email me for URL to Part II. TRAGEDY + TIME = COMEDY. My first trip to Europe was less than a triumph of planning or execution. Fascists were blowing up trains when we arrived and we decided to ditch our Eurail passes hitch hike through Italy. The term "strategy of tension" recurred during the trials that followed in the 1970s and 1980s Years of Lead ( "anni di piombo"), during which terror attacks and assassinations were committed by apparently neofascist terrorists (with such names as Ordine Nuovo, Avanguardia Nazionale or Fronte Nazionale). It was primarily members and international supporters of the Italian Communist Party who invented and popularized the term "strategy of tension". They meant to draw attention to the crimes of the Italian Right and Far-Right parties who were allegedly supported by the foreign belligerents.[citation needed] Much attention[weasel words] has been on Operation Gladio, Italy's branch of the secret pre-positioned NATO "stay-behind" armies of Western Europe. These armies were set up to perform resistance, partisan, and guerrilla activities in the event of Soviet invasion; equivalent units were set up by other NATO members in their states. It is claimed that Gladio units were engaged in destabilization at the behest of the United States and other Western governments, intelligence agencies (eg, the CIA), the P2 masonic lodge, the Order of the Solar Temple, various Church-related organizations, and domestic influences such as organized crime ...