GEHLEN: SPY OF THE CENTURY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200510003-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 1, 1972
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

c mMI)aY 1RT VTEWa
Approved For Release 200'0/ 7tIA-RDP88-01350R00 w- l, f .
/ z
(;EHLEN: SPY of the Century
by I. H. Cookridgc
Random House, 402 pp., $10
TI'iE GENERAL WAS A SPY:
The Truth About General Gehlen
and His SPY Ring
by Heine. II6hr1e and Hermann.
translated from the Gernian
by Richard Barry
Coward, McCann
347 pp., $10
THE SERVICE:
The Memoirs of General
Reinhard Gchlcn
translated from the German
by ]}avid Irving
World, 386 PP., $10
GEIILEN: Master SPY of the
by Charles Whiting
Ballantine, 274 pp., $1.25
Reviewed by Robert G. Deiridorler
In the perilous Cold War times of
eighteen to twenty years ago, few per-
sons privy to the ways of international
circles-least of them Reinhard Gehlen
himself-could have foreseen the twi-
light that was to fall over his later
career. Gehlen'S. triumphs in the late
1940s and early 1950s, particularly his
during. the Second World War, was
named head of Fremdc Ileere Gist
(Foreign Armies East), the German
staff's intelligence unit on the Eastern
Front. With it card file for it mind and
it passion for detail, he soots formed
a successful network of agents on both
sides of the battle lines. His evalua-
tions of Soviet strength were so ac-
curate that they finally did him in.
Toward the end of the war, as the Rus-
sian armies rolled westward, Hitler
angrily relieved Gehlen of his com-
mand, not because his intelligence fore-
casts weren't accurate-they were-but
because Mournful estimates of over-
powering Russian strength were too
1 - i for the tornhethtecl ever.optimistic
t a t I-litler to bear.
In the circumstances this created,
Gehlen demonstrated it flair for the
self-serving long view. Germany was
doomed, no doubt of it. Beyond the
defeat, though, he saw an increasing
tension between the U.S.S.R. and its
Western allies once the postwar house-
keeping in Europe corm menced. He ad-
vised his better agents in the denied
area to stay where they were, Packed
up forty crates of microliim intclli-
gence on the Soviet Union, and scuttled
into Bavaria to but't' the treasure and
await the advancing Americans, who
Seemed as the most promising market.
artful lifting of vital Soviet secrets, put For it while, after Gehlen had (riven
him at the top cf his profession. A himself up, he was submerged in the
slight, vain, driven anan, methodical great wash of prisoners of war. When
and single-minded, Gchlcn was the re- his unique background came to the at-
inarkably reliable and productive rention of U.S. military intelligence of-
leader of an espionage structure he licers, however, he was flown to Wash-
hired out fit St to the United Stites and
then to his own West German govern-
ment. That was a world more clearly
divided than now between friend and
foe, and Gehlen scented to some an
epic figure, concealed behind the high,
heavily patrolled walls of his Itead-
quartets at Pullach, a few miles from
Munich. However, when the Cold War-
began to thaw, when his network was
breached by the Communists, when
new technology re; laced people, Gehlen
was brought down from his under-
cover heights.
ington. In it matter of months he made
an agreement to pull together an
American-funded, German-manned in-
telligence service, with the lielp of his
voluminous files, his dormant agents
and networks, and an intimate knowl-
edge of the Russians.
Gchlcn and his people got oil to the
job inmiediately;' with an annual
budget variously reported to be from
86 million to S20 million. With the col-
laboration of German soldiers still
prisoners in the Soviet Union and a
host of refugees streaming into West-
ern Europe, not to mention some
,
family, Gehlen, like his father, went 1 former iibivehr and SS officers, Gehlen
into the German army and slowly built an enormous service just as the
climbed tip through the chain of corn- breach between the Soviet Union and
mand. If he was an unimpressive-look- the United States began to widen.
ing little man, with thin lips, jugged "The Org," as the Gehlen organiza-
cars, and a pale, cardboard complexion, tion was known, developed right out of
he was also willing to work sixteen the craft books: agents, subagents and
painstaking hours a day to fill in the ' cutouts, dead drops, codes, and safe
dayrheant his vanity kept spinning. houses-the whole sealed off with a
Gehlen, who was it general staff officer watertight coml_partmentzilization for
Robert G. Dcindorfer has written three the obvious reason of security. All over
Europe Gehlen agents masqueraders as
h
mid(lle-class Prussian
Son of a solid
1S e.-L) c- -
- , k (e., : 1M a-5
f*,E.S_4 .
(~ - l d k h. I-~ c
ia-
a.- 0 ,A
Q c Apt'--(---e~- cJ-
w w cuQ. -e
c C''j-'.
escapees recruited in the sprawling-
rd ugee camps of AusI ria and Germany
--for a flat price of $100 it day, plus a
fluctuating bonus afterwards if they.
managed to get back out safely. Among
the notable successes were the penetra-
tion of East Germany's government
and early warnings on Soviet jet and
missile development; on uprisings in
East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and
Hungary; on important political vibra-
tions in rl loscow; on Soviet troop
strength, and even on the hostility be-
tween Russia and China. According to
people who ought to know, The Org
supplied upwards of 70 per cent of the
intelligence data from the Soviet orbit
for the United States, NATO, and
SHAPE. Under the circumstances an
East German newspaper was moved to
offer an improbable tribute in the sum-
mer of 1953: "The Gehlen -Organization
has hitherto scored certain successes
in the recruitment of agents in the Ger-
man Democratic Republic." .
In 1956 the apparatus, except for
sonic ex-SS and ex-Nazi personnel who
were phased out for political reasons,
became the Buudesiiacltrichhteiidietist
books on the subject of intellwence, t
e L1~IU110d
most recent of whirl busin it cs tc tax advisers, and employ k3t
age. ~ele~l~s~ s1 Q,(1 L- ,iA