Blowback (55 page)

1
.

On CROWCASS, see United Nations War Crimes Commission,
History of the UNWCC and the Development of the Laws of War
(London: HMSO, 1948), pp. 360–80; and Ryan,
Barbie Exhibits
, Tab 19. Copies of the now-rare CROWCASS index books are available at Boxes 3690 and 3692, RG 59, NA, Washington, D.C., and Box 1720, RG 153, NA, Suitland, Md. The U.S. Army INSCOM has released a dossier of typical CIC CROWCASS correspondence in response to an FOIA request by the author; see INSCOM Dossier No. XE 004643 D 20B 102 (secret).

2
.

Corson, op. cit., pp. 84 and 86–88.

3
.

Ibid., p. 87. On Thayer/Herwarth, see Thayer,
Hands
, p. 186; on Gehlen, see Gehlen, op. cit., pp. 8 and 11.

4
.

Bramel is quoted in Brendan Murphy,
The Butcher of Lyon
(New York, Empire Books, 1983), p. 230.

5
.

Herb Brucher interview, May 23, 1984.

6
.

On Catch-22, see, for example, Ryan,
Barbie Report
, pp. 50–51; on collection of clippings and similar “paper mill” type of information, see ibid., pp. 25–26.

7
.

On Camp King (Durchgangslager fiir Luftwaffe), Bokor interview, June 9, 1984; also JCS, “Dulag Luft,” nonclassified, privately printed, n.d. (1976?), on Scharff (p. 75), killing of escapees (pp. 37–38), high-level POWs (p. 80), returning POWs (p. 82)—copy in author's collection. The author is indebted to John Bokor for bringing this manuscript to my attention. On the postwar reputation of the camp, see Victor Marchetti and John Marks,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
(New York: Dell, 1974), pp. 187–88; and James P. O'Donnell, “These Russians Are on Our Side,” loc. cit. On Dulag Luft, see also Philip Flammer, ed., “Dulag Luft: The Third Reich's Prison Camp for Airmen,” and
James L. Cole, “Dulag Luft: Recalled and Revisited,” both in
Aerospace Historian
(June 1972), p. 58ff. On writing histories, see, for example, Gehlen “Report of Interrogation,” pp. 2–4.

8
.

JCS, “Dulag Luft,” p. 82.

9
.

For code names and brief descriptions of these operations, see P&O File 311.5 TS (Sections I, II, III), 1948, in 1946–1948 top secret decimal file, Records of Army General Staff, RG 319, NA. See also same citation in 1949–1950 decimal files; with additional details available via FOIA requests to Suitland archives.

10
.

Mark Aarons interview, June 20, 1985. Émigré sources claim that there were some 250,000 to 500,000 executions of anti-Communist Croats and Slovenes during 1944 and 1945. Although those figures are clearly exaggerated, they suggest that large-scale massacres did take place. Krunoslav Dragonovic's essay “The Biological Extermination of Croats in Tito's Yugoslavia,” in Antun F. Bonifacic and Climent Miknovich,
The Croatian Nation
(Chicago: Croatia Cultural Publishing Center, 1955), discusses these killings in considerable detail.

The repatriation programs mentioned in the text remain the object of intense controversy. For reliable accounts, see Nicholas Bethell,
The Last Secret
(New York: Basic Books, 1974), and Mark R. Elliot,
Pawns of Yalta
(Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1982), p. 104ff. More controversial studies include Julius Epstein,
Operation Keelhaul
(Old Greenwich, Conn.: DevinAdair, 1973), and Nikolai Tolstoy,
The Secret Betrayal
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978).

For contemporary coverage of the breakdown of U.S.-Soviet cooperation on the war crimes issue, see, for example, “Soviet, Italy Raise Extradition Issue,”
New York Times
, February 25, 1948, and Delbert Clark, “Red Push Must End, Clay Aide Asserts,”
New York Times
, March 5, 1948 (on suspension of extradition of war criminals to Czechoslovakia).

11
.

On the murders at Katyn and the Polish deportations, see, Louis FitzGibbon,
Katyn
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971); J. Heydecker, and J. Leeb,
The Nuremberg Trial
, tr. R. A. Downie (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1962), pp. 293–307; George F. Kennan,
Memoirs 1925–1950
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 199–200, hereinafter cited
as Kennan vol. I
. For executions at Dubno, see
CIA Eastern Front Study
, “Addendum A: NKVD Operatives and Persons Connected with Them,” particularly p. 2 entry for “Bronstein.” On deportations from the Baltic states, see, for example, William Tomingas,
The Soviet Colonization of Estonia
(Kultuur Publishing House, 1973), p. 265ff.

12
.

Nikita Khrushchev,
Khrushchev Remembers
, tr. Strobe Talbot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 596–97; or see Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson,
Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II
(New York: Pergamon, 1981), pp. 56–59.

13
.

On Iron Guardists in Romanian Communist party, see Ceauşescu's speech at the 1961 plenum in
Scinteis
(December 13, 1961), as noted in Paul Lendvai,
Eagles in Cobwebs
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 287–89.

14
.

“Statement of Mr. Djilas,”
Official Records of the General Assembly
, Sixth Session, Ad Hoc Political Committee, Eighth Meeting, United Nations, November
26, 1951, A/OR 6/Ad Hoc Committee. On East German use of Nazis: for Grossmann and Bartsch, see John Dornberg,
The Other Germany
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 297; for Erdely, see U.S. Dept. of State cable, Heidelberg to secretary of state, 862.20211/8–2045, August 21, 1948 (confidential), RG 59, NA; on Carl Clodius, see “Nazi Economist Used by Cominform,”
Prevent World War II
(May-June 1948), Columbia University Library. For Rattenhuber, Bamler, and Heidenreich, see Cookridge, op. cit., pp. 271–72. For Bamler, Sanitzer, and Hagemeister, see Höhne and Zolling, op. cit., pp. 238–39 and 243–44.

1
.

Yergin, op. cit., pp. 288–96. Also: John Iatrides,
Revolt in Athens
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).

2
.

On IDEA, see Ian McDonald, “Senator [Metcalf] Says Greek Leaders Aided Nazis,”
Times
of London, November 17, 1971, and Jack Anderson, “The Junta and the Nazis,”
New York Post
, November 16, 1971. On persecution of Greek Jews by Greek rightists, see Ivan Mihailoff, “Greece and the Jews of Salonika,”
Balkania
(July 1967), particularly p. 15. On events during the Greek civil war generally, see Yergin, op. cit., pp. 279–95, and Todd Gitlin, “Counter-Insurgency: Myth and Reality in Greece,” in David Horowitz, ed.,
Containment and Revolution
(Boston: Beacon, 1967), p. 140ff. On wartime casualties of Jews and Greeks, see Eugene Keefe et al.,
Area Handbook for Greece
, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 28. Also author's interviews with Elias Demetracopoulos, who kindly provided the author with news clippings concerning events in his native country.

Original source material concerning the role of Nazi collaborators in Greece includes: “Seventh Army Interrogation Center Preliminary Interrogation Report: POULOS, Georg, OBST (Col), Greek Police Volunteer Bn,” June 27, 1945, ref: SAIC/PIR/61 (secret), Box 721-A, Entry 179, MIS-Y Enemy Interrogation Files 1943–1945, RG 165, NA. American interrogations of SS RSHA Amt. VI leader Otto Skorzeny in 1945 also provide considerable background on relations among the SS, Abwehr, and Greek collaborators. See “Annex No. III: Invasion Nets in Allied Occupied Countries,” “Consolidated Interrogation Report (CIR) No. 4, Subject: The German Sabotage Service,” July 23, 1945 (confidential), for interrogation of Skorzeny and his adjutant Radl, and the attached “Consolidated Interrogation Report (CIR) No. 13, Subject: Asts in the Balkans.” pp. 5–8, 17–18; both of which are in Entry 179, Box 739, Enemy POW Interrogation File MIS-Y, 1943–1945, RG 165, NA.

3
.

On Papadopoulos, Natsinas, and Gogoussis, see McDonald, op. cit. On Secret Army Reserve, see “Joint Outline War Plans for Determination of Mobilization Requirements for War Beginning 1 July 1949,” Joint Strategic Plans Committee, JSPC 891/6. See particularly annex to Appendix “E,” pp. 34, 42–43, and Office of Chief of Naval Operations Enclosure “A,” n.d. (top secret) in P&O 370.1 TS (Case 7, Part IA, Sub Nos. 13), RG 319, Records of the Army Staff, NA. For later reporting from a critical perspective on CIA activities in Greece, see Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn, “CIA Operations in Greece,” and Philip Agee, “The American Factor in Greece: Old and New,” both in
Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, eds.,
Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe
(Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1978), particularly p.l54ff.

4
.

Kennan vol. I
, pp. 294–95 (“Communist conspiracy”). Kennan's account of the Long Telegram and its results appears on pp. 271–97. For background on controversy surrounding State Department-White House disputes over policy toward the USSR prior to World War II, see “Ah, Sweet Intrigue! Or, Who Axed State's Prewar Soviet Division?,”
Foreign Intelligence Literary Scene
(October 1984), p. 1.

5
.

Newsweek
quote: “The Story Behind Our Russian Policy,”
Newsweek
(July 21, 1947), pp. 15–17. Kennan quote is from the well-known “Mr. X” article: “Mr. X” (George F. Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,”
Foreign Affairs
(July 1947). See also
Kennan vol. I
, pp. 354–67, on the “Mr. X” article generally. For contemporary profiles noting key role of George Kennan and Charles Bohlen in formulation of U.S. policy during the early cold war, see the
Newsweek
article, above, and “Messrs. Bohlen and Kennan, Authors of Firm Policy to Russia,”
U.S. News & World Report
(August 8, 1947), p. 50ff. See also Yergin, op. cit., pp. 163–92, and Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas,
The Wise Men
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), pp. 347–85.

6
.

Kennan vol. I
, p. 359.

7
.

On role in propaganda programs, see Mickelson, op. cit., pp. 14–15. On role in guerrilla warfare programs, see Joint Strategic Plans Committee, JSPC 862/3 and JSPC 891/6. For a similar operation involving Finnish soldiers who volunteered for anti-Communist guerrilla operations, see Kennan correspondence with Gruenther, April 27, 1948 (secret), P&O 091.714 TS (Section I, Case 1), all at RG 319, NA.

8
.

JSPC 862/3 and JSPC 891/6.

9
.

Kennan vol. I
, p. 81.

10
.

Ibid., p. 81. For background on this point, see also Charles Bohlen,
Witness to History
(New York, W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 71ff., and Paul Blackstock,
The Secret Road to World War II
(Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969), pp. 256–57 and 310–11, hereinafter cited as Blackstock,
Secret Road
.

11
.

Herwarth, op. cit., pp. 75, 77, 80, and photo section; Bohlen, op. cit., p. 67ff.; Charles Thayer,
Bears in the Caviar
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1951), p. 28ff., Thayers,
Hands
, p. 183ff; Isaacson and Thomas, op. cit., pp. 175–77.

12
.

Thayer,
Hands
, p. 185. Herwarth also told Thayer during his 1945 interrogation that he had played a major, heroic role in von Stauffenberg's July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler. Thayer appears to have accepted Herwarth's account without question, and eventually published it in
Hands
, pp. 196–200. Other postwar accounts from conspirators who survived the July 20th affair or from historians who have studied the matter closely do not support Herwarth's (and Thayer's) claim that he played a substantial role in the plot. On this point, see, for example, Hans Bernd Gisevius,
To the Bitter End
, tr. Richard and Clara Winston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), p. 490ff.; Peter Hoffmann,
The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945
, tr. Richard Barry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979) pp. 397–535; Allen Dulles,
Germany's Underground
(New York: Macmillan, 1947); Hans Royce, ed.,
20 Juli 1944
(Bonn: Herausgegeben von der Bundeszentrale für Heimztdienst, 1953); or Hans-Adolf Jacobsen,
ed., July 20, 1944, German Opposition to Hitler
(Bonn: Press and
Information Office of the Federal Government [of Germany], 1969). The Gestapo's massive contemporary investigation of the July 20th conspiracy also failed to turn up enough evidence against Herwarth to cause the police agency to bring him in for questioning.

13
.

Herwarth, op. cit, pp. 352–53.

14
.

Ibid., p. 353ff. (on Herwarth); Strik-Strikfeldt, op. cit., p. 238 (on Köstring and Hilger);
Trials of War Criminals
, vol. XI, pp. 600–01 (on Hilger in United States).

15
.

Kennan vol. I
, pp. 175 and 177.

16
.

Ibid., p. 179.

17
.

Isaacson and Thomas, op. cit., p. 448.

18
.

Griffiths memo to Francis Cardinal Spellman, March 4, 1948, cited in John Cooney, op. cit, p. 159.

19
.

Ibid, p. 159ff., with Cardinal Tisserant statement on pp. 159–60 and Spellman quote drawn from undated Spellman memo to the Vatican concerning his meeting with Secretary of State George Marshall noted on p. 161.

20
.

On role of Exchange Stabilization Fund as funding source for clandestine operations: William Corson interview, March 26, 1984; Bokor interview, June 9, 1984, and Corson, op. cit, p. 299. For background and history of fund, see “Memo to Secretary [of the Treasury John] Snyder from F. A. Southard, Subject: History and Present Status of Exchange Stabilization Fund, 12/14/47,” and similar studies titled simply “Exchange Stabilization Fund” dated December 1948, December 14, 1949, March 1950, January 1951, Office of the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury; copies in collection of the author. Annual unclassified accounts of fund activity which establish the fund's size but conceal its clandestine role are available in
the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury
, for 1947, 1948, 1949. On the fund's relationship to the Safehaven program and captured Nazi loot, see
Elimination of German Resources for War
, Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs, U.S. Senate, June 25, 1945, pt. 2, pp. 135–36;
Change of Status Record, Title: Records of the Office of Economic Security Policy
and
Records of the Division of Economic Security Controls
, both 1945–1947, NA; and contemporary draft of Safehaven historical summary hand-titled “Safe-haven History” (Department of the Treasury, 1946?), copy in collection of author.

21
.

William Colby,
Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 115. For account of CIA role in Italian elections generally, see Corson, op. cit, pp. 295–301, with information on money laundering on p. 299. During 1975 the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, prepared a highly critical report on CIA clandestine activities, including the secret financing of selected Italian political candidates and labor leaders over a thirty-five-year period. The CIA and the White House succeeded in suppressing the official publication of this study, but the document was leaked to the media and published in special supplements to the
Village Voice
on February 16 and February 22, 1976. See p. 86 of the February 16 “Special Supplement: The CIA Report the President Doesn't Want You to Read” for further discussion of agency intervention in the Italian elections.

22
.

On Rauff, see Ralph Blumenthal, “New Charges Made on Nazi,”
New York Times
, May 10, 1984, and particularly
SS Col. Walter Rauff: The Church Connection 1943–1947
(Los Angeles: Simon Wiesenthal Center Investigative Report, May 1984), which includes copies of documentation concerning Rauff's crimes against humanity, his role in Operation Sunrise, and Bicchierai's part in Rauff's escape. See also U.S. Army INSCOM Dossier No XE 216719 I9B001, “Rauff, Walter,” for data on his arrest and escape from U.S. custody; and unnumbered INSCOM dossier on Operation Circle (obtained via FOIA) concerning church role in mass escape of German and Italian Fascist prisoners from Rimini POW camp, 1946. The extradition of Rauff from Chile was a major campaign of the Wiesenthal Center until Rauff's death in May 1984. See, for example, press statement “Nazi Criminals in Latin America,” from Dokumentationszentrum des Bundes Judischer Verfolgter des Naziregimes, Vienna, April 7, 1983.

For Allen Dulles's own account of Rauff's role in Operation Sunrise, see Allen Welsh Dulles,
The Secret Surrender
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 66, 83, 102, 107, and 192–93. For text of telegram discussed in footnote, see Jack D. Neal to USPOLAD, Berlin, September 17, 1947, at 740.00116 EW/8–1147 Secret File (top secret, no distribution), RG 59, NA, Washington, D.C. For postwar data on Dollman, Schellenberg, and Wolff, see Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 705, 713, and 715; and on Wolff: “SS-General Wolff gestorben,”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
, July 17, 1984.

23
.

Cooney, op. cit., p. 160.

24
.

For Mickelson comment regarding Kennan, see Mickelson, op. cit., p. 14.