CNN Article on US Use Of Nazis After WWII Misses Something Essential, Especially Relevant Today
I'm posting this CNN Opinion piece because it is a perfect example of what is wrong with modern journalism, and the seeming intent to render the American population passive and superficial in their understanding of how the world actually works.
This article brings out the well known history of US postwar harboring and protection of former Nazis, including war criminals. This was a program known as "Operation Paperclip", whose most notable publicly known figure was German rocket scientist, Werner von Braun, best known for his role in the NASA Apollo Moonshot program. He was a leading figure in the German V-2 Rocket program during Wartime.
It also covers the standard history of German war criminals who had escaped, and were living in plain sight, many under US government protection due to many of them being of Ukranian or Baltic Nations background and having connections to anti-communist resistance groups in the East bloc which supposedly the US was using during the Cold War. They mention that the CIA used these groups and individuals to collect information.
The author cites the Anti-Defamation League, Smithsonian, and a couple of experts as sources, and concludes that this shameful episode of protecting Nazis should be revisited now, but states no specific reason for doing so.
This piece is sloppy, shallow, and its omissions are staggering. Read for yourselves, but there are two items I would highlight. First, is that the attack on Von Braun is tired, gratuitous, and appears to be a Wikipedia copy and paste job. The reality is, that he and other German scientists were essentially well treated prisoners, under constant supervision by the SS and Gestapo, and were kept isolated from the people in the factories where they worked with rare exception. They were assassination targets for the allies and were kept in lockdown. There was nothing they could do about the prisoners and slave Labor that would not result in their own torture or death. Try to remember the "White Rose" student resistance group, which were each beheaded for leaving stacks of leaflets on Campuses and mailing them to friends. Von Braun was not a War Criminal, and to lump him in with Concentration Camp guards etal as mentioned here is mendacious, false and misleading.
Secondly, there is absolutely no mention of the leading figure in "Operation Paperclip" (ostensibly the subject of the article) the notorious Col. Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen was a high ranking leader of the Wehrmacht Intelligence apparatus during the War, and actual government figure. He was brought into the US and assigned special status with the CIA, literally running his own team called the "Gehlen Organization". During his 10 year hitch with CIA, he was deeply involved with Director Dulles, (who has his own history with the Nazis) and JJ Angelton, CIA Counterintelligence Director in protecting and running "The Rat Line", which was the network through which escaping Nazi War Criminals escaped from Europe into South America. This Network had a name, which was "Die Spinne". (The Web) And it must be known that this Nazi escape network was an auxiliary of the extreme Right Wing pro fascist faction of the Catholic Church, and funded directly by sources in the Vatican. Aside from isolated and small groups of resistance in Germany and Italy, (The Franciscans) the Church was fully on board with the anti-communist agenda of the Nazis, and were deeply involved in their finances and logistics, during and after the War.
These Nazis in South America, Spain and elsewhere became protectees of the Church in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Uraguay, etc, and were used by their CIA partners to create anti-communist death squads, train South American Militaries, and assist in Coup attempts against governments which the US desired be removed, installing Military dictators and Juntas in their place. They trained paramilitary groups affiliated with Right Wing Catholic Fundamentalists and "Traditionalist" Orders such as "Tradition Family Property", Opus Dei, and other extremist groupings. This is the unstated history behind the Coup and networks involved with Pinochet in Chile for example. (have you noticed that the Chilean Military uniforms are modeled on the Wehrmacht's) All of this was under the purview of Reinhard Gehlen, which this opinion piece below somehow forgot to mention.
Also, Nazi SS war criminals were used by the US in Vietnam during its early phases in the 1960's. Many of the worst fled Europe after the war by joining the French Foreign Legion, which would accept virtually anyone physically qualified. Veteran SS Combat units which had stayed together after the War continued to use their skills to fight Islamist insurgencies in Algeria, and Viet Cong insurgents in the then French Colony, Vietnam. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the French departure, the US blundered in, and integrated the old SS teams into their counterinsurgency strategy and training, based on their on-the-ground experience. These secret teams continued to commit war crimes and massacres under US supervision.
Gehlen was not a bureaucrat. He was top echelon leadership in the German Army as they were committing atrocities throughout Europe. And yet, he led an organization under CIA direction for 10 years, before moving in to assume Directorship of West German Intelligence until 1968.
Why, you may ask, am I dumping this load of information here, and how is it relevant? Mainly, is to make the point that you cannot trust "information" without developing your judgment, through some study and thinking outside of the internet and its news sources. This article is a perfect example of a so-called "expose", which is itself a coverup.
Secondly, is that these old intelligence and Nazi networks which were harbored and used by the CIA and the Right Wing of the Catholic Church after the War are still around, and represent a significant threat to the parallel missions of both President Biden, and Pope Francis. The most dangerous of the Right Wing enablers of Trump and his Coup apparatus are tied to this pro fascist network of Charismatic Catholics who want to depose the Pope and Biden. William Barr, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney-Barrett, QAnon affiliated Cardinal Carlo Maria Vigano, a grouping of American Bishops, former Pope Benedict XVI himself, and his ally, Cardinal Robert Sarah, and others are deeply involved in intrigues and coup plots against Biden and Francis, and otherwise serious attacks on the US Constitutional System, as appendages of this extended post war network of Catholic or Fascist affiliated Intelligence operatives.
Often I'll see an article like this on an interesting subject, and after reading it ask myself, "what's missing here"? And in most cases, what's missing is what's most important. That's how I read the News.
