Reinhard Gehlen and the Central Intelligence Agency: Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was an officer in the German Wehrmacht during World War II, reaching the rank of Major General just before being sacked by Hitler for his accurately pessimistic intelligence reports. Starting in 1942 he served as chief of Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), the German Armys military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front. During the emerging phases of the Cold War, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union (known as the Gehlen Organization) which employed numerous former SS, SD and Wehrmacht officers and eventually became head of the West German intelligence apparatus. He served as the first president of the Federal Intelligence Service until 1968. Gehlen is considered one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters, though some at the CIA cast doubt on this. The Gehlen Organization or Gehlen Org was an intelligence agency established in June 1946 by U.S. occupation authorities in the United States Zone of Germany, and consisted of former members of the 12th Department of the German Army General Staff (Foreign Armies East, or FHO). It carries the name of Wehrmacht Major general Reinhard Gehlen, head of the German military intelligence in the Eastern Front during World War II. Reinhard Gehlen had all along been under the tutelage of US Army G-2 (intelligence), but he wished to establish and succeeded in establishing an association with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in 1947. In alliance with the CIA, the military orientation of the organization turned increasingly toward political, economic and technical espionage against the Eastern bloc and the moniker Pullach became synonymous with secret service intrigues. The Org was for many years the only eyes and ears of the CIA on the ground in the Soviet Bloc nations during the Cold War. The CIA kept close tabs on the Gehlen group: the Org supplied the manpower while the CIA supplied the material needs for clandestine operations, including funding, cars and airplanes. Every German POW returning from Soviet captivity to West Germany between 1947 and 1955 was interviewed by Org agents. Those returnees who were forced to work in Soviet industries and construction and were willing to participate, represented an incomparable source of information, a post-war, up-to-date picture of the Soviet empire as it evolved.... [www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/] [https://cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol16no3/html/v16i3a06p_0001.htm] [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen] [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization]
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 01:01:28 +0000
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