Pore Harry!
Correspondent:: "iDRMRSR"
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:26:00 -0500
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I don't understand why everybody is so upset he was wearing a Nazi uniform.
I mean, it's not like they WON or anything?
[*]
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Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:23:23 GMT
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"iDRMRSR" wrote:
>I don't understand why everybody is so upset he was wearing a Nazi uniform.
>
>I mean, it's not like they WON or anything?
>
>[*]
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>
>
What with them bering Hapsburgs, and everyone's still a-skeered
of the "Weresolves"
Have you head of Gehlen?
One of my old neighbors imported the old Nazi east spy net--
google "Gehlen Organization"
washingtonpost.com
CIA Official James Critchfield Dies at 86
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2003; Page B06
James H. Critchfield, 86, a decorated World War II Army officer who played a key role
in the Central Intelligence Agency's controversial postwar alliance with former German
officials to spy on the Soviet Union, died April 22 at a hospice in Williamsburg. He had
pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Critchfield, who retired in 1974, was the chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia
division in the 1960s and a national intelligence officer for energy as the oil shortage crisis
began in the early 1970s.
Later, as president of Tetra Tech International, he focused on Middle East energy
resources, especially those in Oman, and did consulting work.
It was his part in the early days of Cold War intelligence that most recently catapulted
him to attention.
Only in the late 1990s did the CIA begin to disclose, through an act of Congress, its
collaboration with former Nazi spies in what was known as the Gehlen Organization. The
network was named for Reinhard Gehlen, a German general who oversaw Adolf Hitler's
anti-Soviet intelligence and became the first head of West Germany's secret service.
For many, Gehlen's work came to symbolize the moral compromises of the United States.
Mr. Critchfield, often credited with recommending the CIA's union with Gehlen, defended
the work, which supplied the West with an infusion of fresh intelligence material about the
Soviet Union and Eastern European countries at the start of the Cold War.
During the Berlin Airlift and other vital moments, such intelligence was hard to obtain, he
said.
He added that many of the top Germans, including Gehlen, were far from Nazi ideologues
and that many sympathized with those who tried to kill Hitler.
"I've lived with this for 50 years," Mr. Critchfield told The Washington Post in 2001.
"Almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, in which he has been
described as an ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals -- this is all far from the
fact."
As the size of the Gehlen group grew to several thousand, many in the organization were
reputed to be Soviet spies, former Nazis and other unsavory types used as informants
and for other purposes.
"There's no doubt that the CIA got carried away with recruiting some pretty bad
people," Mr. Critchfield told a reporter.
Still, he said his work helped more than hurt American intelligence.
His CIA honors included the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Trailblazer award
for significant early accomplishments in clandestine collection and analysis.
James Hardesty Critchfield, the son of a country doctor and a former schoolteacher, was
a native of Hunter, N.D. He was a 1939 graduate of North Dakota State University,
where he was in the ROTC program.
He served in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and his decorations included
the Purple Heart and two awards of the Bronze Star.
He also received a Silver Star for gallantry in action in the Alsace-Lorraine region of
northeastern France on Dec. 12, 1944. About 700 Germans had infiltrated Allied lines,
and then-Lt. Col. Critchfield put himself in continuous peril against enemy guns to best
direct the artillery and mortar fire on the attackers.
His war record -- he obtained the rank of colonel -- and his subsequent work with Army
intelligence brought him to the attention of the fledgling CIA in 1948.
One of his first assignments was to go to Germany and assess whether to keep or end the
relationship with Gehlen and his spies.
He took several facts into account before successfully recommending to his superiors
that they maintain the relationship.
First was that Gehlen had fallen out of favor with Hitler as the war progressed and had
stored a trove of material on the Soviets as he foresaw the Allied victory.
Gehlen figured the intelligence would make him useful to the Americans.
More urgent was that Gehlen's network provided the Americans real-time surveillance of
Soviet air operations during the Berlin Airlift.
The CIA put Mr. Critchfield in charge of Gehlen, and he held that role until West Germany
became an independent nation in 1955.
In the 1960s, as chief of the Near East and South Asia division, he kept tabs on the Iraq
coup that led to the Baath Party's rule, regarded at the time as a U.S. victory.
He remained an active thinker on intelligence in the Middle East. In a 2001 interview with
the Boston Globe, he linked the postwar spread of communism with a surge of Islamic
fundamentalism and Arab nationalism today.
"I think that the problem of terrorism replaces the ambiguity of the communist threat,"
he said.
He also served on a government historical advisory committee to help declassify U.S.
documents about Nazi and Japanese war crimes.
Mr. Critchfield, a former McLean resident, moved to a horse farm in Fauquier County in
the 1980s and to Williamsburg in 1996.
His memoir, "Partners at the Creation," is scheduled for publication this year by the Naval
Institute Press.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:59:07 GMT
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In article ,
"iDRMRSR" wrote:
> I don't understand why everybody is so upset he was wearing a Nazi uniform.
If he'd been holding a flagon of Guiness Stout, vomiting and wearing
ONLY the armband, it would have been written off as a youthful
indiscretion. If a naked girl had been holding his head over the sink,
he'd be hailed as a hero.
--
HellPope Huey
"Crapocalypse Now," currently playing
in Baghdad, Utah, Ceylon, New Yawk,
Calipornia, Warshington, Usenet and your pants
"Why are these southern-fried hags
having a bitch-fest on my pay-per-view?"
- "Father of the Pride"
"I'm always relieved when I hear a eulogy
and I realize I'm listening to it."
- George Carlin