Record­ed June 11, 2006

Lis­ten: MP3 This pro­gram con­sists of one, 30-minute seg­ment.

REALAUDIO
NB: This stream con­tains both FTR #s 557 and 558 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram sup­ple­ments the recent dis­clo­sure that the CIA knew the where­abouts of Nazi war crim­i­nal Adolph Eich­mann, but failed to act on that infor­ma­tion. Eich­mann was the over­seer of the exter­mi­na­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry. This broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion about Eichmann’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a CIA-spon­sored mis­sion to train the Egypt­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice and gen­er­al staff in the ear­ly 1950’s. The dis­clo­sure of this infor­ma­tion in a pub­lic forum fol­low­ing an arrest of Eich­mann would have proved embar­rass­ing, one pos­si­ble rea­son for the CIA’s ret­i­cence on the sub­ject. The Eich­mann case also illus­trates some­thing of the tex­ture of US polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty bureau­cra­cy: Even as ele­ments of the CIA ran the Egypt­ian oper­a­tion that alleged­ly employed Eich­mann, oth­er Amer­i­can offi­cials not­ed the influx of some of the most heinous Nazi war crim­i­nals and report­ed on it to their supe­ri­ors with great alarm. Func­tion­ing as a Tro­jan Horse for the Under­ground Reich, the Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion embod­ied a per­pet­u­a­tion of the Third Reich’s chain of polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary com­mand. Evolv­ing from the Third Reich’s East­ern Front intel­li­gence ser­vice to become the CIA’s depart­ment of Russ­ian and East­ern Euro­pean affairs, the out­fit run by Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen cleared its liai­son with the Amer­i­cans with [Hitler suc­ces­sor] Admi­ral Karl von Doenitz and [Gehlen’s “for­mer” chief of staff] Gen­er­al Franz Halder. Thus, the Nazi com­mand hier­ar­chy remained essen­tial­ly intact. Much of the pro­gram focus­es on Otto von Bolschwing, Eichmann’s supe­ri­or for a time. Von Bolschwing spent much of the post­war peri­od work­ing for Gehlen and the CIA. Most impor­tant­ly, his protégé—Helene Von Damm—drew up the lists of per­son­nel from which Ronald Rea­gan made his cab­i­net selec­tions. In effect, von Bolschwing and von Damm over­saw the staffing of the US polit­i­cal bureau­cra­cy with per­son­nel select­ed accord­ing to their high­ly spe­cial­ized taste!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A list of the oth­er promi­nent Nazi war crim­i­nals recruit­ed by Sko­rzeny to serve along­side Eich­mann in Egypt; Skorzeny’s devel­op­ment of the first Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist com­man­dos while serv­ing on the Gehlen/Dulles mis­sion in Egypt; Sko­rzeny and Gehlen’s use of CIA-spon­sored oper­a­tions to spread a Nazi polit­i­cal agen­da; von Bolschwing’s con­nec­tions to the milieu of the Iran/Contra scan­dal, the Ger­man government’s post­war infil­tra­tion by rabid Nazis.

1. The pro­gram begins with an arti­cle about the CIA’s cov­er-up of the where­abouts of Adolph Eich­mann. In charge of the relo­ca­tion and mur­der of Euro­pean Jew­ry dur­ing World War II, SS offi­cer Eich­mann was among the most want­ed of Nazi war crim­i­nals. Kid­napped from his hid­ing place in Argenti­na by Israeli agents, Eich­mann was tried, con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed for his crimes. It turns out that the CIA knew where Eich­mann had gone to ground by 1958, but kept it a secret.

“The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency took no action after learn­ing the pseu­do­nym and where­abouts of the fugi­tive Holo­caust admin­is­tra­tor Adolf Eich­mann. In 1958, accord­ing to C.I.A. doc­u­ments released Tues­day that shed new light on the spy agency’s use of for­mer Nazis as infor­mants after World War II. . . . The Eich­mann papers are among 27,000 new­ly declas­si­fied pages released by the C.I.A. to the Nation­al Archives under Con­gres­sion­al pres­sure to make pub­lic files about for­mer offi­cials of Hitler’s regime lat­er used as Amer­i­can agents. The mate­r­i­al rein­forces the view that most for­mer Nazis gave Amer­i­can intel­li­gence lit­tle of val­ue and in some cas­es proved to be dam­ag­ing dou­ble agents for the Sovi­et K.G.B. accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans and mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment pan­el that has worked to open the long-secret files.”

(“C.I.A. Knew Where Eich­mann Was Hid­ing, Doc­u­ments Show” by Scott Shane; New York Times; 6/7/2006; p. A3.)

2. “Eliz­a­beth Holtz­man, a for­mer con­gress­woman from New York and mem­ber of the pan­el, the Nazi War Crimes and Japan­ese Impe­r­i­al Gov­ern­ment Records Inter­a­gency Work­ing Group, said the doc­u­ments showed that the C.I.A. ‘failed to lift a fin­ger’ to hunt Eich­mann and ‘force us to con­front not only the moral harm but the prac­ti­cal harm’ of rely­ing on intel­li­gence from ex-Nazis. The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, pre­oc­cu­pied with the cold war, had no pol­i­cy at the time of pur­su­ing Nazi war crim­i­nals. The records also show that Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cials pro­tect­ed many for­mer Nazis for their per­ceived val­ue in com­bat­ing the Sovi­et threat.” (Idem.)

3. “But Ms. Holtz­man, speak­ing at a news brief­ing at the Nation­al Archives on Tues­day, said infor­ma­tion from the for­mer Nazis was often taint­ed both by their ‘per­son­al agen­das’ and their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to black­mail. ‘Using bad peo­ple can have very bad con­se­quences,’ Ms. Holtz­man said. She and oth­er group mem­bers sug­gest­ed that the find­ings should be a cau­tion­ary tale for intel­li­gence agen­cies today. As head of the Gestapo’s Jew­ish affairs office dur­ing the war, Eich­mann put into effect the pol­i­cy of exter­mi­na­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry, pro­mot­ing the use of gas cham­bers and hav­ing a hand in the mur­der of mil­lions of Jews. Cap­tured by the Unit­ed States Army at the end of the war, he gave a false name and went unrec­og­nized, hid­ing in Ger­many and Italy before flee­ing to Argenti­na in 1950.” (Idem.)

4. Note that the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment feared that expos­ing Eich­mann could lead to dis­clo­sures about Hans Globke, Kon­rad Adenauer’s most trust­ed advis­er. Globke drew up the Law for the Pro­tec­tion of Ger­man Blood and Hon­or—the law under which the exter­mi­na­tion of the Jews was enact­ed! As will be seen in para­graph 11, the Adenauer/Globke gov­ern­ment active­ly pro­tect­ed a CIA oper­a­tion using many Nazi war crim­i­nals, includ­ing Eich­mann. “Israeli agents hunt­ing for Eich­mann came to sus­pect that he was in Argenti­na but did not know his alias. They tem­porar­i­ly aban­doned their search around the time, in March 1958, the West Ger­man intel­li­gence told the C.I.A. that Eich­mann had been liv­ing in Argenti­na as Clemens, said Mr. Naf­tali, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. The West Ger­man gov­ern­ment was wary of expos­ing Eich­mann because offi­cials feared what he might reveal about such fig­ures as Hans Globke, a for­mer Nazi gov­ern­ment offi­cial then serv­ing as a top nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er to Chan­cel­lor Kon­rad Ade­nauer, Mr. Naf­tali said. In 1960, also at the request of West Ger­many, the C.I.A. per­suad­ed Life mag­a­zine, which had pur­chased Eichmann’s mem­oir from his fam­i­ly, to delete a ref­er­ence to Mr. Globke before pub­li­ca­tion, the doc­u­ments show. . . .” (Idem.)

5. One pos­si­ble rea­son for the CIA’s reluc­tance to dis­close Eichmann’s where­abouts is the fact that Eich­mann worked for the CIA as a “con­tract agent” in Egypt! (A con­tract agent is an oper­a­tive who signs on to per­form an indi­vid­ual assign­ment for the CIA—as opposed to a career employ­ee or CIA “offi­cer.”) Eich­mann was one of a num­ber of SS war crim­i­nals who worked to devel­op the Egypt­ian secret ser­vice and gen­er­al staff on a mis­sion that was launched under the aus­pices of Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen and his CIA boss, Allen Dulles. In charge of intel­li­gence for the East­ern Front dur­ing World War II, Gehlen jumped to the CIA with his entire orga­ni­za­tion, which became the CIA’s depart­ment of Russ­ian and East­ern Euro­pean affairs, the de fac­to NATO intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion and, ulti­mate­ly the BND—the intel­li­gence ser­vice for the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. The Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion retained all of its Nazi char­ac­ter, uti­liz­ing many of the most noto­ri­ous SS offi­cers and war crim­i­nals. The Gehlen/Dulles oper­a­tion that employed Eich­mann was real­ized under the aus­pices of SS colonel Otto Sko­rzeny. Sko­rzeny had been in charge of com­man­do oper­a­tions for the Third Reich, was one of Hitler’s per­son­al favorites and was a leader of the post­war ODESSA network—the dead­ly SS under­ground that oper­at­ed around the world. For more about Sko­rzeny, ODESSA, Gehlen and oth­er ele­ments of dis­cus­sion, use the search func­tion avail­able on this web­site. Note how Sko­rzeny, oper­at­ing under the aus­pices of CIA and Gehlen, was able to pro­mote a Nazi and fasc­st agen­da in Egypt! As we shall see below, the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion was a Tro­jan Horse for the Under­ground Reich. “ . . . If there were any doubts that Skorzeny’s alle­giance to the Unit­ed States was of an oppor­tunist nature and tem­po­rary, they were dis­pelled by his actions in Egypt and the Mideast. Even his deep hatred of the Sovi­ets was for­got­ten when it inter­fered with his per­son­al ambi­tions. Egypt pre­sent­ed Sko­rzeny the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote fas­cism; to estab­lish a Nazi clique whose influ­ence would be felt by the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment to restore Ger­man pres­tige in the Mideast, and to become a wealthy man. He didn’t allow the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pass . . .”
(Sko­rzeny: Hitler’s Com­man­do; by Glenn Infield; St. Martin’s Press [HC]; Copy­right 1981 by Glenn B. Infield; ISBN; 0–312-72777–1; p. 205.)

6. A CIA-sup­port­ed coup in Egypt oust­ed King Farouk and replaced him with Gen­er­al Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nass­er. The lat­ter even­tu­al­ly became Egypt’s head of state. Dulles want­ed to retain U.S. influ­ence in Egypt and turned to Gehlen to recruit per­son­nel suit­able for the job. Gehlen turned to Sko­rzeny and his father in law Hjal­mar Horace Gree­ley Schacht, the Amer­i­can-born for­mer finance min­is­ter of Ger­many. “ . . . The CIA, under the influ­ence of Allen Dulles, select­ed Egypt­ian army Gen­er­al Mohammed Naguib to head the gov­ern­ment. . . . The takeover of the coun­try by Naguib, with Nass­er play­ing the role of a shad­owy dic­ta­tor in the back­ground, opened the door wide for the three silent con­spir­a­tors of Hitler’s regime: Gehlen, Schacht, and Sko­rzeny. As Gehlen stat­ed in his mem­oirs: ‘We found Arab coun­tries par­tic­u­lar­ly will­ing to embrace Ger­mans with an osten­si­bly ‘Nazi’ past.’ And Naguib was quick to ask for help. Since his revolt had the back­ing of the CIA and he was aware that Gehlen was col­lab­o­rat­ing with the U.S. intel­li­gence agency, his request for some­one to train his secu­ri­ty forces went to Pul­lach, Gehlen’s head­quar­ters south of Munich. Gehlen and Schacht were in com­plete agree­ment that the man for the job was Otto Sko­rzeny. Dulles, aware of Skorzeny’s anti-Sovi­et role dur­ing the imme­di­ate post­war years when the West­ern nations des­per­ate­ly need­ed help, con­curred. Sko­rzeny went to Egypt as Naguib’s mil­i­tary advi­sor. It was a deci­sion the Unit­ed States would regret in lat­er years.” (Ibid.; pp. 205–206.)

7. Again, note that the Gehlen/Skorzeny/Schacht milieu was able to pur­sue an essen­tial­ly Nazi agen­da under the aus­pices of CIA/Dulles. As will be seen below, many U.S. offi­cials were unaware of the Sko­rzeny mis­sion, and report­ed on devel­op­ments in Egypt with great alarm. “There was, of course, anoth­er rea­son for­mer Nazis were quick to accept the Egypt­ian invi­ta­tion. It once again pit­ted them against the Jews and the new­ly estab­lished Israeli nation. As the Jud­is­che Rund­schau stat­ed in 1951: ‘As for Skorzeny’s anti-Semit­ic and fas­cist propen­si­ties, this is undoubt­ed­ly true. Sko­rzeny read­i­ly admits his strong anti-Semi­tism.’ Gehlen, too, had reser­va­tions about the rela­tion­ship between the new West Ger­man gov­ern­ment and Israel. ‘I have always regard­ed it as some­thing of a tragedy that West Ger­many was inevitably dragged into an alliance with the state of Israel against the Arab coun­tries,’ he stat­ed in his mem­oirs. ‘I always regard­ed their [Arabs] tra­di­tion­al friend­ship for Ger­many as of immense val­ue for our nation­al recon­struc­tion. And at the request of Allen Dulles and the CIA, we at Pul­lach did our best to inject life and exper­tise into the Egypt­ian secret ser­vice, sup­ply­ing them with the for­mer SS offi­cers I have men­tioned.’” (Ibid.; p. 207.)

8. The per­son­nel with whom Skorzeny’s Nazis worked were open­ly admir­ing of the Third Reich. “If there was any doubt that Naguib was pro-Ger­man, his pub­lic state­ments cleared up the mis­un­der­stand­ing. ‘I want you to believe me when I say that I have not changed the great admi­ra­tion I have for the Ger­mans. Their effi­cien­cy, their extra­or­di­nary gifts as sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians, and their loy­al­ty are quite unique. I have been notic­ing all these qual­i­ties in recent times, watch­ing the work of the Ger­man offi­cers and experts in my army.’ Dr. Nored­dine Tar­raf, one of Naguib’s most impor­tant sup­port­ers and lat­er Min­is­ter of Health, was even more explic­it when speak­ing of the Ger­mans, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Nazis. ‘Hitler is the man of my life. The Ger­man dic­ta­tor had been an ide­al leader who ded­i­cat­ed his life to the real­iza­tion of his noble ambi­tion. He nev­er lived for him­self but for Ger­many and the Ger­man peo­ple. I have always wished to live like him.’” (Idem.)

9. “Sko­rzeny felt at ease among Egypt­ian offi­cials with this atti­tude. His first task was to orga­nize a staff of for­mer SS and Wehrma­cht offi­cers to train the Egypt­ian army and secu­ri­ty forces. He select­ed care­ful­ly, mak­ing cer­tain that each offi­cer he brought to Egypt was a diehard Nazi, an expert mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian, and was anti-Semit­ic. Among those recruit­ed by Sko­rzeny were SS Gen­er­al Oskar Dirlewanger, who had com­mand­ed a brigade com­posed of poach­ers, crim­i­nals, and men under the sen­tence of court-mar­tial dur­ing the War­saw ghet­to upris­ing and whose actions against the Jews had earned him the nick­name ‘Butch­er of War saw’; SS Colonel Adolf Eich­mann, the offi­cer Himm­ler charged with the destruc­tion of mil­lions of Jews and who lat­er would be kid­napped from Argenti­na by the Israeli secret ser­vice and smug­gled back to Israel to stand tri­al [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]; SS Gen­er­al Wil­helm Farm­bach­er; Panz­er Gen­er­al Oskar Mun­zel; Leopold Gleim, for­mer chief of Hitler’s per­son­al guard and Gestapo secu­ri­ty chief of Ger­man-occu­pied Poland; and Joachim Daem­ling, for­mer chief of the Gestapo in Dus­sel­dorf. To han­dle med­ical prob­lems, Sko­rza­e­ny recruit­ed Dr. Hans Eise­le, who had been chief med­ical offi­cer at Buchen­wald con­cen­tra­tion camp, and Hein­rich Willer­man, for­mer med­ical direc­tor at Dachau.” (Ibid.; pp. 207–208.)

10. The para­graphs that fol­low are of great sig­nif­i­cance. Indica­tive of he mul­ti-polar tex­ture of the U.S. polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty bureau­cra­cies, many Amer­i­can oper­a­tives report­ed with great alarm on the Nazi recrude­s­cence in Egypt. They were unaware of the CIA/Dulles/Gehlen/Skorzeny col­lab­o­ra­tion. “U.S. offi­cials, many of them unaware that Allen Dulles had encour­aged Gehlen to pro­vide Naguib with Ger­man mil­i­tary advis­ers, became wor­ried when so many infa­mous Nazi offi­cers appeared in Egypt. Even Dulles became con­cerned when it was report­ed to him that Sko­rzeny was meet­ing often with Gamal Abdel Nass­er, the Egypt­ian army lieu­tenant colonel who seemed to be giv­ing more orders than Naguib. A secret let­ter, Embassy Dis­patch 2276, from Jef­fer­son Caf­fery of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to the Depart­ment of State in Wash­ing­ton, indi­cates that inquiries con­cern­ing Skorzeny’s activ­i­ties in Egypt were being con­duct­ed. ‘On June 14, the local press announced that Otto Sko­rzeny had an hour’s inter­view with Gamal Abdel Nass­er on June 12. Aside from recall­ing that he was in charge of the spe­cial com­man­do unit which kid­napped Mus­soli­ni and point­ing out his expe­ri­ence in the train­ing of com­man­dos, the press gave no fur­ther details. The Coun­sel of the Ger­man Embassy states that he and his col­leagues had no pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the vis­it. They are try­ing now through con­tacts among the Ger­man Mil­i­tary Mis­sion to find out what Sko­rzeny is up to. The Ger­man Coun­selor remarked that it was dif­fi­cult to keep track of this indi­vid­ual because he resides in Spain, but the Ger­man Embassy knew that when he was here the last time, four or five months ago, he talked to the Egyp­tians about the sup­ply­ing of small arms and the train­ing of the com­man­dos. On the gen­er­al sub­ject of the activ­i­ties of Ger­man offi­cers in Egypt, the Ger­man Coun­selor said that a for­eign office offi­cial came to Egypt recent­ly to inves­ti­gate them fol­low­ing Sir Win­ston Churchill’s speech in which he men­tioned their activ­i­ties. . . .’” (Ibid.; pp. 208–209.)

11. Note that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, under Kon­rad Ade­nauer and his emi­nence grise Hans Globke (see para­graph 4), active­ly pro­tect­ed the Sko­rzeny oper­a­tion. And Eich­mann was used as part of the Sko­rzeny oper­a­tion! It is fas­ci­nat­ing to note that the first Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist unites were formed under the tute­lage of Sko­rzeny! “ . . . This secret dis­patch and oth­ers that fol­lowed from Egypt indi­cate that U.S. offi­cials and even CIA agents were woe­ful­ly unaware of what the Nazis were real­ly doing in Egypt. The Ade­nauer gov­ern­ment was well aware of Skorzeny’s pres­ence in Egypt and con­doned his actions on behalf of the new Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. The pre­tend­ed ‘igno­rance’ of the Ger­man Coun­selor was mere­ly a face-sav­ing move and an effort to deceive the U.S. Embassy. . . . Sko­rzeny was already train­ing an Arab for­eign legion in com­man­do tac­tics. This secret unit was com­prised of 400 for­mer Nazis and Gestapo vet­er­ans and used a train­ing base at Bil­beis in the Delta. He also helped orga­nize and train the first Pales­tine ter­ror­ists and planned their ini­tial for­ays into Israel by way of the Gaza Strip about 1953–1954. . . . [Empha­sis added.]” (Ibid.; p. 209.)

12. Excerpt­ing FTR#180, the pro­gram sets forth the fact that Gen­er­al Gehlen cleared all the ini­ti­a­tion of his intel­li­gence oper­a­tions with the Amer­i­cans with Admi­ral Karl Doenitz (polit­i­cal suc­ces­sor to Hitler as head of state) and Gen­er­al Franz Halder (Gehlen’s chief of staff dur­ing the war.) As Author Carl Ogles­by notes, this indi­cates that the Nazi chain of com­mand was still in effect, even while Gehlen was osten­si­bly work­ing for the Amer­i­cans! As set forth in FTR#305 and FTR#180, Gehlen cleared his actions with Gen­er­al Mueller, Bormann’s chief of secu­ri­ty.
(“The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt” by Carl Ogles­by; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin [Issue#35]; excerpt­ed from AFA#37, record­ed in August, 1992.)

13. One of the most impor­tant Nazis brought into the coun­try through the Dulles-Gehlen milieu was Otto von Bolschwing. Lat­er, his pro­tégé Helene von Damm became the per­son who select­ed the list from which all of Ronald Reagan’s cab­i­net appoint­ments were made. Note that von Bolschwing not only replaced Eich­mann as intel­li­gence offi­cer in the Mid­dle East but also was his supe­ri­or for a peri­od of time. (For more about von Bolschwing, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 332, 399, 465.) “Eich­mann was replaced on the Mid­dle East­ern scene by a far more skilled intel­li­gence offi­cer, Otto von Bolschwing. Before World War II, von Bolschwing set up an import-export busi­ness in Pales­tine as a cov­er for his espi­onage activ­i­ties. He was an edu­cat­ed man from a good fam­i­ly and an enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­er of Hitler. After the war, von Bolschwing became one of Allen Dulles’s senior agents in the CIA.”
(The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; by Mark Aarons and John Lotus; St. Martin’s Press [HC]; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 46.)

14. “Dulles helped von Bolschwing emi­grate to Cal­i­for­nia, where he estab­lished a busi­ness asso­ci­a­tion with Helene von Damm, lat­er Ronald Reagan’s ambas­sador to Aus­tria. In lat­er years, his busi­ness went bank­rupt and he was forced to sur­ren­der his Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship on the grounds that he was a Nazi war crim­i­nal.” (Idem.)

15. Next, the pro­gram reviews Von Bolschwing’s career in the Unit­ed States, after he was brought here by Allen Dulles. Von Bolschwing worked for Gehlen and lat­er became the head of a par­al­lel net­work to Gehlen’s in the Unit­ed States.
(“Ex-Nazi’s Bril­liant U.S. Career Stran­gled in a Web of Lies” by Pete Carey; San Jose Mer­cury News; 11/20/81; pp.1A-24A.)

16. In addi­tion to his stew­ard­ship of an elec­tron­ics firm TCI (and its sub­sidiary Inter­na­tion­al Imag­ing Sys­tems), von Bolschwing employed his pro­tégé, Ms. von Damm in the firm. (Idem.)

17. The broad­cast high­lights Helene von Damm’s role in select­ing the lists of per­son­nel that Ronald Rea­gan used to select his cab­i­net appoint­ments.
(“Big Pro­mo­tion for Reagan’s Ex-Sec­re­tary” San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 8/3/82.)