URL for this article:
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/gehlen2.htm

WORST KEPT SECRETS OF THE BUMBLING BEAR
- PART 2 (of 2)

(Note: Mr. Lee's article continues here)

UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

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 advisors" 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 '80s.

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.

...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.

*** (C) 'San Francisco Bay Guardian,'
Reprinted for Fair Use Only ***


FURTHER COMMENTS ABOUT THE 'GUARDIAN' ARTICLE

ONE: CONCERNING FALSE INFORMATION

Mr. Lee writes that General Gehlen
passed Washington false information about
a supposed Soviet buildup and adds that:

"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."

First, this is speculation presented as
fact. Who knows whether Gehlen
invented any particular piece of
misinformation, or whether someone in
the CIA instructed him to 'invent' it.

Second, so what if CIA Nazis sometimes
made false reports to heighten
tensions or make themselves look good.
That sort of thing is always possible
in intelligence organizations. (Graham
Greene's wonderful novel, 'Our Man in
Havana,' is about a British intelligence
'asset' in Cuba who manufactures an entire
spy network to keep himself employed.)

Indeed, the CIA is itself famous for
telling tall tales about the misdeeds of
those resisting U.S. domination. Such
statements help create a provocative
atmosphere in which aggressive policies
seem justified.

The question is not whether the Nazis
sometimes misled Washington, or whether
Soviet intelligence could sometimes use
the Nazis against Washington. The
question is: what were and are
Washington's plans?

Did Washington want to crush the Soviet
Union and install puppet governments
throughout Eastern Europe and the
Balkans? Does Washington now wish to turn
the Balkans into a safe rear while it
moves NATO bases up to Russian borders
in order to facilitate 'low intensity
war' against Russia? I would argue that
the answer to both questions is: yes.

The Nazi apparatus was and remains
useful in carrying out these strategies.

TWO: HOW MUCH 'INVESTMENT IN NAZISM' IS TOO MUCH?
OR: HOW MUCH IS JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT?

Mr. Lee writes:

"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."

'Feign allegiance'? What evidence is
there that the Nazis were feigning? The
problem is Mr. Lee is proceeding from
his assumption that Washington made a
mistake in recruiting the Nazis. This
assumption is wrong; that is, it is
plainly contradicted by the evidence he
presents. Like many people, he finds
it awkward to change his assumptions;
so instead he offers, by way of
compromise, this notion that the Nazis
were insincere. (Am I alone in finding
that the mind boggles at the notion of
the insincere Nazi?)

And what if these Nazis did sometimes
feign loyalty? Many employees 'feign
allegiance.' The question the employer
asks is: are they getting the job done.

Says Mr. Lee, "CIA officials invested
far too much in Gehlen's spooky Nazi
outfit." Earlier he refers to the
"Gehlen gambit." And elsewhere he comments
that this was "more than a bungled spy caper"!

This language suggests that that Mr.
Lee, like so many Americans, does not
fully grasp what is involved here. The
'people' whom Allen Dulles and Co.
rescued and recruited into the CIA were
not spooky. This was not simply 'more
than a bungled spy caper.'

These unimaginably vicious thugs were
rescued to do a job.

Therefore the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency had at the core of its field
staff, from the time of its creation,
mass murderers. They were used all over
the world to do what they had done
during World War II.

What had they done during World War II?
What skills did they bring to the CIA?

Let us consider the Croatian Ustashe.
These henchmen of a clerical-fascist
regime (the term "clerical" is used to
describe the Ustashe because the
Catholic clergy controlled this fascist
movement) carried out the slaughter
of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews
and 'Gypsies.'

"The Ustasa regime in Croatia and
particularly this drive... to exterminate
and dispossess the Serbs, was one of
the most horrendous episodes of World
War II. The murder methods applied by
Ustasha were extraordinarily primitive
and sadistic: thousands were hurled
from mountain tops, others were beaten to
death or had their throats cut, entire
villages were burned down, women
raped, people sent on death marches in
the middle of winter, and still others
starved to death..." ('Encyclopedia of
the Holocaust,' Macmillan Publishing
Company, 1995)

Members of the Ustashe were among those
whom U.S. intelligence 'rescued' and
whose ranks swelled the CIA and other
U.S. covert and semi-covert organizations.

THREE: WAS THE NAZI-CIA MARRIAGE A
'HORRENDOUS MISTAKE'?

Mr. Lee quotes IWG panel member
Professor Richard Breitman to the effect
that the CIA-NAZI marriage was a:

"horrendous mistake, morally,
politically, and also in very pragmatic
intelligence terms."

What does it mean for Professor
Breitman to describe as a mistake something
that was elaborately planned? The
recruitment of Nazi's required the movement
of thousands of war criminals, setting
them up with new identities and
financing them for half a century at a
cumulative cost of billions of
dollars. In the late 1980s and early
1990s they were dispatched with their
children to install fascist regimes in
power in Croatia and Bosnia; these
regimes were universally - and
amazingly - described in the Western
media and by Western leaders as 'democratic'.
Repatriated Nazis were used to install
a government in Lithuania that honors
pro-Nazi Lithuanians who during World
War II massacred local Jews, Orthodox
Christians and Bolsheviks.

By what standard can all of this be
described as a 'mistake'? Was it a
misake because it didn't work?

But it did work.

Or perhaps Breitman and Lee think it
was a mistake because it was evil?

But what makes an evil policy a mistake?

Professor Breitman is using sloppy
reasoning in order, one suspects, to
achieve a political effect. By labeling
the Nazi-CIA marriage, with its
'ratlines' and 'captive nations', a
mistake, he lets Washington off the hook.
"This was counter-productive," he tells
us and we think, "Well, if it was
counter productive then in a sense
Washington as suffered a fool's
punishment."

But in fact the U.S. Establishment
never paid a price for the monstrous crime
of saving the Nazis and then unleashing
them, once again, on the world.

Quite the contrary. It gained mightily
from the ruthless use of Nazi
monsters. It gained a ready-made
apparatus in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
It gained the use of an army of covert
operatives ready to carry out any
crime any place in the world.

Among other things, this apparatus
helped destroy the Soviet Union, which had
been a major obstacle to the U.S. drive
for world domination.

FOUR: IF NOTHING ELSE...

The author concludes with the following
comment:

"If nothing else, it [that is, the
revelations about CIA-Nazi ties]
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."

First, why should "nothing else" be
done? Why does Washington have the
right to set up War Crimes Tribunals to
punish people (for instance, Serbian
leaders like Milosevic) whose only
crime is that they resisted Washington,
but when it comes to Washington's own
very real war crimes - such as rescuing
and unleashing these Nazi monsters -
"confronting some of its own demons" is
sufficient? (8)

And second, what about this "now that
unreconstructed Cold Warriors are again
riding top saddle in Washington"?

"Again"?

If by "Cold Warriors" Mr. Lee means
advocates of empire, then pray tell, when
did they leave the saddle? Does Mr. Lee
mean that William Clinton was not an
Imperial warrior, but Mr. Bush is?

For all or part of its eight years in
office, the Clinton administration
waged unrelenting proxy military wars
against the people of Yugoslavia, the
former Soviet Union, Colombia, Congo,
Rwanda, waged a war of sanctions
against 70 countries, routinely bombed
Iraq while starving its children, and
so on. It continued to employ 'captive
nations' Nazis in Yugoslavia and
Eastern Europe. It greatly developed
the use of the National Endowment for
'Democracy', USAID and other government
and semi-private agencies and NGOs to
create a Fifth Column apparatus in
countries around the world.

To be sure, the Bush administration is
continuing these efforts. But the
notion that Bush's foreign policy
represents some sea change from Clinton's
foreign policy is without foundation in
fact.

-- J.I. 21 May 2001

************************
FURTHER READING:
************************

(1) Concerning Allen Dulles and the
Nazis, see: "Nazis in the Attic." The
article is broken into 6 parts. Parts 3
and 5 deal specifically with Mr.
Dulles. The article begins at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas1.htm

The sections that deal specifically
with Allen Dulles are part 3, at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas3.htm
and part 5 at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas4.htm#5
Part 5 also deals with involvement of
the Bush family, since the 1920s, in
helping the Nazis.

(2) For a brief introduction to the
ratlines see 'The Vatican, Croatia and
the Nazi Gold' by Seán Mac Mathúna at
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/the_vatican.htm

(3) See excerpts from 'Blowback' by
Christopher Simpson which can be read
at
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/BareFists_B_CS.html
and
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Pipelines_B_CS.html

(4) For more on U.S. support for Nazi
butchers after World War II, see the
book, "Blowback: America's Nazis and
Its Effect on the Cold War" by
Christopher Simpson, April 1988. You
can find it on Amazon.com For more on
the Nazi-like state re-created in
Croatia during the early 19900s, see
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/backin.htm#a

(5) Washington was a key force in
creating the Albanian secessionist movement
in Kosovo. The evidence is there, every
step of the way. We will soon post an
article, 'Dole Does Kosovo', which
documents Washington's open attempt to
foster secessionism in Kosovo in 1990.
Eight years later, Washington used the
cover of the Kosovo Verification
Mission to import intelligence operatives
and military experts to (attempt to)
train the Kosovo Liberation Army so it
could function as a modern Army. See:
* 'The Cat is Out of the Bag' by Jared Israel at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm
and
* 'Why Albanians Fled Kosovo During
NATO Bombing' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/keys.htm

This interview includes information
unavailable elsewhere. It is well worth
reading if you want to understand just
how sophisticated and ruthless 'poor,
mistake-prone' Washington really is.

(6) For more on General Gehlen, see
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/gehlen2-a.htm

(7) The assault on Yugoslavia has
occasioned perhaps the most extreme
examples of the Washington's foreign
policy doctrine, which might be
paraphrased as follows: "The lie is
mightier than the sword."

Case in point: the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The U.S. and Germany created this
terrorist group. It's strategy, as
described by the pro-NATO publication,
'Jane's Defense Weekly', was and
remains: to commit acts of terror in
order to provoke a government response
which can be misportrayed as ethnic
repression and thereby used to justify
NATO intervention.

In other words, the KLA is openly
terrorist. In addition it is openly racist
- it appeals to and encourages hatred
of Slavs (especially Serbs) and 'Gypsies.'

Here's the point: At a rally two years
ago, Senator Joe Lieberman described
this bunch of terrorist-Nazis as follows:

"[The] United States of America and the
Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the
same human values and principles ...
Fighting for the KLA is fighting for
human rights and American values."
('Washington Post,' April 28, 1999)

The lie is mightier than the sword.

For more on Senator Joe Lieberman, see
'SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN - APOLOGIST FOR
THE FASCIST KLA' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/garris/duringthe.htm


8) On Slobodan Miloshevich, see 'KLA
Attacks Everyone. Media
Attacks...Miloshevich?' Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/expan.htm

and "Statement of President Slobodan
Milosevic on The Illegitimacy of The
Hague 'Tribunal'" Can be read at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/aug30.htm

***

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