Center for the Study of Intelligence Bulletin

Summer 2000

Issue No. 11

Conferences

Symposium on the Psychology of Intelligence Analysis
CSI and the CIA Directorate of Intelligence's (DI) Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis sponsored a one-day symposium on 20 June 2000 to explore issues raised by Richards J. Heuer's book, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, which CSI published in late 1999. Nearly 200 people attended, including Kent School students, academics, psychologists, and analysts from CIA and the Intelligence Community.

The panel sessions, which included discussion and Q&A time, covered:

  • Cognitive Challenges to Analysis, chaired by Associate Deputy Director for Intelligence Winston Wiley. Panelists included Ernest May, Director, Harvard University's Center for Studies in American History; John Steinbruner, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow; and Jack Davis, pioneer of analytic techniques and former DI analyst and manager.

  • New Views on Cognitive Challenges, chaired by Les Pyenson, MD, a senior CIA medical analyst and manager. The panelists were Philip Tetlock, professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University; Baruch Fischhoff, professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University; and Gary Klein of Klein Associates, a research firm specializing in ways to improve decisionmaking by individuals and teams.

  • CIA Views on Challenges to Analysis, chaired by Frans Bax, Dean of the Kent School. Panelists included Randy Pherson, former CIA analyst and manager on Latin American and other issues; a CIA analyst and manager on South Asia; and a CIA military analyst, manager, and expert in methodological and organizational innovation.

Other speakers included Richards Heuer, author of the book under discussion; former Deputy Director for Intelligence Doug MacEachin, who outlined how Heuer's ideas pertained to CIA's analytic performance in the 1980-1981 Polish crisis; CSI Director Lloyd Salvetti, who gave a scene-setting address and introduced Heuer; and Kent School Dean Frans Bax, who recapped some of the main points of the day's discussions.

Bax highlighted panelists' key points and underscored their relevance to the craft of intelligence analysis in his closing remarks. He noted that:

  • May underlined the need to study why some analysts are better than others at empathizing--that is, at understanding how leaders and policymakers think and make decisions. "We need to find ways to develop this in analysts because we don't all start life as politicians."

  • Steinbruner emphasized the importance of "learning about how the US is viewed [in many quarters] as a threat and a player in and of itself." He also noted the difficulty intelligence analysts have "in bringing the [US] part of the story to the table."

  • Davis pointed to the "paradox of expertise"--how experts can have a particularly hard time dealing with "discordant evidence." He noted the analyst's frequent need, when providing policy support, to change the client's question in order to convey analytic value-added, rather than policy choices. Thus, when asked what we should do to help achieve US objectives, the analyst should address what we could do in cost-benefit terms.

  • MacEachin underscored the importance of "arraying the evidence in an effective and systematic way" to facilitate sound analysis.

  • Heuer noted the importance of having intelligence analysts do more case studies, such as MacEachin's work on Poland, which explore the cognitive challenges to analysis and the lessons learned. Heuer also underscored the need to stay in touch with new insights about human thought processes, such as the ideas presented by the psychologists' panel. In his words, "the DI must strive always to be an organization that learns."

Henry Appelbaum,
Publications Staff

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Analyzing the Soviet Union During the Cold War
There has long been a lively debate over the analytic performance of the CIA and the Intelligence Community during the almost five decades of the Cold War. Scholars, students, the media, intelligence officers, and the general public will have an opportunity to examine that performance in detail. Princeton University's Center for International Studies and CSI will cosponsor a conference to examine the Intelligence Community's analytic record from the early Cold War years to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The conference, scheduled for 9-10 March 2001 at Princeton, will feature leading scholars and former and current intelligence officers. Former DCI James R. Schlesinger will be the keynote speaker. Panel sessions will examine the CIA and the Intelligence Community's contributions to policymaking during the Cold War. They will focus on CIA's assessments of Soviet economic growth and performance, internal political developments and foreign policy, military capabilities, scientific and technical capabilities, and how intelligence assessments influenced US policymakers as well as Soviet leaders.

The conference will highlight the CIA's continuing commitment to openness and declassification of original records in order to enhance and enrich the public's understanding of how US intelligence analysts assessed events and developments in the former Soviet Union. In preparation for the conference, the Agency will release approximately 60,000 pages of newly declassified records related to analysis on the Soviet Union. CSI will reprint selected documents in a publication that will be issued in conjunction with the conference. The Center also will issue a post-conference collection of essays by distinguished scholars along with the conference proceedings. The essays will focus on CIA's performance specifically and the Intelligence Community's performance generally in advising presidents and other senior policymakers on Soviet economic performance, military strength, political structure, technical expertise, and foreign policy goals and objectives.

The conference, the publications, and the newly declassified documents will offer scholars and the public a comprehensive review of CIA analysis on the subject. Conference discussions will help illuminate the difficult process of analyzing a "hard target" and the ways in which policymakers use analysis in setting US policy objectives. For more information, contact the Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC 20505.

Gerald Haines,
CIA Chief Historian

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Featured Articles

Did Truman Know about Venona?

Did President Truman know about Venona, the US Army's program for intercepting and decrypting Soviet intelligence cables?1 In 1996 Robert Louis Benson and the author of this article wrote:

Truman's repeated denunciations of the charges against [Alger] Hiss, [Harry Dexter] White, and others--all of whom appear under cover names in decrypted messages translated before he left office in January 1953--suggest that Truman either was never briefed on the Venona program or did not grasp its significance. Although it seems odd that Truman might not have been told, no definitive evidence has emerged to show he was. Truman always insisted that Republicans had trumped up the loyalty issue and that wartime espionage had been insignificant and well-contained by American authorities.2

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) cited the comment in the Venona book as an example of a security system run amok in a bureaucracy that withheld secrets even from its own commander-in-chief. While chairman of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, Moynihan asked the FBI to look into the matter.3 The Bureau's search turned up a loose-leaf binder containing 36 Top Secret documents, including one that Sen. Moynihan believes is the smoking gun he needed to conclude that "President Truman was never told of the Venona decryptions."

The document in question was an FBI internal memorandum dated 18 October 1949 that explained the attitude of Brig. Gen. Carter W. Clarke of the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) toward dissemination of the Venona material outside the AFSA and the FBI.4 Carter had "vehemently disagreed" with Admiral Earl E. Stone, his superior, who had proposed sharing Venona information with President Truman and the then-DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter. It went on to say that Carter and Stone had discussed the dissemination issue with Stone's boss, Gen. Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

General Bradley, according to General Clarke, agreed with the stand taken by General Clarke and stated that he would personally assume the responsibility of advising the President or anyone else in authority if the contents of any of this material so demanded. [emphasis added]

The question of Truman's knowledge is not a trivial one. As Moynihan noted, the President may have been kept in the dark about the "political perils of a Communist espionage ring operating in his own government."

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists contended that Moynihan's conclusion about Truman's being kept in the dark may be premature.5 While examining other FBI documents released in the same batch that contained the 18 October 1949 memo, he spotted some tantalizing clues. The most important was a 16 October 1950 memorandum to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, which stated that a Venona decrypt had led to the identification of Harry Dexter White as a Soviet spy. Hoover annotated his copy: "Wouldn't it be swell to send substance to Ad. Souers for information of the President." RADM Sidney Souers had been the first DCI and later the executive secretary of the National Security Council. In October 1950, he was Truman's top intelligence adviser and a logical point of contact for the FBI on this matter.

Below Hoover's note is another in a subordinate's handwriting: "LP 10/17 to Ad. Souers." Another FBI memo, dated 28 February 1951, confirms that the FBI had sent something to Souers: "We did furnish, in a carefully paraphrased form, the identification of Harry Dexter White on the basis of [one or more words redacted] information to the White House under date of October 17, 1950."

What did "carefully paraphrased" mean? In view of Bradley's insistence that he and the military--the FBI's source of the Venona intercepts--would determine whether to brief the president on the program, it surely means that the FBI's briefing of Souers did not discuss in detail the cryptologic breakthrough that produced the information on White. Simply put, Hoover would not have jeopardized FBI access to the precious decrypts by disclosing too much to a third party, even in the White House. Nevertheless, Souers knew plenty about signals intelligence, and he might well have made his own, basically accurate inferences about the FBI's 17 October message.

Aftergood has almost certainly established that the White House received Venona material by October 1950. But what information? And what happened to it? No one has yet found a 17 October memorandum on Harry Dexter White in the Truman Library or elsewhere. Indeed, during a 1996 visit there, the author found no evidence that the sensitive intercepts or the fact of the program later called Venona ever made their way to Truman.

Did the FBI brief the president on an "ears only" basis? An oral briefing could have sufficed, even if given in "carefully paraphrased form." So what did Souers tell Truman? We do not know, although we can guess when he might have briefed the President. Truman departed Wake Island after his historic meeting with Gen. Douglas MacArthur on 16 October, and then stopped in San Francisco to give a speech on the 17th before returning to Washington a day later. Both Truman and Souers attended an NSC meeting on 2 November, according to an archivist at the Truman Library, but the admiral did not meet privately with the President until two days later. That session was off the record, although the presence of James Lay of the NSC staff, suggests the meeting was devoted to NSC matters.

Did Souers mention the FBI's new information on Harry Dexter White at that 4 November session? Probably not. The President had a lot on his mind that week. The situation in Korea was getting more worrisome by the day as MacArthur's forces approached the Yalu River. UN forces were capturing Chinese soldiers in increasing numbers, and Washington was trying to get an estimate from MacArthur of the likelihood of a full-scale Chinese intervention. The off-year Congressional election looming on 7 November looked bleak for the Democrats; indeed, the GOP would gain five seats in the Senate and 28 in the House. To make matters worse, on 1 November Puerto Rican nationalists mounted a terrorist attack on Blair House--where the president and his family were residing while the White House was being refurbished. The attack resulted in the deaths of a guard and one of the would-be assassins. Truman heard the shootout below his window and was deeply touched by the heroic sacrifice of his guard.

In these circumstances, Souers probably did not want to distract the president with yet another elliptically worded FBI report on the Harry Dexter White case. Hoover had been forwarding allegations about White to the Oval Office since 1945. Truman ignored Hoover's earlier reports; in 1948 he called the charges leveled at White by ex-communists Elizabeth Bentley6 and Whittaker Chambers7 a "red herring." (In 1953 he went further, calling the two ex-communists "a crook and a louse" in a private note.)

So there are two possibilities. Either Truman was not informed about the Venona messages that implicated White, or he disregarded them. In light of the timing and circumstances of this 17 October FBI report to Adm. Souers, this author votes for the former interpretation.

Michael Warner,
Deputy CIA Historian

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Hitler, Stalin, and "Operation Myth"

An exhibit titled "The Agony of the Third Reich: Retribution," which opened last April at the Russian State Archives in Moscow, celebrates the 55th anniversary of the Red Army's capture of Berlin and victory over Nazi Germany. On display are such trophies as Adolph Hitler's and Josef Goebbels' personal papers, Martin Bormann's diary, the surrender agreement ending the Soviet-German war, several of the Führer's uniforms, and a blood-stained section of the sofa where Hitler shot himself after swallowing a cyanide ampoule. The artifacts are from the State Archives as well as the holdings of the Foreign Ministry and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

Hitler's Skull?
The centerpiece of the exhibit is a fragment of a human skull measuring about 3 x 4 inches, approximately the size of a hand. The fragment has jagged edges and a bullet hole on one side. It is one of four such fragments that a Red Army soldier found in a bomb crater turned into a makeshift grave in the garden of Hitler's Reichskanzelei (Imperial Chancellery) in Berlin. Russia's chief archivist says he is "99.9 percent" certain the fragment was once part of Adolph Hitler's cranium.

The Russian curators apparently do not lack a sense of irony. One of the displays is an interrogation report from an SS officer who served as Hitler's adjutant. In it, the SS man claims that Hitler ordered him to burn his mortal remains because he did not want to end up on display in the Soviet Union. So in a way the Russians had the last laugh, thwarting what may have been the Führer's final order.

Lord Dacre, better known as former Oxford professor Hugh Trevor-Roper and the author of Hitler's Last Days, called the exhibit "sordid." Macabre might be a better word. Ostensibly, it celebrates Russia's VE Day, which falls on the 9th of May, the official opening date. But the actual opening date, 30 April, was--not by coincidence--the anniversary of Hitler's suicide in the Führerbunker located beneath the garden of the bombed-out Reichskanzelei, once the seat of the Nazi government. By exhibiting the skull fragments and other Hitler memorabilia, the Russians are in effect finally exorcising the Führer's ghost and closing the books on one of the most bizarre Soviet intelligence operations of the Cold War--Operatsiya Mif (Operation Myth).8

The Hitler Myth
The Soviet government kept the Hitler file completely secret until 1968, when it revealed some of the truth--along with some deliberate distortions--in the West but not in the USSR. That was the year in which a journalist named Lev Bezymensky published the results of the official Soviet investigation into Hitler's death and two autopsies performed on the Nazi leader's remains.9 The book appeared in English in the United States and Britain, but not in Russian and not in the USSR. In 1993, the Yeltsin government granted access to the KGB's Mif files and released photographs of the skull fragments to a Russian and a British journalist. But their book also was published only in English and only in the United States and Britain.10 Now, thanks to the Moscow exhibit, foreigners will be able to examine artifacts that they may have heard about but were never allowed to see, while Russians will see for the first time objects and documents that they never knew existed.

By late March 1945, the Red Army had encircled Berlin and begun its final assault with a massive artillery shelling. The Germans' strong resistance, however, forced the Soviets to fight block by block and house by house before they raised the hammer-and-sickle ensign over the Reichstag. Stalin dispatched special "trophy brigades," organized by Smersh (military counterintelligence), to search for art and other valuables, official records and archives, and anything else of exceptional material and intelligence value. But the most prized trophy was Hitler himself, and selected Smershisti received extensive briefings on how to locate and identify the Führer. On 4 May, a unit attached to the 79th Rifle Corps of the Third Shock Army and under the command of Lt. Col. Ivan Klimenko discovered the badly charred remains of 11 humans and two animals (Hitler's dogs) in shallow graves--actually bomb craters--a few meters away from the entrance to the bunker, where Hitler and his entourage had taken refuge since March.

The badly burned bodies were taken to a clinic commandeered as a makeshift morgue in the north Berlin suburb of Buch, where a four-man military medical team headed by a physician with the improbable name of Dr. Faust Shkravaski concluded that Hitler's remains were among those found near the bunker. Shkravaski did not have much to work with, but there was enough left of Hitler's teeth, lower jaw, and dental work to make a positive identification. Odontological evidence collected from the office of Hitler's dentist, the dentist's assistant, and a dental technician who had made bridgework for the Führer formed the basis of the evidence. By 9 May, when the autopsies were completed, the Soviets knew that Hitler was dead.

Stalin and Operation Myth
But the one man whose opinion mattered the most--Josef Stalin--refused to accept the findings recorded in Shkravaski's forensic report. He dispatched his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, to Berlin to review the autopsy results and associated evidence and bring everything back to Moscow. (For reasons that remain unclear, however, Smersh had already removed and reburied the human and canine corpses that Shkravaski's team had examined, and refused to dig them up and turn them over to the secret police.) Stalin rejected the autopsy's conclusions out of hand.

Then, on 26 May, during a Kremlin meeting with President Roosevelt's chief adviser Harry Hopkins, and diplomats Averell Harriman and Charles (Chip) Bohlen, Stalin said that he believed Hitler had escaped from Berlin and was hiding in the West. Stalin was not making diplomatic small talk; he was launching a disinformation campaign that he had personally devised and directed.

The next version of this myth appeared in the 28 May edition of Time, which featured Hitler's portrait on its cover with a large cross through it. According to a certain "Pvt. Ivan Nikitin," a German SS officer had revealed under interrogation that he had heard Hitler ranting and raving about a coming conflict between the USSR and its western Allies once the war had concluded. (Hitler, in fact, anticipated the Cold War in a document known as "My Political Testament.") But, "Nikitin" claimed, Hitler said that as long as he was still alive the wartime alliance would remain intact. The world would have to be convinced that he was dead. Once the former allies found themselves in conflict, he would reappear and lead the German people to their final victory over Bolshevism. The same "Nikitin" claimed that behind an armoire in the bunker was a moveable concrete wall with a man-size hole in it. On the other side of the wall was a passageway leading to a tunnel where an army troop train was waiting to take Hitler and his entourage to safety.

Next, Stalin dispatched Andrei Vyshinsky, the notorious prosecutor in the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s, to Berlin to brief Marshal Georgy Zhukov on the new line on Hitler. (Zhukov said on record that he believed Hitler was dead.) The Soviet marshal was at the height of his fame and popularity, and had been called the greatest Russian commander since Suvorov. For Stalin, who feared and usually eliminated potential rivals, it was time to cut him down to size.11 At a 9 June press conference--the first since the Western press had been allowed into the Soviet-controlled city--Zhukov, with Vyshinsky at his side, offered a new version of Hitler's fate. The Führer's "present whereabouts are unknown," he said. Zhukov denied reports circulating in Berlin that the Soviets had found a corpse that "could be Hitler's." He added that: "Based on personal and official information, we can only say that Hitler had a chance to get away with his bride [Eva Braun, who married the Führer hours before they committed suicide]. Hitler could have flown out at the very last minute." Zhukov's "personal view" was that Hitler had taken refuge in Spain.

The new Soviet version went out over the press wires the next day, providing grist for hundreds if not thousands of Hitler sightings for many years to come. Vyshinsky then accompanied Zhukov to Frankfurt, where the marshal briefed Gen. Eisenhower on the new Soviet line. Eisenhower later told the press that he had changed his mind about Hitler and believed the Nazi dictator might still be alive.

In July Stalin acted again. At the Big Three summit in Potsdam, Germany, Stalin told US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes that he believed Hitler was living in Spain or Argentina. He repeated this in the presence of Adm. William D. Leahy, President Truman's military adviser. On other occasions, Stalin speculated that Hitler had made his way to Hamburg and left Germany for Japan on board a U-boat; or that he was hiding in Germany in the British occupation zone.

Operation Mif was officially launched in December 1945.12 Its mission was threefold: To (1) gather and review all records and forensic evidence collected during May-June 1945; (2) check and recheck interrogation reports from Hitler's bunker entourage; and (3) reconcile or explain inconsistencies and contradictions in the evidence. A commission chaired by the USSR's preeminent criminologist, Dr. Pytor Semenovsky, and controlled from behind the scenes by Beria, began by tearing up Shkravaski's autopsy and rejecting the evidence on which it was based. This gives some idea of what the commission's unstated purpose was: to produce a report that confirmed or at least was compatible with Stalin's belief that Hitler was--or at least might be--still alive. After reexamining all the evidence, the Semenovsky commission concluded it was "not...possible to arrive at a final conclusion" regarding Hitler. That may have been less decisive than Stalin wanted, but apparently it was as far as the scientists believed they could go in stretching the truth to please Stalin.

Above all, the brutal interrogation of witnesses demonstrated how obsessed Stalin was with finding proof that Hitler might be alive. Smersh detained some 800 (!) persons, and 21 of 35 key witnesses were arrested and interrogated in Berlin and Moscow--often repeatedly and brutally. Some of the witnesses were imprisoned for 10 years or more on trumped up war crimes charges. The Soviets went to great lengths to locate Hitler's relatives. They even arrested his half-sister, a simple Austrian peasant woman whom Hitler had last seen in 1907, as well as her husband and a half-brother Hitler had never even laid eyes on. The focus of the endless interrogations, which filled tens of thousands of pages, was to prove that Hitler could have survived and that the people he spent his last days with had engaged in a systematic deception to convince the world otherwise.

The Smershisti tried to beat confessions out of their prisoners. Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet, was stripped, tied down, and then beaten with whips as his German-speaking interrogators shouted: "Hitler is alive! Hitler is alive!" Two other key witnesses, Hitler's SS adjutant Otto Günsche, and the Führer's personal pilot, Hans Baur, reported similar experiences after returning home in 1956. In Baur's case, interrogators spent hours trying to force him to admit that it had been possible for Hitler to fly out of the Berlin inferno. Witnesses were forced to write and rewrite their accounts of the final days in the bunker. The Soviets even partially reconstructed the bunker and, using mannequins, had witnesses reenact Hitler's and Eva Braun's suicides. Tables and charts were used to plot testimonies against one another in an effort to identify inconsistencies as well as corroborating information.

Imprisoning Hitler's entourage was not aimed so much at uncovering the truth as concealing it. Other steps were taken in the same direction. Stalin ordered that the human and animal remains found in Berlin be hidden. (Strangely, he did not demand their return to Moscow, where they presumably would have been of value to Semenovsky's team.) The Smershisti buried the remains first in Rathenow, then in Stendal. In February 1946, in Magdeburg, the remains were finally buried in the courtyard of an apartment house commandeered by the Red Army. There they remained until April 1970, when KGB chief Yuri Andropov, with Politburo approval, ordered Meropriyatiya Arkhiv (Measure or Operation Archive). Under the guise of searching for long-lost Nazi records, a KGB team excavated what was by then a garage on a Soviet military base and removed the remains of nine persons, including Hitler and Eva Braun. (The base was about to be turned over to the East German government.) The remains, now a "jellied mass" according to a KGB report, were pulverized, soaked in gasoline, and then completely burned up. The ashes were mixed with coal particles and then taken 11 kilometers north of Magdeburg, where they were dumped into the Bideriz, a tributary of the Elbe river.

Hitler Is Alive and Well and Living In...
Why did Stalin go to such lengths to deceive the West while trying to convince himself that Hitler could still be alive? The short answer is: no one knows. Some historians believe that the Soviet dictator wanted to send Western intelligence services on a never-ending wild-goose chase. Whether that was his purpose or not, that in fact is what happened. For 30 years the FBI investigated every report it received regarding Hitler sightings or claims that the Führer was still alive. (A 734-page file of such reports is available on the Internet.) The Bureau conducted its own 11-year probe into the possibility that Hitler had escaped and was still alive. Other historians maintain that Stalin manipulated the Hitler myth to put the onus on the West for "hiding" the German dictator and protecting Nazi war criminals or that he wanted to use rumors that Hitler was in Spain to settle an old score with Franco and avenge the communist defeat in the Spanish Civil War.

Some historians have focused on the Hitler myth to question whether Stalin was rational.13 A clever, cunning, and malicious Stalin might have misled and lied to his top aides and wartime allies for some inexplicable political or psychological purpose and still have been rational. But the fantastic effort carried out under the rubric of Mif suggests something else--that Stalin was trying to bend the evidence to conform to his own distorted version of reality. Here Stalin was not attempting to mislead someone else but was trying to prove his own delusion--or at least destroy the evidence that contradicted it.

None of this would have occurred if there had been a corpus delecti. Or would it have? Even with a corpse in better condition at hand, would Stalin have buried and reburied the body, as he did the remains, to cover up the evidence of Hitler's death?

What about the skull fragments? The first autopsy noted that a piece of the cranium was missing.14 In early 1946, a Smersh unit sent to search the area where Hitler's remains had been found discovered the fragments, and apparently they fit the skull that had been examined in Buch. We do not know when or how the skull fragments reached Moscow. We do know that they were stored in the NKVD/KGB/FBS archives and that their existence was not revealed until 1995--and then only in the West, and not in Russia until this past April! Today, just as in 1945, the skull fragments may hold the final answer. Genetic testing should be able to determine once and for all whether they are the missing pieces of Hitler's cranium. Some of Hitler's closest relatives disappeared into Stalin's Gulag, but others, including several of his closest relatives living in the United States, survived.15 The Russian government, however, cannot afford expensive test procedures, although it is willing to let someone else pick up the tab. So far, no one has offered to do so. In the final analysis, this lack of interest in Hitler and the end of the Third Reich, while disappointing to historians, may not be a bad thing.

Benjamin Fischer,
CIA History Staff

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A.k.a. "Dr. Rantzau": The Enigma of Major Nikolaus Ritter

The Abwehr, Nazi Germany's military intelligence service, is better known for its failures than its successes, especially with regard to agent operations.16 Perhaps its heart wasn't in winning Hitler's war. It was a hotbed of anti-Nazi conspiracy even before the war. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the service from 1935-1944, was one of the first senior officials to conclude that Germany would lose the war. (Once, after the admiral had delivered a pessimistic assessment of operations on the Eastern front while briefing the High Command, Hitler grabbed him by the lapels and demanded to know whether he was a defeatist.) Never a Nazi, Canaris permitted some of his officers to use the Abwehr as cover for political and religious dissidents such as Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Canaris and his chief of staff participated in the anti-Hitler officers' plot of 20 July 1944 and were executed after it failed.17

A Rising Star
Among Canaris's subordinates no one represented the Abwehr's ambiguous record of occasional success and repeated failure better than Maj. Nikolaus Ritter, whose operational alias was "Dr. Rantzau." Ritter, in fact, was intimately involved in one of the service's greatest successes and its two greatest disasters--the compromise of all Abwehr agents in the United States and Britain.

Ritter was in charge of aviation intelligence at the Abwehr's Hamburg branch. (The headquarters were in Berlin.) According to a recent article in the Sunday Telegraph (London), he apparently discovered that all German agents in Britain had been compromised and brought under hostile control. Postwar interrogation reports in London's Public Records Office (PRO) suggest that Ritter knew this as early as 1941 but refrained from telling his superiors.18 Ritter was neither incompetent nor pro-British according to his interrogator, Maj. John Gwyer. He was, however, afraid of what his superiors might do if the blunder were revealed.

If this account is accurate, then Britain's famous Double-Cross program, which managed the double-agent program, was hanging by a thinner thread than was realized at the time. (The name of the program comes from an inter-agency board, the "Twenty [XX] Committee," chaired by MI5 and representing all intelligence services and interested departments, that managed the complex double-agent effort, which by war's end included some 120 double agents.)

Three files discovered in the PRO reveal that at one point MI5 believed the double-agent program had been blown and was prepared to abandon it. When it appeared that the Germans were neither taking countermeasures nor abandoning their agents, the Twenty Committee opted to continue the operations, providing the British-controlled doubles with "feed" material and disinformation. Historians maintain that virtually every German agent dispatched to Britain from the fall of France in 1940 to the D-Day invasion of June 1944 was detected, caught, and "turned," imprisoned, or executed.

Ritter, who had lived in America between the wars and had operated a textile business in New York, returned home in 1937 and joined the Abwehr. He recruited and ran agents in the United States, Britain, and Belgium. His signal success was the recruitment of Hermann Lang, a German-born US citizen who worked for the Norden Corporation as an inspector. In stages, Lang gave Ritter drawings that permitted German engineers to re-create the famous Norden bombsight, the most accurate bomb-aiming device of its day and one of America's mostly carefully guarded secrets.19 Canaris personally decorated Ritter.

Ritter's Star Fades
But a problem that would plague Ritter's career again in the future soon appeared. A German-American radio operator he had recruited, William Sebold, was an FBI double agent. Ritter had used poor tradecraft by letting Sebold send messages for other agents whose identities were thereby exposed to the FBI. In June 1941, the G-men arrested 33 German agents. Although only five of them were working for Ritter, the press dubbed the agents the "Ritter Ring." "Dr. Rantzau's" cover had been blown, but an even bigger setback was waiting in the wings.

In 1936, Ritter, while operating under cover in Britain, recruited a Welshman named Arthur Owens, who was an electrical engineer working on Admiralty contracts. Owens would turn out to be the linchpin of the Double-Cross program. Ritter assigned him the codename "Johnny," but Owens had another codename, "Snow," which had been provided to him by MI5. He was a double agent. Owens had started out spying for Germany but got cold feet and offered to turn his coat one more time to stay out of prison. He gave MI5 his German radio transmitter, codebooks, and other information, enabling the British to monitor Abwehr radio traffic and to set a trap for some 25 agents sent to Britain in the fall of 1940 in preparation for a Nazi invasion.

In MI5's version, Ritter seems to have been infinitely credulous. During a meeting in Lisbon, Owens blurted out that he was working for MI5. But Ritter did not report the incident or begin a counterintelligence investigation.

Later, however, Ritter evidently left or was forced out of the Abwehr in disgrace after the German spy ring in America was broken up. According to the Telegraph, Ritter was transferred to North Africa, where he ran intelligence operations for Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. He ended the war in Hanover, where he apparently deceived himself for the last time with disastrous results. On the very last night of British saturation bombing against Germany, Ritter, who commanded the city's air-defense system, mistook a small diversionary attack at some distance from Hanover to be the main bomber force. He ordered his troops to stand down just six minutes before a fleet of 1,500 bombers leveled the city. Ritter was as hapless in the field as he had been behind his desk in Hamburg.

The Rest of the Story?
The Ritter story, however, may be more complex than the Telegraph article indicates. The major certainly had his moments of glory, as recorded in his fascinating autobiography, one of the few written by ex-Abwehr officers.20 Besides the Norden bombsight caper, he managed to recruit an agent employed at the Sperry Gyroscope Company of Brooklyn; the agent obtained the plans for an advanced automatic pilot device. The Germans saved a lot of Reichmarks on R&D and installed a version of the device on Luftwaffe fighters and bombers.

Ritter's son-in-law challenged the Telegraph's account in a letter to the editor. Colonel Manfred Blume (Ret.) offered several corrections, one being that Ritter had not been forced out of the Abwehr in disgrace after the American fiasco. Ritter, according to Blume, was offered another position but asked for a front-line assignment and ended up commanding a battalion in Sicily. Blume further asserted that Ritter had deliberately misled Maj. Gwyer, his interrogator, with his account of how he kept the secret of the British double-agent program from his superiors. He already was in detention and feared that the British might try him as a war criminal. "This was not the time to reveal the truth nor his achievements," Blume stated.

For years, Ritter refused to write his memoirs or give interviews about his wartime exploits for fear of prosecution. Then Ladislas Farago, a well-known American intelligence historian, showed him examples of captured German records from US archives. Those records reveled that most of the Abwehr's operations were already known to US and British intelligence.

Blume's defense of his father-in-law makes sense, but it also muddies the water. Was Ritter telling the truth to Maj. Gwyer or was he trying to save his own skin? The 1972 memoirs do not help, since there is no mention of Ritter's alleged knowledge of the Double-Cross program. Perhaps we will never know the truth.

Benjamin Fischer,
CIA History Staff

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CIC Records: A Valuable Tool for
Researchers

The records of the US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) are invaluable for students of intelligence and military history. This little-known but important organization played a significant role during World War II and the first decade of the Cold War. While the historical community has pressed for the declassification of records from the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the post-war CIA, CIC's records, in fact, promise to shed even greater light on American intelligence activities than has been previously recognized.

Historical Background
Formed in 1942, the Counter Intelligence Corps's mandate was to "contribute to the operations of the Army Establishment through the detection of treason, sedition, subversive activity, or disaffection, and the detection, prevention, or neutralization of espionage and sabotage within or directed against the Army Establishment and the areas of its jurisdiction." CIC drew its antecedents from the World War I Corps of Intelligence Police, although it did not become a significant intelligence organization until World War II. It gained in status until 1961, when it merged into the newly formed Intelligence Corps. While CIC concentrated on counterintelligence during World War II, it expanded into the positive collection of intelligence behind the Iron Curtain in the years after 1945.

CIC took its missions seriously and, by 1943, it counted over 50,000 informants within the ranks of the US Army. These informants, usually at the ratio of one per 30 soldiers, provided some 150,000 monthly reports on the subversive activities of their fellow soldiers. It did not take long for this security program to become politically controversial, and the Army forced CIC to curtail its domestic activities.

The new organization really made its mark during the war on foreign shores. After some difficulties, the CIC deployed detachments at the division, corps, army, and theater levels to support tactical operations. These detachments rolled up Nazi stay-behind agents and investigated suspect civilians and enemy personnel throughout all theaters of the war. CIC field elements operated independently of other Army intelligence formations, including signals and engineer intelligence units, the Military Intelligence Service detachments (responsible for censorship, prisoner of war interrogation, topographic and photographic intelligence, and order-of-battle collection), as well as various technical intelligence collection units, such as the ALSOS mission looking for Nazi atomic research facilities, the "S Force" in Italy, and the "T Force" in France and Germany.

By 1945, some 5,000 officers and enlisted men worked for CIC worldwide. Lower-ranking enlisted personnel who served as "special agents" with the numerous CIC detachments carried out most of the work. After the war, these CIC veterans scattered to all walks of society upon their discharge from the Army. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, (then a young German émigré), for example, was a special agent with the 84th CIC Detachment of the 84th Infantry Division. Many CIC veterans continued to serve in intelligence roles as civilian employees of the Department of the Army or later transferred to the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency after 1947.

New Missions
CIC's overseas mission did not end with the conclusion of hostilities. It served as the Army's chief agency in occupied Austria, Germany, and Italy, rounding up individuals subject to "automatic arrest" because of their Nazi affiliations or activities. At the same time, CIC was on the lookout for a resurgent underground Nazi movement as well as efforts to circumvent Allied occupation directives. CIC spent a considerable amount of time handling problems associated with thousands of displaced persons in Western Europe as well as ensuing black market activities. By 1946, the 970th CIC Detachment (later designated as the 7970th CIC Detachment in 1948 and then as the 66th CIC Detachment in 1949) in Germany and the 430th CIC Detachment in Austria handled the bulk of the early post-war CIC operations.

In Japan, the 441st CIC Detachment performed many of the same roles as its counterparts in Europe. The considerable challenges in both areas were compounded by the Army's reduction of its intelligence facilities and manpower in the wake of demobilization. Most of CIC's experienced officers and enlisted men quit the service, leaving mainly new and inexperienced CIC special agents in their place. The Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, the training post for most CIC personnel, closed at the end of the war, and the Army did not establish the CIC Center at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, Maryland until 1950.

The Army's intelligence mission was in a state of flux between 1945 and the Korean War. CIC units in Germany and Austria took it upon themselves to face the Soviet threat as the Nazi menace receded. Consequently, CIC became the leading intelligence organization in the American occupation zones. During this early period, CIC in Europe had greater resources than those allotted to OSS and its successor organizations, the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG). Even into the 1950s, CIA and CIC were still trying to reconcile their intelligence missions overseas in order to avoid duplication and to coordinate the recruitment of assets. The tension lingered until American forces withdrew from Austria in 1955, and West Germany entered NATO in 1956.

The North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950 meant that CIC was not only involved in a Cold War in Europe but faced a real military conflict in Asia. The drawdown of American forces in Japan meant that the first CIC unit deployed to Korea that summer had to be pieced together from the 441st CIC Detachment in Japan. The 442d CIC Detachment operated in Korea for much of the war, but it was absorbed by the 8240th Army Unit, which primarily conducted paramilitary operations behind the lines. Other CIC detachments served in Korea at the division and corps levels.

The CIC underwent a major expansion during the Korean War. The 1950s proved to be CIC's heyday; it enjoyed ample resources and attracted the best and brightest soldiers brought in by a draft-era Army. The expansion of military intelligence units throughout the world and their collection activities in the 1950s also resulted in growing numbers of CIC records--a legacy of great importance to historians.

Published Sources of Information
The Counter Intelligence Corps left a remarkable paper trail. Several works provide the framework to understanding CIC's history, organization, and personalities. Most important, the US Army Intelligence Center published a 30-volume work, The History of the Counter Intelligence Corps, in 1959. Originally a classified publication, it provides a detailed history of the CIC from World War I through the Korean War. The product of several authors and years of research through scattered intelligence records, the official CIC history is the most authoritative account of the CIC's wartime and peacetime activities. A declassified version of the official history is available to researchers at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, Maryland.

Coupled with the official CIC history, the US Forces European Theater (USFET) immediately after the war conducted a survey of Army operations in Europe. Several of the USFET General Board's reports discuss the organization and operations of the CIC and other intelligence units in northwestern Europe in 1944-45. These reports are located at the National Archives and at the Pentagon Library.

In 1998, the US Army Center of Military History published John Patrick Finnegan and Romana Danysh's Military Intelligence in the Army Lineage Series. In addition to the lineage and honors statements of the current Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve military intelligence units, the book contains an excellent history of Army intelligence efforts and organizations from the Army's first days until the late 1990s. The book also contains an extensive bibliography of open source literature dealing with intelligence matters.

Published works that deal specifically with the CIC are rare. Ian Sayer's and Douglas Botling's 1989 book, America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter Intelligence Corps, is an exception. Drawn primarily from the 1959 official CIC history, the authors added some material to the basic story (primarily on postwar CIC operations in Europe) as well as photographs. Otherwise, researchers faces a dearth of new literature on the overall history of the CIC. This may change if a CIC veterans organization completes its project to document the CIC's history.

Perhaps the most interesting of the books on the CIC are those written by the veterans themselves. Ib Melchoir's Case by Case: A U.S. Army Counterintelligence Agent in World War II (Novato: Presidio Press, 1993) recounts the author's immigration to the United States from Denmark, his recruitment into the OSS and transfer to CIC, and his service with the 212th CIC Detachment in Europe. Melchoir describes in vivid detail his wartime activities and the people he encountered along the way. The nuances of World War II counter-
intelligence are readily apparent in these memoirs.

Even more perplexing than the challenges faced by CIC in World War II, the 430th CIC Detachment in Austria encountered a hidden threat--the Soviet Union. Just how the Army struggled to keep Austria safe from the Communists is recounted by James V. Milano and Patrick Brogan in Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line: America's Undeclared War against the Soviets (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1995). Although Colonel (then Major) Milano was not a member of the 430th CIC Detachment and had not served in CIC during the war, he was responsible for the unit's activities from 1945 until 1950. As the chief of the Operations Branch of the G-2, or Intelligence Section, of the headquarters of the United States Forces in Austria, Milano worked closely with the officers and special agents of the 430th CIC Detachment.

The Ratline and Klaus Barbie
Milano coordinated many CIC operations, but he is best known for operating the infamous "rat line." Based on the wartime evacuation of downed Allied airmen in occupied Europe, the rat line smuggled informants and defectors from the Soviet zone in Austria to safety. The CIC expanded this escape route to take these same people from Austria to Italian ports, sending them to safety in South America with false identities paid for by the Army. Utilizing the services of a wily priest in Rome, Father Krunoslav Dragonovic, the CIC in Austria effectively subsidized the Croatian cleric's own clandestine rat line to transport Ustasha war criminals from Europe to Latin America.

Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line fleshes out many of the vignettes in CIC's official history. Writing decades after the events he recounts, Milano shows that real people were forced to make real life decisions in a time of crisis. Some decisions were right, and some proved to be wrong. Milano is quick to note that the rat line in Austria had a specific objective that became subverted after his return to the United States in 1950. More importantly, Milano, after many years of silence, is a key eyewitness to these Cold War intelligence activities.

The arrest and deportation of former German SS officer Klaus Barbie from Bolivia to France in 1983 raised questions as to how the "Butcher of Lyon" escaped justice for so many years. Media speculation turned to the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, which facilitated Barbie's escape from the American zone of Germany through Austria to Italy and then to South America in 1951. The news of Barbie's arrest and his image on American television led to his recognition by one of his former CIC handlers.

Erhard Dabringhaus contacted NBC News and reported that he had worked with Barbie while serving as a CIC officer in Germany in 1948. The news rocked the world, resulting in a major Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation in which the United States government apologized to the French government for its role in sheltering the German war criminal. Dabringhaus later wrote about his role in the affair in Klaus Barbie: The Shocking Story of How the U.S. Used This Nazi War Criminal as an Intelligence Agent (Washington: Acropolis Books, 1984). Like Milano, Dabringhaus recalled his CIC role years afterwards, colored by the knowledge that his actions had affected history for better or worse.

U.S. Government Investigations
The 1983 DOJ investigation, formally known as Klaus Barbie and the United States Government: A Report to the Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, is the first examination of the role that the Counter Intelligence Corps played in postwar Europe. While Allan A. Ryan, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the author of the report, focused primarily on the Army's relationship with Barbie, he also uncovered the extent of the CIC's rat line and its dealings with Father Dragonovic. The Barbie Report and the declassified documents in the Appendix provide a valuable account of CIC's activities in Germany and Austria.

A subsequent OSI report in 1988, Robert Jan Verbelen and the United States Government: A Report to the Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, further amplified CIC's use of Nazi war criminals and collaborators as informants in the years after World War II. The Verbelen Report covered in detail the 430th CIC Detachment's mission and organizational structure in Austria and how it recruited informants during the early Cold War. Like the Barbie Report, the Verbelen Report identifies numerous CIC officers and special agents involved in the case. The OSI reports, together with the official CIC history and the open source literature, provide the historical framework in which the Counter Intelligence Corps operated in the first decade after World War II.

CIC Records
From its formation in 1942 until its consolidation in 1961, the Counter Intelligence Corps produced untold numbers of pages of reports and other correspondence. Today, this documentary record is scattered throughout classified and declassified holdings in numerous agencies of the Federal Government. Two of the agencies, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Investigative Records Repository (IRR) of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), hold the bulk of the surviving CIC records. Researchers, however, should be aware that many CIC records remain in the possession of other US government agencies, primarily those in the Intelligence Community. Likewise, researchers should consider that other repositories of unofficial records, such as the U.S. Army Military History Institute, may contain information about the Counter Intelligence Corps.

National Archives and Records
Administration
NARA's holdings at Archives II in College Park, Maryland are a gold mine for information related to the Counter Intelligence Corps. A partial listing below will provide researchers with clues as to where to search for CIC records or information about CIC generated by other agencies. It should be understood that searching for CIC records is a hit-or-miss process.

  • RG 59 General Records of the Department of State

  • RG 65 Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

  • RG 92 Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General

  • RG 107 Records of the Office of the Secretary of War

  • RG 111 Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer

  • RG 153 Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army)

  • RG 159 Records of the Office of the Inspector General (Army)

  • RG 160 Records of the Army Service Forces

  • RG 165 Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs

  • RG 226 Records of the Office of Strategic Services

  • RG 238 National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records

  • RG 242 National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized

  • RG 260 Records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II

  • RG 263 Records of the Central Intelligence Agency

  • RG 278 Records of the Displaced Persons Commission

  • RG 319 Records of the Army Staff

  • RG 331 Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II

  • RG 332 Records of U.S. Theaters of War, World War II

  • RG 335 Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Army

  • RG 337 Records of the Headquarters Army Ground Forces

  • RG 338 Records of U.S. Army Commands, 1942-

  • RG 373 Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency

  • RG 389 Records of the Office of the Provost Marshal, 1941-

  • RG 407 Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1917-

  • RG 466 Records of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany

As can be seen, no single repository for CIC records exists at the National Archives. Instead, CIC material can be found in numerous record groups without any sense of order. Record Group 319, the Records of the Army Staff, contains the best single collection of CIC records. The Records of the U.S. Army Intelligence Command 1917-73, in RG 319, include a large collection of Counter Intelligence Corps material, including the 1959 official history and information on various CIC detachments. In addition to CIC unit histories and annual reports, RG 319 also has historical material compiled by an individual researcher and former member of CIC, Thomas M. Johnson.

RG 319 contains both classified and declassified material. Under Executive Order 12958, the Army and the National Archives have been processing CIC records for declassification. NARA has some 60 million pages of Army material that need to be reviewed under the 25-year declassification order. Consequently, it is impossible to tell when all of the CIC material will be available to researchers.

In addition to the CIC records at NARA, Record Group 319 also has some 8,000 personal dossiers and 1,000 organizational dossiers from the Investigative Records Repository. Some of this material is already declassified while other dossiers are currently being reviewed. Many of these dossiers were opened by CIC.

Investigative Records Repository
The Investigative Records Repository (IRR) at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, is the controlling agency for all intelligence records compiled by the US Army in support of intelligence and counterintelligence activities. The IRR falls under the direct command of the 310th Military Intelligence Battalion of the 902d Military Intelligence Group at Fort Meade which, in turn, reports to the US Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. INSCOM, formed in 1977 by the merger of the US Army Intelligence Agency and the US Army Security Agency, is the Army's chief intelligence organization. The IRR provides daily support to Army intelligence units throughout the world and other intelligence agencies as needed. It is neither an archive nor a research facility, nor does it have the personnel or expertise to handle research requests from the public (with the exception of Freedom of Information Act or Privacy Act requests).

While the IRR has several sources for its records (including ongoing Army security investigations), the Army's CIC records are found primarily in three file series and in the Central Registry. The file series (Foreign Personnel and Organization files, Intelligence/Counterintelligence files, and Counterintelligence/Security Investigations) contain the bulk of the CIC investigative records. The Central Registry, established by the 970th CIC Detachment in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1946, contains an index to CIC records on persons and incidents in Europe as well as a few Far Eastern countries and the United States. Returned to the United States in 1968, the Central Registry has about 4.7 million personal index cards as well as 100,000 topics and subjects in the Impersonal Index, and more than one million files on individuals, groups, or organizations. The vast majority of the CIC records were microfilmed in the 1950s and 1960s on some 10,000 reels of microfilm, which were returned to the United States with the Central Registry. The microfilm is organized into eight different series.

Under the auspices of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (NWCDA), the IRR is electronically scanning all of the microfilm (which is deteriorating with the passage of time) to expedite the tracing of individuals and to identify records for review and declassification. The IRR transfers to NARA its declassified files, including many personal and impersonal dossiers. The Army expects to finish the scanning of its microfilm records by the end of this year so as to meet the deadlines for review and declassification specified under the Act. While the NWCDA review will not declassify all CIC records at the IRR, the Army is taking a serious look at all its historical holdings from the CIC period for the first time in decades.

Kevin C. Ruffner,
CIA History Staff

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Publications Staff Notes

Special 45th Anniversary Edition of Studies in Intelligence
The Center for the Study of Intelligence will publish a special anniversary edition of Studies in Intelligence this fall to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the journal, which first appeared in 1955. The issue will feature articles from each five-year period from 1955 to the present, reproduced in there entirety.

To Request Publications
To request unclassified publications, send a fax to (703) 613-3050 labeled "Publications Request." Please be aware, however, that due to budget concerns, we encourage readers to access the Internet or our internal databases to obtain publications. (CSI's Internet URL is: http://www.cia.gov/csi)

Mailing List
CSI does not maintain an automatic mailing list for publications, only a subscription list for the classified and unclassified editions of Studies. All other publications are distributed only by request, subject to availability and work-related need.

Inventory and the Web sites
CSI's homepages on the Internet and internal sites have been redesigned and updated for easier access. Under Publications, you will find a list of all available CSI publications. A hotlink will indicate if the publication is on line. We are committed to making all listed publications available electronically. We have recently posted the following older publications not previously available electronically (listed on the homepage under the year in which they were published):

  • CORONA: America's First Satellite Program

  • A Cold War Conundrum: The Soviet War Scare of 1983

  • The Chinese Media: An EIAP Monograph

  • Unclassified editions of Studies in Intelligence for 1992, 1994, and 1995 (there was no unclassified issue in 1993)

Certain publications are in extremely short supply or are out of print and must be obtained via the web site. Those currently scheduled for reprinting are listed below; additions are subject to sufficient demand. The publications are:

  • CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers

  • Getting to Know the President: CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates - will be reprinted or updated in 2001

  • CIA Assessments of the Soviet Union: The Record Versus the Charges

  • Global Humanitarian Emergencies

  • INF Deployment

  • VENONA

  • Of Moles and Molehunters

Publications Officer

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Exhibit Center Notes

The Cold War: Fifty Years of Silent Conflict
This exhibit is the Central Intelligence Agency's star attraction. Originally organized as a temporary display of espionage paraphernalia and spy gear in conjunction with the Agency's 50th anniversary in 1997, it has become a permanent fixture. This much-visited display was made possible by a loan from collector and intelligence historian H. Keith Melton. With more than 6,000 items, his is the largest collection of its kind in the world. (The exhibit is not open to the public, although tours can be arranged through the CIA Office of Public Affairs.)

Inspired by Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech, the entrance to the exhibit is flanked with wire and cement reminiscent of the Berlin Wall. As visitors stroll through the corridor, they see that the Wall begins to crack and then fall away, until it is completely open by the end of the tour.

The broad collection includes a variety of espionage artifacts from American and Allied intelligence services as well as adversary services such as the KGB and the East German Stasi. The exhibit is organized chronologically and thematically. The first part is devoted to the CIA's World War II heritage and features equipment used by Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WWII. There is the British Welbike, a kind of mini-motorbike that was delivered in a parachute container to SOE operatives fighting behind enemy lines. The Welbike could be assembled in ten seconds; it had a top speed of 30 mph and a range of 90 miles on a tank of gas.

The OSS section includes special explosives and devices for camouflaging them; several secret cameras, including a matchbox-size Camera-X; compasses hidden in buttons; weapons such as the 45-caliber Liberator pistol supplied to Resistance fighters; and personal memorabilia. The Cold War section displays ingenious specialized cameras, audio transmitters and bugs, and surreptitious-entry tools. From camera lenses concealed behind buttons and belt buckles, to a cigarette lighter that conceals an audio device, the exhibit moves into the late Cold War with sophisticated concealment and microdot equipment, advanced communications gear, and counterintelligence devices. Seemingly ordinary items frequently conceal clever clandestine technology. For example, there is a "walnut" taken from a Soviet agent arrested in West Germany that he used to conceal his ciphers. Another more lethal item is a 4.5mm single-shot "lipstick" pistol the KGB manufactured and gave to an East German spy who was arrested while trying to enter West Berlin.

Over the next few months, CSI Curator Toni Hiley and collector/historian Keith Melton will collaborate on expanding the exhibit. They will showcase more items from Melton's unique collection, including a special trunk used by a foreign intelligence service to transport a suspected double agent it intended to kidnap. The exhibit also will include more information on the historical and operational context of the displayed artifacts. All in all, it will continue to serve as a reminder that the Cold War spanned "fifty years of silent conflict," that fortunately never turned into a "hot" war.

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Intrepid Comes to CIA
On 2 May 2000 CIA Executive Director David W. Carey, representing DCI George Tenet and DDCI John Gordon, accepted a replica statute of Sir William Stephenson (1896-1989) given to CIA by the Intrepid Society of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The society was founded in 1994 to honor the memory of the Canadian-born Stephenson, who headed British Security Coordination, the UK liaison office headquartered in New York during World War II. Stephenson's codename was Intrepid.

Society members who were present for the ceremony included Col. Gary Chris Solar; Mr. John Gordon Makie, who in 1942 served with the Combined Operations Force--Commando Unit under Intrepid and Lord Mountbatten; Capt. Michael Rozak, Royal Canadian Air Force, and Dr. Collin Briggs, the Society's historian.

After accepting the statute, Carey noted that:

Sir William Stephenson played a key role in the creation of the CIA. He realized early on that America needed a strong intelligence organization and lobbied contacts close to President Roosevelt to appoint a US "coordinator" to oversee FBI and military intelligence. He urged that the job be given to William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, who had recently toured British defenses and gained the confidence of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Although Roosevelt didn't establish exactly what Sir William had in mind, the organization created represented a revolutionary step in the history of American intelligence. Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first "central" US intelligence service. OSS worked closely with and learned from Sir William and other Canadian and British officials during the war. A little later, these OSS officers formed the core of the CIA. Intrepid may not have technically been the father of CIA, but he's certainly in our lineage someplace.

In 1946, General Donovan presented Stephenson the Medal for Merit, America's highest civilian award. He was the first non-US citizen to receive the medal. The citation paid tribute to his "invaluable assistance to America in the fields of intelligence and special operations".

The original statue on which the replica is based shows Sir William in military aviation garb. (He was in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and was credited with shooting down 27 enemy aircraft. After the war, he manufactured and raced airplanes.) H.R.H. Princess Anne unveiled the original statue on 24 July 1999 in the presence of the artist, world renowned-sculptor Dr. Leo Mol, and Intrepid Society president Syd Davy. Mol (Leonid Molodoshanin) is a Ukrainian-Canadian sculptor whose works in the Washington, DC area include the Taras Shevchenko monument on P Street, NW, and a bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower at the National Portrait Gallery.

The 22-inch-high maquette of Sir William Stephenson will be given a place of honor in the entryway of CIA's New Headquarters Building.

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The Free Thai Movement--An Exhibit of Historic Photographs and Memorabilia from Thailand's Liberation
On 8 May 2000, DCI George Tenet, OSS veterans, and distinguished guests from Thailand, including the newly arrived Thai ambassador, gathered at CIA Headquarters to honor five courageous Free Thai volunteers who took part in their country's independence struggle during World War II. The honorees were among 43 American Free Thai volunteers who suspended their studies at American universities to return to home and fight against foreign domination.

In 1942, Thailand's Ambassador to the US, Minister Seni Pramoj, defied orders from his government to declare war on the US and instead launched a bold plan for his country's liberation from Japan. Under his guiding hand, and with the cooperation of William J. Donovan's fledgling Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Free Thai Movement was born. Recruited from among college students across the United States, the Free Thai were among Thailand's best and brightest. After OSS training, they were infiltrated into Thailand by submarine, seaplane, and airdrop. Some walked overland from China. The first volunteers were all captured or killed, but on 5 October 1944, the OSS Detachment in Szemao, China, received a radio message from Free Thai agents who had successfully made contact with resistance forces inside the country. The Free Thai provided the resistance with intelligence on Japanese military positions, helped rescue scores of captured Allied soldiers, and prepared the ground for the eventual Japanese surrender and the independence of Thailand.

After the war, they returned to their studies. Many later became leaders in government, the armed forces, or private industry. On 12 March 2000, an exhibit of wartime photographs and memorabilia opened at the US Ambassador's residence in Bangkok. The Free Thai have presented this collection as a permanent gift to the CIA Museum, where it will be displayed as a tribute to the patriotism, service, and sacrifice of the Thai people and a testament to the friendship between the US and Thailand.

The exhibit includes medals presented to Donovan by the Thai Government while Donovan was the US ambassador there in 1953-54. The medals include the most prestigious of Thai orders--The Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant--as well as King Bhumibol Adulyadej's Royal Cipher Medal.

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Goodbye Comrade: An Exhibition of Images from the Revolutions of 1989
This exhibit combines a twist of fate with a bit of irony. Posters played an important role in the Soviet Union from the Bolshevik Revolution until the collapse of Communism. In the words of one expert, posters were the "iconography of power." The "Goodbye Comrade" posters, created after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, served as a rebuke to the Communist system. Many of the artists who created these 45 posters were dissidents whose works express the joys as well as the uncertainties of liberation, sometimes in controversial and unsettling ways. They cover once-taboo themes such as Communist party corruption, rights of ethnic minorities, refurbished national symbols, the departure of Soviet occupation forces, and newly found freedom in art, literature, and politics.

The Gelman Library Special Collections Department at George Washington University assembled this exhibit in 1999. CIA displayed the loaned collection in February-March 2000.

Toni Hiley,
Curator, Exhibit Center

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Footnotes

1 In 1943, the US Army began trying to decipher Soviet overseas cable traffic. Cables from Soviet representatives in the US to Moscow were enciphered using "one-time" pads. Under normal circumstances such cables would have been indecipherable, but, due to wartime exigencies, Moscow used some of the same pads twice, enabling the Army to make its first breakthrough by 1946. Ironically, the first decrypted message dealt with Soviet atomic espionage. The program continued under the National Security Agency (NSA) until 1980. In 1995-1996, NSA released some 5,000 pages of Venona decrypts consisting of about 2,900 messages.

2 Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957 (Washington: National Security Agency/Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), p. xxiv. Hiss was a senior State Department official and presidential adviser during the 1945 Yalta summit meeting in the USSR. White was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during World War II. In 1946, President Truman nominated him to be the first executive director of the International Monetary Fund.

3 See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 69-74.

4 The FBI memorandum was reproduced, in redacted form, as Figure 1 in ibid., p. 73.

5 See Secrecy & Government Bulletin 77, Federation of American Scientists (March 1999).

6 Bentley had been a courier for one of several Soviet spy rings operating in the Washington area and was cooperating with the FBI.

7 Chambers also had been a courier and active Soviet agent in the 1930s before he broke with Moscow and revealed what he knew about Soviet espionage before and after World War II. He is best known for having fingered Alger Hiss as a spy, an accusation that eventually led to Hiss's conviction and imprisonment for perjury.

8 See Lev Bezymensky, Operatsiya <<Mif << ili skol'ko raz khoronili gitlera? (Moscow: Mezhdynarodniye Otnosheniya, 1995). See also "Hitlers Höllenfahrt," Der Spiegel, 14 and 21 April 1995, pp. 170-187 and 172-186.

9 Lev Bezemensky, The Death of Adolph Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968).

10 Peter Watson and Ada Petrova, The Death of Hitler (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1995).

11 Soon thereafter, Stalin recalled Zhukov to Moscow and then consigned him to obscurity. There are rumors that Stalin was prepared to charge the marshal with stealing gold and art in occupied Germany. Another popular figure who had stated publicly that he believed Hitler was dead was Col.-Gen. Nikolai Bezarin, the military commander of Berlin. He was killed in a mysterious motorcycle crash in June 1945.

12 The most comprehensive and balanced account of Hitler's end is Anton Joachimsthaler, The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth (London: Arms and Armour, 1996).

13 See, for example, R. C. Raack, "With Smersh in Berlin: New Light on the Incomplete Histories of the Führer and the Vozhd'," World Affairs 154:2 (Fall 1991), pp. 47-55.

14 The various autopsy reports are reprinted in Bezymensky, The Death of Adolph Hitler, pp. 85ff.

15 See Timothy W. Ryback, "Hitler's Lost Family," New Yorker, 17 July 2000, pp. 46-57.

16 Abwehr is a bit of a misnomer. It literally means counterintelligence or counterespionage. The organization dated from 1920, when, under the Versailles Treaty, Germany's army was restricted in size and mission to defensive operations, and its military intelligence service was limited to counterintelligence and counterespionage missions. In fact, from the outset the Abwehr engaged in intelligence collection, using agents and technical methods to spy on international arms control inspectors, among others. The Abwehr later became the Amt Ausland [Foreign Office], but it was still popularly known by its original name.

17 They were slowly hanged with piano wire while suspended from meat hooks. Canaris actually survived the first attempt and had to be hanged a second time. His execution as well as those of other key plotters were filmed so that Hitler could view the executions.

18 See Peter Day and Andrew Alderson, "Top German's Spy Blunders Helped Britain to Win War," Sunday Telegraph, 23 April 2000, p. 5.

19 The bombsights were removed from the aircraft after each mission. Bombardiers entrusted with the Norden device had to sign an agreement pledging to protect it at all costs and keep it from falling into enemy hands, even if that meant sacrificing their own lives. Ironically, the Norden bombsight had been compromised long before the United States entered World War II.

20 Nikolaus Ritter, Deckname Dr. Rantzau: Die Aufzeichnungen des Nikolaus Ritter, Offizier im Geheimen Nachrichtendienst (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1972).

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