Word: gehlen
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Throughout the world last week, secret agents were on the move-many of them in the direction of jail. The U.S. had just rounded up its Fourth of July catch; West Germany was trying three spies who had penetrated its supposedly impenetrable Gehlen intelligence organization (see following story); and Britain had two spy thrillers running concurrently...
...career officer in the Wehrmacht, Gehlen had charge of intelligence on the bloody Eastern front. Late in 1944 he reported that the Russians were planning a huge winter offensive, accurately predicted that it would crush the Nazis' Eastern armies. Hitler raged that Gehlen's report was "the greatest bluff since Genghis Khan," shouted that he should be sent to a lunatic asylum. Replied Chief of Staff Heinz Guderian: "Then send me there with...
...Allies closed in, Gehlen looked to the future. Deciding that the U.S. and Russia would be the next antagonists, he selected 50 cases of important documents from his files, hid them in Bavaria. Then he ordered 30 key officers of his staff to go underground and wait for word from him. He himself holed up in a mountain chalet, and several weeks later marched down, surrendered himself to U.S. authorities...
...same time, he made them a proposition: he would make his hidden files and his staff men available to provide intelligence on the Soviet Union. The U.S. agreed, set up Gehlen and his men in a closely guarded compound outside Frankfurt. Exactly what Gehlen and his men did during the following years is still closely veiled, but a U.S. official says: "They were mostly useful in squelching various alarms; they knew a lot more about the Russians than anyone...
Sliding Doors. After West Germany became a sovereign state in 1955, the new government took over Gehlen's operation. For the past 13 years Gehlen has been established in the village of Pullach, some five miles from Munich, in a tree-shaded compound on the banks of the Isar River. Surrounded by a 10-ft. concrete wall, the compound looks like a housing development, with neat lawns and flower beds, lace-curtained villas and administration buildings. At each entrance are electrically operated sliding doors of steel mesh, with sentry boxes manned by armed and uniformed guards. Gehlen...