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.)

c12. 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.)