Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by 12/19/2014. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #827.  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748.)

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE. 

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

Lis­ten: MP3

This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment. 

Intro­duc­tion: The fifth of sev­er­al inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da, this pro­gram sets forth the his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion for the post­war per­pet­u­a­tion and oper­a­tion of Nazism–“The Hitler Lega­cy.”

The the­sis of this remark­able book might be summed up in an excerpt from page 307:

. . . . After World War II, the Amer­i­can peo­ple thought that Nazi Ger­many had been defeat­ed and the “war” was over; this book demon­strates that it nev­er was. Instead, we were told that Com­mu­nism was the new threat and we had to pull out all the stops to pre­vent a Com­mu­nist takeover of the coun­try. And so our mil­i­tary and our intel­li­gence agen­cies col­lab­o­rat­ed with sur­viv­ing Nazis to go after Com­mu­nists. We refused to pur­sue world­wide right wing ter­ror groups and assas­sins. After all, they were killing Com­mu­nists and left­ists; they were doing us a ser­vice. Like Hoover and the Mafia, the CIA refused to believe a Nazi Under­ground exist­ed even as they col­lab­o­rat­ed with it (via the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion and the like).

The whole thrust of this book has been that Amer­i­can lead­ers in busi­ness, finance, media, and pol­i­tics col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazis before, dur­ing, and after the war. The West­’s share in the ‘blame” for Al-Qae­da, et al, goes back a long way–before Eisenhower–to a cabal of extrem­ist US Army gen­er­als and emi­gre East­ern Euro­peans who did­n’t have much of a prob­lem with Nazism since they feared Com­mu­nism more. The Church, the Tibetans, the Japan­ese, the Ger­mans, the Croatians–and the Americans–all felt that Com­mu­nism was the greater dan­ger, long before WWII. We enlist­ed war crim­i­nals to fight on our side. We appro­pri­at­ed the idea of glob­al jihad from the Nazis and their WW I pre­de­ces­sors. We amped up their plan to weaponize reli­gion and con­vinced Mus­lims, who hat­ed each oth­er, to band togeth­er to fight Com­mu­nism. And when Afghanistan was lib­er­at­ed and the Sovi­et Union was defeat­ed?

Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. . . .

This inter­view begins by dis­cussing some of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als that com­prised the post­war “Under­ground Reich.”

This pro­gram high­light­ing orga­ni­za­tions that com­prised the post­war Nazi under­ground. The most impor­tant of these is Die Spinne, engi­neered by Otto Sko­rzeny.

Sko­rzeny also helped estab­lish Merex, an arms traf­fick­ing firm which we dis­cussed in AFA #32.

One of the Nazi under­ground’s most high-pro­file oper­a­tives was Luft­waffe pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel. In addi­tion to work­ing with Third Reich alum­ni as sort of a trav­el­ing ambas­sador-at-large, Rudel also worked with the U.S. gov­ern­ment in the post­war peri­od, devel­op­ing com­bat air­craft includ­ing the F‑16 and the A‑10.

In the con­text of post­war lumi­nar­ies of the Nazi under­ground, Peter high­lights the remark­able career of Fran­cois Genoud.

Next, the pro­gram sets forth the Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of the glob­al-jihadis-as-proxy-war­rior strat­a­gem mint­ed by Max von Oppen­heim in World War I and then resu­si­cat­ed by the Nazis dur­ing World War II. Seek­ing forces with which to pur­sue a glob­al anti-Com­mu­nist agen­da dur­ing the Cold War, the U.S. turned to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, sup­port­ing the orga­ni­za­tion through the CIA and State Depart­ment.

Shift­ing focus from the Mid­dle East to Asia, the Cold war saw the Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of yet anoth­er Third Reich man­i­fes­ta­tion of “weaponized reli­gion.” Hav­ing sent an SS expe­di­tion to Tibet in 1938, the Third Reich may well have been explor­ing a poten­tial out­post to be used for their con­quest of the “Earth Island,” in addi­tion to indulging their anthro­po­log­i­cal fan­tasies about Tibet being the fount of the “Aryan Race.”

After Chi­na occu­pied Tibet, that coun­try’s leader–the Dalai Lama–became yet anoth­er ally in the Cold War. The CIA pur­sued alliance with the Dalai Lama’s forces, appar­ent­ly employ­ing SS offi­cer Hein­rich Har­rer as an agent. (Har­rer was the Dalai Lama’s tutor and close per­son­al friend.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

• Stille Hil­fe, one of whose most impor­tant mem­bers is Gudrun Bur­witz, SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler’s daugh­ter.
• HIAG–the “self-help” orga­ni­za­tion of the Waf­fen SS.
• The best known of these post­war Nazi orga­ni­za­tions, ODESSA.
• Dis­cus­sion of the Pal­adin mer­ce­nary group, a Sko­rzeny oper­a­tion.
• Dis­cus­sion of the CIA and State Depart­men­t’s estab­lish­ment of the “Mosque in Munich.”
• The Dalai Lama’s decades-long rela­tion­ship with SS war crim­i­nal Bruno Beger, an anthro­pol­o­gist who was on the orig­i­nal 1938 SS expe­di­tion to Tibet.

1. The pro­gram begins by high­light­ing the orga­ni­za­tions that com­prised the post­war Nazi under­ground. The most impor­tant of these is Die Spinne, engi­neered by Otto Sko­rzeny.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 167–168.

. . . . Die Spinne is anoth­er case entire­ly.

This was the cre­ation of Otto Sko­rzeny (he of the Hunt­ing Soci­ety) and it leads us into the deep­er world of ODESSA. More than any oth­er sin­gle indi­vid­ual, Sko­rzeny is the entry point to the world of the Nazi under­ground and the links between resur­gent Nazism and what we are call­ing Islamist jihadism, with the con­nec­tive tis­sue of the dic­ta­tor­ships of Latin Amer­i­ca: first stop for most of the flee­ing Nazi fugi­tives. Die Spine and its off­shoots pro­vides us with a glimpse into the inter­face between West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies and their ide­o­log­i­cal con­flict with Com­mu­nism on the one hand, and with expe­ri­enced and ded­i­cat­ed anti-Com­mu­nists on the oth­er. I have writ­ten else­where that the deal Amer­i­ca made with Nazi sci­en­tists under the rubric of Oper­a­tion Paper­clip, and with Nazi spies under the rubric of the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion, was a Faus­t­ian pact with the Dev­il: the point at which Amer­i­ca bartered its soul in exchange for a short-lived sense of secu­ri­ty. The deal that Amer­i­can and oth­er West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies and polit­i­cal lead­er­ships made with the bru­tal pres­i­dents of Latin Amer­i­can and Asian nations in the 1950’s, 1960’s and through the 1980’s is a cod­i­cil to the pact. What the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment could not effec­tive­ly pro­mote with­in its own bor­ders –whole­sale sup­pres­sion of any oppo­si­tion on a mas­sive and unapolo­getic scale–it suc­ceed­ed in accom­plish­ing through­out Latin Amer­i­ca, and by exten­sion into South­east Asia . . . .

2. Next, Peter dis­cuss­es the insti­tu­tions com­pris­ing the Nazi under­ground includ­ing:

• Stille Hil­fe, one of whose most impor­tant mem­bers is Gudrun Bur­witz, SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler’s daugh­ter.
• HIAG–the “self-help” orga­ni­za­tion of the Waf­fen SS.
• The best known of these orga­ni­za­tions, ODESSA.

3. One of the most impor­tant fig­ures in the post­war Nazi under­ground was dec­o­rat­ed Luft­waffe pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel, who also helped design air­craft for the U.S. Air Force, devel­op­ing com­bat planes includ­ing the F‑16 and the A‑10.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 162.

. . . . Since Rudel had not been indict­ed for war crimes, he was free to roam about the world pro­mot­ing Nazism and becom­ing a kind of one-man clear­ing­house for com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Nazis in var­i­ous parts of the world, many of whom were not as free to trav­el due to their need for secu­ri­ty and the com­plex paper trails they had cre­at­ed to dis­guise their iden­ti­ties. In this capac­i­ty, Rudel could car­ry mes­sages between fugi­tives, help arrange finan­cial sup­port, and keep the spir­it alive among the mem­bers of the Brud­er­schaft, the “Broth­er­hood.” His address book is ample evi­dence of the con­nec­tions Rudel had around the world with both promi­nent Nazis and sym­pa­thiz­ers, and with those less well-known or liv­ing under pseu­do­nyms. It also reveals the extent of Rudel’s con­nec­tions with influ­en­tial and pow­er­ful mem­bers of var­i­ous gov­ern­ments and mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions. In fact, his rela­tion­ship with Pierre Sprey was based on just that kind of gov­ern­ment con­tact, for it was due to Rudel’s pro­fi­cien­cy as a wartime ace pilot that his knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence was val­ued by the US Defense Depart­ment, for which Sprey worked in devel­op­ing the F‑16 and the A‑10 air­craft in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Sprey was encour­aged to talk about avi­a­tion with Rudel if it would help air­craft engi­neers design a bet­ter plane. In oth­er words, one could say that for awhile at least Hans-Ulrich Rudel worked for the Pen­ta­gon. . . .

4. Sko­rzeny also helped estab­lish Merex, an arms traf­fick­ing firm which we dis­cussed in AFA #32.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 173.

. . . . Sko­rzeny was­n’t sat­is­fied with just Merex, how­ev­er. As entre­pre­neur­ial as ever, he found­ed a series of oth­er com­pa­nies with dubi­ous pedi­grees: such as the Pal­adin Group, Based in Ali­cante, Spain it was designed to pro­vide para­mil­i­tary train­ing and sup­port to a vari­ety of caus­es around the world. Fore­most among these tasks was tutor­ing secu­ri­ty per­son­nel in Egypt and Argenti­na, and for this, he hired as man­ag­er one Dr. Ger­hard Hart­mut von Schu­bert, who for­mer­ly worked for Goebbel­s’s Pro­pa­gan­da Min­istry (like Johann von Leers and Wern­er Nau­mann). Pal­adin Group also pro­vid­ed logis­ti­cal sup­port for the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion move­ment. In addi­tion, Sko­rzeny worked with the H.S. Lucht Cor­po­ra­tion, anoth­er of the ubiq­ui­tous “import-export” firms used to pro­vide cov­er for unsa­vory trade, head­quar­tered in Dus­sel­dorf and direct­ed by Wern­er Nau­mann him­self. . . .

5. Next, we high­light the career of Fran­cois Genoud, one of the most impor­tant fig­ures of the post­war Under­ground Reich.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 174–176.

. . . . Anoth­er key fig­ure in the under­world of the glob­al Nazi network–and close friend of Sko­rzeny, Rudel, and Schacht–was the Swiss financier and for­mer Abwehr agent Fran­cois Genoud (1915–1996). Although a Swiss cit­i­zen, Genoud was a devot­ed Nazi to the end of his days, like his col­leagues. The dif­fer­ence lay in Genoud’s post-war pro­fes­sion as a financier. It has large­ly been accept­ed that the funds to which Genoud had access were secret accounts held in Swiss banks by Nazi lead­ers and fugi­tives. He man­aged to par­lay what was a con­sid­er­able for­tune into even greater wealth through a series of shrewd invest­ments, as well as what might be called “pro­tec­tion mon­ey” from a vari­ety of sources. He was the lit­er­ary execu­tor of the works of Adolf Hitler, Mar­tin Bor­mann, and Josef Goebbels, among oth­er claims to fame, and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Holo­caust denier and his­to­ri­an David Irv­ing (whose name also appears in the Rudel address book, along with Genoud and Sko­rzeny). As the post-war decades pro­gressed, Genoud would become a key fig­ure in the financ­ing of Arab lit­er­a­tion move­ments through­out North Africa and the Lev­ant. . . .

. . . In 1954, he began financ­ing the Alger­ian Lib­er­a­tion Front, an orga­ni­za­tion to which he already had been sup­ply­ing weapons after meet­ing mem­bers of the Front in Egypt. In 1955, he cre­at­ed AraboAfri­ka, anoth­er “import-export” com­pa­ny, to assist the Alger­ian cause and to pro­vide a cov­er for anti-Israel pro­pa­gan­da. In 1958, he went on to cre­ate a medi­um for the trans­fer and laun­der­ing of cash for Alger­ian, Moroc­can, and Tunisian lib­er­a­tion groups–the Arab Com­mer­cial Bank–with the indis­pens­able Hjal­mar Schacht as a part­ner. By 1960, he added the Pales­tin­ian cause to his resume, and in par­tic­u­lar financed the defense of mem­bers of the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine (PFLP), who blew up an El Al Air­lin­er in Zurich. This involve­ment in pro­vid­ing expen­sive defense reams extend­ed to the tri­als of Klaus Bar­bie and Adolf Eich­mann, with Genoud gen­er­ous­ly sup­ply­ing what­ev­er funds were need­ed to obtain the best pos­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

In 1969, he put mem­bers of the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (PLO) in con­tact with Nazi per­son­nel who would pro­vide train­ing in weapons, sab­o­tage, and infil­tra­tion tech­niques. (This was the same period–from 1967–1969–that the author made con­tact with the PLO at their offices in New York City, hav­ing first dealt with a Ger­man woman who was their recep­tion­ist.) Genoud was a seri­ous sup­port­er of Pales­tin­ian lib­er­a­tion through­out his life, and, accord­ing to author Peter Wyden, was also a con­fi­dant and men­tor of Ahmed Huber, the Swiss sup­port­er of Nazi and Islamist caus­es. . . .

. . . . If Hjal­mar Schacht was “Hitler’s Banker,” Genoud was the banker of the Nazi and Arab resis­tance move­ments in Europe and the Mid­dle East. He was a friend of the noto­ri­ous assas­sin “Car­los the Jackal”–Ilich Ramirez Sanchez–and assist­ed the ter­ror­ist in sev­er­al of his mis­sions. He also helped finan­cial­ly sup­port the Aya­tol­lah Khome­i­ni dur­ing the latter’s exile in France dur­ing the regime of the Shah of Iran. Genoud and Schacht were part­ners in many of these ven­tures, and Genoud rep­re­sent­ed Schacht’s finan­cial inter­ests where feasible–occasionally help­ing the old­er man make sound invest­ments, or in bro­ker­ing deals between Arab nations and the Euro­pean firms that were in Schacht’s com­fort zone. That both men were instru­men­tal in pro­vid­ing finan­cial and logis­ti­cal sup­port to ODESSA is not in ques­tion; but they extend­ed that assis­tance to ODESSA’s nat­ur­al allies, the Islamist resis­tance groups that were found­ed to remove all traces of their for­mer colo­nial mas­ters in North Africa and the Lev­ant and to wage an ide­o­log­i­cal war–a glob­al jihad–against Israel and the West, under the guise of reli­gious fer­vor. . . .

6. Next, the pro­gram sets forth the Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of the glob­al-jihadis-as-proxy-war­rior strat­a­gem mint­ed by Max von Oppen­heim in World War I and then resu­si­cat­ed by the Nazis dur­ing World War II. Seek­ing forces with which to pur­sue a glob­al anti-Com­mu­nist agen­da dur­ing the Cold War, the U.S. turned to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, sup­port­ing the orga­ni­za­tion through the CIA and State Depart­ment.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 181.

What we have called the cyn­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of reli­gion by the Ger­man intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary organs was a strat­e­gy inher­it­ed by the Amer­i­cans after the defeat of Ger­many. Sin­cere spir­i­tu­al sen­ti­ments were to be ruth­less­ly exploit­ed once again, but this time with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences: what is known in espi­onage jar­gon as “blow­back.”

Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Ian John­son reveals the depth of the insan­i­ty in his book A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the West. The sub­ti­tle says it all. The CIA inher­it­ed a raft of pro-Nazi Mus­lims who were strand­ed in Europe in the decade after the end of the Sec­ond World War and decid­ed to use them to fight Rus­sia. In order to do so, CIA found itself financ­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood activ­i­ties in Europe includ­ing a mosque in Munich that would become the cen­ter of intrigues against the West. Iron­i­cal­ly, of course, it was Munich where the Nazi Par­ty was born. (And it was in the Ham­burg, Ger­many, apart­ment of Mohamed Atta that the final details and main par­tic­i­pants of the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 attacks would be deter­mined.)

In 1953, Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er’s sup­port was solicit­ed for an impor­tant meet­ing that would take place in Sep­tem­ber of that year at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. The meet­ing was to be an Islam­ic Col­lo­qui­um. Lead­ing Islam­ic schol­ars from around the world would be attend­ing, includ­ing one Said Ramadan, “Del­e­gate of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. . . .”

7. Devel­op­ing its fate­ful rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the CIA and State Depart­ment estab­lished the “Mosque in Munich.”

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 184–185.

. . . . This was essen­tial­ly what CIA was already doing with their Chris­t­ian net­works and their infil­tra­tion of the World Coun­cil of Church­es, the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, the League of Cap­tive Nations, and so many oth­ers. It did­n’t require much imag­i­na­tion to port the Chris­t­ian strat­e­gy onto a Mus­lim-based agen­da. Some of this was done through Radio Lib­er­ty, a CIA asset in Europe that beamed pro-Islam­ic and anti-Com­mu­nist pro­gram­ming into the Sovi­et Union. The CIA oper­a­tion uti­liz­ing Muslims–and specif­i­cal­ly mem­bers of the Mus­lim Brotherhood–was run by an agent named Bob Dreher. The US gov­ern­ment felt that help­ing to build an Islam­ic Cen­ter in Munich would attract the “right kind” of Mus­lims to their cause, and to that end, a mosque was build that lat­er became the foothold in Europe (and the West) that the Broth­er­hood need­ed. They used the mosque to dis­sem­i­nate Broth­er­hood-ori­ent­ed pro­pa­gan­da and to act as a kind of safe house for Broth­er­hood mem­bers. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood offi­cial Said Ramadan became cen­tral to that strat­e­gy, and in 1953 he had his pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty with the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. . . .

8. Shift­ing focus from the Mid­dle East to Asia, the Cold war saw the Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of yet anoth­er Third Reich man­i­fes­ta­tion of “weaponized reli­gion.” Hav­ing sent an SS expe­di­tion to Tibet in 1938, the Third Reich may well have been explor­ing a poten­tial out­post to be used for their con­quest of the “Earth Island,” in addi­tion to indulging their anthro­po­log­i­cal fan­tasies about Tibet being the fount of the “Aryan Race.”

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 239–240.

One expe­di­tion mount­ed by the SS-Ahnenerbe, and with the spe­cif­ic bless­ing of Hein­rich Himm­ler, ws the 1938 SS-Tibet Expe­di­tion led by Ernst Schafer and includ­ing the anthro­pol­o­gist Bruno Beger among the expe­di­tion mem­bers. While the Dalai Lama was only three years old at the time of this expe­di­tion, the Panchen Lama was avail­able to greet the Nazis to the Himalayan king­dom and to pro­vide them with texts (includ­ing the 108-vol­ume Tibetan scrip­ture, the Kangjur), ani­mal and plant spec­i­mens, and pho­to­graph­ic footage to take back with them. In addi­tion, Beger con­duct­ed ethno­graph­ic and anthro­po­met­ric research among the Tibetans, mea­sur­ing their skulls with calipers, for instance. Pho­tographs of this expe­di­tion are still extent and exam­ples of it are found in the pho­to­graph­ic sec­tion of this book, includ­ing a famous pho­to of Beger mea­sur­ing the skull of a smil­ing Tibetan maid­en. . . .

. . . . by the time the SS-Tibet Expe­di­tion arrived back in Ger­many, the Sec­ond World War was just begin­ning. Bruno Beger–the anthro­pol­o­gist with the calipers–found him­self gain­ful­ly employed in build­ing an ethno­graph­ic muse­um of the human race, more­over one which would demon­strate the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Aryan over the Semit­ic peo­ples. In order to do this, he need­ed a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling of human skulls for his col­lec­tion.

Eighty per­sons were mur­dered at Natzweil­er-Struthof con­cen­tra­tion camp to sat­is­fy this require­ment.

After the war, Beger was denaz­i­fied. While he was con­vict­ed of the mur­der of more than eighty indi­vid­u­als for the express pur­pose of build­ing his skull col­lec­tion, he nev­er served a day in prison. In fact, he remained a close friend of the Dalai Lama all his life, just as his old SS col­league Hein­rich Har­rer. . . .

9. After Chi­na occu­pied Tibet, that coun­try’s leader–the Dalai Lama–became yet anoth­er ally in the Cold War. The CIA pur­sued alliance with the Dalai Lama’s forces, appar­ent­ly employ­ing SS offi­cer Hein­rich Har­rer as an agent. (Har­rer was the Dalai Lama’s tutor and close per­son­al friend.)

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 236–237.

Thus we have the strange tableau of an SS man and com­mit­ted Nazi in Lhasa, at the same time that his friend, the Dalai Lama, is offi­cial­ly in con­tact with the US gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing the Chi­nese sit­u­a­tion. What did Hein­rich Har­rer know of these nego­ti­a­tions? How much did the Dalai Lama him­self know at this time? Even more to the point, was Amer­i­can intelligence–in the form of the CIA and the State Department–aware of Har­rer’s pres­ence in Lhasa and the influ­ence he had over the king?

Har­rer would remain a close friend and ally of the Dalai Lama for the rest of his life. As a Nazi and a mem­ber of the SS as well as of the SA (the Sturm Abteilung or Storm Troop­ers), Har­rer would have been a devot­ed anti-com­mu­nist, and would have seen in the strug­gles of the Tibetan peo­ple against Chi­nese Com­mu­nism an echo of his ow coun­try’s fight against the Sovi­et Union. Har­rer, as some­one with a demon­strat­ed and inti­mate knowl­edge of the land­scape, cul­ture, lan­guages, and envi­ron­ment of north­ern India and Tibet would have been an excel­lent choice for Amer­i­can intel­li­gence as an asset to run oper­a­tions against the Chi­nese. After all, the CIA had hired the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion at the end of World War Two to run ops against the Rus­sians from east­ern Europe. Rein­hard Gehlen was a Nazi intel­li­gence offi­cer who bartered his way to free­dom from pros­e­cu­tion by offer­ing his ser­vices (and those of hun­dreds of his close per­son­al friends in the SS, Gestapo, and SD) as an anti-com­mu­nist fight­er against the Sovi­ets. It would have made per­fect sense to hire Nazis who had expe­ri­ence of Asia in the fight against Chi­nese-style Com­mu­nism.

In fact, as Thomas Laird reveals: “Only dur­ing the past ten years, State Depart­ment doc­u­ments have been declas­si­fied that show Har­rer may have been involved with sev­er­al covert oper­a­tions for the Amer­i­cans after he left Tibet. . . .”