man named Mehmet Ojha, a member of a right wing Turkish group called The Gray Wolves. The KGB offered him three million German marks to assassinate the pope, about five million dollars today. They hope that using a right wing operative would keep suspicion away from the Kremlin.

They provided Ojha with a false identity and smuggled him into Rome. And on May 13th, 1981, he waited in St. Peter's Square with a hidden pistol. When the pope passed him in the crowd, ardia shot him four times. Thankfully, he survived. The assassination in Ojha was captured.

During his trial, Ojha refused to testify about his motives. He was sentenced to life in prison. However, months after his trial, he changed his mind. He was finally willing to talk and revealed his agreement with the KGB.

Like the Aldo Morel kidnapping, some things didn't add up. The assassination attempt stirred up anti-communist sentiment when tensions between Poland and the USSR were already high.

Clearly, this didn't benefit the Soviet Union, but it did help America's war on communism until one Turkish journalist named War Monju decided to dig a little deeper. Monju investigated OJARS role within the gray wolves. He heard rumors that this right wing group had connections to the CIA. Supposedly, they provided training and weapons to the group, all in the name of suppressing communism in Turkey.

However, he was unable to find proof linking Ojha to the CIA. But in 1993, his investigation was tragically cut short. Someone bombed Munchers car, killing him inside. Monteux assassins were never found after his suspicious death.

The CIA refuted all of Moom Joo's allegations. They assured the world that the KGB was responsible for the pope's assassination attempt.

Then in 2000, Pope John Paul, the second as the Italian president to pardon Oddjob. 10 years later, Agia changed his story. He claimed a cardinal in the Catholic Church hired him to kill the pope. But in 2013, he said that was a lie.

He then said the Iranian government hired him to assassinate John Paul the second. So clearly, Ojha was an unreliable source, but the CIA did have motivations for assassinating John Paul the second, like Morreau.

Both men were trying to negotiate with communist political parties to the CIA. This opened the door for communism to usurp capitalism in Europe.

But the KGB also had clear motives. They were afraid that the pope and immoral were pushing communists to be more moderate.

However, the physical evidence doesn't point to the KGB. Mauro's assassins appeared to use Gladio resources and had advanced military training.

The pope's assassin came from a right wing organization that allegedly had ties to the CIA, and the journalist investigating it came to a mysterious end. To me, there's no smoking gun. Much of this is, again, based on anecdotal evidence. And as the Ever-changing testimony of Ojha illustrates, that's not always reliable. In addition, the bullets that killed Aldo Moro may have been from an Operation Gladio weapons cache, but that doesn't mean the weapons were deliberately given.

The Red Brigades could have stumbled on one of the two weapons stashes that Italy couldn't find. Sure.

But lest we forget, the CIA and European governments have admitted to the existence of these stay behind forces. They were designed to combat communist subversion. I don't think it's a big leap to claim they actually did activate them and use them for their own political gain.

But as you mentioned, we don't have the evidence to fully support this, which is why I'm giving this theory a two out of 10 while it's possible the CIA masterminded these attacks. I don't think it's likely.

I agree with that rating, it's too big and too dangerous of an accusation to make, but in a way, I understand why people might want to blame the CIA and Operation Gladio for these horrific atrocities. It's almost comforting to think that one evil organization is responsible for all of the death and destruction because then it's easier to put a stop to it. But in reality, it's more likely that these events happened independently without rhyme or reason, the product of irrational humans trying to achieve short term goals.

The Cold War was certainly an invisible one. We may never understand how the battles played out. All we can say for sure is that it caused as much pain and terror as any conventional war would.

And regardless of who was to blame, innocent people still paid the price. Thanks for tuning into conspiracy theories. We'll be back Monday with a new episode, you can find all episodes of conspiracy theories and all other Spotify originals from podcast for free on Spotify.

Until then, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify original from past. It is executive produced by Max Cutler Sound, designed by Anthony Vasek with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Travis Clark. This episode of Conspiracy Theories was written by Evan McGehee with writing assistance by Lori Gottlieb and Obiageli Idemitsu Fact checking by Annibale and researched by Brad Klein and Brian Peatross. Conspiracy theory stars Molly Brandenberg and Carter Roy.

Bad omens, good fortune, pure luck. Take a closer look at what you believe in and follow the Spotify original from Past Superstitions, new episodes, Air Weekly every Wednesday. Listen free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.