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WORST KEPT SECRETS OF THE BUMBLING BEAR (Part 1 of 2)
by Jared Israel
[Originally Posted 22 May 2001]
[Reposted 2 December 2001]
=======================================
Below is an article from the 'San Francisco Bay Guardian', entitled, 'The CIA's
Worst-Kept Secret.' It discusses some recently unclassified CIA files. These
documents, 18,000 pages in all, confirm that U.S. intelligence recruited and protected
Nazis starting at the end of World War II.
I am posting and writing about this article for two reasons. First, it includes some
useful information about the Nazi-CIA marriage. Second, it presents that information
from a perspective that I consider at once mistaken and widespread; hence worth
discussing.
The article was written by Martin Lee. Mr. Lee argues that after World War II, Nazi
spies duped the U.S. into hiring them, thereby protecting themselves and their
networks from prosecution.
He cites the example of General Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen had been chief of Nazi
intelligence in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. According to Mr. Lee, Gehlen
fooled spymaster Allen Dulles, who later became Director of the CIA, in the following
way:
"Gehlen was quickly spirited off to Fort Hunt, Va. The image he projected during 10
months of negotiations at Fort Hunt was, to use a bit of espionage parlance, a
"legend" --one that hinged on Gehlen's false claim that he was never really a Nazi,
but was dedicated, above all, to fighting Communism. Those who bit the bait included
future CIA director Allen Dulles, who became Gehlen's biggest supporter among American
policy wonks. " (From the text below)
There's a bit of a problem here.
Starting more than a decade earlier, Allen Dulles, a leading diplomat and spy, and his
brother, John Foster, a Wall Street insider, had created a financial-intelligence
apparatus to assist the Nazis. So Dulles had long-standing, friendly relations with
Nazis. That being the case, why would Dulles be upset if he 'learned' that Gehlen (a
top Nazi spy) was a Nazi? (1)
Moreover, Gehlen had not been some cloistered spy. His job had not been simply to
coordinate the gathering of information. He had been a key leader of the work of
fascist groups in the occupied East, such as the Iron Guard in Romania, the Latvian
Vanagis and the Croatian Ustashe. These groups committed the most unimaginably brutal
atrocities against 'Untermenschen', Jews, 'gypsies', Serbs and other Slavs and
Orthodox Christians, as well as against anti-Nazis, both Communist and non-Communist,
including various Nationalist groups, which resisted the Nazis. Gehlen was a leading
war criminal.
Did Allen Dulles know all this? Of course he knew all this. He was a U.S. spymaster
with almost three decades experience and he had worked with the Nazi leadership for
two decades. Dulles arranged to have Gehlen secretly brought to the U.S. precisely so
that the Russians wouldn't get hold of him and put him on trial for war crimes and
hang him.
Once they had Gehlen safely in the U.S., Allen Dulles and other top U.S. Intelligence
operatives met with Gehlen and planned a nightmare creation: a vast European
spying-and-subversion apparatus, controlled by Washington but staffed by hundreds and
then thousands of Nazi war criminals. The Nazis may have lost the war but Nazism had
found new life. (6)
Since Allen Dulles knew that Gehlen commanded an army of monstrous war criminals in
Eastern Europe and Russia, what is the significance of Dulles' supposed (though
frankly unbelievable) belief that Gehlen was not a Nazi?
Mr. Lee's suggestion that Dulles' rescue and empowerment of Gehlen was somehow less
monstrous because he was 'fooled' about Gehlen's Nazi beliefs is typical of the way
the mass media has been whitewashing American foreign policy since 1945.
According to this reasoning, it is a crime if Nazis (or Islamist terrorists) go out
and commit atrocities on their own. But if they commit atrocities at the behest of
American leaders who are a) naive about who these Nazis (or Islamist terrorists) are
and b) are only using these Nazis or terrorists in pursuit of good American values,
then it is OK. This treats the American foreign policy establishment as if it were
some perpetual teenager who may have fallen in with a bad crowd, but heck, he'll grow
out of it.
Very few of us will ever read the declassified Nazi-CIA documents. Articles like Mr.
Lee's from the 'San Francisco Bay Guardian', a left-leaning newspaper, must inform our
view. Throughout the article, Mr. Lee portrays Washington as naive, trapped by a Cold
War mentality into recruiting Nazis (or, as he suggests at the end of his article, by
recruiting too many of them...you know, Nazis are OK, but only if taken in
moderation...)
Can it be that a smart guy like Mr. Lee really believes that the very sophisticated
men who shaped US foreign policy over the past 50 years unknowingly blundered into bed
with the worst butchers of the century? I cannot say; but by making this absurd idea
the theme of his article, Mr. Lee, the critic, makes himself an apologist for the
thing he is seemingly attacking.
DID THE NAZI-CIA MARRIAGE TAKE PLACE BECAUSE WASHINGTON WAS IN A "COLD WAR MENTALITY"?
This notion, which is put forward by Mr. Lee, is contradicted by two important facts:
Fact # 1 - No, Because It Started Too Early
Washington began working with high-placed officials in the Vatican at the end of the
war to set up Nazi escape routes. Some of the Nazis whom they cooperated in rescuing
were spies. Others were just Nazi butchers.
The escape routes, appropriately called 'ratlines', started in Eastern Europe and the
Balkans, particularly Croatia, and terminated in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Latin
America, and so on. How could it be true that the U.S. got swept up in organizing the
ratlines due to a Cold War mentality when the Cold War hadn't yet begun? (2)
Mr. Lee is aware that the U.S. began rescuing Nazis before the Cold War began. He
points out that this:
"...belies the prevalent Western notion that aggressive Soviet policies were primarily
to blame for triggering the Cold War."
Point well taken. But at the same time, Mr. Lee writes:
"The early courtship of Gehlen by American intelligence suggests that Washington was
in a Cold War mode sooner than most people realize." (From the text below)
What does this mean? If aggressive Soviet policies were not to blame for triggering
the Cold War, why does Mr. Lee say that "Washington was [already] in a Cold War mode"
at the end of World War II? Doesn't a "Cold War" require two sides?
What Mr. Lee probably means is that at the end of W.W. II; Washington was in an
"Attack Russia!" mode. Indeed, it was precisely Washington's belligerent and criminal
actions, such as rescuing Nazi war criminals, that created the international climate
of hostility and threat which became known as the "Cold War".
In the decade and a half before World War II, Washington and Wall Street, including
the the Dulles brothers and the grandfather and great grandfather of President Bush,
played a dangerous game. They helped put the Nazis in power and aided them once they
got in power. With their assistance, the shattered German war industry was rebuilt in
record time.
Why did Dulles and the Walker/Bush family and others in the U.S. Establishment help
finance the creation of a powerful, fascist state in Germany? They did it in large
measure because they planned to use the Nazis to attack Soviet Russia.
Alas, as the poet says, the best laid plans of mice and men often fail. Instead of
settling for their assigned role, of conquering Russia, the German Nazi/Corporate
state decided to conquer everyone. Washington and London responded to this
unacceptable ambition in a measured fashion. First, they allowed the Nazis to inflict
maximum damage on the Soviet Union. Then they opened a Second Front (the Normandy
Invasion) in order to prevent the USSR from liberating all of Europe and to make sure
the Nazis were not completely crushed.
After World War II Washington didn't go into "Cold War mode." It simply continued with
its plan of using Germany and the Nazis against the USSR. Except now the Nazi
apparatus existed all over Eastern and Southern Europe (including in Russia) and
Soviet influence was far more extensive as well.
Fact # 2 - No, because the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment Didn't Use the Nazis Only
to Spy
The Nazi murderers whom the U.S. helped rescue, in violation of law and decency, were
not simply spies. Many of them were monstrous war criminals. And these war
criminal/spies were not simply rescued, dumped in various countries, and then
forgotten.
Instead the U.S. maintained a great network of the 'escapees' and their contacts all
over Europe with three purposes:
* to spy;
* to nurture networks of fascists dedicated to infiltrating, subverting and sabotaging
the socialist and non-socialist states of Europe, a network linked to U.S.
intelligence (and to Germany);
* and to prepare a force that could be sent back into the socialist countries,
especially the strategic Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and into the
Balkans states, especially Yugoslavia, when the time was ripe.
The Nazi and pro-Nazi 'refugees' were maintained at the expense of U.S. taxpayers
through programs such as the 'Assembly of Captive Nations' (3)
In the late 1980s and early 1990s many of the U.S.-protected Nazi war criminals
(and/or their children) were shipped back to Eastern Europe and the Balkans where they
helped to launch secessionist movements, install U.S. and German puppet governments,
assassinate those who resisted and foster national hatreds. For example, returning
Fascists helped Franjo Tudjman's neo-Nazi group, the Croatian Democratic Union, or
HDZ, take over the Croatian Republic and launch a secessionist war against Yugoslavia
in 1991. (4)
THE BUMBLING BEAR THEORY OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Why do critics of U.S. foreign policy so often present Washington as a passive force?
Why are we constantly told that the U.S. is being 'used by the Cuban exiles for their
own agenda' or that the U.S. has 'screwed up once again by backing the Kosovo
Liberation Army' and that 'sooner or later the Americans will find out what kind of
monsters these Albanian secessionists are' and so on. (5)
Two explanations come to mind.
First, wittingly or unwittingly, people tend to censor themselves in confrontation
with reckless power.
When one is criticizing an Establishment that bombs pill factories because it doesn't
like the government (as the U.S. did in Sudan), that bombs Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq
with radioactive weapons and then sends its own and allied troops into the
contaminated areas, that refuses to punish submarine commanders who cause the deaths
of Japanese fishermen while performing daredevil stunts with nuclear submarines - in
criticizing such an Establishment one may experience the temptation to exercise
restraint.
If, for example, one argues that Washington was tricked into working with Nazis one
may feel reasonably secure. One is not challenging the basic legitimacy of the Wall
Street-Washington axis. But if one argues that the nightmares of U.S. foreign policy
have been, like most large-scale human activities, planned, then one will be accused
of being conspiratorial, or extremist, or worse. One may find that certain doors,
previously open, are now shut tight. Or worse.
Second, American TV and films, viewed by people all over the world, project an image
of the Innocent American official: kind hearted, too powerful for his own good; easily
fooled and manipulated. This plays a big role in conditioning people to think of the
U.S. government as a bumbling bear.
Since the movies are partly responsible for this nonsensical image of American
leaders, let me paraphrase a famous movie speech by way of refutation:
"Don't be too sure we're as naive as we're supposed to be. That sort of reputation
might be good business, toning down the critics and making it easier to deal with the
enemy." (With apologies to Sam Spade in the 'Maltese Falcon', for which see
http://www.filmsite.org/malt.html )
Was Washington an innocent bystander during World War II? It was most surely not. The
OSS, predecessor of the CIA, was engaged all over Europe. OSS operatives knew - and
reported - that monstrous crimes were being committed by Nazis, following which
Washington recruited these same Nazis into its burgeoning covert apparatus, the most
sensitive branch of the U.S. government.
Think about this. The OSS was a small organization. The Nazi apparatus was huge and
well organized. Absorbing the Nazis into U.S. intelligence was like a garter snake
eating a rat. What does this mean? It means the most powerful forces in the U.S.A. had
decided that the CIA was to be, in essence, a Nazi organization.
Washington's goal was to break up the USSR and other Socialist states and bring them
under U.S. domination. The way Washington planners viewed things, Nazis had many
virtues. They respected capitalism. They despised a host of groups (including Serbs
and other Slavs, 'Gypsies', other dark-skinned people, etc.) who tended to resist U.S.
domination. They were good at playing on prejudice against these groups. Moreover, the
intensity of their hate gave an energy of persistence to their work. They were skilled
at demagoguery, subversion, assassination, and torture.
Numerous virtues; only one fault: a very bad reputation, regarding which, no problem
unless the truth came out. And should the truth come out, (as it is indeed trickling
out today) the important thing from Washington's point of view was and is to make sure
the inevitable criticism has the proper slant. Let the critics declare that it was all
a terrible, stupid, unforgivable mistake and we should learn 'our' lesson and never
never do such bad things again.
Better to be attacked for being unforgivably stupid than for being unforgivably evil.
To this end, President Clinton set up an 'Interagency Working Group' (IWG), made up of
"scholars, public officials, and former intelligence officers who helped prepare the
CIA records for declassification." It would appear that Mr. Lee has accepted the IWG's
spin on the Nazi-CIA connection.
Below is the 'San Francisco Bay Guardian' article.
Following the article I have posted a few dissenting remarks.
-- Jared Israel, 21 May 2001
==================================================
The CIA's Worst-Kept Secret
>From 'San Francisco Bay Guardian', May 7, 2001
Newly Declassified Files Confirm United States Collaboration with Nazis
by Martin A. Lee
=============================================
"Honest and idealist ... enjoys good food and wine ... unprejudiced mind ..."
That's how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil
Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in
planning the Final Solution. Augsburg's SS unit performed "special duties," a
euphemism for exterminating Jews and other "undesirables" during the Second World War.
Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate
himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late1940s as an expert on Soviet
affairs. Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue's
gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence shortly after Germany
surrendered to the Allies..
Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years
ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the
worst-kept secrets of the Cold War-- the CIA's use of an extensive Nazi spy network to
wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.
The CIA reports show that U.S. officials knew they were subsidizing numerous Third
Reich veterans who had committed horrible crimes against humanity, but these
atrocities were overlooked as the anti-Communist crusade acquired its own momentum.
For Nazis who would otherwise have been charged with war crimes, signing on with
American intelligence enabled them to avoid a prison term.
"The real winners of the Cold War were Nazi war criminals, many of whom were able to
escape justice because the East and West became so rapidly focused after the war on
challenging each other," says Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's
Office of Special Investigations and America's chief Nazi hunter. Rosenbaum serves on
a Clinton-appointed Interagency Working Group committee of U.S. scholars, public
officials, and former intelligence officers who helped prepare the CIA records for
declassification.
Many Nazi criminals "received light punishment, no punishment at all, or received
compensation because Western spy agencies considered them useful assets in the Cold
War," the IWG team stated after releasing 18,000 pages of redacted CIA material. (More
installments are pending.)
These are "not just dry historical documents," insists former congresswoman Elizabeth
Holtzman, a member of the panel that examined the CIA files. As far as Holtzman is
concerned, the CIA papers raise critical questions about American foreign policy and
the origins of the Cold War.
The decision to recruit Nazi operatives had a negative impact on U.S.-Soviet relations
and set the stage for Washington's tolerance of human rights' abuses and other
criminal acts in the name of anti-Communism. With that fateful sub-rosa embrace, the
die was cast for a litany of antidemocratic CIA interventions around the world.
The Gehlen Org
The key figure on the German side of the CIA-Nazi tryst was General Reinhard Gehlen,
who had served as Adolf Hitler's top anti-Soviet spy. During World War II, Gehlen
oversaw all German military-intelligence operations in Eastern Europe and the USSR.
As the war drew to a close, Gehlen surmised that the U.S.-Soviet alliance would soon
break down. Realizing that the United States did not have a viable cloak-and-dagger
apparatus in Eastern Europe, Gehlen surrendered to the Americans and pitched himself
as someone who could make a vital contribution to the forthcoming struggle against the
Communists. In addition to sharing his vast espionage archive on the USSR, Gehlen
promised that he could resurrect an underground network of battle-hardened
anti-Communist assets who were well placed to wreak havoc throughout the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe.
Although the Yalta Treaty stipulated that the United States must give the Soviets all
captured German officers who had been involved in "eastern area activities," Gehlen
was quickly spirited off to Fort Hunt, Va. The image he projected during 10 months of
negotiations at Fort Hunt was, to use a bit of espionage parlance, a "legend" --one
that hinged on Gehlen's false claim that he was never really a Nazi, but was
dedicated, above all, to fighting Communism. Those who bit the bait included future
CIA director Allen Dulles, who became Gehlen's biggest supporter among American policy
wonks.
Gehlen returned to West Germany in the summer of 1946 with a mandate to rebuild his
espionage organization and resume spying on the East at the behest of American
intelligence. The date is significant as it preceded the onset of the Cold War, which,
according to standard U.S. historical accounts, did not begin until a year later. The
early courtship of Gehlen by American intelligence suggests that Washington was in a
Cold War mode sooner than most people realize. The Gehlen gambit also belies the
prevalent Western notion that aggressive Soviet policies were primarily to blame for
triggering the Cold War.
Based near Munich, Gehlen proceeded to enlist thousands of Gestapo, Wehrmacht, and SS
veterans. Even the vilest of the vile -- the senior bureaucrats who ran the central
administrative apparatus of the Holocaust -- were welcome in the "Gehlen Org," as it
was called, including Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's chief deputy. SS major Emil
Augsburg and Gestapo captain Klaus Barbie, otherwise known as the "Butcher of Lyon,"
were among those who did double duty for Gehlen and U.S. intelligence. "It seems that
in the Gehlen headquarters one SS man paved the way for the next and Himmler's elite
were having happy reunion ceremonies," the Frankfurter Rundschau reported in the
early1950s.
Bolted lock, stock, and barrel into the CIA, Gehlen's Nazi-infested spy apparatus
functioned as America's secret eyes and ears in central Europe. The Org would go on to
play a major role within NATO, supplying two-thirds of raw intelligence on the Warsaw
Pact countries. Under CIA auspices, and later as head of the West German secret
service until he retired in 1968, Gehlen exerted considerable influence on U.S. policy
toward the Soviet bloc. When U.S. spy chiefs desired an off-the-shelf style of nation
tampering, they turned to the readily available Org, which served as a subcontracting
syndicate for a series of ill-fated guerrilla air drops behind the Iron Curtain and
other harebrained CIA rollback schemes.
Sitting ducks for disinformation
...Third Reich veterans often proved adept at peddling data -- much of it false -- in
return for cash and safety, the IWG panel concluded. Many Nazis played a double game,
feeding scuttlebutt to both sides of the East-West conflict and preying upon the
mutual suspicions that emerged from the rubble of Hitler's Germany.
General Gehlen frequently exaggerated the Soviet threat in order to exacerbate
tensions between the superpowers. At one point he succeeded in convincing General
Lucius Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone of occupation in Germany, that a major
Soviet war mobilization had begun in Eastern Europe. This prompted Clay to dash off a
frantic, top-secret telegram to Washington in March 1948, warning that war "may come
with dramatic suddenness."
Gehlen's disinformation strategy was based on a simple premise: the colder the Cold
War got, the more political space for Hitler's heirs to maneuver. The Org could only
flourish under Cold War conditions; as an institution it was therefore committed to
perpetuating the Soviet-American conflict.
"The agency loved Gehlen because he fed us what we wanted to hear. We used his stuff
constantly, and we fed it to everyone else -- the Pentagon, the White House, the
newspapers. They loved it, too. But it was hyped-up Russian bogeyman junk, and it did
a lot of damage to this country," a retired CIA official told author Christopher
Simpson, who also serves on the IWG review panel and was author of "Blowback:
America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War."
CONTINUED, PART 2
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