U.S. Intel Agencies Get Court Protection From Oglesby's Gehlen FOIA Lawsuit.

[Peter Lemkin]

Quest for Information on CIA/Nazi Spy Brought to End

By NICK DIVITO / October 3rd, 2013





MANHATTAN (CN) One man's 30-year quest for information about a Nazi spy came to an end after a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government adequately provided him the information he sought.

Beginning in the '70s, Carl Oglesby, who died in September 2011, "relentlessly pursued" the story of Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who served as chief of the Gehlen Organization, a Nazi spy ring during World War II. Gehlen later allegedly negotiated an agreement with the United States that allowed his spy network to continue despite denazification programs. The group was reportedly reconstituted as a functioning espionage network under U.S. command.
Oglesby claimed that control of the organization shifted back to the West German Federal Republic after 10 years of American control. Gehlen died in Starnberg, Germany on June 8, 1979.
Oglesby sued the federal government in 1987 to challenge several government agencies' responses to his Freedom of Information Act requests submitted in August 1985. Aron DiBacco and Barbara Webster, the domestic partner and daughter of the now-deceased Oglesby, sought to replace him in the case in 2011. The request was granted.
But U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ended their quest last week.
"The court finds the defendants have met their burden to show … that the CIA and the Army conducted adequate searches for responsive records, and that the NSA, the CIA and the Army properly withheld certain information to various FOIA exemptions."
Seeking records on Gehlen, Obglesby submitted FOIA requests in 1985 to the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Departments of the Army and State, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Archives and Records Administration.
Along with information about Gehlen, he also wanted records on meetings held in Virginia in the summer of 1945 between Gehlen and U.S. Army General George Strong and the Office of Strategic Services officer Allen Dulles; records of the U.S. Army's "Operation Rusty," carried out in Europe between 1945 and 1948; records on post-war Nazi German underground organizations; records of the OSS' "Operation Sunrise;" and records of Gehlen's relationship with William J. Donovan and Allen Dulles, and records on the Nazi underground organization "La Arana.'
The agencies responded by releasing 384, redacted pages, but withheld other documents.
Oglesby sued in December 1987, and 2ruled in the federal agencies' favor. The DC Circuit remanded the case and instructed Oglesby to exhaust his administrative remedies. Oglesby did so, and again challenged the agencies' responses, but the District Court again ruled in defendants' favor, concluding that each had conducted an adequate search for the requested documents.
Oglesby again appealed, arguing that the CIA and the Army failed to show they conducted adequate searches, and that the CIA, Army and NSA failed to justify their withholdings. The DC Circuit agreed.
In October 1998, President Bill Clinton signed into law the "Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act," which required the federal government to locate, declassify and release "in their entirety, with few exceptions," remaining classified records about war crimes committed by the Nazis and its allies. Although Gehlen was not considered a Nazi war criminal, the CIA approved the release of a 2,100-page Army file, and released an additional 2,100 Gehlen-related pages. The case has sat dormant from 2001 to 2011. Eleven years later, plaintiffs filed a motion to substitute themselves for Oglesby as plaintiffs, which U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington, D.C., granted.
Skeptical of the transfer of documents, the replacement plaintiffs then moved to compel the government agencies to provide descriptions of their searches for documents. Kollar-Kotelly denied that motion.
"In the context of complying with the Nazi War Criminal Disclosure Act, the CIA conducted an adequate search for records responsive to Oglesby's FOIA request," she wrote. She also found that the Army's decision to transfer all of its World War II related files from the Army's Intelligence and Security Command's Investigative Records Repository to the National Archives and Records Administration was "not suspect, and thus the Army did not wrongfully withhold any relevant documents."
Lollar-Kotelly was the former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court brought to light by former CIA and NSA employee Edward Snowden's document leaks. Among the documents he leaked was a classified 2009 draft report by the National Security Agency's inspector general that recounted some of the activities of the court and the interaction between the it and the NSA.
In June, after her role on the intelligence court came to light, Kollar-Kotelly expressed frustration with suggestions the judiciary was secretly collaborating with the executive branch.
"In my view, that draft report contains major omissions, and some inaccuracies, regarding the actions I took as Presiding Judge of the FISC and my interactions with Executive Branch officials," she said in a written statement provided to The Washington Post.

[David Guyatt]

For me this shows how truly sensitive these files still remain.

Oglesby's essay, The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt, about the agreement reached with Gehlen is a masterpiece. I've linked it, accordingly.

The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt

[Peter Lemkin]

For me this shows how truly sensitive these files still remain.

Oglesby's essay, The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt, about the agreement reached with Gehlen is a masterpiece. I've linked it, accordingly.

The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt

I agree Dave, it must have to do with MORE dirty laundry...but we now have access to so much dirty laundry vis-a-vis the Gehlen Org and US Intel/Military it boggles the mind what else is still not 'out'......I can only guess it has to do with high level Nazis moved out of Germany [with US/Vatican and others blessings] to various places with new identities. Borman for sure. Higher, maybe. Certainly others at the top, or in the scientific fields and/or torture/intel fields.

[David Guyatt]

For me this shows how truly sensitive these files still remain.

Oglesby's essay, The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt, about the agreement reached with Gehlen is a masterpiece. I've linked it, accordingly.

The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt

I agree Dave, it must have to do with MORE dirty laundry...but we now have access to so much dirty laundry vis-a-vis the Gehlen Org and US Intel/Military it boggles the mind what else is still not 'out'......I can only guess it has to do with high level Nazis moved out of Germany [with US/Vatican and others blessings] to various places with new identities. Borman for sure. Higher, maybe. Certainly others at the top, or in the scientific fields and/or torture/intel fields.

Could be Pete. Opening even a small crack in a room full of corpses lets the smell of death escape.

Bormann is known to have escaped, so personally, I would be looking at figures like Himmler and Adolf. My guess is that Bormann negotiated a secret deal with the US that saw himself, Hitler and others like Gestapo Mueller receive a free ticket to Latin America in exchange for advanced weapons - like the Kammler ones. Just a theory as it presently stands. Possibly wrong, although it seems pretty clear to me, that Bormann and Hitler did get away scott free, and were left in peace in Argentina. And the US knew Bormann was there too. They, therefore, must've known about Hitler too.

For me the missing piece is Himmler these days. In his book SS-1 The Unlikely Death of Heinrich Himmler, Hugh Thomas, a highly credible forensic expert demonstrates that there is no evidence available at all to show Himmler died as he is said to have done. His body was buried secretly and never recovered, which is very curious.

[Magda Hassan]

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The CIA and Nazi War Criminals
National Security Archive Posts Secret CIA History
Released Under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 146
Edited by Tamara Feinstein
February 4, 2005

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Washington D.C., February 4, 2005 - Today the National Security Archive posted the CIA's secret documentary history of the U.S government's relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army's intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S. and successfully maintained his intelligence network (it ultimately became the West German BND) even though he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals. The use of Gehlen's group, according to the CIA history, Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945-49, was a "double edged sword" that "boosted the Warsaw Pact's propaganda efforts" and "suffered devastating penetrations by the KGB." [See Volume 1: Introduction, p. xxix]The declassified "SECRET RelGER" two-volume history was compiled by CIA historian Kevin Ruffner and presented in 1999 by CIA Deputy Director for Operations Jack Downing to the German intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) in remembrance of "the new and close ties" formed during post-war Germany to mark the fiftieth year of CIA-West German cooperation. This history was declassified in 2002 as a result of the work of The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) and contains 97 key documents from various agencies.This posting comes in the wake of public grievances lodged by members of the IWG that the CIA has not fully complied with the mandate of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and is continuing to withhold hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation related to their work. (Note 1) In interviews with the New York Times, three public members of the IWG said:

• "I think that the CIA has defied the law, and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust, thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust and also at the Americans who gave their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II." - Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman
  

• "I can only say that the posture the CIA has taken differs from all the other agencies that have been involved, and that's not a position we can accept." - Washington lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste
  

• "Too much has been secret for too long. The CIA has not complied with the statute." - Former federal prosecutor Thomas H. Baer
  

The IWG was established in January 11, 1999 and has overseen the declassification of about eight million pages of documents from multiple government agencies. Its mandate expires at the end of March 2005.
The documentation unearthed by the IWG reveals extensive relationships between former Nazi war criminals and American intelligence organizations, including the CIA. For example, current records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers. (Note 2)
The IWG enlisted the help of key academic scholars to consult during the declassification process, and these historians released their own interpretation of the declassified material last May (2004) in a publication called US Intelligence and the Nazis. The introduction to this book emphasizes the dilemma of using former Nazis as assets:

"The notion that they [CIA, Army Counterintelligence Corp, Gehlen organization] employed only a few bad apples will not stand up to the new documentation. Some American intelligence officials could not or did not want to see how many German intelligence officials, SS officers, police, or non-German collaborators with the Nazis were compromised or incriminated by their past service… Hindsight allows us to see that American use of actual or alleged war criminals was a blunder in several respects…there was no compelling reason to begin the postwar era with the assistance of some of those associated with the worst crimes of the war. Lack of sufficient attention to history-and, on a personal level, to character and morality-established a bad precedent, especially for new intelligence agencies. It also brought into intelligence organizations men and women previously incapable of distinguishing between their political/ideological beliefs and reality. As a result, such individuals could not and did not deliver good intelligence. Finally, because their new, professed 'democratic convictions' were at best insecure and their pasts could be used against them (some could be blackmailed), these recruits represented a potential security problem." (Note 3)
The Gehlen organization profiled in the newly posted CIA history represents one of the most telling examples of these pitfalls. Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia professor and consulting historian to the IWG who focused heavily on the declassified CIA material, highlighted the problems posed by our relationship with Gehlen: "Reinhard Gehlen was able to use U.S. funds to create a large intelligence bureaucracy that not only undermined the Western critique of the Soviet Union by protecting and promoting war criminals but also was arguably the least effective and secure in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As many in U.S. intelligence in the late 1940s had feared would happen, the Gehlen Organization proved to be the back door by which the Soviets penetrated the Western alliance." (Note 4)

The documents annexed in the CIA history posted today by the Archive echo the observations of Professor Naftali. While placing much of the blame on the Army Counterintelligence Corps' initial approach to Gehlen, this history emphasizes the CIA's own reluctance to adopt responsibility for Gehlen's organization, yet the documents show the CIA ultimately embracing Gehlen.
Some of the highlights from this secret CIA documentary history include:

• A May 1, 1952 report detailing how Gehlen and his network were initially approached by U.S. army intelligence. (Document 6)
  

• Two evaluations of the Gehlen operation from October 16 and 17, 1946, advising against the transfer of Gehlen's organization to CIG hands and questioning the value of the operation as a whole. (Documents 21 and 22)
  

• A March 19, 1948 memorandum from Richard Helms, noting Army pressure for the CIA to assume sponsorship of the Gehlen organization, and continued concern over the security problems inherent in the operation. (Document 59)
  

• A December 17, 1948 report outlining the problems with the Gehlen organization, but ultimately recommending CIA assumption of the project. (Document 72)
  

In answer to the question "Can we learn from history?", the IWG's consulting historians noted "The real question is not whether we will make use of our past to deal with the present, but rather how well we will do so. To do it well, we need these documents." (Note 5)
"This secret CIA history is full of documents we never would have seen under the Freedom of Information Act, because Congress in 1984 gave the CIA an exemption for its 'operational' files, on the grounds that such files were too sensitive ever to be released," commented Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. "The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act has proven this assumption false. Release of these files has done no damage to national security, has provided information of enormous public interest and historical importance, and however belatedly, has brought a measure of accountability to government operations at variance with mainstream American values."

---

Documents
Note: Many of the following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.Note: The following CIA history has been split into separate pdf files for each separate document or volume introduction, due to its large size. It includes relevant documents from the CIA, Army Intelligence, and CIA predecessor organizations.
Forging and Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945-49. Edited by Kevin C. Ruffner for CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, and European Division, Directorate of Operations. 1999. Released May 2002.
Volume 1: Introduction
Volume 1: Part I - Firsthand Accounts

Document 1: Statement of Gerhard Wessel on Development of the German Organization [undated]
Document 2: Statement of General Winder on the History of the Organization [undated]
Document 3: Statement of Hans Hinrichs on Early History of the Organization [undated]
Document 4: Statement of Heinz Danko Herre. April 8, 1953.
Document 5: Statement of General Gehlen on Walter Schellenberg Story (Post Defeat Resistance) [undated]
Document 6: Report of Initial Contacts with General Gehlen's Organization by John R. Boker, Jr. May 1, 1952.
Document 7: Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin on Early Contacts with the Gehlen Organization [undated]
Document 8: Report of Interview with General Edwin L. Sibert on the Gehlen Organization. March 26, 1970.
Document 9: Debriefing of Eric Waldman on the US Army's Trusteeship of the Gehlen Organization during the Years 1945-1949. September 30, 1969.

Volume 1: Part II - Stunde Null

Document 10: Seventh Army Interrogation Center, "Notes on the Red Army-Intelligence and Security." June 24, 1945.
Document 11: Headquarters, Third Army Intelligence Center, Preliminary Interrogation Report, Baun, Hermann. August 16, 1945.
Document 12: Captain Owen C. Campbell, Evaluation Section, to Lt. Col. Parker, Enclosing Interrogation Reports No. 5724 and 5725. August 29, 1945.
Document 13: Crosby Lewis, Chief, German Mission. October 25, 1945.

Volume 1: Part III - The Vandenberg Report

Document 14: SAINT, AMZON to SAINT, Washington, "Russian Experts of German Intelligence Service." January 8, 1946.
Document 15: Headquarters, US Forces European Theater (USFET), Military Intelligence Service Center (MISC, "Operation of the Blue House Project." May 11, 1946.
Document 16: Headquarters, USFET, MISC, CI Consolidated Interrogation Report (CI-CIR) No. 16, "German Methods of Combating the Soviet Intelligence Service." June 3, 1946.
Document 17: Headquarters, USFET, MISC, Lt. Col. John R. Deane, Jr. to Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, USFET, "Plan for the Inclusion of the Bolero Group in Operation Rusty." July 2, 1946.
Document 18: Lewis to Chief, Foreign Branch M (FBM), "Operation KEYSTONE." September 9, 1946, enclosing Lewis to Brigadier General Sibert, G-2, September 6, 1946.
Document 19: Maj. Gen. W.A. Burress, G-2, to Lt. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Director of Central Intelligence, "Operation RUSTY - Use of the Eastern Branch of the former German Intelligence Service." With attachments. October 1, 1946.
Document 20: Lewis to Richard Helms, Acting Chief of FBM, October 8, 1946, enclosing Lewis to Donald H. Galloway, Assistant Director for Special Operations, September 22, 1946.
Document 21: Draft to Deputy A, "Operation Rusty." October 16, 1946.
Document 22: Galloway to DCI, "Operation Rusty," October 17, 1946, enclosing Heidelberg Field Base to Chief, IB, "Agent Net Operating in the Bamberg Area," with attachment, September 17, 1946.
Document 23: DCI to Maj. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin, Director of Intelligence, War Department, "Operation Rusty-Use of the Eastern Branch of the Former German Intelligence Service," November 20, 1946, enclosing Burress to Vandenberg, "Operation RUSTY-Use of the Eastern Branch of the Former German Intelligence Service," October 1, 1946.
Document 24: Col. W.W. Quinn to Galloway, "Operation RUSTY," December 19, 1946.
Document 25: Helms, Memorandum for the Record, "Operation RUSTY." December 19, 1946.

Volume 1: Part IV - The Bossard Report

Document 26: Cable, Special Operations to [excised]. January 31, 1947.
Document 27: Cable, SO to [excised]. February 10, 1947.
Document 28: Lt. Col. Deane to the German Chief of Operation RUSTY, "Assignment of Responsibilities," February 25, 1947.
Document 29: Cable, SO to Frankfurt. March 6, 1947.
Document 30: Cable, Heidelberg to SO. March 11, 1947.
Document 31: Report, "Operation KEYSTONE." March 13, 1947.
Document 32: Cable, SO to Heidelberg. March 14, 1947.
Document 33: Samuel Bossard to [Galloway]. March 17, 1947.
Document 34: Memorandum to Helms, "American Intelligence Network," with attachment. March 18, 1947.
Document 35: Bossard to [excised] Chief, German Mission. March 20, 1947.
Document 36: Cable, Heidelberg to SO, March 21, 1947.
Document 37: Report, "American Intelligence in Bavaria." March 29, 1947.
Document 38: SC, AMZON to FBM for SC, Washington, "KEYSTONE: LESHCINSKY." March 31, 1947.
Document 39: Memorandum to [Galloway] and Bossard, "Evaluation of RUSTY CI Reports," with attachments. April 1, 1947.
Document 40: Cable, Heidelberg to SO. April 8, 1947.
Document 41: [Bossard] to [Galloway]. May 5, 1947.
Document 42: Bossard to DCI, "Operation Rusty." May 29, 1947.
Document 43: Galloway to DCI, "Operation RUSTY," June 3, 1947, enclosing Bossard to DCI, "Operation Rusty," with annexes, May 29, 1947.
Document 44: Memorandum for [unspecified], "Operation RUSTY," with attachment, [undated]
Document 45: DCI to Secretary of State, et al, "Opertation Rusty," [undated], enclosing "Memorandum on Operation RUSTY," June 6, 1947.
Document 46: Cable, Central Intelligence Group to ACS, G-2, European Command, June 5, 1947.
Document 47: Cable, EUCOM to CIG, June 6, 1947.
Document 48: Galloway, Bossard, Memorandum for the Record, June 20, 1947.
Document 49: Brig. Gen. E.K. Wright, Memorandum for the Record, June 20, 1947.
Document 50: Galloway, Bossard, Helms, "Report of Meeting at War Department 26 June 1947." June 26, 1947.
Document 51: Bossard, "Recommendations drawn up at request of Gen. Chamberlin for the attention of Gen. Walsh." June 27, 1947.
Document 52: Cable, SO to Heidelberg, June 27, 1947.
Document 53: Cable, SO to Heidelberg, June 27, 1947.
Document 54: Cable, Heidelberg to SO, July 25, 1947.
Document 55: Chief of Station, Heidelberg to FBM, "RUSTY." October 1, 1947.
Document 56: Headquarters, First Military District, US Army, General Orders Number 54, "Organization of 7821st Composite Group." December 1, 1947.

Volume 2: Introduction
Volume 2: Part V - The Critchfield Report

Document 57: Chief of Station; Heidelberg to Chief, FBM, "Russian Newspaper Attack on American Intelligence Activities," with attachment. February 6, 1948.
Document 58: Memorandum to Helms, "Operation RUSTY," March 18, 1948.
Document 59: Helms to ADSO, "Rusty," March 19, 1948.
Document 60: Chief, Foreign Broadcast Information Branch to ADSO, "PRAVDA Report of US Spy Group in USSR Zone of Occupied Germany." March 30, 1948.
Document 61: Chief, FBIB to ADSO, "PRAVDA Report of US Spy Group in USSR Zone of Occupied Germany." March 31, 1948.
Document 62: Chief, Munich Operations Base to Acting Chief of Station, Karlsruhe, "Rusty." July 7, 1948.
Document 63: Acting Chief, Karlsruhe Operations Base to Chief, FBM, "RUSTY." August 19, 1948.
Document 64: DCI to Chamberlin, August, 31, 1948.
Document 65: Chief of Station, Karlsruhe to Chief, FBM, "RUSTY." October 15, 1948.
Document 66: Cable, SO to Karlsruhe, October 27, 1948.
Document 67: [Helms] to COS, Karlsruhe, "RUSTY." November 2, 1948.
Document 68: [excised] to COS, Karlsruhe, "RUSTY." November 18, 1948.
Document 69: Chief, MOB [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "Bi-Weekly Letter," (excerpts), December 4, 1948.
Document 70: Cable, SO to Karlsruhe, December 14, 1948.
Document 71: Cable, Karlsruhe to SO, December 17, 1948.
Document 72: Chief, MOB [Critchfield] to Chief, OSO, "Report of Investigation-RUSTY," with annexes, (excerpts), December 17, 1948.
Document 73: Galloway to DCI, "Recommendations in re Operation Rusty." December 21, 1948.
Document 74: Cable, SO to Munich, Karlsruhe. December 22, 1948.
Document 75: Chief, FBM to COS, Karlsruhe, "Operation Rusty." December 24, 1948.
Document 76: Chief, FBM to COS, Karlsruhe, "Operation Rusty," December 28, 1948, enclosing DCI to Maj. Gen. William E. Hall, USAF, "Operation Rusty." December 22, 1948.

Volume 2: Part VI - A Year of Decisions

Document 77: Maj. Gen. S. LeRoy Irwin to DCI, "Operation 'RUSTY.'" January 19, 1949.
Document 78: Helms, Memorandum for the Files, "Operation Rusty." February 1, 1949.
Document 79: Chief, FBM to COS, Karlsruhe, "[Gehlen Organization]," February 2, 1949.
Document 80: Cable, SO to Karlsruhe. February 8, 1949.
Document 81: Cable, SO to Karlsruhe. February 9, 1949.
Document 82: Chief, FBM to COS, Karlsruhe, "[Gehlen Organization]," February 9, 1949.
Document 83: Chief, FBM to COS, Karlsruhe, [untitled], February 10, 1949, enclosing Alan R McCracken, ADSO, to Irwin, "Operation Rusty." February 9, 1949.
Document 84: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "Letter to General Hall," with enclosures, February 10, 1949.
Document 85: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "[Gehlen Organization]: Procedure for Handling Funds. March 14, 1949.
Document 86: Cable, SO to Karlsruhe, March 16, 1949.
Document 87: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "[Gehlen Organization]: Current Financial Situation." March 21, 1949.
Document 88: Executive Officer to Chief of Operations and Chief, FBM, "[Gehlen Organization]," April 1, 1949.
Document 89: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "[Gehlen Organization]: Current Situation." April 18, 1949.
Document 90: Robert A. Schow, ADSO to Director, CIA, "EUCOM Support for the 7821 Composite Group (Operation Rusty)," April 21, 1949.
Document 91: [Critchfield] to COS, Karlsruhe, "Organization and Individual Security Problems [Gehlen Organization] Staff," May 4, 1949.
Document 92: Headquarters, EUCOM to Chief of Staff, US Army Director of Intelligence, June 6, 1949.
Document 93: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "Basic Agreement with [Gehlen Organization]," June 13, 1949.
Document 94: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "[Gehlen Organization] General Policy," with enclosures, July 7, 1949.
Document 95: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "Basic Considerations in Reviewing the Concept and Mission of [Gehlen Organization]," September 21, 1949.
Document 96: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "[Gehlen Organization] - Schneider's Negotiations with Third Parties," September 22, 1949, enclosing [Critchfield] to Dr. Schneider, "The Coordination and Control of Negotiations with German Political and Economic Circles and Representatives of Western European Intelligence Services," September 20, 1949.
Document 97: [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM, "Dr. Schneider's Reply to Recent Policy Guidance Letters," with enclosures, October 12, 1949.

---

Notes1. Douglas Jehl, "CIA Said to Rebuff Congress on Nazi Files," New York Times, January 30, 2005.
2. Richard Breitman, Norman Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, (Washington, DC: National Archive Trust Fund Board, 2004), 377.
3.Ibid, 8-9.
4. Ibid, 406.
5. Ibid, 8.

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/

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[David Guyatt]

Phew! linking that lot took some time eh. Great work Maggie.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Magda - very generous of you.

Document 20: Lewis to Richard Helms, Acting Chief of FBM, October 8, 1946, enclosing Lewis to Donald H. Galloway, Assistant Director for Special Operations, September 22, 1946.

Doc 20 reveals that Gehlen Org is thoroughly penetrated by Soviet intelligence.

Document 23: DCI to Maj. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin, Director of Intelligence, War Department, "Operation Rusty-Use of the Eastern Branch of the Former German Intelligence Service," November 20, 1946, enclosing Burress to Vandenberg, "Operation RUSTY-Use of the Eastern Branch of the Former German Intelligence Service," October 1, 1946.

So that strange, brief, Creature of the Night known as the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), the fog-cloaked bridge leading from the OSS to the CIA, makes a power grab for Gehlen Org with the stated intention of running its operations from the US.

Central to these SSU machinations is John J McCloy - sometime President of the World Bank, US High Commissioner to Germany, the eminence grise behind the pardoning of Krupp and various IG Farben bosses for industrial-scale war crimes, CFR chairman, Ford Foundation chairman and - lest we forget - Warren Commission fixer.

The fix was in early.

Gehlen became Gladio.

Wholesale Slaughter was replaced by the Strategy of Tension.

The military-industrial-complex became the military-multinational-intelligence complex.

::

[Peter Lemkin]

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2013, Issue No. 87
October 8, 2013

Secrecy News Blog: http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/


** CIA HALTS PUBLIC ACCESS TO OPEN SOURCE SERVICE


CIA HALTS PUBLIC ACCESS TO OPEN SOURCE SERVICE

For more than half a century, the public has been able to access a wealth of information collected by U.S. intelligence from unclassified, open sources around the world. At the end of this year, the Central Intelligence Agency will terminate that access.

The U.S. intelligence community's Open Source Center (OSC), which is managed by the CIA, will cease to provide its information feed to the publicly accessible World News Connection as of December 31, 2013, according to an announcement from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which operates the World News Connection (WNC).

The WNC "is an online news service, only accessible via the World Wide Web, that offers an extensive array of translated and English-language news and information," an NTIS brochure explains. "Particularly effective in its coverage of local media sources, WNC provides you with the power to identify what really is happening in a specific country or region. Compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources, the information in WNC covers significant socioeconomic, political, scientific, technical, and environmental issues and events."

"The information is obtained from full text and summaries of newspaper articles, conference proceedings, television and radio broadcasts, periodicals, and non-classified technical reports. New information is entered into WNC every government business day. Generally, new information is available within 48-72 hours from the time of original publication or broadcast."

"For over 60 years, analysts from OSC's domestic and overseas bureaus have monitored timely and pertinent open-source materials, including grey literature. Uniquely, WNC allows you to take advantage of the intelligence gathering experience of OSC," the NTIS brochure says. Soon, that will no longer be true.

The WNC public feed from the Open Source Center is a highly attenuated version of what is available to official government users. Within government, copyright considerations are ignored, but for public distribution they must be respected, and so (with some exceptions) only information products whose creators have signed a royalty agreement with NTIS are publicly released.

Even with that significant limitation and the attendant public subscription fees, the NTIS World News Connection has remained a highly prized resource for news reporters, foreign policy analysts, students and interested members of the public.

I check it almost every day. Recently, for example, I have been following official statements from Russian officials who allege that the U.S. is covertly developing biological weapons for use against Russia in a military laboratory in the Republic of Georgia. The claim seems bizarre, but may nevertheless be politically significant. Detailed English-language coverage of the matter, or of many other stories of regional interest and importance, is not readily available elsewhere. (Moreso than in the past, however, portions of the material that is publicly accessible through WNC can be obtained elsewhere, through other news services or foreign websites.)

The reasons for the decision to terminate the World News Connection are a bit obscure. Producing it is not a drain on U.S. intelligence-- the marginal costs of providing the additional feed to NTIS are close to zero. (The total budget for open source intelligence was about $384 million in FY2012, according to classified budget records obtained by the Washington Post from Edward Snowden.) However, the program is a headache for NTIS to manage, particularly since NTIS officials had to negotiate numerous contracts with media source providers to offer their products to the public. But the large majority of that work has already been accomplished, and now it will be rendered useless.

Mary Webster of the Open Source Center had initially proposed to cancel the public information feed as of September 30, according to an NTIS official. Then she was persuaded to grant a six month reprieve. But in the end, a cut-off date of December 31, 2013 was set.

If that comes to pass, it will be a blow to researchers and proponents of public intelligence. The Federation of American Scientists had previously argued that the U.S. government should actually expand public access to open source intelligence by publishing all unclassified, uncopyrighted Open Source Center products. ("Open Up Open Source Intelligence," Secrecy News, August 24, 2011.) Instead, even the current range of publications will no longer be systematically released. (Only a small fraction of publicly unreleased OSC records ever seem to leak.)

Although the Open Source Center is managed by the Central Intelligence Agency, it is formally a component of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Yet the move the terminate public access to OSC products seemed to catch the ODNI unawares.

"Obviously our attention is on a possible lapse in appropriations, but we are looking into this," said an ODNI spokesman on September 30, just before the government shutdown.

"The information provided through NTIS makes an irreplaceable contribution to U.S. national security," wrote Prof. Gary G. Sick of Columbia University in an October 1999 letter, in response to a previous proposal to curtail coverage in the World News Connection.

The World News Connection "informs us about other countries in ways that otherwise would be nearly impossible," Dr. Sick wrote. "It costs virtually nothing in comparison with almost any other national security system. It is not as sexy as a bomber or a missile, but its contributions to national security can be attested to by generations of policy-makers. I was in the White House during the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, and my respect for the power of this information was born at that time. I often found it more helpful than the reams of classified material that came across my desk at the NSC."


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[Peter Lemkin]

When Jim and Lois Critchfield built their new home near the mouth of Virginia's James River across from Colonial Williamsburg, Critchfield christened his boat Tinker Tailor. Fans of mystery writer John LeCarre would know instantly that the other half of that book title was Soldier, Spy. Those two words pretty well summed up the 60-plus years in the life and career of James H. Critchfield after his 1939 graduation from North Dakota Agricultural College.

Critchfield died at Williamsburg, Va., April 22, of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was buried with full military honors a month later at Arlington National Cemetery. What transpired over the intervening decades would constitute grist for a novel by Robert Ludlum. But perhaps not surprisingly, he was a bit uncomfortable talking about those aspects of his life that others would undoubtedly find intriguing.

A book titled "General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection" by former New Yorker writer Mary Ellen Reese contains this description how that episode of Critchfield's life began: "... It was a time of paradox. As Gehlen (Adolf Hitler's chief of eastern front intelligence) savored those unreal days, (as the war came to and end) waiting, one man ... rode past on the road far below in a noisy, battered American Jeep, leading a column of tanks that had made the trip through France. It was James A. Critchfield, a 28-year-old veteran of some of the war's bitterest fighting ....

Although neither man knew it at the time, their paths were destined to cross in the years ahead, with a profound, though initially controversial, effect on U.S. intelligence gathering and foreign policy during the ensuing post-war, Cold War era.

Here's how reporter Adam Bernstein reported it in an obituary printed April 24 in The Washington Post: "... It was his part in the early days of Cold War intelligence that most recently catapulted him to attention.

"Only in the late 1990s did the CIA begin to disclose, through an act of Congress, its collaboration with former Nazi spies in what was known as the Gehlen Organization. The network was named for Reinhard Gehlen, a German general who oversaw Adolf Hitler's anti-Soviet intelligence and became the first head of West Germany's secret service.

"For many, Gehlen's work came to symbolize the moral compromises of the United States. Mr. Critchfield, often credited with recommending the CIA's union with Gehlen, defended the work, which supplied the West with an infusion of fresh intelligence material about the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries at the start of the Cold War.

" 'During the Berlin Airlift and other vital moments, such intelligence was hard to obtain,' he (Critchfield) said.

"He added that many of the top Germans, including Gehlen, were far from Nazi ideologues and that many sympathized with those who tried to kill Hitler.

" 'I've lived with this for 50 years,' " Mr. Critchfield told The Washington Post in 2001. " 'Almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, in which he has been described as an ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals -- this is all far from the fact.' "As the size of the Gehlen group grew to several thousand, many in the organization were reputed to be Soviet spies, former Nazis and other unsavory types used as informants and for other purposes.

" 'There's no doubt that the CIA got carried away with recruiting some pretty bad people,' Mr. Critchfield told a reporter.

"Still, he said his work helped more than hurt American intelligence..

Much later in his life, the CIA honored Critchfield with its Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Trailblazer award "for significant early accomplishments in clandestine collection and analysis..

Critchfield had entered military service following his graduation from the 'AC as a member of the old horse cavalry. Initially, he served in such places as Ft. Meade, S.D., and Ft. Riley, Kan., ending up, still in the pre-war army, as the very young commander of an all-black squadron of cavalry soldiers.

Minus its horses, which had been replaced by tanks in preparation for a more modern war, that was the unit he took to North Africa. Much to Critchfield's chagrin, and that of his men, in whom he took great pride, while in North Africa, the 10th (black) cavalry was deactivated, and the troops dispersed to other units in preparation for the invasion of Europe..

With the invasion of southern France by Allied forces, Critchfield was by then in command of a battalion of the 141st regiment of the 36th Infantry Division (Texas National Guard). That unit continued to fight its way across France and ultimately into Germany. In addition to decorations won earlier, he received a Silver Star for gallantry in action in the Alsace-Lorraine region of northeastern France.

A citation accompanying the medal states: "On Dec. 12, 1944. About 700 Germans had infiltrated Allied lines, and then-Lt. Col. Critchfield put himself in continuous peril against enemy guns to best direct the artillery and mortar fire on the attackers..

Promoted to the rank of colonel, one of the youngest full colonels in the U.S. Army at the time, Critchfield's post-war work with Army intelligence had brought him to the attention of the fledgling CIA in 1948..

The Washington Post obituary goes on to report: "One of his first assignments was to go to Germany and assess whether to keep or end the relationship with Gehlen and his spies.

"He (Critchfield) took several facts into account before successfully recommending to his superiors that they maintain the relationship.

"First was that Gehlen had fallen out of favor with Hitler as the war progressed and had stored a trove of material on the Soviets as he foresaw the Allied victory.

"Gehlen figured the intelligence would make him useful to the Americans.

"More urgent was that Gehlen's network provided the Americans real-time surveillance of Soviet air operations during the Berlin Airlift.

"The CIA put Mr. Critchfield in charge of Gehlen, and he held that role until West Germany became an independent nation in 1955..

There were occasions, during Critchfield's "undercover" years that classmates, Ann Murphy Thornton and Orville Goplen among them, who were also working in government, reported "sightings" of someone they were fairly certain was him. But he declined to exhibit any sign of recognition..

The Washington Post account continues, "... In the 1960s, as chief of the Near East and South Asia division, he kept tabs on the Iraq coup that led to the Baath Party's rule, regarded at the time as a U.S. victory.

"He remained an active thinker on intelligence in the Middle East. In a 2001 interview with The Boston Globe, he linked the post-war spread of communism with a surge of Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism today.

" 'I think that the problem of terrorism replaces the ambiguity of the communist threat,' he said."

Critchfield retired from the CIA in 1974 and launched Tetra Tech, his own engineering consulting firm, specializing in the Middle East..

Continuing to play a very active role in governmental affairs, he served as a White House energy adviser under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and on a historical advisory committee to declassify U.S. documents about Nazi and Japanese war crimes. Along with his author/war correspondent brother, Richard, Critchfield was honored by his alma mater with the conferral of an honorary doctorate in 1986, and by the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges as NDSU's Centennial Alumnus the following year..

During the 1980s, Critchfield and Lois built a home in Fauquier County, the Virginia "horse country" where they lived until moving to the James River enclave in 1996.

"Partners at the Creation," a memoir about Critchfield's post-war years in Germany, was published in September by the Naval Institute Press. The family also has established a Middle Eastern Memorial Fund at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.

NDAC classmates may recall that Critchfield's first wife, Constance Taylor Critchfield, who had worked with him on the Bison Annual, was killed, along with his soon-to-be brother-in-law, David Baldwin, in a 1948 automobile-truck accident in Iowa. They were en route to meet Critchfield in Washington, D.C., following his return from Europe. Their two children, Michel and James, had remained in Fargo with their grandmother. A later marriage to Louise Mithoff Critchfield ended in divorce.

Critchfield married fellow CIA officer Lois Matthews during the mid-1970s. He is survived by her, two children from his first marriage, Michel Ann Webster of Clifton and James Critchfield Jr. of Culpeper, Va.; two children from his second marriage, Elizabeth Harding of Millwood, Va., and Thomas Critchfield of Falls Church; his sister, Peggy; and seven grandchildren.

Although he returned to North Dakota on only rare occasions after leaving in 1939, Critchfield never lost his strong sense of loyalty and affection for North Dakota. In 1997, on the occasion of his receiving the CIA's Trailblazer Award, marking the agency's 50th anniversary, he told a Forum reporter his Midwestern upbringing and NDAC education had prepared him well for his career.

"I have great respect for North Dakota," he said, "People who come from the Midwest are uniquely endowed with an attitude that serves our country well -- I've seen it a thousand times."

-- Jerry Richardson