A SPY WHO MADE THE MOST OF DEFEAT....

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010045-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: August 9, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

64pRmed For Release 2000/05123 : CIA-RDP75-000
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`A ' ~? ! 4sw GF` 2 ' l l 1 EF! 3 ~y t'11; I l
ti .i .i \a +l aEW 4mv tai l ti ti 3 I la ~t Q 9 t
itit~ GENERA! WAS A SPY. The True Story of General Gehlen
and His Spy Ring. B' Heinz Hoehne and Hermann Lolling.
Coward, McCann and Geoghegan. $3.95. - -
GEHEEN: SPY OF THE CENTURY. BY E. H. Cookridge. Ran-
dom House. $117.
CPYRGHT
By K. S. Ginirer
The first thing that must be said about both these books is
that Lieutenant-General Reinhard Gehlen n:wer was a spy.
An extreme'.,; proficient technician in the collection of in-
telligence, Gen. Gehlen t:tts the very Model of the effi.ient
Gerniai bureaucrat.. His undeniable talents, his knack for self-
preseivation and his lust for power led him to a successful
intelligence career, first under Adolf llitler, then under the
occupying Americans and the Central Intelligence Agency and
finally under thw newborn Federal Republic of Cermany. His
Wehrmacht colleagues steed trial for war crimes, languished
in.prison camps aid ;.if-red the agonies of defrat. Gehlen
hardly tasted the tet.r: o; .;urrendet: in his mouth, their water
became the wine of AI1;:?? i, told'.
Who is this mail? Wh!~ +. ?:e?
Reinhard Gehl, n ent(.r, e ? postwar German army in 1921.
His progress was slow bay. .?r the Nazis seized power and
the General Staff, ba nee girt ': ~., rsailles, was reactivated, lie
was appointed to the G?:: as a major. HIS specialty
staff
was fortifications and op,. .; ..arming. He was given
assignments in the blitzla) Poland, the canlpa'.gn in
France and the attack on h )a. }'?at he had no intelli(lone:
experience.
Then, In April, 1942, his sup: por:;, recognizing his talent
for organization, made. him) chilli t,1 lac office charged with
.military intelligence activities in the F. st, which meant Rus?
sla. Less than two years later, the redoubtable Admiral Ca-
naris fell out of favor with Hitler and Gehlen found himself at
.the top of the intelligence heap.
IT WAS A SHORT VIC T OILY. In another two years, Gehlen
was dismissed by his Nazi master. But it didn't matter very
much; he had already made other plans.
These plans were to. sell himself and his vast intelligence
files on Soviet Russia to the victorious Americans and to fight
alongside them in the war between the Allies and Russia he
thought was inevitable. The success of General Gehlen's
plans, the creation of a huge American-financed intelligence
network known as the Ciehlen Organization and the absorption
of that organization as the intelligence service of the new West
German state is the primary subject of the two books under
consideration here.
Gehien's "Org," staffed very heavily by old \ttchrmacht,
SS and SD friends, was an important instrument of American
Intelligence in the "cold w'ar" period. E. H. Cookridge (lives it
credit for
11*000618 tl ~~ cR aHv MN#12~
CPYRGHT
side the .
securing the secret Khrusllchev address to the 1955 Communist
Party Congress. The first allegation is obviously silly; the
Green Berets have always been reg alai U.S. Army troops.
And I am told on good authority that the Khrusllchev speech
came to CIA from other sources.
After Gehlen and his people became part of the new German
government, the Org continued to prosper under Chancellor
Adenauer as it had under the patronage of Allen Tulles. But
then Gehlen made the mistake of becoming involved in politi-
cal conflict. This was followed by the disclosure that the Org
had been penetrated by both the East Germans and the So-
viets. Adenauer, the conservative, was followed by Georg
I:iesineer as chancellor and Kiesinger by Willy Brandt, the
Socialist. Gehlen was retired in l9GS and the race to write his
story began. - -
III"INZ IIOEIINE AND Hermann 'Lolling had a considerable
advantage. They are, investigative )'t pel'[tl'5 on l)C't' Sple;;el,
the German nctw;swc.ekly which was writing about Gehlen
when both German sources and CIA were denying he even
existed. Cookridre's is the more'exciting of the two boolts,
but it is riddled with htaccuracies. The flochne and Zulling
hook is a more sober venture (Uer Spiegel obviously lacl:s the,
panache of Time) but far more in'foi'ntative and revealing
n terms of historical and political background.
But until Gehlen's own story n)pears next month, perhaps
he comment of Maj. Gen. Sir Kenneth Strong, World War II
SHAL- F intelligence chief, nostwnr Director of Intelliger: e
of the British Ministry of Defense and longtime acquaintau
of Gehlen, will serve: The air of mystery with which Gehl, 1
surrounded himself has tended to increase his signiiicanc.'
and importance in the eves of the More sensational writers
on espionage. A full appreciation of his place it,, the history
of Intelligence must wait until all the facts can he told, bat
I suspect that his activities were.a good deal less et-otcric
and more conventional and to the point than. is t;enert.lly
believed, or possibly than he himself Wollid perhaps adn,i;.''?
K. S. Ginirer, a-former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, i,(t.
een the publiuher of both Gen. Geltlert's patron, Allen Di; '?
nd his friend, Maj. Gen. Sir Kenneth Strong.
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: CIA-RDP75-00001 R000100010045-7