U.S. Army Field Manual 30-31B

Its usage in implicating the CIA in certain events further fueled debate, but arguments to its authenticity were strengthened by evidence uncovered during Operation Gladio in the 1990s.

[14] At a 1980 hearing of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee of Oversight, CIA officials testified that the document was a singularly effective forgery by the KGB and an example of Soviet covert action.

It was also used at the end of the 1970s during Operation GLADIO, to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency in the Red Brigades' kidnapping and assassination of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro.

[18][19] The discovery in the early-1990s of Operation Gladio (NATO stay-behind networks) in Europe led to renewed debate as to whether or not the manual was fraudulent.

In Allan Francovich's three-part BBC documentary on the subject, Licio Gelli, the Italian leader of the anti-Communist P2 freemason lodge, stated "The CIA gave it to me."