00:00In 1980, a bomb tore through the waiting room of a train station in Bologna, Italy.
00:0485 people died. Hundreds more were wounded.
00:07Italian investigators blamed far-left terrorists.
00:10They were lying.
00:10What they were covering up was one of the most disturbing secrets in modern history.
00:15After World War II, NATO secretly built a hidden army across Western Europe.
00:19Trained operatives, underground weapons caches, safe houses in 16 countries.
00:23The network was called Gladio.
00:25Its official purpose was to resist a Soviet invasion, but that invasion never came.
00:29So Gladio found a different mission.
00:31Bombings, assassinations, mass shootings, all carried out by government-linked operatives.
00:35All blamed on communists and leftist groups.
00:38The goal was simple.
00:39Keep European citizens afraid and keep them voting right.
00:42Investigators called it the strategy of tension.
00:44In 1990, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andriotti finally confirmed it.
00:48Parliamentary investigations across Europe followed.
00:51The network was real.
00:52The attacks were real.
00:53The cover-up had lasted decades.
00:55Democratic governments had been terrorizing their own people.
00:58And almost no one noticed.
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