Reply #55: There's another side to this story - how Allen Dulles and friends moved Nazi gold out of Europe

[leveymg]

under the guise of Operation Safehaven. Only a small fraction of the loot made it to the U.S. Treasury. If you want to buy people's silence about a huge crime, treason, nothing is more effective than making them accessories to lesser crime, like looting captured enemy assets. See, http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/goldp2.html; c.f., http://www.docstoc.com/docs/8870134/The-OSS-and-Project-SAFEHAVEN

On December 6, 1944, the State Department released its long awaited Circular Instruction to U.S. Missions about Safehaven matters. The release of the Circular marked the beginning of the political and diplomatic phases of Safehaven under the Department of State.

Collecting data and evaluating the data were largely confined to the OSS. Within the OSS, Safehaven was confined to the SI (Secret Intelligence) and X2 (counter-intelligence) divisions. X2 often played the dominant role within the OSS, especially with the more important neutrals of Switzerland, Portugal and Spain. X2 was particularly involved in the German effort to transfer looted assets to foreign countries. For the OSS, this meant little more than a redirection of its intelligence operations to obtaining economic data. Cooperation between the OSS and Safehaven was on an informal basis until November 30, 1944. At the end of November, instructions sent out to all OSS stations detailed the intelligence requirement expected to be generated by the Safehaven program. In substance, Safehaven was piggybacking on already active OSS operations.


Under such conditions, it is hardly surprising that Safehaven was dependent on the personalities of the various OSS station chiefs. As already mentioned, the OSS operation in Spain was compromised because of the ambassador. In Switzerland, Allen Dulles was the station chief. Dulles had already been exposed by an earlier operation in a joint program with the British of spying on Americans and was suspected of being sympathetic with the Nazi cause. Dulles had deliberately been sent to Switzerland where he would have the most temptation to help his clients. By the time Dulles had reached Berne, he was aware that he was being watched. Dulles knew he was unable to use official channels to help his clients in the United States. Thus, Dulles used his Vatican connections to help the Nazis and Vatican couriers to help his clients in America, as the Vatican couriers held diplomatic immunity. The Vatican readily agreed to help Dulles in their zeal to regain their own assets in Germany and further their fanatical anti-communism philosophy.

Declassified files show that Slovenian bishop, Gregory Rozman, was trying to arrange the transfer of huge quantities of Nazi-controlled gold and Western currency that had been discreetly secreted in Swiss banks during the war. The bishop had been sent to Berne with the aid of Dulles’ friends within the intelligence service. For a few months, the Allies were successful in preventing Rozman from receiving the funds. Then suddenly, Rozman had the funds for his Nazi friends residing in Argentina. Dulles had fixed it. This action may be only the tip of the iceberg. In 1945, the U.S. Treasury Department accused Dulles of laundering the funds from the Nazi Bank of Hungary to Switzerland. Similar charges were made against Dulles’ agent Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had worked as an OSS agent while serving at the Reichsbank. The State Department quickly took over the case from the Treasury, after which the investigation was silenced and quickly dropped.7 Gisevius may have also been involved in the ratlines.

In fact, Dulles’ career in Berne during WWII is marked by several money laundering cases. After the Nazis tipped Dulles off that the Swiss codes had been broken, Dulles shifted his operation to the banks of Belgium, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, using a roundabout route through Japan aided by Vatican couriers. 8 After the end of the war all the banks in these countries refused to allow allied investigators to look at their books. One of Dulles’ dirtiest tricks may have been an effort to buy more time to move Nazi gold through Switzerland. A former East Bloc intelligence officer has confirmed that Dulles warned the Nazis the Japanese code had been broken at a crucial time. Shortly after warning the Nazis, the SS suddenly told the High Command to use tighter code security and to stop using the radio. They suddenly stopped using Ultra and switched to couriers. For once, the Allies had no information on the German battle plan. This most likely explains how the German’s were able to launch the Battle of the Bulge as a complete surprise.13

Dulles and his comrades certainly exerted a large amount of influence to ensure US investments in Nazi Germany were not seized for repartitions. In Switzerland, the SS had purchased a large amount of stock in American corporations and laundered their money through the Chase and the Corn Exchange banks. Even more brazen was the case of Pan Am clippers hired by W.R. Grace Corporation to transport Nazi gems, currency, stock and bonds to South America. The operations were the product of Dulles’ money laundering for the Nazis. 11 Several American officers readily admit that much of the Nazi gold was never turned over to them. One officer admits to being in a huge vault filled with gold, gems and currency that never appeared in any US files.9

Dulles had been a backer of Germany for a longtime and he envisioned Germany as a bulkhead against the Soviets. The young Lt. William Casey was another OSS agent that shared Dulles’ views of a German bulkhead. Casey served in the SI division in France and the Lowlands after they were recaptured. In a report from Paris, Casey wrote that Safehaven was a valuable field of endeavor, especially because of the potential for leverage with German financial circles, etc., in the future. 12 Following the war, Casey entered a career on Wall Street before becoming a director of the CIA under Reagan.

In 1946, Dulles’s men simply changed their OSS uniforms and became the War Department Strategic Service Unit. Sometimes they were War Department Detachment and others the Document Disposal Unit. In effect, there were two factions left over of the OSS. One a liberal faction took orders from the President and the other under the control of Dulles. The latter faction was hoping for a conservative victory by Dewey so they could unleash their émigré army against the Soviets. Dulles had a secret ally in Region IV around Munich, where the Counter Intelligence Corp (CIC) was helping to recruit ex-Nazis.14

BTW: This is the basis for intelligence agency self-financing that became the norm. The French added a modification by using the revenues from IndoChina drug trafficking to fund operations in Vietnam, networks that were later taken over by the CIA. Also, ONI and OSS made a compact with the Italian and Corsican mobs as early as 1944, as well as making deals with the American Mafia to reduce waterfront sabotage operations. This was the basis for the CIA partnership with Lansky, Lucianno, Genovese and Trafficante families - a must-read on the subject, McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, available in its entirety at http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/default.htm .