Based on the idea of Nazi stay-behind agents who remained in the occupied territories after World War II as resistance to the threat of communism, NATO and the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies, organized the Gladio network.
Between the end of World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, teams of secret agents killed innocent civilians to keep Europe "free from communism" and under the influence of their political bosses.
In 1978 in Rome, the Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and his bodyguard was killed. The bullets found at the scene were of a type issued only to Italian Special Forces and, according to one secret agent's confession, the secret services had been warned in advance of the kidnapping.
Timewatch examines the truth behind this and the subsequent assassination of Moro - who was in favour of including the Italian Communist party in a national government.
This episode also reconstructs a series of unexplained and bloody killings a few years earlier in Belgium, when masked gunmen murdered people shopping in supermarkets. Some of the Gladio members responsible now talk about these seemingly pointless murders
