Nazis in the CIA closet:
The Origins of Fascism
in the United States
By Christian Dewar, democrats.com
http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=9099
The Secret Sharers
The CIA, the Bush Gang and
the Killing of Frank Olson
by Chris Floyd, counterpunch.org
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd0828.html
Nazis in the CIA closet:
The Origins of Fascism
in the United States
By Christian Dewar
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not
become a monster."
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The events of September 11th have served as a disconnect for many Americans
who wonder why it is that some people hate this country enough to perpetrate
such a horrendous act of terrorism on against a democratic country. The
Statue of Liberty beckons the world's citizens to our shores. The
inscription on this monument by Emma Lazarus reads:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores, Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
George W. Bush says that the terrorists envy and hate this country because
we are a freedom loving democracy. Simplistic, disingenuous and inane as an
explanation, those who do try to answer the question, 'Why do they hate us?'
are criticized as unpatriotic. They are accused of 'Blaming America First'.
Organizations with very close ties to this administrations such as Lynne
Cheney's American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and the Americans for
Victory Over Terrorism are denouncing academics who have dared to address
this burning question. Yet, it would be a disservice to hide our heads in
the sand and ignore the terrorist's rationale for such horrendous attacks.
The truth is that America hasn't always been a good citizen of the world.
Our country has intervened in many countries to overthrow democracies and
subvert the will of the people. We have established and supported
dictatorships and built armies to maintain totalitarian governments in
office. Even a cursory examination of the United State's involvement in such
countries as Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Zaire, Angola,
Nicaragua, Chile, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Panama,
Guatemala, Grenada, Honduras and other countries will demonstrate that far
from bringing democracy to the world, we have frequently destroyed it.
American institutions such as the School of the Americas have trained many
foreigners who perpetrated murders, kidnappings, terrorism and genocide.
Wars have been waged without the consent of our citizens or our elected
representatives. Army installations such as the School of the Americas have
trained foreign soldiers involved in massacres, genocide and terrorism.
Booklets distributed by the CIA to the Contras advocated torture,
kidnapping, assassination and terror techniques to control the population.
Our intelligence agencies have cooperated with the Mafia, drug traffickers,
dictators and other criminals. How is it that our country whose citizens
perceive it to be a beacon to the 'huddled masses' came to embrace many
aspects of a fascistic regime?
Author Kathryn S. Olmstead, in her book 'Challenging the Secret Government'
quotes General James Doolittle discussing the tactics that he thought the
U.S. would need to employ in the impending war with the Soviets: 'Hitherto
acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply...If the United States is to
survive, long-standing American concepts of 'fair play' must be
reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage
services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more
clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods that those used
against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made
acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant
philosophy."
The gloves were off in the Cold War. The Geneva Convention was moot. We were
to do anything to win, even if it meant embracing the brutal tactics of our
most unprincipled enemies. If we were going to disavow notions of 'fair
play' in the impending war with Russia, if we were going to have to be
absolutely ruthless in our war with a mortal enemy, who better to emulate
than the Nazis?
The terror unleashed by Hitler has become a benchmark from which people
judge evil. The Nazis and Japanese armies included some of the worst war
criminals that have ever lived during recorded history. Americans have been
raised to believe the atrocities perpetrated by our enemies were anathema to
our way of life and could never be accepted by our democratic institutions.
Doomed to defeat by the superior Allied forces, it was thought that the
forces of fascism had been routed and that the world was safe for democracy.
The irony is that the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government saved
many of the most hardened Nazi war criminals from a certain execution in
order to recruit them as scientists, spies and guerrilla warriors in the
anticipated war with the Soviet Union. And this had dire effects on our
country's democracy.
Many Americans may not be aware of this wide spread recruitment of SS and
Gestapo alumni into our intelligence agencies but it has had a profound
effect on the shaping of our domestic and foreign policy, often with ruinous
consequences. The legacy of this incorporation of Nazis into the CIA and
U.S. military has been a half a century of support for fascist regimes,
juntas, death squads, torture and the overthrow of democratically elected
governments around the world.
This policy of adopting Nazis into our intelligence agencies did not
consciously begin as some conspiracy to protect fascists. It was pragmatic.
The use of Nazis and their collaborators was looked upon much the same way
police use confidential informants. They could be given immunity from
prosecution and granted special favors for their assistance in the war
against the Soviets. However, the program became perverted. Agencies set up
to investigate Nazi war criminals ended up as programs to subvert
communism -- with the help of those same Nazis. And many of elements of
their fascistic philosophy were adopted by the U.S.
Author Christopher Simpson outlines much of the basis for these programs in
his book, 'Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and its Effect on the
Cold War'. 'Blowback' in spy terminology means an operation that essentially
fails in such a way as to create negative, unforeseen consequences, which
causes harm or embarrassment to the agency perpetrating the plot. Another
book which deals with the use of Nazis and their collaborators and the
harmful effects on our way of life is 'The Belarus Secret', which was
written by John Loftus. Loftus was a former attorney with the Justice
Department of Special Investigations. His job was to hunt for Nazi war
criminals in the U.S. Loftus in also the co-author of the book, 'The Secret
War Against the Jews', which covers many related subjects.
According to Simpson, the introduction of the Nazis into the U.S.
intelligence agencies was in no small part overseen by Alan Dulles, a member
of the of OSS, a republican activist and the eventual director of the CIA.
The Dulles brothers, John and Allen were predisposed to helping the Nazis.
After WWI, Germany's infrastructure and economy were in shambles. American
financiers, bankers and industrialists swarmed over the country seeking the
tremendous profits which were to be made in redeveloping the vanquished
nation.
As a partner at the prestigious law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, Dulles
represented many of these U.S. corporations and the German cartels
responsible for Hitler's rise to power and the rearmament of the country.
Dulles was very involved in protecting the profits of these powerful
corporations and obscuring their Nazi participation. Several of these
companies supported espionage, propaganda and the war effort against the
Allies. The wealth of former president George Bush is in part due to the
collaboration of his father with the Nazis. The U.S. government seized
assets from Bush company holdings for Trading with the Enemy. Some
historians state that Dulles' actions and those of the collaborating
American corporations were tantamount to treason.
It eventually became clear to the Nazis that defeat was inevitable. It was
at this point that one of the most prominent German spymasters decided to
act for the preservation of his espionage ring and his fellow Nazi soldiers.
Reinhart Gehlen was a Nazi stalwart and the head of Hitler's intelligence
organization for Eastern Europe and the Russian territories. Some of the
worst atrocities during the war were conducted at the Eastern Front. The
Russians were seen by the Nazis as subhumans who would have to be
exterminated in order to create living space for the Aryan people. Having
participated in operations to interrogate Russian POWs in the concentration
camps, Gehlen had to be aware of the intentional murder of as many as four
million Soviet POWs by shooting, torture and starvation. Gehlen knew that
his chances of survival were nonexistent if he were captured by the Russians
and he made plans to surrender to the Americans.
Anticipating defeat, Gehlen microfilmed all of the Nazi intelligence files
on these territories and buried them in a remote Austrian pasture. If there
was one redeeming quality about the Nazis which was appreciated by their
U.S. counterparts, it was their hatred of communism and the Soviets. Gehlen
created a need for his services by playing on America's worst fears of
Soviet hegemony. Insisting that there was to be an imminent war with the
Russians and the U.S. after Germany's defeat, the Nazi spy was greeted with
open arms by members of the U.S. intelligence community -- who accepted the
offer of his extensive files -- and his German spy ring already in place in
the Soviet block. They were willing to overlook Gehlen's status as a war
criminal. Dulles said of the Nazi spymaster, 'He's on our side and that's
all that matters.'
In order to make his services appear invaluable to his new American masters,
Gehlen told his American captors that the Soviet forces were much greater
than they were, that they were battle ready, and that they constituted an
immediate threat. Gehlen claimed that there were at least 175 Red Army
divisions poised to attack. The Soviet onslaught was to include air attacks
on the U.S. and Canada. Guerrilla and subversive operations were to be
launched against all Anglo-American interests. Fabricating the threat of an
impending war provided safety and a livelihood for Gehlen's spies. By
creating a crisis, magnifying it's significance and convincing his handlers
that his services were vital, Gehlen assured himself a pardon from the
gallows of Nuremburg, a comfortable life style, and the opportunity to open
immigration into the U.S. and South America for thousands of the worst Nazi
criminals.
Clearly, Stalin was a monster and not to be trusted. He had entered into a
non-aggression pact with Hitler and divided the spoils of Eastern Europe
with the German dictator who then betrayed him. The Russian dictator had
created a tremendous police apparatus, engaged in genocide of his own people
and shipped millions to slave labor in the gulags. He most certainly had
designs on the countries that his armies had come to occupy.
But it is now clear that Gehlen inflated or created from whole cloth much of
the information that he fed to his gullible handlers. Gehlen's reports were
rife with misinformation and created a highly distorted idea of what the
U.S. was up against. The reality was that most of the Soviet units were
depleted from the vicious fighting against the Nazis and supplies were not
adequate to launch a huge offensive. But Gehlen continued to play on
American fears and paranoia. As Simpson put it, Gehlen perpetrated the idea
of a communist conspiracy 'in which the hand of the Kremlin could be seen in
almost every labor dispute and student strike on the continent.'
Army intelligence had been fairly accurate in their estimates, which said
that the Russians were no where near being capable of launching such an
attack, since their armies had lost millions in the war with Hitler. But
personnel within the intelligence community and some conservative
politicians realized that there was a lot of power to be gained in jumping
on the anti-Communist bandwagon. They embraced the Gehlen line and claimed
the low U.S. estimates of Soviet strength were due to infiltration of
communists into the American intelligence apparatus. As a result of this
hysteria, intelligence units that made more realistic estimates were
dismantled by their opportunistic foes and blamed as being soft on
communism. The Gehlen mind set became entrenched. The paranoia spread. Soon,
government workers and military officials realized that their careers
depended on subscribing to this perspective of U.S. and Soviet relations.
Confidential reports of Gehlen's estimates were leaked to sympathetic
reporters. Fabricated magazine and newspaper articles were published in
America and foreign countries. Information was shaped by the defense
industry and tailored for consumption by the politicians who held the purse
strings for the military budget.
Increasingly wary of their former allies, the Soviets made a point of not
confirming or denying any intelligence of their army's capabilities or
intentions. This worked to their profound detriment. Their repressive
campaigns against Eastern European nations did not do much to dispel U.S.
suspicions. With no feedback from their former ally, the Americans assumed
the worse and the most expensive arms race of human history was on. The
price tag for the arms buildup has been estimated at around fifty billion
dollars.
The Nazis and their collaborators were employed for many reasons, not just
as spies and guerilla fighters against the Soviets. Scientists were brought
to the U.S. to work on atomic, chemical and biological projects as well.
Nazis with any expertise on Soviet affairs were recruited as consultants.
However, the most controversial aspect of the program was the utilization of
fascists by American intelligence in a program named 'Operation Bloodstone'.
These people were incorporated into the programs involving guerilla warfare,
sabotage, demolition, assassinations and propaganda. According to Simpson,
Nazis were inducted into the U.S. army and Special Forces. After five years
of service, they were eligible for citizenship.
The theory behind the use of the fascist secret army was that the U.S. could
use them against any Soviets who survived the anticipated nuclear attack on
Russia. Prior to any major conflict, they could be used to fuel
nationalistic movements within Eastern European countries, compete with the
communists for political power, exploit internal divisions within the Soviet
Union and promote dissent.
U.S. analysts who subscribed to Operation Bloodstone eventually came to
believe that the best policy was not to confront the communists head on in
open warfare, but rather implement a policy of 'containment' that could
confront the enemy indirectly in any sphere in which they tried to establish
a beachhead. This theory then gave way to the 'roll back' or 'liberation
theory' whereby nationalistic tendencies by countries that resisted Stalin
and communism would be encouraged and provided with the resources and
weapons to rebel against them. The theory had its direct lineage from the
Nazis who used the same approach to win collaborators from the Eastern
European countries when the source of German fighters became depleted.
Recruits not only included SS, Gestapo and Wermacht personnel but also
collaborators from countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Hungary,
Romania, the Ukraine and Belarus who fought with the Nazis against their
mutual enemy, the communists. Many of these soldiers had been involved in
gruesome massacres of Jews, communists, partisans and civilians. Some of
these non-Germans even managed to astonish their Nazi bosses with their
extraordinary brutality and sadism. The CIA funded the activities of these
soldiers and groomed them for insurrection in their countries of origin.
Initial operations involved infiltrating these agents back into their
homelands to create instability in the left leaning governments. The U.S.
also backed fascist groups in Western Europe. Greece, Italy and France
governments were targeted for infiltration in an attempt to roll back
communist influence. Eventually, these programs were grafted onto U.S.
policy in South and Central America, Cuba, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and
other locations around the globe.
Gehlen had ulterior motives for cooperating with the Americans. Initially
agreeing not to enlist SS, Gestapo or other Nazi loyalists, Gehlen was soon
packing his employment roster with some of the worst war crime perpetrators
that Germany had produced. Gehlen oversaw the 'ratline' that allowed
thousands of his fellow Nazis and their collaborators to flee to safety in
foreign lands and the U.S. When the Korean War broke out, the Germans found
themselves in even greater demand by the Americans who wanted their support.
The Germans used this as a means to extort the release of hundreds of
convicted war criminals including some sentenced to death for genocide, the
murder of American POWs, gruesome medical experiments on prisoners and the
use of slave labor.
One such criminal was Franz Six who was a protege of Eichmann and whose job
was to compile lists of Soviet officials for extermination. Another war
criminal was Dr. Emil Augsburg who also compiled lists of Soviets marked for
assassination. Walter Rauff oversaw a program which utilized mobile gas
trucks to exterminate thousands of Jews. Gustav Hilger was a senior Nazi
party official and liason with the Einsatzgruppen who murdered thousands of
Serbs and Jews. These Nazis and hundreds more all found employment with
American agencies.
Probably the most famous war criminal recruited by the U.S. was the Gestapo
officer Klaus Barbie, known as the 'Butcher of Lyon' for his part in the
execution of civilians and the torture and murder of French resistance
fighters. He assisted U.S. intelligence agents until word got out that the
Americans were harboring him. A hasty escape was arranged to South America
where he trained security forces for right wing governments and helped to
overthrow democratically elected governments.
A parallel 'Operation Paperclip' recruited Nazi scientists with expertise in
biological warfare, atomic research and the Nazi rocket program. Truman had
given his permission to use German experts with the proviso that none of
them have Nazi affiliations. Unbeknownst to the president, the background
investigations of some of the worst Nazi war criminals were sanitized and
scrubbed to omit any reference to their crimes. Author Linda Hunt, writing
for the 'Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' reported that an examination of
security clearances clearly demonstrated that they had been altered to
remove evidence of a Nazi taint. According to Simpson, between 1945 and
1955, 765 scientists, engineers and technicians were brought to the U.S.
under Paperclip and 'At least half, and perhaps as many as 80% of the
imported specialists were former Nazi party members or SS men." If Truman
was unaware of the hiring of Nazi war criminals, the Soviets were not and
Truman's disavowal only exacerbated the mistrust between the superpowers and
served to stoke the fires of the cold war. The program was incredibly lax in
security and some of our most secret programs were leaked to the Soviets.
The U.S. policy of utilizing Gehlen's spy apparatus had many devastating
effects on American domestic and foreign policy. High ranking CIA agents
have declared that using the Gehlen organization was a tremendous disaster
and a failure of the highest magnitude. It accomplished few of its goals.
The Gehlen organization proved to be riddled with Soviet spies and
unrepentant Nazis who did not have U.S. best interests in mind. The chief of
Gehlen's counterespionage division, Heinz Felfe, was revealed to be a double
agent. As a result of his treachery, the cover of hundreds of spies was
blown. Many were arrested by the Russians. Codes were broken and information
compromised. Millions of dollars in gold, bank notes, weapons and other
equipment that was smuggled into Eastern Europe actually went to agents who
turned out to be working for the Soviets. Guerillas parachuted behind Soviet
lines were never heard from again, were turned, or were paraded in front of
the televisions at show trials. Five hundred guerillas sent into Albania
were slaughtered because the Gehlen spy ring was so heavily penetrated. It
cost millions of dollars to rebuild the spy network. War criminals were also
very susceptible to blackmail. It is thought that U.N. Secretary-General
Kurt Waldheim may have been compromised by those with knowledge of his
participation in units known to have committed atrocities.
Gehlen's emphasis on the inevitability of war served to create friction
among the former allies and make cooperation more unlikely. Suspicions were
fostered and feelings of mistrust exacerbated. It created a propaganda coup
for the Soviets when they could demonstrate that the U.S. was harboring war
trade agreements. Defense companies used them to lobby for more expenditures
of weapons. Abroad, the served as agent provocateurs, inciting violence
which led to further repression.
Another dangerous ramification from this period was the development of
foreign policy by secret, unaccountable groups within the intelligence
community. Although the CIA was originated as an agency to gather and
analyze information in an objective and neutral manner for consideration by
the government, under Dulles, the emphasis was placed on proactive covert
activities. Truman explicitly said that he didn't want a domestic version of
the Gestapo on American soil but Dulles and his allies promoted
unaccountable paramilitary ops, often with no oversight at all by the State
Department or other government agency. The CIA could now do an end run
around the elected government officials. Even the president was kept in the
dark about some of the most important CIA operations. This precedent
continues to this day. The Iran-Contragate debacle was a direct continuation
of this policy of usurping the lawful power of America's elected
representatives by a select few in the U.S. intelligence community.
One more legacy of these operations was the illegal use of the CIA for
spying and influencing politics domestically. The agency's support for these
fascists violated its charted, which prevented it from operating in the U.S.
They were used for propaganda value in arousing opposition against the
Soviets and supporting an arms buildup. They allied themselves with the far
lobbying tools. They produced propaganda for domestic and foreign
consumption.
Some historians allege an even more cynical use of these organizations. The
backgrounds that were sponsored by the CIA became affiliated with the
republicans and helped to get out the voted in their ethnic communities. It
has been suggested that these groups were mobilized by the republicans to
off set the Jewish vote that was thought to have contributed to the election
of democrats. Both Nixon and George Bush senior courted these ethnic groups
in their campaigns with full knowledge of their fascist backgrounds. The
Bush/Quayle campaign quietly fired eight operatives when it was revealed in
small newspapers that they were Nazi collaborators, neo-Nazis or holocaust
revisionists. Some were just as quietly rehired at a later date.
Another blow to democracy from this period was the corruption of the free
and independent press. The CIA sponsored seeming scholarly and academic
work, which was carefully written to reflect the agency's perspective.
Journalists were recruited as CIA assets. The media was used to suppress
stories that were embarrassing to the agency. Press investigations were
squelched. The press was used to plant false stories and disseminate
propaganda for consumption by foreign and domestic readers.
The fascists in our government did much to ruin the political climate of our
democracy. The fear and sense of urgency created by the cold war brought
forth paranoia among American citizens. Reactionaries like Joe McCarthy
became prominent. Dissent was squelched. Loyal Americans were persecuted. A
generation of U.S. citizens practiced futile safety drills, ducking under
their desks to avoid nuclear blasts and digging fall out shelters.
Communists were behind every tree. It can and is happening again.
Another tragic consequence of the use of Nazi agents was the adoption of
many of their tactics. Fascists were used to train police and intelligence
agencies in other countries, which persecuted dissidents and were involved
in the murder and torture of their citizens. The complicity of U.S.
intelligence engendered scorn, hatred, resentment and often violence against
our country by the citizens of those nations. The governments that were
established with these fascist collaborators left a legacy of extreme right
wing dictators, coups, and repression.
It has been said that the Nazis were the true victors of the Cold War.
Although the use of Nazis by the U.S. intelligence agencies proved to be a
disaster for our nation, it could, however, be seen as a great success for
Gehlen and his henchmen. They were able to escape the gallows and begin new
lives. They also accomplished many of their political goals. The Soviets had
been mortal enemies of the Nazis and Gehlen expertly manipulated the
Americans into accepting the Soviet Union as their greatest nemesis too. It
is not far fetched to believe that Gehlen, more than any one other person,
was most responsible for instigating the Cold War.
The legacy of our cooperation with these fascists is now coming home to our
shores. We now have a 'Shadow Government' that was even unknown to most of
our elected representatives until recently. The Bush administration conducts
its business in unprecedented secrecy. In the recent 'War on Terrorism',
there has been talk of institutionalizing torture in our intelligence
agencies. It has been reported that the CIA has been sending prisoners to
countries where torture is permitted so as to avoid the legal restrictions
here in the U.S.
The disinformation campaign is in full swing. Reporting on the war has been
censored. Unfavorable coverage in the foreign press seldom is reported here
at home. American soldiers recently threatened to shoot a journalist who was
investigating civilian casualties. The Pentagon planned to establish an
office to plant propaganda in the media of both friendly and unfriendly
governments. America's image abroad is being shaped by a Madison Avenue
executive who is now selling 'Brand United States' the way she marketed
Uncle Ben's Rice and Head and Shoulders shampoo. Media coverage is now
concentrated in the hands of ten multinational corporations with agendas
which often conflict with the reporting of the truth. Adverse news regarding
a subsidiary of their companies often goes unreported. For their complicity
with the republicans in the last presidential election, they have been
rewarded with tremendous financial windfalls by Michael Powell, the head of
the FCC.
The Orwellian named Patriot Act curtails liberties in a way that does not
contribute to the 'War on Terrorism'. Innocent people have been imprisoned
without being charged and without proper representation. Some have
reportedly been abused. The lawyer-client privilege is in shambles. Dissent
and criticism of Bush is scorned as unpatriotic. War and intelligence are
being privatized to avoid congressional oversight. The military-defense
industry is poised to make extraordinary profits. Bush's father and his
firm, the Carlyle Group, are profiting on the sale of military equipment to
the Pentagon in an unseemly conflict of interest. Billions are being spent
on a missile defense system that has never been proven to work in the real
world. Corrupt corporations write energy policy and regulatory legislation.
An extraordinary effort has been made to keep our elected representatives in
the dark about the administration's agenda. It seems evident even to the
main stream press now that the election in Florida was fraudulently stolen,
with the votes of eligible voters being disqualified.
Americans who want to know how our government became involved in supporting
fascist governments, training their armies and secret police and assisting
in the overthrow of democratically elected governments should familiarize
themselves with this sordid chapter of our history. The introduction of Nazi
war criminals into our intelligence and scientific communities is a shameful
period in our nation's history and in large part is the reason for the
perversion of democracy in other nations as well as our own. If knowledge is
power, we should become aware of our past in order to become better world
citizens. It may be the only way to thwart future terrorist attacks and
preserve our constitutional rights. As George Santayana wrote, "Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
The Secret Sharers
The CIA, the Bush Gang and
the Killing of Frank Olson
by Chris Floyd
There is a thread running through modern American history, a thin red cord
that weaves in and out of the shifting facades of reason and respectability
that mask the brutal machinery of power. At certain rare moments the thread
flashes into sight, emerging from the chaotic jumble of unbearable truth and
life-giving illusion that makes up human reality. It appears, bears witness,
then vanishes again, forgotten behind the next facade.
It's a thread that runs from horrified young intelligence operatives
stumbling into the death camps of Nazi Germany to hardened agents running
assassination programs in the jungles of Vietnam to august men of state
building a shadow government with secret decrees authorizing tyranny,
murder, torture and deceit. It's a thread of moral corruption, corruption by
an idea, a temptation, a perversion of reason, the whisper of evil that
says: "The end justifies the means."
That thread fetched up briefly again earlier this month, then was buried,
literally, in a Maryland grave. The family of Frank Olson laid his exhumed
remains to rest, closing the book on their half-century of struggle to find
out why he died so violently in the hands of the government he had
served--and whose deepest secrets he had guarded.
Frank's son, Eric, believes he knows the answer now: his father was murdered
to keep the thread from sight, to "protect" the American people from the
knowledge that their own government had taken up and extended Nazi
experiments on mind control, psychological torture and chemical warfare--and
that it was conducting these experiments as the Nazis did, on unwilling
subjects, on captives and "expendables," even to the point of "termination."
Frank Olson was a CIA scientist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Army's
biological weapons research center. Ostensibly he was a civilian employee of
the Army; his family didn't know his true employer. Olson worked on methods
of spreading anthrax and other toxins; some of his colleagues were involved
in mind control drugs and torture techniques. But his life within the
charmed circle of the American intelligence elite would unravel with
dizzying speed in just a few months in 1953.
It began in the summer of that year, when Olson--increasingly troubled by
his own and his colleague's work--made several trips to Europe, to
investigate secret American-British research centers in Germany. There he
found the CIA was testing "truth serums" and other torture drugs on
"expendables," including captured Russian agents. He told a British
colleague that he had witnessed "horrors" there. And it called into starkest
question his own work on biochemical weapons. He came home a changed man,
troubled, morose. He told his wife he wanted to leave government service.
But it was too late: the brutal machinery was already grinding. His British
colleague told his own superiors about Olson's concerns; they in turn
informed the CIA that Olson was now a "security risk." Not long after his
return, Olson was given the LSD. Then he was flown to New York, ostensibly
for psychiatric treatment, at the hands of a CIA doctor--who prescribed
whiskey and pills. Then he was taken to a CIA magician--yes, a magician--who
apparently tried to hypnotize him for interrogation.
Finally he checked into a cheap hotel--with a CIA handler, Robert Lashbrook,
in tow. Olson called his wife, told her he was feeling better and would be
home the next day. But that night, he was found dead on the street, 10
floors below. The handler said that Olson had apparently thrown himself
through the closed window in a suicidal fit. The government told the family
it was simply a tragic suicide. They didn't mention the LSD--or the fact
that Olson worked for the CIA.
It would take Eric Olson 49 years to piece together as much of the truth as
we are ever likely to know about what happened that night. But first would
come a false dawn, a cruel trick played on the family by cynical operators
in Ford Administration, who used a screen of half-truth and deliberate
falsehood to divert the Olsons--and the nation--from the darkest tangles of
the thread. Two of those operators would would work the thread--play upon
it, thrive on it, hold hard to its damp crimson stain--to rise from the
obscurity of White House functionaries to positions of colossal,
world-shaking power:
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Keeping the Faith
Washington, 1975. It was a long hot summer of discontent in the White House.
The unelected president, Gerald Ford--who'd taken office after the
resignation of Richard Nixon--was raging. Every day seemed to bring fresh
horrors from the Congressional committees investigating America's
intelligence agencies. Assassination plots, terrorist acts, coups, secret
armies, subversion of allied governments, Mafia connections, torture, press
manipulation, domestic surveillance--the revelations were endless, a
bottomless pit of corruption and criminality being dredged up by the House
and Senate panels.
Where was their sense of duty, the code of omerta that had for so long
protected those who toil in the shadows, who do the dirty work to keep
America fat and safe and happy? What right did these mere senators and
representatives have to tell the people--the big dumb dazed mobocracy out
there--the truth about what their leaders were doing in their name? They
were like children, they could never understand the higher wisdom that
guided the elites. Oh, it was a far cry from the old days, back on the
Warren Commission, when a good soldier like Jerry Ford knew just what to do:
you accepted whatever the agencies told you, and you steered investigations
away from anything that might break the code and pierce the shadows.
So Ford seethed. What the hell is wrong over there at the CIA, he complained
to his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld. Why couldn't Bill Colby, the
director, keep a lid on things? Colby had even come clean about Operation
Phoenix, for Christ's sake. More than 20,000 Vietnamese murdered in the
CIA-run program--did Joe Lunchbucket really need to know about that?
What next? Are they going to find about Reinhard Gehlen, too: the Nazi spy
who joined the CIA and recruited thousands of Hitler's best and
brightest--including Klaus Barbie and a cadre of SS veterans--to work for
the Agency? Sure, it would look bad, but come on: Gehlen was championed by
Allen Dulles himself--the founding father of the CIA, the hotshot lawyer who
kept Prescott Bush's name out of the papers when Pres was caught trading
with the Nazis in 1942. Dulles and those Yale boys knew what was best--but
try explaining that to some poor schmuck whose father got killed at Normandy
or Auschwitz or some other godforsaken hole, eh?
As it happened, the "Gehlen Organization" stayed secret for another 26
years. But in July 1975, Ford had still more worries. A top White House
aide, Dick Cheney, sent a memo to Rumsfeld, warning him about an upcoming
lawsuit. The family of Frank Olson had found out--through the Congressional
investigations--that he had been secretly drugged by the CIA not long before
he took that fall from the hotel window. Now they were suing the government
for damages.
The lawsuit could be bad business, Cheney told Rumsfeld. "It might be
necessary to disclose highly classified national security information"
during the trial. That would include the truth about Olson: the CIA
connection, biochemical weapons, the mind-control and torture experiments
based on Nazi death-camp "research," and the Agency fingerprints all over
Olson's last days in New York City. The case might even reveal the existence
of special "CIA Assassination Manuals," like the one issued in the year of
Olson's death, 1953, stating: "The most efficient accident, in simple
assassinations, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator
shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. [In some
cases], it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before
dropping him."
Such revelations had to be avoided at all costs. Rumsfeld and Cheney urged
Ford to make a settlement before the trial started. To avoid the courts
entirely, they would arrange a private bill in Congress to give the family
some cash. The deal would be sweetened by private audiences with both Ford
and Colby, apologizing for the CIA's past "mistakes," and promising "full
disclosure" of all the facts, so the family could at last find peace.
And so it was done. And it was all a lie--beyond the bare fact, already
unearthed by Congress, that Olson had been drugged by the CIA. The family
got 17 minutes in the Oval Office with Ford--who apologized for the
government's indirect involvement in Olson's death--that LSD test gone awry.
Rogue elements, you know; unauthorized activity. Shouldn't have happened;
never happen again. This was followed by a meeting with Colby, who handed
over a thick file: the CIA's "complete" investigation of the Olson
affair--so complete that it forgot to mention that Olson was a CIA official.
Or that his colleagues considered him a "security risk." Little things like
that.
Thus began the second cover-up. It took Eric Olson another 27 years to piece
together the story, from obscure archives, through lucky accidents, and
strained meetings with old CIA hands, who let fall dribs and drabs of the
truth. He was even forced to exhume his father's body: a gruesome process
that revealed the original 1953 post-mortem had also been a lie.
That examination had simply confirmed the cover story: poor sap had flung
himself through the glass and splattered on the sidewalk below. No autopsy
needed. Close the coffin--the body is too busted-up for the family to
see--and close the case. But the second examination, decades later, carried
out by forensic experts, revealed the truth. There were no marks on the
well-preserved cadaver consistent with a self-propelled flight through the
window: no cuts on the face or arms. There was, however, a cranial injury
entirely consistent with a blow to the head--delivered before the fall.
Earlier this year, the Cheney-Rumsfeld memos came to light, confirming that
the Olsons had been deliberately lied to in 1975. It helped fill in some of
the remaining pieces of the scattered jigsaw puzzle that was his father's
death--and had become Eric's life. And although the centerpiece of the
puzzle--the fateful moments in that hotel room, before Frank Olson went
through the glass--remains forever absent, the picture was as complete as it
would ever be, Eric decided. And so he buried his father, again, in the dark
Maryland earth.
But Ford, Rumsfeld and Cheney had kept the faith back in those dangerous
days of 1975. They had honored omerta. Colby was not so lucky. For his
sins--his "weakness" in allowing a few spears of sunlight into the
shadows--he was summarily dismissed a few months later. He was replaced by a
man who also lived by the code, who would keep the precious Agency--and all
its Gehlens, its torturers, its dopers, its shooters--safe from the
mobocracy, the ignorant rabble with their pathetic fairy-tale notions about
democracy, justice, law and honor. He would guard the shadow world so well
that one day the headquarters of the CIA would proudly bear his name:
George Herbert Walker Bush.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to
CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
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