HOW WWII GAVE LIFE TO THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403230003-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: February 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403230003-0
NEWSDAY
6 February 1985
TiwCt
Net c'l y declassified papers reveal
t,1te U. S. spy agency in its infancy
By David Kahn
N DEC. 5, 1944, an official
of the Office of Strategic
Services, the predecessor
of the CIA, outlined a plan
for setting up a spy ring in Nazi Ger-
many.
The official, Thomas B. Wilson, had
become interested in using anti-Nazi
church groups in the Rhineland as a
basis for such a ring. Soon the OSS
found a prospective agent.
lie was Hans, a private in the U.S.
Army. Born in East Prussia 35 years
before, and later a student of theology
at several prestigious German univer-
sities, he had lived in the Rhineland
for several years. In 1935 - two years
after Adolf Hitler came to power - he
left Germany. His background made
him an excellent choice to infiltrate
Germany and to contact the religious
officials in the waning months of the
Second World War.
The OSS code named the project the
CHURMI mission and set it in motion.
From Dec. 28 to Jan. 2, Hans met in
Paris with another expatriate, Fritz
Lieb, formerly a professor at Bonn,
where Hans had studied, and at the
time of their meeting a Swiss citizen
teaching in Basel. Also present was the
OSS' Carl Auerbach. They discussed
mainly "safe houses" - places where
I lans could be sheltered without fear of
betrayal to the Gestapo.
On Jan. 7, Lieb returned to Swit-
zerland to make arrangements for
Hans' support after he was para-
chuted into Germany. Hans began
spy training.
By the middle of February, this had
been completed. But the OSS had not
yet worked out a cover story for him
nor provided the fake documents he
would need to substantiate this story.
In March, 1945, Cologne, the chief
city of the Rhineland, fell to the ad-
vancing Allied armies. Operation
CHURMI was shelved.
This tale, admittedly rather anticli-
mactic but in that way true to much of
life, is one of several similar ones to be
found in a vast hoard of recently de-
classified OSS documents. They have
been transferred by the Central Intel-
ligence Agency to the National Ar-
chives, where they are now open to the
inspection of scholars. Filling 109 gray
archives boxes, they consist of origi-
nals, carbon copies and negative pho-
tostats of the innumerable reports of
departments and subsections, of unit
histories typed on large sheets of blue
paper in black binders, of photo-
graphs, letters, endless memoranda,
orders and mimeographed unit-
strength reports, pencil sketches of or-
ganization charts crumpled into
manila envelopes.
They deal with training, supplies,
the endless personnel transfers, new
quarters, the technicalities of radio
transmission and reception, statistics
- down to such details as the death in
a car accident of a private. They in-
clude many names now famous: Lt.
William J. Casey, then head of the Se-
cret Intelligence Branch of the Euro-
pean theater, now head of the CIA;
Maj. Arthur Goldberg, then head of
the Labor Division, later a justice of
graphic Branch, later one of the great
movie directors; Willi Brandt, then
the Swedish contact of an anti-Nazi
group, later chancellor of West Ger-
many; Capt. Walt W. Rostow, then a
liaison officer to the British Air Minis-
try, later President Lyndon Johnson's
national security adviser. But, amidst
the floods of trivia, stand out fascinat-
ing nuggets about the techniques, tri-
als and triumphs of American espio-
nage in its embryonic stages.
One of the first problems in spying
is to find a spy. No single principle for
recruiting agents was found reliable;
the report of one unit stated. "In the
last analysis the recruiting was done
'by ear.' In other words, [Lt. A. E.) Jo-
lis's conviction that a man would
make a good agent was the final decid-
ing issue." The report conceded that
the security check in such cases was
"not too satisfactory."
Once an agent was recruited, he had
to be given a cover story --- his false
identity. The documents tell that one
OSS division began by describing the
agent, determining the character of
the mission, and getting the agent's
ideas about what the cover story
should be.
The agent had to be not only fully
familiar with his cover story, but fully
sold on it as well.This required "sales-
manship" on the part of the person
briefing the agent, noted a history of
the briefing division. "This inevitably
involved the ability to dominate the
agent. Briefing an agent was not the
sort of activity that could be done me-
chanically. The agent had to be given
faith in his story. Confidence in him-
self was the first condition of success."
For the data that would make its
fake documents appear authentic, the
i briefing division searched in captured
documents, newspapers, prisoner-of-
war interrogations, telephone books.
"An ordinary factory not only gave its
address in the telephone directory, but
also the names and addresses of its di-
rectors. If the agent's cover story in-
cluded having worked at a particular
factory, he had to know the names of
some of the officials. The telephone di-
rectory told him," said the history.
Continued
the U.S. Supreme Court; Cmdr. John
Ford, then chief of the Field'Photo-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403230003-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403230003-0
Often the investigations of other
agencies did not attain the fineness of
detail that the briefing division re-
quired. For instance, various units had
compiled a study that wouia enaoie an'
American officer to walk into the post-
master general's office in Berlin and
run the German postal system. But no-
where was there information on how to
mail a letter. "It was a simple point and
yet one which might easily have
tripped up an agent," said the report.
"Bach [an early code name of the
briefing division] discovered that in i
order to post letters going abroad, a
special form was needed from the po-
lice. Furthermore, stamps had to be
stuck on by the mail official - to pre-
vent anyone writing anything under-
neath - and padded envelopes were
not allowed. Since agents may use the
mail system to dispatch reports, the
importance of this information was ob-
vious," said the report.
Once equipped with a cover story,
and supporting documents, the spy
had to be gotten into enemy territory.
Sometimes he was parachuted in: The
Air Operations Section reported on
April 30, 1944, that it had made 49
sorties since April I3, of which 28
were successful. Sometimes the spy
was infiltrated through the lines ora
border. Both were difficult. Battle line
infiltration "involved long trips to
army headquarters all along the front
to decide which spots were easiest-"
Going into Germany from neutral
Switzerland via the Alps was, reports
agreed, only slightly easier.
Despite the problems, a Casey
memorandum of Sept. 23, 1944, re-
ported, 16 agents and five Jedburgh
(combined OS&.. British and- Free
French) teams "were infiltrated into
France" in the first half of September.
One agent was dropped into Germany.
Most agents reported by radio. The
OSS built Station Victor near Hurley
Bottom, west of London, for these com-
munications. They were often diffi-
cult. Victor's operational activity
report for Aug. 9, 1944, from 10 a.m. to
3 p.m. remarked that an agent code
named "Cendrillon came up but with a
very weak signal buried under inter-
ference so we got just a few groups of a
message from him. He does not readily
change frequencies and we can't copy
through the heavy interference on his
weak signal. We arranged additticn ai
contact time with him for 1530 today."
Five days later, during the Ameri-
can breakout from Normandy, Victory
received the greatest number of agent
messages in any 24 hours: 32.
What did they report? Sometimes
nothing either very fast or very ac-
curate. On July 29, an agent report-
ed that Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel had been badly wounded in
an Allied air attack; two days later,
he was reported dead. "The speed
with which these reports came
through ... gave proof of the effi-
ciency of the German agents," a re-
port bragged. In fact, American
newspapers were gathering the in-
jury news the same day - and Rom-
mel did not die until Oct. 16.
But some of the material was more
valuable. Shortly after the D-Day in-
vasion, an OSS agent "was the first to
identify the movements of the [Pan-
zer] Lehr division, information consid-
ered of especial value." During the
night of Sept. 7-8, an agent at Bac-
carat in eastern France radioed that
200 tanks were unloading. This was
confirmed by other sources, and, "As a
result of this, the 2nd French Armored
Division was able to anticipate the
counterattack of the 21st Panzer Divi.
sion on 11 September and knock out
65 enemy tanks."
Taken as a whole, what do these
documents show? They do not depict
OSS winning the war in Europe.
The agency got there too late for
that. Rather, the documents illus-
trate the establishment by the 510
officers, 1,740 men, and 405 civilians
of the OSS in the European theater
- according to a strength report for
June 11, 1944 - of a professional
intelligence organization - the or-
ganization from which evolved the
keyst4me. of our present intelligence I
apparatus. /n
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403230003-0