THE FEARLESS YANKS WHO SPIED ON HITLER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090056-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: February 11, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

- I li I.I 1 - 11LI I
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090056-3
.Article appeared
on page 6
of -1 -7
red Mayer,sits today in his neat rte--
tirement home overlooking. the
gentle green rises of West Virginia.~
At 57, he is still a trim, muscular man.
with a genial manner and flashing
smile. Thirty-four years ago, Mayer, a_
Jewish refugee from Nazi terror, was;
parachuting from a B-24 onto an a
pine glacier.to become one of thet
most successful American spies-inside=
Hitler's Reich-
Fred Mayer's exploits form part of a.~
still essentially untold espionage tri=.,
umph of World War 11: the
tion of the-Third Reich.by over 200'
American spies, largely during the last.
year of the war. These missions were
carried off by agents of the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS1 predecessor
of today's CIA. Until 1976, the.official
account of these usually successful;
often heroic, occasionally bizarre and
sometimes tragic operations . were:.
locked up in the Archives of the CIA: I
Previously_ numerous. books, .ar.
tides and movies have acquainted
Clothes were bought off the back&of
refugees " who had fled -Germany.
Skilled printers,' engravers and com-
mercial artists, drawn from top maga-
zines and the Federal Bureau of ?n-
.graving and Printing, were sent to 055
in London to counterfeit ID's, travel
permits,. ration cards and other docu-
ments used in Germany. Cover stories
were memorized down to such details
as the graveyard in which an agent's
"father" was buried and the color of
.buses in his _. "hometown"-just the
kinds of questions which GestapoI
-terrogators were known to ask
Fred Mayer and two other agents
after landing at over10,000 feet in the
Stubaier Alps,-worked. their way. into
Innsbruck; where Fred fed a steady
stream of intelligence on - German
movements through the key Brenner
Pass to U.S. 15th'Air Force bombers.
Mayer was later caught and tortured'
by the Gestapo but never talked-
The team code named HANW(ER~
made the most daring flight, directly
.from London 'to Berlin, where they.
parachuted just.outside the Getman
capital. Thereafter, HAMMER.provid-4
Teel intelligence;on thy.:operat%on ; of
:power plants;..tank factories and.'r.
road marshaling yards to 8th Air Force
raiders-through :anngenious device
called "Joan-Eleanor"=a.communi
cations system invented'for'our Gee
-man .. operations that enabled .
agent on the. ground to converse'.
.through a tiny. radio with .airplanes
seven milesabove Berlin= 1
America's most successful spies in-
side Germany came out of. Switzer'
land and were directed by' Allen
Dulles, who later went on to head the
PARADE.
THE WASHINGTON POST
11 February 1979 .
ess YOKS
9iEd O Hitler
sador Arthur J. Goldberg was an 055 !
:major who helped place agents with.
labor backgrounds inside Germany.
Mike Burke, later the president of the
New York Yankees and head of Madi-
son Square Garden, went to England
-to help. organize the dropping of
agents into the enemy _homeland.
Richard Helms, a generation before"
becoming director of the CIA, worked-
on the O55 German Desk. HenryMor.
gan, grandson of financier-J. P. Mor-
gan, was involved in collecting the
clothes and in counterfeiting door
ments that the agents used.
What kind of spy carried out.these I
infiltrations? Initially, 055 feared that]
Americans, even if fluent in German, .1
.would have too little-knowledge of i
daily life: to pass successfully inside
the Reich. German POW's who pro-:.
fessed to be anti-Hitler were possibili
ties; but the turncoat is always sus-
pect- German refugee communists
were genuinely . anti-Nazi -,but-! po-
litically risky..055 had to make corer-
Americans. with 055 successes i promises ;and, in-the end, used all
placing agents inside,Nazi-occupi _ three categories. - Frenchmen;, Bel-
_countries, such as. France, Italy;. glans, Poles and other Europeaniwere
gium and Norway. But the idea of also - - recruited,:because.- they.: could,::
.cret agents. jumping out of planes to pass as conscript laborers.;,~z- -` T
serve as spies directly inside the most _,From,- the outset,. British-^intelli??
ruthless and efficient police state ever- gene officials had been: pessimisti
c
known was a story begging to be told. that secret agents could survive inside
I requested that the CIA declassify: Germany-. without a resistance base.
and release the files on these opera.' ' Our ally thus sought to discourage the'.
tions. What emerged was an account American plans, and the British made
of a pervasive, boldly executed infil- only- modest efforts themselves to_I
tration of every militarily significant penetrate the Reich. But Gen. William i
zone and city within Hitler's Reich by "Wild Bill" Donovan, the dauntless!
America's secret operatives. father of OSS, was eager to have his
One of the first surprises was the young intelligence organization inside
many Americans involved in these. Germany.
II!
operations w_io later distinguished Every effort was -made to prepare: CIA. Three of his agents contributed
themselves in other areas. Former Su? ~ . the likeliest agents with the most creel to intelligence revealing the secret,
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090056-3