26 Sep 1980 - Munich Oktoberfest NATO Gladio bombing

[TonyGosling]

Gladio WNP leaders Paul Latinus and Heinz Lembke found dead

Investigation into the death of Westland New Post founder Paul Latinus, ]
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Investigation_into_the_death_of_Westland_Ne w_Post_founder_Paul_Latinus,_689_pages
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Release date
January 31, 2009
Summary
Paul Latinus founded the Belgium neo-Nazi group Westland New Post (WNP, also known as Westland National Socialistische Ordnung) in March 1981 with members of the Front de la Jeunesse (FJ).
The Belgian police found the dead body of Paul Latinus in the evening of April 24, 1984, at the home of Latinus' girlfriend in Court-Saint-Etienne. The police found Latinus lying on the floor of a basement, with strangulation marks around his neck, but no other signs of violence or disorder.
The 689 page file, contains contact with many organizations. It is clear that nearly all of the material is from the Belgium police, other government organizations and their counterparts in other countries. Because the file comes from an anonymous (to Wikileaks) source and is of enormous quantity, we can not vouch for every page, yet substantial portions agree with the public record and appear at a forensic level to be quality reproductions. The source clearly had access to a substantial collection of private documents relating to the Latinus investigation.
According to the source, Latinus' family will vouch for the veracity of collection.
The file starts with the infamous 1979 dossier of Dr. Pinon.
Further information, in order of perceived authority:
Intelligence Online: L'ANS AVAIT AGREE PAUL LATINUS[1]
Westland New Post - in particular see the links at the bottom to Belgium parliamentary enquiry reports.
http://www.resistances.be/tueurs3.html - uncertain authority, but numerous references.
↑ http://www.intelligenceonline.fr/Identification/p_identification.asp?r ub=login&lang=FRA&service=ART&context=BOI&doc_i_id=59286

Studies of NATO stay-behind networks and other clandestine resurgence operations

Operation Gladio
http://operation-gladio.net/event/heinz-lembke-found-hanging-his-priso n-cell
Heinz Lembke found hanging in his prison cell
1 Nov 1981

Heinz Lembke was found hanging in his cell in Lüneburg prison. He had been convicted of establishing and overseeing 31 weapon caches spread over an area of 125 soccer fields in the remote Heideforst Uelzen district in Northern Germany, containing 88 boxes of army supplies including weapons and explosives. Parts of the supplies stemmed from a decommissioning company called Vebeg. Heinz Lembke was a well-known right-wing extremist. He had been in prison before when he refused to give testimony about the prominent ultra right Manfred Roeder. After the Oktoberfest bombing in 1980 the Bavarian state office of criminal investigation received a hint that a certain Heinz Lembke would be in possession of explosives. After a raid at his house the police found only a blasting fuse and an empty shotgun magazine. Only accidently a lumberjack encountered one of the boxes and called the police.

[TonyGosling]

New revelations in the 1980 Munich Oktoberfest bombing
By Dietmar Henning 17 February 2015
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/17/muni-f17.html

On February 4, the German ARD television channel broadcast the documentary “Assassins—A Single Perpetrator? Latest revelations about the Oktoberfest bombing,” by Daniel Harrich. It uncovers how government authorities stymied investigations into the worst terrorist act in postwar German history and suggests intelligence agents could have been involved in the attack.
On September 26, 1980, a pipe bomb explosion at the main entrance of the Munich Oktoberfest killed thirteen people and injured another 211, 68 of them seriously. Although the bomber, Gundolf Köhler, who was killed in the explosion, was in contact with the far-right Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (Armed Sports Group Hoffmann), and there was plenty of evidence of his complicity in the crime, the Bavarian State Criminal Investigations Office and federal prosecutor Kurt Rebmann rapidly committed themselves to a sole perpetrator thesis, terminating the investigation after two years.
Investigations into the case resumed last December, due primarily to the persistent research of journalist and non-fiction author Ulrich Chaussy and efforts of the victims’ attorney, Werner Dietrich, to prevent the nearly 35 year old case from disappearing from the public eye.
The ARD documentary is based on their findings. The evidence and leads that they unearthed, point “to the existence of a complex, extreme right-wing network and an act planned well in advance, in which Köhler was only the last link in a deadly chain of events,” the documentary reports.
Two previous attempts by Dietrich to have the case reopened were unsuccessful. New witnesses, coming forward after the airing of the feature film The Blind Spot, finally induced the federal prosecutor’s office to resume investigations. The Blind Spot, also scripted and directed by Daniel Harrich, deals with the Oktoberfest bombing, the suspiciously lopsided investigation and Chaussy’s research. Chaussy is played in the film by Benno Fürmann. It was premièred at the Munich Film Festival in July 2013, and initially shown on the Arte public television channel on October 10, 2014.
Since then, an increasing number of witnesses who saw Köhler arguing with a stranger before the explosion have come forward. A female witness had already testified to the police about this in 1980. In 1983, she meticulously described to Chaussy the course of events leading up to the explosion, but allowed neither film nor sound recordings of her statement, fearing reprisals from the people behind the attack. Only now, 35 years later, was she willing to be interviewed on camera.
Someone who apparently knew in advance about the bombing was also traced. Just one day after the attack, he was found in possession of leaflets, hailing the bomber Köhler, although his name had still not been released to the public at the time. This right-wing suspect then fled to Argentina but is now back in Germany. His whereabouts are known to the authorities and an initial hearing has allegedly been held.
Another witness, who has now reported to Chaussy, claims to have seen Köhler talking intensely to the occupants of a car in front of the entrance to the festival site. He says Köhler then put a bright plastic bag into a rubbish bin. The witness states that he smelled fireworks and, shortly after, the bomb exploded. He says he reported this to the investigators a few days after the attack, but his statement was never subjected to further investigation.
A key piece of evidence in the case was a severed hand that did not come from any of the victims and was attributed to the bomber, Köhler. The documentary film now includes the statement of a certain Gerd Ester, who was involved as a Federal Criminal Investigation Agency (BKA) explosives expert in the 1980 investigation. Ester claims he reconstructed the bomb and concluded that the hand could have not come from Kohler, because Kohler was bending over the bomb when it exploded and his hands would have been “atomised”.
Chaussy concludes that it was the hand of an accomplice. A female witness, who worked in Oststadt Hospital in Hanover in 1980, has also recently come forward. After the attack, she treated a patient who had lost an arm. She says he had been sitting upright in bed with “a proud glowing look on his face” and was visited by some men who were obviously right-wing radicals.
The young man had refused to explain how he came to be injured, but he apparently told someone that he had been playing with explosives which caused the accident. He disappeared after a few days, before the stitches were removed.
Finding this man today would be a difficult task. In 1997, the prosecutor general allowed all evidence retained by the Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Munich to be destroyed due to “lack of [storage] space”. Among the destroyed evidence were cigarette butts from the ashtrays in Kohler’s car, possibly smoked by his accomplices. The butts were discarded the very year that DNA analysis was first officially approved as courtroom evidence.
Chaussy and Dietrich had originally assumed the hand was destroyed after its discovery. Chaussy now claims he knows this was not the case. The severed hand was never delivered to the Office of the Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe. After the bombing, the Bavarian LKA had initially sent it on to the forensic institute in Munich for serological (blood serum) examination.
There, Chaussy found a form with a stamped reception date and other documents, stating it had been impossible to verify that the hand was part of Köhler’s corpse. Apart from this, there was no trace of the missing hand. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Eisenmenger, former head of forensic medicine at Munich University, says: “Strangely enough, we’ve compiled a large number of laboratory records over many years, but we have no records covering this particular time. We don’t know where the hand could have ended up. We don’t know whether it was incinerated, or whether it was returned. We have no firm evidence about what happened to it.”
Records of the Bavarian LKA, however, indicate that the hand was returned to the LKA. All traces of it ends there. The LKA is subject to the control of the Bavarian interior ministry, which—as Chaussy demonstrates—pressed the investigators to adhere to the solo perpetrator theory.
Max Strauß, son of former Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss [Christian Social Union, CSU], comments on this in the documentary: “Of course, if they uncovered something there internally, they would have taken swift action to cover for themselves in the old CSU way. It was the usual practice.” At the time, Franz Josef Strauß was the leading candidate for the Christian Democratic Union [CDU] and CSU coalition in the federal election, which took place just 10 days after the Oktoberfest bombing.
Köhler’s connection with Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann indicates the possible involvement of intelligence agencies in the Oktoberfest bombing. This paramilitary organisation was founded in 1973 by Karl Heinz Hoffmann, and was able to train neo-Nazis in the use of weapons and guerrilla warfare in Bavaria for six years, unimpeded by the authorities. Gundolf Köhler participated in such exercises in 1976 and 1977. This was known to the Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution (intelligence service).
Only on January 30, 1980, eight months before the Oktoberfest bombing, was the outfit banned by the liberal federal interior minister, Gerhart Baum. At the time, the militia had 400 members. Two-and-a-half months after the Oktoberfest bombing, another member of the paramilitary group, Uwe Behrendt, killed Jewish publisher Shlomo Levin and his partner Frieda Poeschke in Erlangen.
Hoffmann and his closest associates moved to Lebanon after the ban. Chaussy is sure there were several undercover agents in Wehrsportgruppe. The files remain unopened, but two names are now known: Walter Ulrich Behle and Odfried Hepp.
Behle, who checked into a hotel with Hoffmann in the Syrian capital of Damascus in October 1980, told a bartender at the time about the Oktoberfest bombing, boasting: “That was us.” He said they had put one bomb in a garbage bin and another in a drainage gutter.
A new witness supports the claim that there was a second bomb. He says that on the day of the attack, he saw a flame coming from a bomb that had failed to explode. He also says it was lying in a drain or street gutter.
The bartender at the hotel in Damascus immediately reported Behle’s statement to the German Embassy. When he was interrogated in Germany in July 1981, his statement was deemed to be “alcohol-related bragging”.
On August 2, 1982, Wehrsportgruppe member Stefan Wagner, who was on the run from the police, also told someone he had been involved in the Oktoberfest bombing. After the police arrested him, he was sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison. He then shot himself. Since Wagner allegedly could not have been at the scene of the crime on the day of the bombing, investigators called off any further investigations. Nor did they consider whether Wagner might have been involved in preparations for the bombing.
The testimony of a police officer who has now turned to Chaussy is noteworthy. It establishes a connection between Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann and the Thüringer Heimatschutz (Thuringian Homeland Security) organisation, from which the National Socialist Underground (NSU) extreme right-wing terrorist group emerged. Another lead points to the possible involvement of NATO’s secret Gladio forces, which have committed terrorist acts in Italy, Luxembourg and other countries.
According to the police officer who carried out investigations in the Thüringer Heimatschutz milieu, the organisation’s paramilitary exercises in the 1980s were conducted together with the Bavarian militia group. Two years before going into hiding in 1998, NSU terrorists Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhard were photographed at the trial of far-right terrorist Manfred Roeder. In 1980, Roeder founded the German Action Groups, which, among other things, carried out bomb attacks on the homes of refugees.
The explosives were supplied to them by Heinz Lembke, who lives in Uelzen near Hannover, where the alleged accomplice was treated in Oststadt Hospital. Swiss historian Daniele Ganser, who researches NATO’s Gladio forces, assumes Lembke was a member of these paramilitary underground armies, because he was known to be stockpiling and managing weapons and explosives from military reserves.
Lembke probably provided Köhler with the explosives, but investigators also failed to act on this clue. Lembke was found hanging by a cable in his cell in late 1981, shortly after he announced his intention to lodge a comprehensive testimony with the federal prosecutor.
Marginal notes in relevant files led attorney Dietrich to suspect that Lembke was either a confidential informant or an employee of a state or federal intelligence agency. Important files relating to him are still under wraps.
Chaussy has raised the question of whether Bavarian head of state security Dr. Hans Langemann [CSU], who previously worked for the foreign intelligence service (BND), had at that time built up a similar network of undercover agents in the radical right-wing milieu, comparable to the one later associated with the NSU. This might explain why he leaked sensitive information about Köhler to the press and thus warned the bomber’s possible accomplices. Langemann died in 2004.
Chaussy suspects that the informant network organised by Langemann proved a failure in the 1980s, as did the one involving Thüringer Heimatschutz at a later stage. Chaussy’s work on the Oktoberfest bombing and revelations about the NSU and its supporters also suggests a different conclusion: that German secret service agencies virtually amount to a state within the state, which collaborates with right-wing extremists.
Daniel Harrich’s documentary ends with the notice: “The story continues”.

[TonyGosling]

SUBVERTING GERMANY

Gladio operations pervaded Europe and South America in the pre 9/11 era as “anti-Communist operations.” Belgium, Norway, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain and other West European democracies bore Gladio terror in these years. While I was doing my Ph.D. at Edinburgh University, Scotland in the second half of the 1970s, the Baader-Meinhof gang, formally known as the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction) or RAF, suddenly burst into news at the international level. The cause of their international fame resulted from their abduction, in 1977, of Hanns Martin Schleyer, a representative of the West German capitalist class. The abduction took place on September 5, the same date on which Israeli sportsmen were killed in 1972. It was a familiar tactic of the Gladio operators to infiltrate left wing movements and steer them in directions that suited those who ran Gladio. In what was a precursor of the Aldo Moro abduction the following year, the abduction of Schleyer lasted 44 days. Cottrell has noted several similarities between the two abductions [42]:

“. . . a bloody assault on security guards, protracted manhunts, and regular parading of the victims revolutionary banners (the staged Moro and Schleyer poses were, curiosly, virtually identical). . . Both murders bore the same clear blueprint, exquisitely prolonged to cultivate maximum impact on public opinion and reap the desired political harvest. This was the standard feature of the Strategy of Tension.”

During these 44 days, at least in the beginning the authorities were very close to finding him out but seemed disinterested. Valuable and solid clues about suspicious activity in a local flat, including numbers of suspicious vehicles, had been provided to them by witnesses. But the police seemed to let the opportunity slip away for no obvious reason. In the 44 days in captivity, Schleyer was moved between four different countries, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France. How on earth could that happen when the Interpol had been alerted and the case had drawn worldwide attention. He was killed near Mulhouse, a town close the Swiss border in eastern France, on October 18, 1977 with three shots at the back of his head. As Cottrell points out [43]:

“Yves Guerin-Serac, the Frenchman who wrote the manuals of Gladio terrorism, laid special emphasis on infiltrating movements organized in the name of social protest, with the object to manipulate their direction and tactics. . . .Geurin-Serac taught the clever ploy of intercepting plans for terrorist attacks and then allowing those events to happen. The authorities would then reap the propaganda benefits in terms of social persuasion. The destruction of the Communist party in Italy in the wake of the Aldo Moro affair in 1978 was a classic example. But first Germany led the way with a remarkably similar demonstration that bore overtones of a rehearsal. The political prizes of a sensational episode were attractive. It ended with the elimination of the RAF royal family. It also marked the steady slide of federal Germany into a reflection of the pre-war national security state.”

The 1980 Munich Oktoberfest bombing was the most frightening Gladio attack on German soil. The Munich Oktoberfest is held in Munich and is an occasion where people enjoy beer – it is a beer-swill. It runs for about 16 days from the end of last week of September to first weekend in October. The festival is attended by about six million people and is regarded as the biggest festival in the world. During the 1980 Munich Oktoberfest, a bomb blast killed thirteen people and injured over two hundred, 68 of them seriously. Apparently a bomb placed in a waste paper basket exploded on Friday night, September 26, 1980, when the rush was at its peak. What was the object of killing people who had gathered to enjoy themselves and who were merrymaking? It had to be the work of those who wanted to terrorize the people and give the public the impression that the state was their only refuge.

The bomb blast was a typical Gladio activity and what followed bore its marks. An election was due to take place in which the incumbent Prime Minister of Bavaria Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) was running against Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the SDP. Immediately after the blast the CSU leadership attributed responsibility of the bomb attack on the Red Army Faction (RAF) and then attacked SDP government for being too soft on the left wing. But this Gladio designed response subsided as soon as evidence began to emerge about the right wing connection of Kohler, the alleged bomber. In 2011 the German paper Der Speigel reported that Kohler, the student who died in the attack and was blamed for the bombing, had been going around saying that exploding a bomb in Hamburg, or Bonn or Munich, and blaming the left for it, Strauss could be made to win the election.

The blast was then attributed solely to Gundolf Kohler, a 21 year old geology student who had very strong leanings towards the far right parties. Kohler was killed in the blast and the authorities put forward the thesis that he was a lovesick student who wanted to harm himself and others. This theory of a sole perpetrator was put forward despite the fact that witnesses had seen him arguing with some people shortly before the bomb went off and despite the fact that he had links with an extreme right wing group. As early as 29 September, Larry Gerber reported in The Lewiston Daily Sun that neo-Nazi groups were suspected in the bombing [44]. Papers pertaining to a group known as “Military Sport Group Hoffman” were found near the body of Kohler. This name is very suggestive – one may recall the name Austrian Hiking Sports and Society Club – the name of the Austrian Gladio group. Police raided the homes of several members of the group and found grenades, mines and explosives. West German police also confiscated three off-road trucks and three personnel carriers that were trying to enter Austria. The Bavarian Interior Minister however refused to confirm or deny whether the drivers had been arrested. The 43 year old leader of the group, Karl Heinz Hoffman, and five other members of the group were taken into custody but, as it happens with Gladio cases, nothing came of it. The Bavarian authorities terminated the investigation after two years on the basis of the implausible hypothesis that Kohler was a lone disgruntled perpetrator of the act.

It appears from a story published by Der Speigel in 2011 that the Oktoberfest case was reopened in 2011, but for some reason, it was at the end of 2014 that the global media reported it! Dave Emory posted a story on spitfirelist.com on November 1, 2011 stating [45] (emphasis in original):

Another clue also raises questions about the background of the Oktoberfest attack. A few weeks earlier, Köhler’s idol Hoffmann apparently met in Italy with the internationally feared neo-fascist Joachim Fiebelkorn. The neo-Nazi from the town of Eppstein in the Taunus Mountains near Frankfurt was an informant for the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and a number of intelligence agencies. He also helped Klaus Barbie, the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, build a paramilitary combat group in Bolivia. According to previously unknown Stasi documents, Fiebelkorn, “at the instruction of Chiaie,” had met with “Karl-Heinz Hoffmann in Rome on July 13, 1980,” as well as with French and Italian right-wing extremists. The Italian neo-fascist Stefano delle Chiaie was viewed as one of the leading international terrorists of the day, a sort of right-wing counterpart to the left-wing terrorist “Carlos.” Western intelligence agencies held Chiaie and his varying terrorist organizations, like “Ordine Nuovo,” responsible for anti-communist attacks on several continents in the 1970s and 1980s. .
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/09/23/gladio/

[outsider]

'1980 Oktoberfest bombing: German government and secret service still withholding information':
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/25/okto-m25.html

(It's a pdf or something, so I can't copy parts out).

'1980 Oktoberfest bombing: German government and secret service still withholding information':
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/25/okto-m25.html
By Dietmar Henning 25 May 2016

'On September 26 1980, 12 innocent bystanders and the perpetrator, Gundolf Köhler, were killed in the most serious right-wing attack in post-war German history. Over 200 were injured, some seriously.

At the time, the investigators and secret service drew a veil over the background to the attacks and those responsible. Although evidence and witnesses pointed to the involvement of state bodies and neo-Nazi terrorist groups, the authorities soon settled on a narrative that Köhler was the sole perpetrator. The state attorney halted any investigations two years after the attack.

It was only thanks to the initiative of journalist Ulrich Chaussy and the victims’ attorney Werner Dietrich that the attorney general was forced to take up the case again at the end of 2014. In February 2015, they demanded the Secret Service and Foreign Intelligence Agency (BND) look through their files covering the Oktoberfest bombing and the right-wing scene at the time and make the relevant files available.

The state attorney in Karslruhe sent the two agencies a long list, which included the following search terms, among others: Von Karlheinz Hoffmann (the paramilitary group the culprit Gundolf Köhler trained in) and Heinz Lembke (the neo-Nazi who was suspected of providing the explosives for the attack).

But the prosecutors are still waiting. The BND has since provided a few files; however, they are redacted. The Secret Service, which possesses far more files regarding the Oktoberfest attack, the culprit’s background and the neo-Nazi organisations of the time, is keeping these under lock and key.

This was revealed in an answer to a parliamentary question lodged by Left Party deputy Martina Renner. The Karlsruhe state attorney has been waiting for 15 months. The Secret Service has justified the long wait by saying that it involved “a very extensive trawl through the evidence.” However, the Secret Service and the government were close to completion of their review, it was said....'

I was led back to this subject by the brilliant book 'Operation Gladio' by Paul L. Williams.