The Gehlen Org
from the book
The CIAs Greatest Hits
by Mark Zepezauer
One of the most important of all CIA operations
began before the agency was even born. Many Nazi leaders realized
they were going to lose World War II and started negotiating with
the US behind Hitler's back about a possible future war against
the USSR. In 1943, future CIA Director Allen Dulles moved to Bern,
Switzerland to begin back-channel talks with these influential
Nazis.
Officially, Dulles was an agent of the
OSS (the Overseas Secret Service, the CIA's predecessor) but he
wasn't above pursuing his own agenda with the Nazis, many of whom
he had worked with before the war. Indeed, as a prominent Wall
Street lawyer, Dulles had a number of clients- Standard Oil, for
one-who continued doing business with the Nazis during the war.
So it's not surprising that when Hitler's
intelligence chief for the Eastern front, General Reinhard Gehlen
(GAY-len), surrendered to the US, he expected a warm reception-especially
since he had buried his extensive files in a secret spot and planned
to use them as a negotiating chip
General Gehlen was whisked to Fort Hunt,
Virginia, where he soon succeeded in convincing his captors that
the Soviet Union was about to attack the West. The US Army and
Gehlen arrived at a "gentlemen's agreement.
According to the secret treaty, his spy
organization-which came to be called the Gehlen Org- would work
for, and be funded by, the US until a new German government came
to power. In the meantime, should Gehlen find a conflict between
the interests of Germany and the US, he was free to consider German
interests first.
Gehlen even made sure he got approval
for this arrangement from Hitler's appointed successor, Admiral
Doenitz, who was in a cushy prisoner-of-war camp for Nazi VIPs
in Wiesbaden, Germany.
For almost ten years, the Gehlen Org was
virtually the CIA's only source of intelligence on Eastern Europe.
Then, in 1955, it evolved into the BND (the German equivalent
of the CIA) which, of course, continued to cooperate with the
CIA.
Gehlen was far from the only Nazi war
criminal employed by the CIA. Others included Klaus Barbie ("the
Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind
who worked closely with Eichmann) and, SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny
(a great favorite of Hitler's). There's even evidence that Martin
Bormann, Hitler's second-in-command at the end of the war, faked
his own death and escaped to Latin America, where he worked with
CIA-linked groups.
[Correction: The OSS was the Office of
Strategic Services - not the Overseas Secret Service.]
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