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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 08:28am May 24, 2001 EST (#4188 of 4190)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"Vilest

"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 early 1950s.

"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

"It's long been known that top German scientists were eagerly scooped up by several countries, including the United States, which rushed to claim these high-profile experts as spoils of World War II. Yet all the while the CIA was mum about recruiting Nazi spies. The U.S. government never officially acknowledged its role in launching the Gehlen organization until more than half a century after the fact.

"Handling Nazi spies, however, was not the same as employing rocket technicians. One could always tell whether Werner von Braun and his bunch were accomplishing their assignments for NASA and other U.S. agencies. If the rockets didn't fire properly, then the scientists would be judged accordingly.

"But how does one determine if a Nazi spy with a dubious past is doing a reliable job?

"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 IGW review panel and was author of Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War.

"Unexpected Consequences

"Members of the Gehlen Org were instrumental in helping thousands of fasc

rshowalter - 08:31am May 24, 2001 EST (#4189 of 4190)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"Members of the Gehlen Org were instrumental in helping thousands of fascist fugitives escape via "ratlines" to safe havens abroad – often with a wink and a nod from U.S. intelligence officers.

"Third Reich expatriates and fascist collaborators subsequently emerged as "security advisers" in several Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, where ultra-right-wing death squads persist as their enduring legacy.

"Klaus Barbie, for example, assisted a succession of military regimes in Bolivia, where he taught soldiers torture techniques and helped protect the flourishing cocaine trade in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

"CIA officials eventually learned that the Nazi old boy network nesting inside the Gehlen Org had an unexpected twist to it. By bankrolling Gehlen the CIA unknowingly laid itself open to manipulation by a foreign intelligence service that was riddled with Soviet spies.

"Gehlen's habit of employing compromised ex-Nazis – and the CIA's willingness to sanction this practice – enabled the USSR to penetrate West Germany's secret service by blackmailing numerous agents.

"Ironically, some of the men employed by Gehlen would go on to play leading roles in European neofascist organizations that despise the United States. One of the consequences of the CIA's ghoulish alliance with the Org is evident today in a resurgent fascist movement in Europe that can trace its ideological lineage back to Hitler's Reich through Gehlen operatives who collaborated with U.S. intelligence.

"Slow to recognize that their Nazi hired guns would feign an allegiance to the Western alliance as long as they deemed it tactically advantageous, CIA officials invested far too much in Gehlen's spooky Nazi outfit.

""It was a horrendous mistake, morally, politically, and also in very pragmatic intelligence terms," says American University professor Richard Breitman, chairman of the IWG review panel.

"More than just a bungled spy caper, the Gehlen debacle should serve as a cautionary tale at a time when post-Cold War triumphalism and arrogant unilateralism are rampant among U.S. officials.

"If nothing else, it underscores the need for the United States to confront some of its own demons now that unreconstructed Cold Warriors are again riding top saddle in Washington.

MARTIN A LEE (martin@sfbg.com) is the author of Acid Dreams and The Beast Reawakens , a book on neofascism.

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