Stephen Barrett Tanner Quotes
people with fascist backgrounds trying to save their careers by becoming useful to the Americans. [The non-Russians] hated the Russians violently…. Their main goal was to convince the U. S. Government of their importance and their ability to help the U. S. Government so they would get support in one way or another
The potential spies I interviewed after WWII were He was one of the earliest employees of the CIA. He was assigned to interview all the characters from Eastern Europe in including Russia who were offering their services to the Americans to spy on the Russians whose troops and puppet communist governments were controlling most of the area. Unfortunately, most of these volunteers were just trying to save their skins or settle scores and had served the Nazis and often committed murder and other war crimes themselves. None the less, the CIA used many of them. See {635149}.
Stephen Barrett Tanner, CIA Agent & Official, Military Historian, Quoted in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Gehlen’s war crimes and knowledge thereof were overlooked setting a precedent for even allowing German and Japanese major war criminals into the United States. In those days, most men of substance belonged to one or more private clubs which was a important element of their social and professional lives. People of unsavory character were not welcome at such clubs.
Dulles had little regard for the immorality of using Nazis as agents including major war criminals—even when it was against U. S. law and policy. The CIA continued to be insensitive and over the years employed some of the worst right wing murders and war criminals, The “precedent” was set after WWII by Dulles. See also {633240}.
Donovan had been criticized for utilizing "leftists" for intelligence activities. Precursor to CIA. Donavan was a prominant attorney, banker and financier as well as a Medal of Honor Winner when he was asked to organzie the OSS. America was far behind the axis and even our allies in spy craft. J Edgar Hoover focused the FBI on leftists and had veritually no capability for spying in Western Europe and Asia. Donavan's OSS produced almost all of the actionable intelligence and did a wonderful job in organziaing covert operations. He used people who would normally never be considered by an espionage agency including many scholars, intellectuals, scientists, and entertainers. His agents ranged from Julia Child, the gourmet chef. to Moe Berg, a New York Yankee Baseball Player who spoke many languages. Hoover and some if the military intelligence agencies were jealous of his success and his access to President Roosevelt, and complained about anything they could find and hisi agents were an easy target for their wealth, societal connections, sexual indescretions, liberal politics, Bohemians, upper class right wing politics and culture. None of thus phased Donavan. After the war and FDR's death, Donavan's enemies got the OSS disbanded. Soon, something was needed, and the CIA was organized along the lines of Donavan's recommendations.
Mykola Lebed was of inestimable value to this agency…. He assisted in operations of great importance
This is a noteworthy quotation as it shows the nasty side of American intelligence activity in the aftermath of WWII. Mykola Lebed, 1909-1998 was a Ukrainian Nationalist war criminal working with the Nazis who was responsible for the murder and ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, He was convicted, and imprisoned for the murder, in 1936, of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki but was released when the Nazis occupied Poland. However, he was anti-Russian and our CIA enlisd his “services” to spy on the Soviets in the Ukraine. Then in 1949 he emigrated to the United States. As a war criminal, the law required that he be sent back to Europe, but this letter from the CIA Director “persuaded” the immigration authorities to not only allow him into the country, but the CIA paid him and he lived until in New York City until his death. There was no legal basis for his entry into the United States but the arrangements were made in secret. Polish patriots who had greatly assisted the Allies in fighting the Germans in WWII with great losses, did not even know that the war criminal that had tortured and murdered so many Poles was not only alive and well and living in New York, but was being paid by the United States government. The issue of what criteria are used for American intelligence agencies to use agents and what “rewards” can be given has been in controversy ever since. In one case in the late 20th century, the CIA actually employed an agent in South America who murdered and raped American nuns doing humanitarian work. The argument on the other side is that for espionage one wants terrible people with no moral compunctions as they make good agents. The question has always been at what moral cost and does a sociopath really make a good agent. See {633239}.
The CIA, like most intelligence services, attract some unusual and abnormal people who in many settings might be considered mentally unbalanced or sociopathic. Many intelligence service operatives are often recruited for some of these qualities. This is always a risk for the agency both from the potential scandal such as when the Central Intelligence Agency utilized war criminals at the end of the Second World War and the unbalanced agent going off on his own. Pope flew unopposed Central Intelligence Agency armed planes over communist controlled Northeastern Indonesia, attacking both military and civilian targets. He was captured and although sentenced to death, spent 4 years in jail before his release was negotiated while the United States government denied that we had anything to do with the death and destruction that the CIA planes produced.
This fact was one of the reasons that McCarthyism and HUAC were able to get traction. The Red Scare paranoids found something to really worry about. They overreacted, sensing the problem not as one of a large number of misguided and naïve people trying to help America do better, but as active spies controlled by the Kremlin who wanted to destroy the American way of life. There were two basic reasons these naïve officials acted that way. Many of them had not forgotten the devastation of the American people in the Great Depression and believed that capitalism had almost failed completely and the rough edge had to be taken off American capitalism by injecting some socialist principles such as stronger labor unions, ending racial and religious discrimination, controlling monopolies, and regulating critical industries. They also were mindful of the fact that the Russians were bearing the brunt of the WWII casualties—military and civilian—while killing more of the Germans and capturing more German occupied territory than the other allies together, yet they were not receiving the same level of assistance—technical, intelligence, economic and political as the British. They saw helping the Russians as saving American lives on the battlefield by making them more effective and keeping German soldiers and weapons away from the Western front and Americans. They also remembered that many in Congress were opposed to our entering WWII in Europe until Germany declared war on America. They had in many cases been apologists for Fascism and passionate enemies of communism. Some American industrialists like Henry Ford were anti-Semitic and overt admirers of Hitler. {586985} So these officials tried to redress the imbalance that existed while at the same time little was really known about Soviet Russia and the Stalin excesses that were as bad as some of Hitler’s. {634969} The only information Americans had were the terrible casualties the Russians were taking and the in kind that they were dishing out to the Germans. The number of Soviet spies in America were few and commensurate with the number of agents we had in Russia. But few Americans realized the difficulty the U. S. and the rest of the democratic world would have with Russia after the war was won.
Ford was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler who thought Ford was the greatest of the Americans. He was an inveterate Fascist—racism and all. He vehemently opposed United States entry into WWII against the Nazis. He was awarded a medal by Hitler, and he had no qualms about taking it.
The inoming President was meeting with and getting briefed by the Director of National Intelligenc, James Clapper and this is the word he used to descrive the American Intelligence Agencies.
He had abdicated and was serving as the Governor of the Bahamas at the time. While the public was given the reason for has abdication as his love for a divorced woman, his pro Nazi viewpoints which were not publicly known in England, made him unacceptable and his treason a danger to England at war with Nazi Germany.
The PBSUCCESS unit was attempting to thwart the Communist movements in Guatemala.
Although the U. S. denied propaganda and dirty tricks efforts interfering in the internal affairs of South American Countries, this memo proves that there were some instances of just that.
Kellis was the first of the Central Intelligence Agency whistle blowers. The President acted promptly on the letter and appointed General Jimmy Doolittle to conduct an investigation which confirmed the Kellis letter.
The Professor was explaining the explanation of the so-called “Frankfurt School” of WWII policy advisors Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer.
The 1st the CIA ever had. Popov was, in the 1950s, considered the CIA’s most valuable agent. He was motivated by deeply felt anger at Soviet exploitation of Russian peasants, including his family. He was caught and executed by Russian authorities in 1960. The quotation illustrates just how simple was his initial communication for spying.
The allies—mostly under American Pressure—only tried the highest ranking Nazi war criminals. Many wanted to try the rest, but they did not prevail. Lord Russell, the English prosecutor at Nuremburg resigned in protest as he had case files on over 100,000 Nazi war criminals who were never prosecuted. The main object was to use those officials to establish a strong anti-Communist government in post war Germany.
This was the point of view that was adopted by the Western Allies about the German Nazis and collaborators in the other European nations. However, not everyone agreed at the time with this policy. Lord Russell, the British Nuremburg Prosecutor resigned over this policy. He had case files against over 100,000 Nazi’s who had committed war crimes that he was not allowed to pursue. There was one Western county that did not follow this policy—Norway. They actually tried, convicted and jailed 10 percent of their entire population for collaboration. Their rehabilitation was just fine without the services of these criminals and they became the richest per capita country in the West including the U.S. The issue will be debated by historians of each generation.
Johnson tasked Clark with finding out what the FBI knew of this story. The story was true. Worse, the CIA had hired members of the Mafia to do the assassination. (The Mafia resented Castro as he ended the Gambling Mecca that Cuba had been when his revolution succeeded. Before the Castro revolution, he Mafia got a “piece” of the profits from each Cuban casino for “protection.”) It might have been that the Kennedy Assassination was retaliation by Castro. However, the CIA withheld this from the Warren Commission and Robert Kennedy never revealed it even though he was a member of the Commission and the Commission had security clearance. See {637465}.
This was a big factor that made the Red Scare so damaging.
