Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. 398 pages.

At the confirmation hearings for Robert Gates as CIA director, Senator Bradley exposed the CIA's manipulation of intelligence data to produce exaggerated estimates of Soviet economic and military strength -- estimates that produced the Reagan-era extravaganza of military spending. However, the Bradley-Gates colloquy did not explore the historical roots of such exaggerations. Simpson fills in the void left by the Senate's lack of historical perspective.

He traces the post-World War II recruitment by the U.S. of defeated Nazi chief of intelligence for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Reinhard Gehlen, and the increasing reliance of U.S. intelligence on the Gehlen organization's estimates of Soviet strengths and intentions.

In the critical period from 1945 to 1948, the correct assessments by U.S. military intelligence that the Soviet occupation forces in Eastern Europe were worn out and posed no threat, were supplanted with the Gehlen organization's lie that these same forces were a major military threat posed to invade Germany. The rest is our history, known as the Cold War.

-- Lanny Sinkin
ISBN 1-55584-106-6

Extract the names from this source

Back to search page