www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id465/pg1

rotten roots: the us, nazis and the cia
by Preston Peet (ptpeet@cs.com) - May 19, 2001

"He's on our side, and that's all that matters," chuckled Allen Dulles, a US Intelligence officer during the war who later headed the CIA.

"Besides, one need not invite a Gehlen to one's club," wrote the late, great conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell in 1983, quoting Dulles.

A mystery many Americans ponder now at the dawn of a new millennium is how an agency such as the CIA, which purports to work for the furthering of Truth, Justice and the American Way, could have gone so far astray. Or has it gone astray at all?

On Wednesday, September 20, 2000, the CIA admitted for the first time that it had connections to Reinhard Gehlen (1902-1979), Adolf Hitler's Eastern Intelligence Chief during World War II.

This admission comes over fifty-five years after Gehlen first surrendered to an American Counter Intelligence-Corps Team (May 28, 1945). Just months prior, in March, Gehlen and his henchmen transferred all of their documents onto microfilm, and buried the cache in metal drums in the Austrian Alps. Gehlen demanded an audience with American officials, and got it, arriving at Washington National Airport (August 24, 1945).

Gehlen quickly came to an agreement with his erstwhile captors: All his agents, documents, and his prodigious connections would be at the service of the Americans. In exchange, Gehlen would not be prosecuted for war crimes. Gehlen capitalized upon Western Industrialists' fears of Communism and the Soviet threat, deluding the Western powers, supposedly, into believing that the Soviets were massing to attack, greatly outnumbering the US and British forces after the crumbling fall of the Third Reich.

Setting up shop back in Central Germany in the Spessert Mountains, and supported by the newly formed CIA, the Gehlen Org began shunting anti-Soviet intelligence back to US spooks, until becoming incorporated openly into the Bonn Government as the official intelligence organization (Bundesnachrichtendiest) when West Germany gained its sovereignty in 1955.

This friendship and cooperation between US and Nazi officials has been well documented by numerous respected authors, notably Alexander Cockburn's Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (New York: Verso Press, 1998) and Christopher Simpson's Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988).

Through the author and researcher Carl Oglesby's efforts, whilst seeking information from classified US Intelligence material, the CIA was forced to finally admit in print that this connection was true. Citing the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (1998), the CIA filed a brief in Oglesby's current FOIA appeal in US District Court, ironically citing a commitment to "conform to the spirit of the disclosure Act" according to a release of the US National Archives.

The military is taking part in drug raids, police can charge one's property with a crime in forfeiture proceedings, and the US supports modern-day narco-terrorist scumbag Indian hunters, such as Colombia's Carlos Castano. Some researchers trace the hypocritical roots of the War Against Some Drugs, specifically Marijuana Prohibition, right to the door of US and Nazi spooks and industrialists.

As R. William Davis wrote in Shadow of the Swastika (July, 1996): "Marijuana Prohibition was created in 1937 not to protect society 'from the evils of marijuana,' as the Federal Government claimed, but as an act of deliberate economic and industrial espionage against the re-emerging Industrial Hemp Industry."

Davis details what he calls a "US/Nazi corporate conspiracy to bring a fascist state to America, and eliminate competition in the industrial raw materials market to force world-wide dependence on oil-based petro-chemicals."

With a foundation built upon the Gehlen Org and other fascist criminals, the CIA never went astray. It began its existence already rotten to the core.

CIA Plans to Release Records on Cold War Spy Master
This US National Newswire report (September 20, 2000) reports on the intention of the CIA to release records of its connections to the Nazi, Eastern-Front Chief of Intelligence, Reinhard Gehlen, whose "intelligence" helped predicate and drive the Cold War on, and on, and on.

The Gehlen Org
This excerpt from Mark Zepezaur's book The CIA's Greatest Hits (Tucson, AZ: Odonian Press, 1994) describes the backroom talks and conniving that went on to get the Gehlen Org accepted by his "captors." The Gehlen Org was subsequently folded into the about-to-be-formed CIA and its global criminal contact web.

CIA at 50: Still Hiding its 'Original' Nazi Sin
This Consortium News article by Martin A. Lee contends that Reinhard Gehlen, by getting his Org incorporated into the US/CIA-intelligence network, not only accomplished the goals of ODESSA (the group of Nazis who planned on continuing the Third Reich's work by forming outposts around the world, stashing money, valuables, and later Nazi officials themselves, in these outposts), but also enabled West German, and hence US intelligence, to be compromised and infiltrated by the Soviets during the Cold War.

Project Paperclip & The Nuremberg Farce
This is a chapter from Alexander Cockburn's unbelievable yet true history of the CIA, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (New York: Verso Press, 1998). Cockburn's fantastic book is a must-read for anyone who still believes that the CIA is out to protect anyone but the themselves.

Presidential Commission On Holocaust Assets In The US
This is the US commission signed into existence by President Bill Clinton to help Holocaust survivors and their descendants find whatever remains of property taken by the Nazis. The commision's brief is to particularly focuus on property which may have somehow found its way into the control and/or possession by the US Government, or private hands.

CIA Says Nazi General Was Intelligence Source
This Virtual New York article (September 20, 2000) reports on the first official admission by the CIA that it did indeed worked with, Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's Eastern Intelligence Chief, and protected him from possible war-crimes prosecution and retribution. Well, it only took them fifty-five years to admit it, so I guess we should be, uh, really pissed off?

The Secret State
This is a speech by Carl Oglesby, to the Massachusetts Libertarian Party on the 200th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights (December 19, 1991). Oglesby's FOIA request forced the CIA to admit it that did have connections to Gehlen and his Org. Oglesby is to be lauded and applauded for his efforts to get the truth out of the CIA and the US government.

New World Order and Nazi Germany: Operation Paperclip
This is an illuminating summary of Operation Paperclip, in which US spooks raced the Soviets to snatch up and make use of all the Nazi scientists they could get their hands on. Also mentioned is how Reinhard Gehlen and Allen Dulles hit it off immediately upon meeting one another, with Dulles promising that the Gehlen Org would be "safe" in the about-to-be-formed CIA. There is also a listing of other known Nazi war criminals, and general criminal types too, that the post-World War II US government and CIA protected and collaborated with.

The Nazi Warcrimes Disclosure Act
Read what the law says about what has to be disclosed about these fascist war criminals coddled and employed in many cases by the US government and CIA. Then read all the exceptions to the rule, like the one excusing the disclosure of intelligence sources. I wonder what drove the CIA to admit its relationship now, after all these years?

Colonel Reinhard Gehlen (1902-1979)
This is one hell of a great Web site, other than for the very irritating ticker-tape sound that begins clacking away once this page opens, which tries to simulate a typewriter's sound.

Consider The Source: Conspiracies Part 5
This is an in-depth look at political scientist Richard Hofstader's mistakenly understood conception of The Paranoid Style In American Politics (New York: Random House, 1967), and how conspiracies are often true, and real. Reinhard Gehlen, and the Gehlen Org, is a case in point.

An Open Letter to All Americans: The Shadow Of The Swastika
This dissertation by R. William Davis, outlines the main reasons behind marijuana prohibition, tracing it directly to those industrial powers and their minions who imported and protected Nazi officials like Reinhard Gehlen after World War II, after making tons of money from supplying both sides of the conflict. This is a brilliant bit of work, and quite a thesis for pondering. We hear about the need to take away more civil rights, to build prisons, and to waste ever more money to fight the drug war in the US and other countries.

Project Paperclip: Nazi Scientists Who Performed Human Experimentation In The US
Read many different accounts of CIA and US involvement with Nazis, thereby explaining the CIA's horrid track record of human rights abuses, drug trafficking and murder; not to mention the hundreds of other crimes committed in the name of Freedom and Democracy.

The Nazi Connection to The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
This is a classic article by the late Mae Brussell, originally published in The Rebel (November 22, 1983), which opens up with the description of Gehlen's arrival in the US at the end of World War II (August 24, 1945). A tangled must-read for all conspiracy buffs, and for those interested in seeing an alternative to the nice, safe version of history taught in public schools.

Blowback
Read reviews of Christopher Simpson's expose on official US recruitment of Nazis, and its disastrous effect on America's domestic and foreign policy. You can also order Simpson's in-depth historical study Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988).

Our Nazi Allies
This excellent Salon magazine article (May 3, 2000) by Ken Silverstein reveals how one German researcher had managed to turn up US documents detailing US hiding and employing wanted Nazi war-criminals more easily than have American researchers in the US. There are over a million OSS documents still "classified," and many more generated by the CIA, its successor institution.

ASIO Recruited Nazi War Criminals: Author
This Age article (May 20, 2001), by Larry Schwartz, reveals how the Australian Secret Intelligence Organization had 'rotten roots' of its own . . .

General Reinhard Gehlen
Here is a short bio, and a great mugshot, of Reinhard Gehlen himself in 1969, in his full dress costume . . . I mean, uniform.

Project Monarch
This is one of those zany conspiracy theories, one has a lot of interesting information on some of the various real US Intelligence projects to bring to the US Nazis of all shapes and sizes. It then devolves into a discussion on Demonic possession and how only Jesus can save us, citing books such as Cathy O'brien's Trance Formations of America (Las Vegas NV: Reality Marketing Inc, 1995). Hmmm. Have fun here.

Project Monarch: Trance Formations Of America
I'm sorry, I just cannot this seriously. If you would like to read about how her Uncle Bob and Father fried Cathy O'Brien's brain and turned her into a brainwashed child porn goddess for dogs and politicians by using Nazi-based mind-control, then by all means, please read these excerpts fom her book Trance Formations of America (Las Vegas NV: Reality Marketing Inc, 1995). If you don't, I understand. But again, have fun.