WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE $500,000 REWARD! REINHARD GEHLEN, ALIAS 'DER DOKTOR'

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 02752850
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: June 30, 2025
• Document Release Date: June 30, 2025
• Publication Date: November 1, 1961

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�atberi
WANTECi
$50,16RRNEARD!
REINHARD GEHLEN,
ALIAS "DER DOKTOR"
This man, the CIA's top secret agent in
Europe, has caused the Reds untold
damage and embarrassment. They'll do
anything to get their hands on
THE MOST
DANGEROUS SPY
IN THE WORLD
ARGOSY/NOVEMBER, 1961,
/
ic Gar
X
continued
on
following
page
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THE MOST DANGEROUS SPY
On a warm mid-June morning in 1960, a
dusty Mercedes limousine escorted by six mo-
torcycle police roared through the main gate
of Frankfurt's airport and braked to a stop
beside a waiting airliner. From the auto
squeezed the stocky, cigar-smoking defense
minister of West Germany, followed by four
gray-clad members of his staff. His destina-
tion was Washington, D. C., and the Pentagon,
and his mission was to discuss what then was
inevitable to diplomatic and military leaders
of the western alliance�a new snowballing
Berlin crisis.
As Herr Franz Josef Strauss paused be-
side his limousine, he mentally recapped sev-
eral world-shaking events of the preceding six
weeks that placed him beside a plane destined
for the United States. It all began on May Day
when a Red Army anti-aircraft unit stationed
deep inside Russia celebrated the traditional
communist labor day by blasting out of the
Soviet Union's wild blue yonder a U-2 spy
plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. In the
wake of the U-2 "incident," a Big Four sum-
mit conference also was shot down along with
America's high-flying secret agent, and tubby
Nikita Khrushchev, the Kremlin's bellicose
soap-box orator, began mouthing a series of
threats that began in Paris and continued
months later with an unprecedented historic
shoe-thumping session at the United Nations
in New York, right up to the threat of war
today.
These repercussions weighed heavily on the
portly West German defense official, but he
shook off his somber thoughts and began walk-
ing toward his plane. Then a group of news-
men suddenly swarmed around him and
hemmed in his staff, hammering the minister
with questions. He deftly fielded a question
from an American correspondent who jokingly
asked if he planned to buy a U-2 while he was
in Washington.
"What would we do with it?" Strauss
shrugged in mock (Continued on page 0
PHOTOGRAPHED BY WIL BLANCHE
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published by the Flanders Filter Company,
relating to survival in air-raid shelters,
seems to indicate strongly that men might
have survived for a considerable period
inside the submerged chamber�if they got
the petcocks shut. "A sitting adult," says
the Flanders report, "consumes only 0.0114
cubic feet of oxygen per minute. As air
normally contains twenty-one per cent
oxygen, this*amount is equivalent to .0543
cubic feet Of fresh air per person, per
minute."
Flanders sums up, "In fact, one need
not fear asphyxiation- even if ventilation is
omitted for several hours, since the effect
of a progressive decrease in oxygen of the
air does not become marked until it has
fallen to thirteen per cent, and the air in a
336-cubic-foot shelter will support six peo-
ple for seven hours while the oxygen con-
tent decreases from twenty-one to thirteen
per cent."
Three hundred and thirty-six cubic feet
is the volume Flanders assumes for a small
civil-defense shelter. The volume of a
recompression chamber is roughly the same.
So it may well have been possible for the
five divers to have remained alive on the
bottom for some time if they remained at
rest. If only one diver got into the cham-
ber, he could have remained alive much
longer. The only way this mystery will be
solved, probably, is for somebody to re-
cover the chamber and look inside.
Wives and relatives of the twenty-eight
men who perished on Texas Tower Num-
ber Four are, however, now taking a seri-
ous hand in the aftermath of the disaster.
Law suits totalling millions of dollars have
been started by a number of people against
the organizations they feel are responsible
for the loss of their loved ones. The Air
Force has been carrying on court-martial
proceedings against officers in the com-
mand who might have been negligent or
derelict in their duties. ARGOSY cannot re-
port the findings in either the civil or mili-
tary cases, at this time, since both are
still in progress.
The findings of the Congressional Com-
mittee, however, have been published and
are herewith summarized in part:
(1) "A substantial portion of the re-
sponsibility for the defects, deficiencies and
inadequacies in the design and construc-
tion, and in some cases in the repair, of
Texas Tower Number Four rests squarely
upon the Bureau of Yards and Docks of the
Department of the Navy."
( 2) "The Air Force is chargeable with
the responsibility for the safety and well-
being of the personnel on board the tower,
both civilian and military, and must accept
a substantial portion of the blame for the
loss of the twenty-eight persons on board
at the time of the collapse in failing to
order a timely evacuation of the tower."
Tese fikdings are certainly clear-cut.
It is ea � to exercise twenty-twenty
vision when ng hindsight, and Ancosx
is attempting to port, not to evaluate in
any way. One thi we believe everyone
will agree to. Texas ower Number Four
had more troubles than ob. She collapsed
because of dozens of rea ns. They kept
adding up, over a period o ears, and the
ocean worried the tower e second
with random motions. After rea ng the
288-page play-by-play description iN.the
document "Inquiry Into :the Collapse of
Texas Tower No. 4," an impartial observer
may well draw the conclusion that this was
a tragedy nobody was sOlely responsible
for. Everybody involved seems to have
tried pretty hard to do a good job�the de-
signers, the builders, the Navy, the USAF,
the divers. The thing was this: TT4 stood in
185 feet of water. She soaked up a hell of
a beating over a long period. She finally
just couldn't take it any longer and she
went down.
However, one final paragraph in the
Congressional Committee findings does
seem really important at this point. When
TT4 fell, the services decided not to re-
place it. Here's what the committee said
about that: "The decision not to replace
Tower No. 4 with a structure performing
a like function raises serious doubt as to
whether Tower No. 4 was indeed an opera-
tion requirement of the service at the time
of its collapse. The continued need for
maintaining the operation of Towers Nos. 2
and 3 ( the two still out there) is a decision
calling for the exercise of military judg-
ment over which the subcommittee is not
superimposing its own judgment."
Indeed, it does seem that these quotes
give food for thought. ARGOSY, during re-
search in Boston, was informed unofficially
that legs for a new Texas tower were being
fabricated there even now. We could not
verify this rumor. It may be false. But in
the light of Soviet airplane and missile
capability, such a venture�which is very
expensive�would certainly seem worthy of
review. None of these towers are useful
against ICBMs�and this is a threat which
will steadily increase. And Uncle Sam
doesn't have a bottomless pocket, despite
our vast spending sprees overseas. A say-
ing, attributed to a former head of the
Strategic Air Command, seems to fit here.
"A second-best military force," said this
astute general," is like a second-best hand
at poker. It costs like hell�and doesn't
win a thing!"
. If the time for Texas towers has indeed
come and gone, perhaps we ought to pull
the crews off TT2 and TT3, instead of
upping their pay, as a recent bill proposes
to do. Certainly we ought not to build new
towers. There's no use kidding ourselves.
If Russia miscalculates us into a war over
Berlin, we can't hurt them very badly with
a handful of highly expensive steel islands
off our coastline which are suitable only as
roosting places for tired seagulls, or breed-
ing spots for disaster. � � �
THE MOST DANGEROUS SPY IN THE WORLD Continued from page 20
innocence. "Our man Golden does things
better�and has never been caught!"
His off-hand, bombshell reply brought
a gasp from the fifty newsmen and pho-
tographers packed around Strauss. Geh-
leri's name is only whispered in Europe,
although he is field in awe west of the
Iron Curtain and feared by the Reds on
the slave side of the heavily fortified line
that divides two worlds.
Reinhard Gehlen! A living legend in his
own time, Gehlen is a master spy with a
price on his bead and an army of Soviet
killers on his shadowy trail. Kremlin lead-
ers want him "dead or alive"�preferably
alive�and since 1947 have had a standing
offer of a $500,000 reward ( that's also
rumored to go as high as $1,000,000) for
a man only a handful of people know.
At the plane-side press conference,
Strauss became the first West German
official openly to admit that Gehlen is his
country's spy chief.
Few Germans, including the majority of
men in the higher echelons of the Bonn
Government, know vhat be looks like.
Even the Kremlin's crack teams of killers
from the KGB Foreign Intelligence Bureau
106 are as mystified as most Germans, for the
only photographs of Gehlen said to exist
are of 'World War II vintage, that is,
unless the photographs of Strauss and his
staff published that June day in 1960 are
of any use to the mysterious spy master's
enemies. For Reinhard Gehlen was there
in disguise :is on.. of the four nondescript,
gray-clad members of the German official's
staff! He, too, had a mission in Washing-
ton: A report to Allen Dulles, director of
the United States Central Intelligence
Agency, which bankrolls Geblen's own
group of spies, and another in a long
series of meetings with the not-so-anony-
mous American spy master who gave his
clever and SeGrotive German colleague
and protege a new start in life some
fourteen years earlier.
West Germany's mystery man is one of
the prime reasons why there is a Berlin
crisis. From 1946 until now, Gehlen's
super-secret Bundesnaeltrichtendienst (Fed-
eral Intelligence Service of the German
Federal Republic) is heavily involved in
espionage in the former German capital,
and has virtually humiliated the deadly
communist spy machine in every nation
behind the Iron Curtain. His presence at
CIA headquarters is often requested by
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top American intelligence leaders who long
ago admitted that Gehlen "knows more
about what's going on inside Russia than
even the Kremlin's secret police force."
In the estimation of a select few Americans
who know Gehlen�and there are very
few�"he's the only weatherman who can
read storm warnings blowing in from be-
hind time Iron Curtain."
Gehlen was appointed director of his
country's intelligence service after West
Germany became a sovereign state in 1955,
but he still maintains his headquarters ( as
he has for the past fifteen years) in the
quiet village of Pullach, five miles south
of Munich, in a tree-shaded compound on
the banks of the Isar River. Surrounded
by a ten-foot-high concrete wall, his se-
cluded headquarters from the outside
resembles a typical German housing de-
velopment, with neat lawns and flower
bushes around lace-curtained villas used
for administration buildings. At both
entrances are electrically operated steel-
mesh sliding doors, expertly camouflaged
sentry boxes manned by a select group of
heavily armed guards and the latest elec-
tronic detection devices to warn of curious
and unwelcome visitors. His own head-
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object which had almost�but not quite�
managed to bash it shut, .was the route
that led to the dining hall at the bottom
of the wreck. O'Neill stationed a man at
the entrance to N passage with one of
the 1,000-watt lights.
Here Bill Routt had a word to say to
ARGOSY: ,
"That passageway almost stopped me.
I saw how the bulkhead was bulged
almost shut. I kePt thinking: What if I'm
going past that tight spot and she gives a
little more? Dad is gonna be flat as a
flounder."
O'Neill swain in and squeezed through.
Routt swam in bohind him and squeezed
through. They were in the dining hall,
close to 160 feet down. .
"At this point," Routt said, "I began to
get a little nutty. I had to keep saying to
myself: Boy, it's fist a dive. You're down
here looking for 1/odies. It's just a dive.
I don't know wh i: it was, nitrogen nar-
cosis, maybe. I funcl a mattress in the
dining hall and it threw me. Why was it
here? Who needs a mattress in a dining
hall? In a dining hall, you eat. I just
hung there in th water until old Mike
swam over and ba ged me on the shoulder
and brought me or of it."
Q'Neill checked his diver's wrist watch
after he'd knade a tour of the dining
hall and found no bodies. :He had three
more precious minutes on the bottom ac-
cording to the recompression tables. He
swam over the stani tables of the dining
hall into a dark r eess, the galley, Inside,
something plucke lightly at his intake
hose, and he pulled back instinctively to
look. It was a torn edge of metal, and if
it had been an itkin or two longer it would
have ruptured thej delicate neoprene hose,
and Mike would lave drowned.
"I had a weld n thought," Mike said.
"It was this: No ody is gonna run into
the galley for a sa dwich when a tower is
shaking. I'm a fool to be in here. I think
Hi get out."
He turned caref illy, avoiding the tangle
of cooking gear i the galley and swam
back to Bill Ron t's light. The time on
the bottom was u . He indicated to Bill
that they would ow surface. Then, as
they started out, 'Neill got a frightening
surprise. One of the 1,000-watt lights lay
on the deck, abandoned . and burning:.
Where was the diver who'd had it? M'
knew his own air 'was nearly gone, bt he
knew he could not surface until he'd made
a check for that utissing man. The poor
'guy might have t attack of "rapture of
the depths (exe ss nitrogen can turn a
cool-headed pro into an irresponsible
drunk), and be sw laming around in circles
at the bottom of the dining ball.
"I sent Routt 1 p and out," Mike said.
"Then I swam clown into the black pocket
at the very bottom of the wreck, looking
for the missing mm. He wasn't there. I
checked my Watcl . I was overdue on the
surface. I couldn't look any more. Then,
to top it, my main tanks ran dry and I
had to switch to emergency. I didn't hit the
panic switch, but I did start out of there
as fast as I could move."
Mike found the hatch on the cargo deck
and squirmed out nto the open sea, racing
against his air sup sly. Coming toward the
surface, he had a brief moment of relief:
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11/61
all four of his divers "were clustered there
underwater, takinWtheir prescribed under-
water decompression. Mike didn't have
the air for that. He broke through the
surface, spit ot:it his mouthpiece, and said,
"Get me in tile tank, boys."
The Navy divers on the Sunbird hauled
Mike out fast and put him into one of the
vessel's two recompression chambers.
"I didn't get bent," Mike said. "And my
ears popped nicely when they threw the
pressure to me. It's blue murder if they
don't. Feels like two guys were boring
holcs in your head from both sides at
once. Better than the bends, though. You
can die of the bends if they're bad
enough."
With the completion of O'Neill's deep
exploratory dive, it was known that most
of the men aboard the tower�very prob-
ably all of them except Bakke�had been
topside on deck at the moment of collapse.
The beat went out of the search as far as
hoping that anybody could be recovered
alive. The tappings had stopped. It was
now a matter of salvaging the secret gear
and trying to ascertain exactly how the
tower had broken up when she fell.
AncOSY did ask Davy Crockett to
give his opinion of the theory that the
divers had gone into the recompression
tank as a temporary refuge when the
tower began its last wild oscillations.
Crockett is most emphatic about this. The
portable chamber, he points out, was fed
by a portable air compressor and con-
nected to the chamber by piping. There
were also external banks of oxygen tanks
connected to the chamber in this manner.
When the tosser fell, the chamber had te
fall ninety feet into the ocean�and both
the compressor and the tanks would al-
most certainly haxe been ripped off. This
would have left the men trapped in a tiny
steel tank, with no extra air or oxygen.
Davy calculates they would only have
had enough air for a short time, assuming
that they were able to close the petcocks
on the air and oxygen inlets. If they bad
not, the chamber would have flooded
instantly through the holes and there
would have been no time at all.
AlGOSY asked Davy if by chance the
men might have donned aqualungs
and gotten inside the chamber with them,
using the chamber merely as a protection
during the expected ninety-foot fall into
the raging sea. Crockett said that it was
his understanding that the divers were not
"lungers"�didn't use SCUBA gear. They
were harchliai boys. They dived with
heavy helmets and bulky suits and received
their air through hoses from the surface.
Davy did not i hink there was any SCUBA
( self-contained underwater breathing ap-
paratus) on board at the time. If this is
correct, and if Crockett's other assumptions
are also correct, lie would seem to have
settled this _tapping business once and for
all. Tappings could not have come from
trapped divers. Any wives or relatives of
the divers, reading this, may he comforted.
It would seem better to get it Over quickly,
if a man must die, than do it the hard way,
trapped in 185 feet of water.
On the other band, scientific information,
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quarters building is separately enclosed by
an electrified steel fence, and his paneled
second-floor office contains only one sym-
bol of his profession and is indicative of a
sense of humor acquired about a decade
ago. Always perched on the edge of his
wide desk is a box of cigars bearing simply
inscribed labels reading Geheimdienst
( Secret Service).
Like the tall, stooped and white-haired
director of the CIA, Cehlen also has some
of Allen Dulles' professional air and prob-
ably patterned his sense of humor after the
American spy chief, who also keeps a gag
prop on his desk�a plaster statuette of a
man draped with a cloak and clutching a
dagger. But unlike Dulles, who stands out
in a crowd, Gehlen ( addicted to all. sorts
of disguises and aliases when he travels)
is of medium height, has a square, leathery
face centered with a thin, aristocratic nose
separating piercing blue eyes below a high
forehead topped by thinning brown hair.
Other distinguishing characteristics: out-
size ears and a thin, square or full, brown
mustache�though he occasionally wears
no mustache at all.
A ny description of Germany's master spy,
also known to his intimates as Der
Doktor, fits many a German. The cloak
of anonymity that surrounds him today
can be likened to the war clouds that
gathered in Europe in the mid-1930s,
blotting out the early activities of Major
Reinhard Gehlen. In his early thirties at
the time, Gehlen was a professional soldier
in the Wehrmacht. A Prussian by birth, a
ramrod-stiff Junker in appearance, Maier
Gehlen trained in the old German army as
an operations staff officer. As a career
officer, whose allegiance by Junker tradi-
tion was only to his country (not the Nazi
Party) and his offizier class, young Gehlen
remained in the Wehrmacht after the
Nazis took over Germany in 1933. He was
a junior officer in 1939 in a panzer division
and received his baptism of fire in Hitler's
attack against Poland. He met his first
Russians when his division linked up with
the Soviets who had invaded Poland from
the east, when Hitler and Stalin were
partners in crime.
From 1940 on, he rose rapidly because
the expanding Nazi military juggernaut
needed experienced officers. In the fall of
1940, Colonel Gehlen reported to the plan-
ning staff of "Operation Barbarossa"�the
men who planned to double-cross the
Kremlin by invading Russia. He directed
several -combat operations during the first
months of Hitler's blitzkrieg through the
western half of the Soviet Union, but didn't
distinguish himself as a military genius.
Other than his most trusted assistants,
little is known of Gehlen's military service
by former German officers who served at
the Wehrmacht's Eastern Front Head-
quarters. The majority were captured by
the Reds who, seeking vengeance against
the German officer corps, probably killed
the very men who could have shed light
on the spy the Kremlin fears the most.
In early 1943, he was put in charge of
all Wehrmacht intelligence operations on
the Eastern Front. Methodically, he built
up a small espionage and counter-espionage
organization that functioned too efficiently.
On the one hand, he built a pipeline into
Red Army military headquarters using
disgruntled Ukraniaris and Russians as
spies, with telling effect. His counter-
intelligence agents, on the other hand,
were so effective they brought him infor-
mation and the plans for the unsuccessful
1944 assassination plot against Hitler's life.
But loyalty to the officer corps rather than
to Hitler, whom he despised, kept this
vital information under wraps.
Then, in 1944, the Third Reich's self-
styled military genius ordered his armies
in Russia to prepare a giant counterattack.
Planning fell directly upon the shoulders of
Gehlen, now a major general, and his
superior, Wehrmacht Chief of Staff Gen-
eral Heinz Guderian. Both men were
summoned to Berlin to present plans for
the offensive to Hitler.
It was a stormy session that took place
in the deeply dug Fuehrerbunker When
Hitler's request for Golden's maps evoked
no reply. "Your maps, Generals!" the
Nazi leader snapped. "Mein- Fuehrer,"
Gehlen finally spoke up after stifilly salut-
ing the number one German, "an offensive
at this time is impossible because the
enemy is prepared to attack within forty-
eight hours. In fact, I believe they will
succeed unless .we pull back our forces on
the Eastern Front."
Gehlen stepped back. Hitler's lips
curled and his facial muscles strained.
Then he turned, screaming to the Wehr-
macht chief of staff, demanding who the
fool was who "dug up this nonsense and
dares appear before me?"
The small group of professional soldiers
in the bunker shrank into Corners or
slipped out of the war room to escape the
madness of their hysterical leader.
"No true German. would ever present
this kind of defeatist :report," Hitler raged.
"This is the greatest bluff since Ghengis
Khan! This man, this Gehlen, Ire belongs
in a lunatic asylum."
General Guderian " stepped to Gehlen's
side. "Then send me to an asylum with
him," the flinty German general retorted.
"Without his reports, intelligence directly
from the Kremlin, We would have been
defeated long ago by the Russians."
Hitler exploded again. Literally frothing
at the mouth, Guderian later reported, he
stormed out, followed by his coterie of
party hacks and SS bodyguards,
Gchlen's mind was made up, thanks to
the Foe/o'er, and lie returned to East-
ern Front Headquarters with only one
thought in mind: To prepare for the defeat
of Germany and his own survival. In March
1945, he carefully began to plan for the
grim post-war future. "Forget about mili-
tary intelligence and concentrate on
political espionage," he messaged his spies
in the field. "Unearth what Stalin and the
political commissars are planning for the
post-war period."
Information he received from his secret
agents might haye altered the course of
history if it had fallen into Allied hands at
the time it came into Gehlen's possession.
With the Kremlin's post-war blueprint for
conquest in 'his hands, he decided it was
high time to flee to the Western Front and
surrender to the United States Army. Of
one thing he was sure: if the Soviets
learned who he was, he'd face certain
torture and death if he was captured.
He planned carefully and well. To his
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3,000 secret, agents inside Russia, he sent
a message tirdering immediate suspension
of all espionage operations and the prom-
ise that his spies, within two years, would
hear from I im again, and work for him
again. The Order to his staff of thirty key
officers was: "Co underground�and await
my earn"
In two weeks, be carefully collected his
most important records and filled fifty
filing cabinets full of 'maps of Russia, re-
ports of his intelligence operations in
Russia and Eastern Europe, the names
and vital 'nformation about his most
t
trusted offic rs and all of his secret agents
and, finally, the most complete dossiers of
top Red le ders in ,Europe and Russia
other than what similar material the
NKVD had on the same people.
One night during the first week of April,
a truck loaded with fifty filing cases and
driven by a nondescript Wehrmacht
corporal drove westward, bearing some-
what toward the soutl) and the mountains
of Bavaria. General Gehlen's punctual
appearance at morning staff meetings had
suddenly come to an end that same morn-
ing. He never did show up.
For the great majority of Nazis�and
other Germ'c � nswar's , end also meant the
s
end of the hi:. e. But it was to mark a now
beginning f r Reinhard Gehlen. Almost
three months after the Nazi surrender, a
nattily-dress d officer clad in the spotless
gray uniform of a Wehrmacht major gen-
eral jauntily stepped from a tiny mountain
chalet perel ed high above Munich, and
marched d wn the sun-washed, hard-
packed dirt road toward ,Bavaria's largest
city. United States Army vehicles rumbled
by the erect officer hiking toward Munich.
Finally an MP jeep sped by, halted,
and then backed up to the marching Ger-
man. A military police sergeant demanded
his papers. ,
"No papeis," he snapped back in perfect
but accenteI English. "just take me to
your comma iding general. Immediately!"
According to one high-ranking American
intelligence officer who was present when
Major General Reinhard Gehlen surren-
dered, it was the only time in the German
master spy's life that he elected to an-
nounce his identity to persons other than
his closest colleagues. By nature a tight-
lipped person with a passion for anonymity,
Gehlen volunteered information about his
entire intelligence organization, but with-
held the news about his treasure trove of
fully packed filing cabinets hidden in a
mountain cave. He fit the description of
Major General R. Gehlen listed in Wehr-
macht files, but none of his questioners
had ever heard of his accomplishments in
the field of espionage.
However, he surprised his interrogators
by offering a proposition based upon a
prediction. He claimed that the Kremlin
would send the Red Army marching into
Iran within twelve months, and with in-
formation like this at his fingertips, he said
he thought it would be wise for the U. S.
Army to hire him as an agent. He was
laughed back to the prisoner-of-war cage.
In late 1945, be was released from in-
ternment, presented with papers certifying
that he was properly "de-Nazified," be-
cause he had never been a Nazi Party
member, and promptly dropped from sight.
Stalin's not yet demobilized army
marched into Iran in 1946 and Reinhard
Gehlen marched into U. S. Army occupa-
tion headquarters in Munich shortly after
the news broke of Soviet treachery against
an unarmed neighbor. His request to see
the G-2 chief was honored.
"I have a proposition," he told the
American officer. "You know who I am
and what I did during the war. You can
have fifty filing cabinets filled with vital
documents of great value to your govern-
ment if you let me go to work for you."
Soviet treachery in Iran and a commu-
nist-sponsored civil war burning heavily in
Greece didn't have to spell out the details
of his proposition. It was one of the most
valuable post-war deals ever made by the
United States. For included in Gehlen's
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"We've got to stop this madness, Ethel! The island's starting to sink!"
fifes were detailed maps of Russia compiled'
by the Wein-mad-it and Gehlen's agents,
which were to become the backbone of
American war plans. These maps today are
closely guarded military secrets in the
vaults of the U.S. Army Map Service and
they are also included in the U.S. Air Force
Strategic Air Command's top-secret target
information center.
In the summer of 1947, after almost a
year with the G-2 section of the Army's
constabulary force, Galen was flown to
Washington where he met Allen Dulles for
the first time. Dulles was a top intelligence
official who had been monitoring Gehlen's
work frem Washington. Dulles' offer was
plain a:ad simple: Would Gehlen be
interested in setting up an independent
espionage system paid for by the United
States? Gehlen gave a qualified affirmative
answer. He agreed to work for Uncle Sam
as long ....is Germany was occupied by the
Allies, but he was not to be asked to "work
against the German interest."
He returned to Germany a few weeks
later and was set up in a closely
guarded compound outside Frankfurt. Via
the cloak-and-dagger underground tele-
graph, his alert to 3,000 spies in Eastern
Europe and Russia filtered down to the
men who once worked for his Wehrmacht
intelligence organization. To his thirty
trusted officers in their underground hide-
outs, he sent this message: "Resurrection
in Frankfurt! Gehlen."
Most of his activities as an American spy
are still veiled in secrecy, although one
CIA official went so far as to admit that
Gehlen's spy center was "mostly useful in
squelching various alarms; they knew a
lot more about the Russians than anyone
we had." But in the early years of what
came to be affectionately known as Buro
Gehlen, Washington officials refused to con-
firm that this organization ever existed.
Mere mention of the name Gehlen was
enough to make American intelligence
officials in Germany clam up blank-faced.
It was a time when the Kremlin was build-
ing a prison around Eastern Europe, when
Czechoslovakia was about to fall to the
Reds in 1948 ( a Gehlen prediction and
warning), when the Berlin blockade was
instituted by the. Russians in the summer of
1948 ( another Gehlen forecast) and when
the Soviet secret police were running
rampant through West Berlin and the
western occupation zone of Germany, kid-
naping some. anti-Reds and killing others.
It was also a time when the Reds began -
blaming "Gehlen agents" for all acts of
sabotage throughout Eastern Europe, and
began a search for the mystery man,
On the surface, the Kremlin had an edge,.
for in the dangerous underground game of
cold-war espionage, there's a built-in ad-
vantage on the communist side of the front
line�an estimated 10,000,000 party mem-
bers in more than sixty different countries,
and all potential secret agents. This is an
irrefutable fact. In the shadowy, secretive
world of Reinhard Gehlen, on the other
hand, it's often hard to distinguish legend
from fact. But Gehlen's ruthless efficiency
has brought to an end the career of many
an important communist official, as well as
an end of life itself to Red spies who have
tangled with Burii Gehlen.
Early in 1950, Gehlen's agents in Berlin
Approved for Release: 2025/04/29 CO2752850
tteee"
tr
Approved for Release: 2025/04/29 CO2752850
discovered that the main telephone trunk
lines used by all of East Berlin (whole
German Reds and top-level Soviet civilian
and military leaders were privileged to
have telephones) were located in conduits
a few feet from the border line separating
the divided city. Gehlen's next move was
obvious: He had his agents dig a large
tunnel from the western sector to the tele-
phone trunk lines in the eastern sector. For
two years, his agents monitored the most
important communist messages and ob-
tained proof that Dr. Otto John, leader of a
rival intelligence service, also bankrolled by
the CIA, was in reality a double agent
working for the Kremlin. Just at the time
Gehlen was ready to unmask John, the
Soviet secret police discovered the tunnel
and tipped off John that he should pull out
of the western sector of the city. John won
a cops-and-robbers auto race through Berlin
to the Brandenburg Gate and safety at the
control point manned by the Red Army
and communist East German Volkspolizei
guarding the entrance to the east sector.
But the Reds lost out on another score,
and disgrace came to Gehlen's deadliest
enemy, Ernst Wollweber, chief of the East
German intelligence service. Wollweber's
spies discovered that Gehlen preferred fast
cars, spotted his personal Mercedes 300 SL,
and set up an ambush on a lonely road
near Munich. Machine-gun fire smashed
into the low-slung sports car as it came
barreling down the road toward Pullach,
but the attempt failed because Gehlen had
thoughtfully had his vehicle outfitted with
bulletproof windshields.
But Wollweber didn't stop there. His
next attempt, although foiled, as were later
attempts, was directed against Gehlen's
family. If the Reds could get Gehlen's
wife or any one of his four children as a
hostage, Wollweber felt, they would have
Gehlen over a barrel. This attempt was
narrowly frustrated by Gehlen's teen-age
son who was no slouch with a pistol.
But the former Welarmacht general was
furious. Two could play at tIlC game and
he decided to do away with his East Ger-
man counterpart in a classic ploy that
"spooks" everywhere still talk about.
Walter Granisch, one of Gehlen's trusted
supervisors, was called in to discuss
"Operation Brutus." He agreed to the plan
outlined by Der Doktor. In 1954, Herr
Walter Granisch, with a forged identity
card and carrying a tattered document de-
scribing him as a one-time Gestapo strong-
arm type, made his appearance in East
Berlin. His next move was a meeting with
Wollweber to talk about "old times."
"Ja, you've come up in the world, Woll-
weber," Granisch remarked after they each
had consumed a number of drinks in the
ex-Nazi's office. "I'd like to join the
Commies, too. What the hell�Reds, Nazis�
they're all alike and it's all the same.
How about it? It'll be like the good old
days in the Gestapo."
Granisch offered his sabotage and ter-
rorist experience, which he claimed was
learned in the Gestapo, and Wollweber
accepted his rediscovered "friend" as a
member of his own staff.
For two years, the Gallen agent played
the part of a loyal Communist, meanwhile
slowly pulling Wollweber in deeper and
deeper by tipping off Buro Gehlen's Berlin
office about the plans .of East German
intelligence service. But all good �stories.
must come to an end. Granisch conned his
East German boss into publicly presenting
him with a medal and citation for his "role"
in devising extensive sabotage and terrorist
plans against Allied shipping in West Ger-
many. This was the moment for which
Gehlen had waited two years. A tiny slip
of paper was pressed into Granisch's hand
one morning. It read: "Rata! G." Trans-
lated it ordered the West German agent
to flee East Germany immediately.
When Granisch returned, Gehlen put his
second phase of "Operation Brutus" into
high gear. The heroic spy was flown to
Bonn and, with great publicity fanfare,
Presented with a medal for his "brave and
devoted exploits amid great danger."
West Berlin papers are used for more
than wrapping fish in the east sector, and
it was only a matter of hours before the
Soviet secret police saw their German
"colleague's" photo in the Western-sector
paper. "Explain!" shouted East Germany's
top man, Walter Ulbricht. "Explain!"
roared the Russian security agents.
Wollweber was speechless, but not so
his communist bosses. He was stripped of
all party rank and privileges, read out of
the Communist Party and simultaneously
kicked out of his job. The star of Opera-
tion Brutus had done in his communist
"friend." Burt!, Gehlen won another round
against the common enemy.
Along with his many successful battles
1A. against the Reds, Callen has had to
suffer silently through some failures. The
Hungarian revolt in 1956 was one example.
Small arms that were promised by Gehlen's
agents in Hungary were never dispatched
because the CIA didn't come through. In
the event of another uprising in Eastern
Europe ( and Gehlen expects to know
about it before it even happens), the story
will be somewhat different.
Der Doktor's leading secret agents, like
their boss, also shun any form of publicity.
For security reasons, few of them know
more than two or three other members of
the Burii. More often than not, their suc-
cesses go unheralded ( except for the
squawks of pain from the Reds), and for
their failures, they usually pay with their
lives. The Reds claim to have captured
hundreds of so-called "American-paid Geh-
len agents," but the KGB has yet to crack
the tight wall of security protecting Gen-
eral Gehlen's vast operation. Gehlen's
method of operating a ring within a ring,
with none of his agents in the field know-
ing much about one another, is about as
successful as espionage groups can operate
with small teams. By choice, even Galen
limits his own knowledge about the de-
tails of his organization. He feels that, if
he's captured and tortured, the less be
knows, the less the Kremlin will learn.
There's little doubt that the West Ger-
man Federal Republic has inherited one of
the most efficient intelligence organizations
in the world. Der Doktor has 5,000 active
spies behind the Iron Curtain and another
5,000 part-time agents he can .call upon.
Call him spy master or master spy,
Der Doktor will always be Reinhard Geh-
len�the CIA's mystery man in Europe
whom nobody in the Kremlin knows, but
whom all the top Soviet Reds fear. �
Approved for Release: 2025/04/29 CO2752850
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