Foreign Affairs July/August 2004: U.S.'s use of Nazi intelligence as cautionary tale
The July / August issue of Foreign Affairs (Vol. 83, No. 4), the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations -- yes, conspiracy buffs, that Council on Foreign Relations; and the same entity that developed the program to rebuild Western Europe after World War Two that became known as the Marshall Plan -- leads off with a very interesting book review essay by Timothy Naftali: "Berlin to Baghdad: The Pitfalls of Hiring Enemy Intelligence" (pps. 126-32). Mr. Naftali reviews the "historio-memoir" of the late CIA agent James H. Critchfield, Partners at the Creation: The Men Behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003; 243 pps.; US $32.95), in which Mr. Critchfield recounts how he "mentored" (which is the verb that Mr. Naftali uses; one may well have misgivings as to how accurate it is and exactly how much control that Mr. Critchfield had over his "students" or "protégés") "two of Hitler's former generals, the controversial Reinhard Gehlen and the lesser-known Adolf Heusinger, both of whom would ultimately play large roles in West Germany's national security community."
Yes; that Reinhard Gehlen. Some sources say that Gehlen's ORG supplied nearly all of the U.S. intelligence on the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s; Gehlen's ORG is credited (or blamed...) for grossly exaggerating the Soviets' troop strength and belligerence, and apparently some of the ORG reports were retyped verbatim onto CIA letterhead, and handed to the U.S. president, Harry S Truman.
Some choice excerpts from Mr. Naftali's review:
"During [World War II], Gehlen directed the German army's intelligence organization on the eastern front, the Fremde Heere Ost, while Heusinger was wartime chief of the operations division of the German army general staff. Heusinger participated in the resistance movement against Hitler and was jailed for it in 1944; Gehlen did not."
"Heusinger ran Gehlen's postwar analytical branch and was more pro-U.S. than his colleague."
"...the Soviets found the Gehlen organization easy to penetrate, and Gehlen's own chief of counterespionage against the Soviet bloc, Heinz Felfe, eventually proved to be a KGB agent."
"In accordance with the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, the CIA and the U.S. Army have had to declassify thousands of documents on their relationships with Nazi war criminals. Gehlen himself may never have been indicted for war crimes, but we now know that at least 100 of his employees were former members of the SS."
"In its drive to acquire human intelligence on the Soviet Union, [the CIA] allowed its field officers to recruit former members of Hitler's SS and excluded war criminals only if their war crimes were a matter of public record [emphasis added]." -- In other words, the CIA wanted to maintain "plausible deniability."
"CIA headquarters established a climate that discouraged field officers from digging too hard [into an operative's wartime record]. Not until Israel captured Eichmann in 1960, in fact, would the CIA bother to look at the records of captured Gestapo members to see how many of these killers it had recruited."
-- The usual counter-argument employed here goes along the lines of, "You can't gain real, actionable intelligence by only dealing with nice guys." Quite possibly true; and yet this reasoning is bit too close for comfort to a reportedly favorite saying of Stalin's: "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs."
"Case officers are rewarded for the number of agents they recruit and the amount of material they send home. Former enemy intelligence officers understand this very well and are adept at inventing networks to meet the needs of their new bosses [emphasis added]. Former Nazis played this game, taking the Americans to the cleaners and getting nicely paid for work of no significance."
Clearly, this is but one of many caveats to incorporating former enemy operatives into one's own intelligence agency; unfortunately, this is one of the few that I can imagine would give even the most ardent "egg-breakers" pause.
One final citation, then, from Mr. Naftali's piece:
"...the situation in Iraq today is even more dangerous than that of postwar Germany, not least because Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower's decision to rely on overwhelming force broke the spirit of even the most dedicated Nazis and left little option for regime loyalists to surface openly."
The implications of this statement are that the U.S. might be in a better position today if it had "gone medieval" on Iraq, if it had "bombed it back to the Stone Age." That sort of peace is not one that should be lightly sought.
Yes; that Reinhard Gehlen. Some sources say that Gehlen's ORG supplied nearly all of the U.S. intelligence on the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s; Gehlen's ORG is credited (or blamed...) for grossly exaggerating the Soviets' troop strength and belligerence, and apparently some of the ORG reports were retyped verbatim onto CIA letterhead, and handed to the U.S. president, Harry S Truman.
Some choice excerpts from Mr. Naftali's review:
"During [World War II], Gehlen directed the German army's intelligence organization on the eastern front, the Fremde Heere Ost, while Heusinger was wartime chief of the operations division of the German army general staff. Heusinger participated in the resistance movement against Hitler and was jailed for it in 1944; Gehlen did not."
"Heusinger ran Gehlen's postwar analytical branch and was more pro-U.S. than his colleague."
"...the Soviets found the Gehlen organization easy to penetrate, and Gehlen's own chief of counterespionage against the Soviet bloc, Heinz Felfe, eventually proved to be a KGB agent."
"In accordance with the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, the CIA and the U.S. Army have had to declassify thousands of documents on their relationships with Nazi war criminals. Gehlen himself may never have been indicted for war crimes, but we now know that at least 100 of his employees were former members of the SS."
"In its drive to acquire human intelligence on the Soviet Union, [the CIA] allowed its field officers to recruit former members of Hitler's SS and excluded war criminals only if their war crimes were a matter of public record [emphasis added]." -- In other words, the CIA wanted to maintain "plausible deniability."
"CIA headquarters established a climate that discouraged field officers from digging too hard [into an operative's wartime record]. Not until Israel captured Eichmann in 1960, in fact, would the CIA bother to look at the records of captured Gestapo members to see how many of these killers it had recruited."
-- The usual counter-argument employed here goes along the lines of, "You can't gain real, actionable intelligence by only dealing with nice guys." Quite possibly true; and yet this reasoning is bit too close for comfort to a reportedly favorite saying of Stalin's: "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs."
"Case officers are rewarded for the number of agents they recruit and the amount of material they send home. Former enemy intelligence officers understand this very well and are adept at inventing networks to meet the needs of their new bosses [emphasis added]. Former Nazis played this game, taking the Americans to the cleaners and getting nicely paid for work of no significance."
Clearly, this is but one of many caveats to incorporating former enemy operatives into one's own intelligence agency; unfortunately, this is one of the few that I can imagine would give even the most ardent "egg-breakers" pause.
One final citation, then, from Mr. Naftali's piece:
"...the situation in Iraq today is even more dangerous than that of postwar Germany, not least because Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower's decision to rely on overwhelming force broke the spirit of even the most dedicated Nazis and left little option for regime loyalists to surface openly."
The implications of this statement are that the U.S. might be in a better position today if it had "gone medieval" on Iraq, if it had "bombed it back to the Stone Age." That sort of peace is not one that should be lightly sought.