A few excerpts of the book JFK –
The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate
John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty
Birch Lane Press, 1992 – hard cover
from pages 25 - 33
On October 1, 1945, Truman directed the termination of the OSS. While the legislation for the new defense establishment and the CIA was being written and debated, the President established the Central Intelligence Group as an interim measure. The existence of the CIG made it possible to maintain the covert-agent assets of the wartime OSS wherever they existed and to provide organizational cover for former Nazi general Reinhard Gehlen and his intelligence staff, along with their voluminous files of former Nazi, anti-Communist agents and spies that were concealed in the undercover networks of Eastern Europe and in the USSR.
Allen Dulles had been instrumental in arranging, with Gehlen for this most unusual conversion of one of Hitler's most sinister generals into an officer in the U.S. Army, but the details of Gehlen's personal surrender and subsequent flight to the United States—in General Eisenhower's own VIP aircraft—were arranged by U.S. Army officers. The senior officer of this plan was Eisenhower's chief of staff, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, who served immediately after World War II as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and, upon his return from Moscow in October 1950, as the director of central intelligence. Also involved in this plan was Col. William Quinn, later Lieutenant General Quinn and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).2
It is important to note the active role of these U.S. Army officials in this unprecedented move of Hitler's own intelligence chief, Gehlen, directly into the U.S. Army as an officer by a special act of the Congress. This was not a casual incident. The move, planned before the end of the war with Germany and directed from the top, was a classic example of the work of the power elite.
Shortly after the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the National Security Council met, on December 19 of that year, for the first time. The council had hardly waited for the ink to dry on the new law before it ignored its stricture—that the CIA limit itself to the "coordination" of intelligence—and rushed the fledgling agency into covert action. National Security Council Directive #4 directed the newly appointed director of central intelligence, Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, "to carry out covert psychological warfare," much against his own professional desires. To this end, a "special procedure group" was set up immediately, and, among other things, it became involved in the covert "buying" of the nationwide election in Italy.
This early covert operation was considered successful, and in 1948 the National Security Council issued a new directive to cover "clandestine paramilitary operations, as well as political and economic warfare." This new directive gave birth to a new covert action unit that replaced the "special procedures group." In deference to the language of the law, if not the intent, this new unit—the most covert of all sections—was named the Office of Policy Coordination.
As quoted earlier, "The deepest cover story of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization." The OPC was headed by Frank Wisner, formerly the OSS station chief in Romania. Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles, then with the OSS in Switzerland, were among the first U.S. officials to begin contact in 1944 with selected Nazis and Nazi sympathizers—with a "Blowback" ("exfiltration" of former Nazis with desired technological skills) operation known as the "Deep Water" (code name only) project—for their eventual evacuation to the United States.
Of course, the ostensible reason given in most instances for this unusual action was that these Nazis were scientists and technical experts whose skills would be useful in the United States and that it was necessary to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets. As we know today, this was hardly the truth. It was Wisner who had arranged a transfer of a large number of prisoners of war from the Balkans via Turkey and Cairo in the fall of 1944. Among this large group—mostly American flight crew members who had been shot down during heavy bombing attacks over the Ploesti oil fields of Romania—were a number of pro-Nazi intelligence specialists who were fleeing the Balkans, scattering before the approach of the Russian army.
In his new position with the OPC, Wisner was able to control a large group of Eastern European agents in a massive network of spies. At the same time, he could protect them and their U.S. contacts against hostile, anti-Nazi, and Soviet capture—possibly even assassination. The OPC was a little-known, most unusual organization, especially within the U.S. government, where such deeply covert activity had never taken place before.
As initially created, the OPC was totally separate from the CIA's intelligence collection (another function not specifically authorized by law) and analysis sections. The OPC's chief had been nominated by the secretary of state and approved by the secretary of defense. The funds for this office were concealed, as were much of the CIA funds, in the larger budget of the Department of Defense. Policy guidance and specific operational instructions for the OPC bypassed the director of Defense. In other words, the OPC was all but autonomous.
It is in this example of the OPC that we discover most clearly how the new invisible army was brought into the government and created in secrecy. There was no law that authorized such an organization or the wide range of covert functions it was created to perform. When it began, the director of central intelligence, if asked, could have denied that he had anything to do with it, and no one would have thought—or dared—to ask the secretaries of state or defense if they had become involved in covert operations or to ask them about an organization they could claim they did not know even existed. As we see, this most covert office was buried as deep within the bureaucracy as possible, and its many lines to agents and secret operations were untraceable.
Despite all this secrecy, however, the OPC grew from about three hundred personnel in 1949 to nearly six thousand contract employees by 1952. A large part of this sudden growth was due to the additional demands for covert action and other special operations that grew out of the Korean War and related activities. One of the first things Gen. Walter B. Smith did, when he returned from Moscow and became director of central intelligence, was to take over OPC completely and sever its connections with State and Defense—except for the concealment of funds in Defense and for the rather considerable support that was always provided by military units for these clandestine activities around the world.
This brings up another important characteristic of the invisible army. While the CIA administered the operations of this fast-growing organization, with its six thousand employees, it could always rely upon the military for additional personnel, transport, overseas bases, weapons, aircraft, ships, and all the other things the Department of Defense had in abundance. One of the most important items provided regularly by Defense was "military cover." OPC and other CIA personnel were concealed in military units and provided with military cover whenever possible, especially within the far-flung bases of the military around the world—even in Antarctica.
The cover or invisible operational methods developed by the CIA and the military during the 1950s are still being used today despite the apparent demise of the Cold War, in such covert activities as those going on in Central America and Africa, and even in such highly specialized activities as the preparation of "assassination manuals" of the type that was written by the CIA and discovered in Nicaragua in 1984. That manual was only a later version of one developed by the CIA in the 1950s. Today all of this clandestine activity amounts to big business, and the distinction between the CIA and the military is hard to discern, since they always work together.3
Birch Lane Press, 1992 – hard cover
Reinhard Gehlen
from pages 25 - 33
On October 1, 1945, Truman directed the termination of the OSS. While the legislation for the new defense establishment and the CIA was being written and debated, the President established the Central Intelligence Group as an interim measure. The existence of the CIG made it possible to maintain the covert-agent assets of the wartime OSS wherever they existed and to provide organizational cover for former Nazi general Reinhard Gehlen and his intelligence staff, along with their voluminous files of former Nazi, anti-Communist agents and spies that were concealed in the undercover networks of Eastern Europe and in the USSR.
Allen Dulles had been instrumental in arranging, with Gehlen for this most unusual conversion of one of Hitler's most sinister generals into an officer in the U.S. Army, but the details of Gehlen's personal surrender and subsequent flight to the United States—in General Eisenhower's own VIP aircraft—were arranged by U.S. Army officers. The senior officer of this plan was Eisenhower's chief of staff, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, who served immediately after World War II as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and, upon his return from Moscow in October 1950, as the director of central intelligence. Also involved in this plan was Col. William Quinn, later Lieutenant General Quinn and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).2
It is important to note the active role of these U.S. Army officials in this unprecedented move of Hitler's own intelligence chief, Gehlen, directly into the U.S. Army as an officer by a special act of the Congress. This was not a casual incident. The move, planned before the end of the war with Germany and directed from the top, was a classic example of the work of the power elite.
Shortly after the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the National Security Council met, on December 19 of that year, for the first time. The council had hardly waited for the ink to dry on the new law before it ignored its stricture—that the CIA limit itself to the "coordination" of intelligence—and rushed the fledgling agency into covert action. National Security Council Directive #4 directed the newly appointed director of central intelligence, Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, "to carry out covert psychological warfare," much against his own professional desires. To this end, a "special procedure group" was set up immediately, and, among other things, it became involved in the covert "buying" of the nationwide election in Italy.
This early covert operation was considered successful, and in 1948 the National Security Council issued a new directive to cover "clandestine paramilitary operations, as well as political and economic warfare." This new directive gave birth to a new covert action unit that replaced the "special procedures group." In deference to the language of the law, if not the intent, this new unit—the most covert of all sections—was named the Office of Policy Coordination.
As quoted earlier, "The deepest cover story of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization." The OPC was headed by Frank Wisner, formerly the OSS station chief in Romania. Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles, then with the OSS in Switzerland, were among the first U.S. officials to begin contact in 1944 with selected Nazis and Nazi sympathizers—with a "Blowback" ("exfiltration" of former Nazis with desired technological skills) operation known as the "Deep Water" (code name only) project—for their eventual evacuation to the United States.
Of course, the ostensible reason given in most instances for this unusual action was that these Nazis were scientists and technical experts whose skills would be useful in the United States and that it was necessary to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets. As we know today, this was hardly the truth. It was Wisner who had arranged a transfer of a large number of prisoners of war from the Balkans via Turkey and Cairo in the fall of 1944. Among this large group—mostly American flight crew members who had been shot down during heavy bombing attacks over the Ploesti oil fields of Romania—were a number of pro-Nazi intelligence specialists who were fleeing the Balkans, scattering before the approach of the Russian army.
In his new position with the OPC, Wisner was able to control a large group of Eastern European agents in a massive network of spies. At the same time, he could protect them and their U.S. contacts against hostile, anti-Nazi, and Soviet capture—possibly even assassination. The OPC was a little-known, most unusual organization, especially within the U.S. government, where such deeply covert activity had never taken place before.
As initially created, the OPC was totally separate from the CIA's intelligence collection (another function not specifically authorized by law) and analysis sections. The OPC's chief had been nominated by the secretary of state and approved by the secretary of defense. The funds for this office were concealed, as were much of the CIA funds, in the larger budget of the Department of Defense. Policy guidance and specific operational instructions for the OPC bypassed the director of Defense. In other words, the OPC was all but autonomous.
It is in this example of the OPC that we discover most clearly how the new invisible army was brought into the government and created in secrecy. There was no law that authorized such an organization or the wide range of covert functions it was created to perform. When it began, the director of central intelligence, if asked, could have denied that he had anything to do with it, and no one would have thought—or dared—to ask the secretaries of state or defense if they had become involved in covert operations or to ask them about an organization they could claim they did not know even existed. As we see, this most covert office was buried as deep within the bureaucracy as possible, and its many lines to agents and secret operations were untraceable.
Despite all this secrecy, however, the OPC grew from about three hundred personnel in 1949 to nearly six thousand contract employees by 1952. A large part of this sudden growth was due to the additional demands for covert action and other special operations that grew out of the Korean War and related activities. One of the first things Gen. Walter B. Smith did, when he returned from Moscow and became director of central intelligence, was to take over OPC completely and sever its connections with State and Defense—except for the concealment of funds in Defense and for the rather considerable support that was always provided by military units for these clandestine activities around the world.
This brings up another important characteristic of the invisible army. While the CIA administered the operations of this fast-growing organization, with its six thousand employees, it could always rely upon the military for additional personnel, transport, overseas bases, weapons, aircraft, ships, and all the other things the Department of Defense had in abundance. One of the most important items provided regularly by Defense was "military cover." OPC and other CIA personnel were concealed in military units and provided with military cover whenever possible, especially within the far-flung bases of the military around the world—even in Antarctica.
The cover or invisible operational methods developed by the CIA and the military during the 1950s are still being used today despite the apparent demise of the Cold War, in such covert activities as those going on in Central America and Africa, and even in such highly specialized activities as the preparation of "assassination manuals" of the type that was written by the CIA and discovered in Nicaragua in 1984. That manual was only a later version of one developed by the CIA in the 1950s. Today all of this clandestine activity amounts to big business, and the distinction between the CIA and the military is hard to discern, since they always work together.3
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