Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

1. This pro­gram cov­ers the post-war activ­i­ties of Gestapo Chief Hein­rich Mueller. Mueller was reported to have died in the ruins of Berlin at the end of the war. When his grave was opened in 1963, it con­tained the remains of two (or by some accounts three) men, none of them Mueller.

2. The broad­cast high­lights Mueller’s work on behalf of U.S. intel­li­gence after the war, as well as his over­lap­ping activ­i­ties as direc­tor of the remark­able and deadly Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion. This insti­tu­tion has per­pet­u­ated its power in an effec­tive, clan­des­tine, and deadly, Mafia-like fash­ion in the years since World War II. The Bor­mann group dom­i­nates cor­po­rate Ger­many and wields enor­mous influ­ence around the world.)

3. The pro­gram begins with an excerpt from Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M-57, high­light­ing Mueller’s escape from Berlin at the end of the war, and his work for U.S. intel­li­gence dur­ing the Cold War. (“The Flight of the Wolf: Berlin 1945″ by Gre­gory Dou­glas; The Mil­i­tary Adviser; Win­ter of 1992–93 [Vol­ume 4, #1].)

4. The infor­ma­tion in the Dou­glas arti­cle is, in turn, drawn largely from U.S. Army Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Corps (CIC) doc­u­ments on file at the National Archives. These doc­u­ments were accessed by writer Gita Sereny, while doing research for a Lon­don Times arti­cle. (Idem.)

5. In addi­tion, the Dou­glas arti­cle presents infor­ma­tion from a CIA debrief­ing of Mueller, appar­ently con­ducted prior to his employ­ment by the agency. (Idem.)

6. It should be noted that a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion of the CIC doc­u­ments con­ducted by the FBI sup­ports their verac­ity. (Idem.)

7. The U.S. intel­li­gence inter­view with Mueller was con­ducted with his even­tual employ­ment being a fore­gone con­clu­sion. (Idem.)

8. In Feb­ru­ary, an arti­cle in the Los Ange­les Times pro­vided sig­nif­i­cant corob­o­ra­tion for the infor­ma­tion in M-57. (“New Ques­tions Arise on Fate of Gestapo Chief” by Henry Wein­stein; Los Ange­les Times; 2/26/2001; pp. A1-A6.)

9. “U.S. Army Intel­li­gence records indi­cate that Mueller–who was nick­named ‘Gestapo Mueller’ to dis­tin­guish him from the hun­dreds of other Muellers in the Nazi hierarchy–was cap­tured by Amer­i­cans in 1945, says his­to­rian George Chalou, who worked at the National Archives for 28 years.” (Ibid.; p. A6.)

10. The arti­cle also notes that “a Ger­man tele­vi­sion net­work aired a program–based in part on doc­u­ments from the U.S. National Archives in Maryland–claiming that Mueller was cap­tured by the U.S. Army, but released for unknown rea­sons.” (Idem.)

11. In addi­tion, the arti­cle notes that ele­ments of the Mueller file were with­eld. “Despite the fact that the files were opened more than 50 years after the end of World War II, numer­ous por­tions have been redacted. In Feb­ru­ary 1999, eight months before the Army records were made pub­lic by the National Archives, Army offi­cials sent Rabbi Hier a let­ter say­ing some of his requests for infor­ma­tion on Mueller were being denied on grounds of ‘national secu­rity,’ includ­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that more com­plete dis­clo­sure could com­pro­mise intelligence-gathering meth­ods.” (Idem.)

12. The arti­cle makes another allu­sion, as well. “Index cards stat­ing that Mueller was in cus­tody first in the town of Ilme­nau and then in Decem­ber 1945 in a ‘civil­ian intern­ment’ camp in Altenstadt in Upper Bavaria. . . .It ends with the cryp­tic and provoca­tive sen­tence, ‘case closed 29 Jan 46.’ It is unclear who placed the infor­ma­tion on the card, which states that a Mueller dossier was to be sent to Frank­furt.” (Idem.)

13. The arti­cle also notes that there “. . .have been uncon­firmed reports that he served as an ‘enforcer’ for for­mer Nazis liv­ing in South Amer­ica. . . .” (Idem.)

14. As vet­eran lis­ten­ers know, these reports are far more than “uncon­firmed.” Mueller served as the secu­rity direc­tor for the Bor­mann group and, in that capac­ity, worked directly with U.S. intel­li­gence, the CIA, in par­tic­u­lar. “The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion had many com­mer­cial and polit­i­cal links to the cap­i­tals of these three nations, and real clout was avail­able should the chase become too hot. The CIA could have pulled aside the gray cur­tain that obscured Bormann—at any time. But the CIA and Mueller’s crack orga­ni­za­tion of for­mer SS men found it to their mutual advan­tage to coop­er­ate in many sit­u­a­tions. There is no moral­ity in the sense that most of us know it in the strange world of pro­fes­sional secrecy, and when it was to the advan­tage of each to work together they did so.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; by Paul Man­ning; copy­right 1981; Lyle Stu­art [hard­cover]; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p.211.)

15. As might be sur­mised, Mueller’s oper­a­tives also worked with the orga­ni­za­tion of Rein­hard Gehlen. “Even Gen­eral Gehlen, when he was chief of the Fed­eral Republic’s intel­li­gence ser­vice, sent his agents to con­fer with Gen­eral Hein­rich Mueller in South Amer­ica.” (For more on Gehlen, see RFA-3, among other pro­grams.) (Ibid.; p. 274.)

16. Jour­nal­ist Paul Man­ning had direct and exten­sive con­tact with the Mueller orga­ni­za­tion, while doing the research for his remark­able book. (Ibid.; pp. 272–273.)

17. “Dur­ing years of research for this book, I have become aware of Hein­rich Mueller and his secu­rity force, which pro­vides pro­tec­tion for the lead­er­ship in Latin Amer­ica and wher­ever else they may travel to Europe and to the United States to check on invest­ments and prof­its. Through inter­me­di­aries, I have attempted unceas­ingly to pen­e­trate to the cen­tral core of the orga­ni­za­tion in South Amer­ica, but have been denied access. At the last meet­ing that I know about, it was voted: ‘Herr Manning’s writ­ing would focus undue atten­tion on our activ­i­ties and his request must once again be denied.’ The elderly lead­ers, includ­ing Reich­min­is­ter Bor­mann, who is now eighty, wanted me on the scene to write of their side of the story, above all his story, of one of the most amaz­ing and suc­cess­ful finan­cial and indus­trial cloak­ing actions in his­tory, of which he is jus­ti­fi­ably proud. I had sent word to Bor­mann that the true story, his first­hand account, should become a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal record, and stated that I would be agree­able to writ­ing it if I could tell his true story, warts and all.” (Ibid.; p. 272.)

18. “Back came the word: ‘You are a free world jour­nal­ist, and can write as you think best. We, too, are inter­ested only in truth.’ They agreed to my request to bring along a three-man cam­era crew from CBS News to film my con­ver­sa­tions with Mar­tin Bor­mann, and even approved my wish for at least a per­sonal thumbprint of the for­mer Reich­sleiter and party min­is­ter, which would be pos­i­tive proof of his iden­tity. At the organization’s request, I sent the back­ground, names, pho­tos and cre­den­tials of the par­tic­u­lar CBS cam­era­men: Lawrence Wal­ter Pierce, Richard Henry Perez, and Oden Lester Kitzmiller, an award-winning cam­era crew (which got the exclu­sive film cov­er­age of the attempted assas­si­na­tion of Gov­er­nor George Wal­lace when he was run­ning for pres­i­dent).” (Ibid.; pp. 272–3.)

19. “I am sorry to say that the younger lead­ers , the ones now in vir­tual com­mand, voted ‘No.’ They did agree, how­ever that 232 his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments from World War II, which Bor­mann had had shipped out of Berlin in the wan­ing days of the war, and which are stored in his archives in South Amer­ica, could be sent to me anony­mously, to be pub­lished. They said their lengthy inves­ti­ga­tion of me had pro­duced con­fi­dence that I was an objec­tive jour­nal­ist, as well as a brave one, for their prob­ing stretched back to World War II days, and up to the present.” (Ibid.; p. 273.)

20. “Hein­rich Mueller, now seventy-nine years old, who also serves as keeper of these archives as well as chief of all secu­rity for the NSDAP, rejected this deci­sion: when the courier reached the Buenos Aires inter­na­tional air­port bear­ing these doc­u­ments for me he was relieved of them by the Argen­tine secret police act­ing under an ini­tia­tive from Mueller.” (Idem.)

21. “As Mueller had explained pre­vi­ously, he had noth­ing against me per­son­ally; I had been cleared of any ‘strange con­nec­tions’ by his agents in New York City, whose sur­veil­lance efforts were sup­ple­mented by the old pros of the Gestapo, up from South Amer­ica to assist in watch­ing me. This con­tin­ued inter­mit­tently for years, and efforts were stepped up in response to the inten­sity of my inves­ti­ga­tions. The state­ment I had orig­i­nally made to their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in West Ger­many, that I was only a dili­gent jour­nal­ist try­ing to dig out an impor­tant story, finally proved sat­is­fac­tory to them. I observed that Mueller hadn’t lost his touch in the field of sur­veil­lance, judg­ing by the qual­ity, skill, and num­ber of men and women who tracked me, at what must have been enor­mous cost, wher­ever I went in New York City, Wash­ing­ton, and over­seas.” (Idem.)

22. Mueller didn’t restrict his secu­rity activ­i­ties on behalf of the Bor­mann group to sur­veil­lance. “Israeli agents who move too closely to these cen­ters of power are elim­i­nated. One such ter­mi­na­tion was Fritz Bauer, for­merly attor­ney gen­eral for the State of Hesse in Frank­furt, a sur­vivor of Auschwitz and the man who tipped off the Israeli Mossad about the pres­ence of Adolf Eich­mann in Buenos Aires, who was killed on orders of Gen­eral Mueller. . . .Mueller’s ruth­less­ness even today is what deters Artur Axmann from alter­ing his tes­ti­mony that he saw Bor­mann lying dead on the road­way the night of their escape from the Fuehrerbunker, May 1–2, 1945. . . .To this day, Axmann, the only so-called liv­ing wit­ness to the ‘death’ of Bor­mann in Berlin, knows his life is in jeo­prady if he reverses him­self. Gen­eral Mueller is thor­ough and has a long mem­ory, and for a Nazi such as Axmann to go against Mueller’s orig­i­nal direc­tive would make him a trai­tor; ret­ri­bu­tion would surely fol­low.” (Ibid.; pp. 289–90.)

23. The broad­cast con­cludes with an excerpt from FTR-145, that high­lights Mueller’s dis­cred­i­ta­tion of jour­nal­ists attempt­ing to tell the truth about Bor­mann. When writer Ladis­las Farago (the author of, among other titles, After­math) was in Latin Amer­ica research­ing the Bor­mann story, Mueller staged a false pho­to­graph of Bor­mann and mis­lead Farago into using it in his book. (Excerpted from a let­ter from Paul Man­ning to William Leonard [the Pres­i­dent of CBS News]; 11/1/81.) The jour­nal­is­tic assault on Farago in this coun­try was led by Ger­ald Pos­ner, who also “walked point” for the media in the 1990’s with his unten­able rein­force­ment of the War­ren Commission’s hypothesis.

24. The excerpt from the Manning-Leonard let­ter also dis­cusses the Mueller outfit’s train­ing of Moham­mar Khadafy’s secret ser­vice. (Idem.) (This is also dis­cussed in RFA-3.)

25. Man­ning also relates an account of his broad­cast appear­ance with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Wiesen­thal orga­ni­za­tion, who agreed with his view that the Mueller net­work was the best intel­li­gence out­fit in the world. The Wiesen­thal rep­re­sen­ta­tive also agreed that Bor­mann had escaped from Europe. (Idem.)