A factional recounting of the suppression of the events that led to such a disaster & horrendous aftermath
By Cindy Sheehan
Since I have become an activist after my son’s death in Iraq in 2004, I have gotten out of the practice of reading fiction. The exceptions are through my iPod when I am exercising, or when I am on airplanes. And, if I do read fiction, it’s not usually international spy thriller type books. I find those types of books too real for me now since I have been the subject of surveillance. And, since my son was killed by this “deep state,” I don’t like the traditional way of portraying the protagonists in these books as “heroes,” when I suspect in reality most of them are either boring functionaries or stone-cold killer/torturers.
However, having said all that when Sibel Edmonds, (“The Most Gagged Woman in America”) asked me if she could send me a review copy of her fictional (high stress on the “fictional”) book The Lone Gladio, I readily agreed because how could I refuse someone who I hold in such high regard for her courage, intelligence, and compassion?
After the book arrived, it took me a few days to sit down and crack open The Lone Gladio, but when I finally did I had trouble putting it down.
Of course, I know Sibel’s story and I know her work with The Boiling Frogs Post and after I read The Lone Gladio, I looked more into the very real program called “Gladio B.” Gladio B is the codename for an operation that began in 1997 for ongoing relations between US intelligence, the Pentagon, and Al Qaeda. The name refers to the original Operation Gladio, in which US intelligence had relations with anti-communist groups in Europe.
Operation Gladio is fundamental in this book because the anti-hero, Greg McPhearson is a semi-retired Gladio agent who gets drawn back into the murderous world of international intrigue and his path eventually coincides with the protagonist of the book Sibel, oops, I mean FBI analyst Elsie Simon, who is actually a hero who wants to expose the fact that many of the so-called “terrorists” are actually agents of the CIA trained by US operatives and many had meetings with high level US operatives long before 9/11/2001.
Sibel does a great job of portraying what I suspect is the reality of the slimy underbelly of the “deep state’ without turning the bad guys into noble actors or falling into the trap that the USA actually has any good intentions and sometimes, regrettably (yeah, right) has to do evil to meet those ends.
I highly recommend this book and the only mild criticism I had was that I was lost for the first several chapters but Sibel ties all those loose threads up and weaves them into a very compelling tale of intrigue and as a reader it’s fun in fiction to have those “aha” moments.
The Lone Gladio was released on September 11, 2014 and it’s factional recounting of the suppression of the events that led to such a disaster and horrendous aftermath is so important because after 13 years, many, many people are still dying and being tortured for the lies and cover-ups of that day.
In fact, the current US “peace” president and propaganda mill of the war machine are lying us right into more and more wars and we need more courageous whistle-blowers who refuse to be “gagged” to step forward and get these stories out any way that they can and Sibel is a gifted storyteller.
Get this book!
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* This review by Cindy Sheehan was originally published here
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