Douglas - The CIA Covenant-Nazis in Washington - preterhuman.net

Historical BackgroundLiving comfortably in Switzerland under the name of Schwartzer after the end of the SecondWorld War, as an intelligence resource of the Swiss government, Heinrich Müller was contacted in 1948by his onetime deputy in the Gestapo, SS-Oberführer Willi Krichbaum. Krichbaum, a long-time personalacquaintance of Müller, had been a senior Gestapo official in the Southeastern Grenz-Polizei or BorderPolice and had headed the Geheime Feld Polizei, the investigative body of the Abwehr since September of1939.After the war, Krichbaum had been recruited by former Major General Reinhard Gehlen and in1946 was Gehlen’s chief agent recruiter stationed in Bad Reichenhall. Krichbaum was responsible forlocating former Gestapo and SD agents and securing positions for them inside the Gehlen Organization.This organization, located at the former Nazi official complex at Pullach southeast of Munich,became affiliated with the CIA when that organization was officially founded in 1948. According toMüller’s papers, Krichbaum had been in touch with his former chief through ex-Gestapo personnel livingin Switzerland and opened discussions with the Americans about the possibility of employing Müller.The head of this organization, Lt Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA, had heard rumors that thehead of the Gestapo had fled to Switzerland and was working with Swiss intelligence. Through the servicesof former SS-Oberführer Krichbaum, Critchfield made contact with Müller in early 1948.During the course of that year, a number of CIA luminaries, including Alan Welch Dulles, alterhead of the CIA and Frank Gardner Wisner, later head of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations, were in Italyalong with James Jesus Angleton to disrupt the Italian general elections. Dulles had known Müllw duringthe war when the former was OSS station chief in Bern, Switzerland.Because of Müller’s knowledge and expertise in matters concerning Soviet intelligence, backedwith archival material that the former head of the Gestapo had hidden in Berlin and Switzerland, the CIAexpressed an immediate and intense interest in recruiting Müller. Krichbaum acted as a go-between in thenegotiations with his former superior who was chafing at his comfortable but boring retirement and theCIA controlled Gehlen Organization under Colonel James Critchfield. 6It was never a question of the Americans threatening Müller with exposure if he did notcooperate, but more a question if Müller was willing to work for a former enemy. In the event, because ofhis detestation of communism and the perceived opportunity to do further damage to this system, Müllerhad little difficulty in working for American intelligence.6 “The American Army even recruited and evacuated the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller. Toprevent later accusations that the United States government was employing the notorious Mueller, theAmericans used Gehlen’s organization to finance his work.” Trento, Joseph, “The Secret History of theCIA” New York, 2001, p29.