WEEKLY LETTER, BERLIN OPERATIONS BASE.

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06469122
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: September 12, 2023
• Document Release Date: June 26, 2023
• Case Number: F-2020-00509
• Publication Date: August 29, 1947

Approved for Release: 2023/02/17 C06469122
\ E.
29 August 1947
SUBJECT: Weekly letter, Berlin Operations Base.
TO
�
�
Chief of Station.
1. The principal item of interest affecting the intelligence
field during the past week has been a minor furore arising out of
the journalistic zeal of Marguerite Higgins, New York Herald Tribune
correspondent. Miss Higgins, you may recall, recently published
a flashy but rather naive article describing a conversation with
two so-called Russian "spies". Her latest coup has been the dis-
covery, through an unidentified source, of a somewhat irregular
Incident involving the evacuation of an alleged Russian citizen
by the American authorities from Berlin to the United States Zone.
The story is rather complicated and confused, obscured by a subse-
quent series of buck-passing moves between officials of OMG, Berlin
Sector, CIC, and the Adjutant General's Office of OMGUS. In the
opinion of CIC and ourselves, there is no particular news value to
this story, especially since the evacuee in question has good claim
to German rather than Russian citizenship, and since he is not
apparently guilty of anything worse than being a competent bacteri-
ologist, wanted by the Russians. However, word of the impending
article by Miss Higgins reached General Galley, Chief of Staff,
OMGUS, and General Walsh, Director of Intelligence, EUCOM, who
promptly became greatly worried over possible scandal. As a result,
General Galley ordered the Adjutant General's Office to lay all
cases of travel orders for German civilians on his desk. Some 25
such orders were placed before him on the first day, and, finding
himself distracted by the visit of General Bradley, General Gailey
turned them back to Colonel Arrowsmith, Deputy Chief of the Civilian
Personnel Branch. Four of the requests for orders had come from us,
and one at least was very urgent. Accordingly, I took the matter
up with General Walsh and explained that it was necessary for us to
reach an agreement on procedure which would enable us to continue
our present satisfactory method of obtaining travel orders for
German civilians. General Walsh said that the principal concern of
General Galley was with permanent evacuations, rather than with
temporary duty orders involving return to Berlin. Since all four of
the current cases were in the latter category, General Walsh was
able to secure a release from General Galley and the requests were
duly approved by Colonel Arrowsmith.
On the broader question of our right to obtain orders of
all types for German civilians, General Walsh advised us to lie
low for the time being, until the current flap has subsided. As a
matter of general policy, he proposed that certain types of clearance
should be granted in principle from General Galley through General
Walsh to us. We would be responsible for preserving exact records
of all movements, which we would be prepared to justify in detail if
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required. Specifically, General Walsh seems to be alarmed over
the possibility that the Russians may present a list of Berlin
evacuations at the Council of Foreign Ministers meeting. Such a
list would presumably be referred back to General Clay, and through
him to General Walsh for explanation and justification. It would
then be necessary for him to call upon us for such information as
was necessary to back up the American delegation at the Council of
Foreign Ministers. I stated that we would, of course, be prepared
to accept that responsibility and to make any explanations which
were required by competent authority. However, we were reluctant
to present either him or the Chief of Staff with requests in
writing giving the names of persons involved and the justification,
since this would obviously be incompatible with clandestine intel-
ligence operations. The entire matter will be discussed next week
with General Wright and we hope to obtain a satisfactory agreement
with Military Government, if necessary laying the matter before
General Clay himself. In the meantime I believe we can continue
to procure approval for all cases involving permanent evacuation,
simply by taking the matter up direct with Colonel Arrowsmith.
We are extremely anxious to preserve our present stream-
lined procedure within the Adjutant General's Office, which
involves only one American officer and one American clerk, and
keeps the entire matter out of German hands. We have been particu-
larly fortunate in securing from this American officer the privilege
of removing from the A.G. files all copies of agent orders issued
at our request. He is quite willing to continue the present system,
and the only complicating factor is the need of clearing through
Colonel Arrowsmith. The latter, however, has long been acquainted
with our organization and seems willing to cooperate, as long as
he has the assurance that we will take the responsibility for our
requests in case they backfire from General Gailey. I do not think
that the concern over the Higgins article will last very long,
especially since there is no indication to date that it will
actually be published.
2. As you are aware, for some time there has been a sparring
game going on between CIC Region VIII and 8-2, Berlin Command. 8-2
has attempted sporadically over the past year or even two years to
assert some sort of coordinating authority over clandestine opera-
tions in Berlin. While they have recognized that the effort was
hopeless, so far as we are concerned, they have never given up the
effort to bring GIG under control. Lt. Col. Wilson, 8-2, appears
now to be on the point of achieving at least a paper victory over
CIC. He is preparing the draft of an order for General Walsh's
approval which would detach Region VIII, CIC from the 970th Division,
EUCOM, and bring it under 8-2 for operational supervision. The
significance of this move is not, however, very great. Colonel
Wilson himself admits that it will not bring about any real change
in the current practice, by which GIG carries out its own operations
In the counterespionage, counter-subversive, and Communist penetration
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field. CIC will continue to have its own line of communications
to Frankfurt and will submit its own reports. Major Stewart,
head of CIO, takes a rather detached attitude toward the whole
matter. This may be prompted by the fact that he is returning to
the States in December to enter the Strategic Intelligence course
for Army officers. Major Stewart has been in command of CIC for
two years in Berlin and his record entitles him to respect as an
intelligence officer. We presume he will broaden his background to
include positive intelligence and may at some future date be one of
the Army officers assigned to CIG. We will notify Washington at
the time of his return and urge that he be interviewed by members
of our organization.
3. At various times in the past we have raised the question
of sponsoring the prosecution of an espionage trial in Berlin. This
matter was discussed orally with you in the case of Anton Hamm and
it was agreed that that case was not suitable for our purposes.
Subsequently we have learned that the Legal Division of =GUS is
greatly interested in producing a sound espionage case for trial
in order to establish a precedent and to provide a deterrent. We
are not yet in a position to provide a guinea pig for this purpose.
However, as an experiment we are canvassing the possibility of
trying our former SC agent (Canna) on the charge of making a false
statement to American officials. Legal Division guarantees appro-
priate safeguards. The details of this project will be presented
in an SC report as-soon as the matter has been sufficiently investi-
gated with the Legal Division. We raise the point now with the
thought that you may wish to survey your Amzon field to provide a
case which could be tried for outright espionage. No action will
be taken at this end, of course, without consulting your headquarters
and Washington. 0:0(3)
0:0(6)
4, Once more we are making a determined effort to eliminate
points of insecurity in our physical setup. As you are aware, we
have changed the licenses on all our civilian plate vehicles,
bringing them out of the 16500 series. The bulk of the new numbers
are, unfortunately, in the 26500 bracket, but they are not in series
and they are completely mixed in with ordinary civilian vehicles,
not our own, has made a searching study of the
problem of telepnone security, with the result that we are dropping
all the six digit number civilian Lines leading into this building
which were formerly used for agent communication. Our agent phones
will be switched to the military five digit numbers, which are much
more difficult to trace to our building, since the card records are
kept by American personnel in the Signal Corps office. In addition,
we are exploring the possibility of channeling all our agent calls
into a cover phone in the ODI building, which would be physically
connected by our own communications personnellwith phone extensions
in our own building. In this way it would be impossible for an agent
given our number, to trace our address. We are also planning to seal
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.'111, II
off the office floors of our building from the basement where our
German personnel work. Although this will involve considerable
inconvenience to our staff, especially to the administrative
personnel, it should remove a possible source of insecurity.
CRP/wmc
TO : FBM.
Forwarded�
Dist: 2 - COS
" FBM
1 - Reg
1 - File
CHAUNCEY'R. PURDY '
1st Ind.
MATTHEW L. CARSON
(b)(3)
(b)(6)
(b)(3)
(b)(6)
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