The CIA, the Nazis and the Bankrupting of American Intelligence

Surely one of the most shocking misbehaviors of American intelligence services after World War II dates right to the beginnings of the CIA: the secret protection of literally thousands of Nazi war criminals by US intelligence organizations in the name of a resurgent explosion of irrational hatred of Communism.  In Operation Paperclip alone, 1500 German "scientists" and other war criminals were brought to the United States:

"One purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge to the Soviet Union...To circumvent President Truman's anti-Nazi order and the Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOA worked independently to create false employment and political biographies for the scientists. The JIOA also expunged from the public record the scientists' Nazi Party memberships and régime affiliations. Once "bleached" of their Nazism, the scientists were granted security clearances by the U.S. government to work in the United States."

This is hardly the only action of this type.  It is instructive to consider the Gehlen affair:

"Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was an officer in the German Wehrmacht during World War II, reaching the rank of Major General...Starting in 1942 he served as chief of Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), the German Army's military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front. During the emerging phases of the Cold War, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union (known as the Gehlen Organization) which employed numerous former SS, SD and Wehrmacht officers...Gehlen had always been under the sponsorship of US Army G-2 (intelligence), but he eventually succeeded in realizing his ambition of establishing an association with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), established in 1947. The CIA kept close tabs on the Gehlen group. For many years during the Cold War, Org agents were the only eyes and ears of the CIA on the ground in the Soviet Bloc nations. 

Every German POW returning from Soviet captivity to West Germany, between 1947 and 1955, was interviewed by Org agents. The Gehlen Org employed hundreds of ex-Nazi members..."

 Reinhard Gehlen, when he was still working for his former employers

Let me make it clear what happened here.  As World War II wound down, American military contractors were deathly afraid that decreased arms purchases would cut into their profits, so they and their political allies began to ratchet up a tsunami of paranoia about the supposed threat of Communism.  It was clear by the late 1950's that much of this was propaganda without any justification (thus Eisenhower's warning about the "military industrial complex" at the end of his term) and much of that propaganda was generated by the CIA.

The resultant widespread collaboration of the CIA with high ranking Nazi officials who participated in the greatest war crimes in the history of the world was a moral crime beyond equal in the history of this country.  The perpetrators of this crime, Allen Dulles, Wild Bill Donovan, et. al. could only justify this malignant behavior to themselves by creating a myth that the Soviet Union represented a far greater threat to us than the narrowly averted world conquest by the Nazis, and the consequent deaths of fifty million.  Thus, the primary task of the CIA from its very inception was not to seek out intelligence, but to fabricate it to suit a horrible predetermined narrative.  From that beginning the CIA has not been a fact finding organization, but a lie factory.

Wild Bill Donovan

And sad to say, this action, at the very birth of the CIA, set the character of American intelligence services from that time forward.  To be blunt, they were built not to provide information on which the government can rely, but rather to create fictions which allow right wing schemes that benefit the rich to be pursued.  This is the reason that American intelligence services have been wrong about virtually everything since World War II- Vietnam, Iraq and Iran, Central America- they do not exist to find the truth, but to spread lies.  This is the inevitable poison fruit of collaborating with the likes of Reinhard Gehlen and Wehrner von Braun, and it is the reason that I have believed since the Vietnam war that this country will never set itself on the right course until the CIA is eliminated, and replaced with something dedicated to finding the truth instead of perpetually leading the country into foreign adventures that are doomed to fail because they are built on a malignant fantasy.


Note:  I have linked to Wikipedia articles about the chief people I have mentioned here, for the convenience of those who would like to learn a little more about them.  In my opinion, these articles are far too kind to these guys, so take what they say with a grain of salt.  And don't even get me started on Allen Dulles.   These were very evil people and the passing of sixty years has not changed that.