Ex-Italian President: Provocateur Riots Then “Beat The Shit Out Of Protesters”

Cossiga says Italian government should “do what I did” under Operation GLADIO - infiltrate protest groups with agent provocateurs
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Nov. 01, 2008

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga has offered a solution to the Italian government in dealing with widespread demonstrations by students and teachers over a cut in state funding of education - use agent provocateurs to start riots and then have the police "beat the shit out of the protesters".

Cossiga, former Italian President, Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, and one of the founders of the Operation GLADIO covert intelligence unit, encouraged Silvio Berlusconi and current Minister of the Interior Robert Maroni to "do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior," namely infiltrate what so far have been relatively peaceful demonstrations, radicalize them, start riots, then engender public support for a heavy-handed police response.

Cossiga's full statement translated reads as follows.

"Maroni should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior. University students? Let them do what they want. Withdraw the police from streets and universities, infiltrate the movement with provoking agents ready for anything ["agenti provocatori" is the Italian term] and let them devastate shops, put fire to the cars and put cities to the sword for ten days.

Then, strengthen by people's support, the sound of the sirens from ambulances will have to overwhelm that from the police and carabinieri [italian military police]. Law enforcement officers should pitilessly beat the shit out of protesters and send them all to the hospital. They should not arrest them since the courts would free them immediately, but they should beat them savagely, and they should beat savagely as well those teachers that incites them: not old professors, just the young school teachers."

Cossiga is essentially describing the problem-reaction-solution dialectic that he exploited when he was in government. Under the banner of Operation GLADIO, which was unveiled after parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, NATO sponsored secret armies committed acts of violence and terrorism and blamed the attacks on left-wing political movements, allowing far-right governments to seize power in numerous European countries.

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game," right-wing terrorist and GLADIO agent Vincezo Vinciguerra explained the so-called "strategy of tension" in sworn testimony.

"The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened."

GLADIO-orchestrated false flag terror attacks, such as the Bologna train bombing in 1980 which killed 85 people, were revealed during the Italian parliamentary investigation as having been overseen by elements of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. At the very least, U.S. intelligence sat on prior knowledge of bombings and allowed them to go ahead.

Cossiga's call to infiltrate protest groups and provocateur violence, giving the police public backing to "beat the shit" out of them, is a false flag tactic that has been employed numerous times during major protest events around the world.

Indeed, the scenario Cossiga is describing is exactly what happened at the violent 2001 Genoa G8 summit, during which Italian police planted bombs in headquarters being used by protest groups as an excuse to conduct raids and "beat the shit" out of peaceful demonstrators.

A similar tactic was also attempted during last year's SPP summit protest in Quebec Canada. Canadian police were caught dressed up as rock-wielding anarchists intent on causing riots. Peaceful protesters identified the agent provocateurs and the police later had to admit the fact despite going to the lengths of publicly staging the arrests of their own officers.

Last year, Cossiga drew on his first-hand personal experience in conducting false flag terror operations to declare that 9/11 was an inside job and that this fact was "common knowledge" amongst global intelligence agencies.