ABSTRACT
The American involvement in setting up what eventually became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), today’s German foreign intelligence service, has long been common knowledge. From the summer of 1945 until March 1956 the US engaged, developed, and financed a German intelligence organization which was led by former Wehrmacht officers and intelligence professionals and which essentially provided Washington with information and studies on the Soviet Union and its satellites. The first detailed account was published by the key figure on the German side, Reinhard Gehlen, in his 1971 memoirs. Later publications elaborated somewhat on that story but failed to add much because archival sources were tightly closed on both the American and the German sides. No original documents from that period were available until 2002 when the CIA released a “documentary history” prepared by Kevin C. Ruffner of the CIA history staff. A year later, and obviously in tandem with those CIA releases, James H. Critchfield published his book Partners in the Creation. Critchfield had been an important figure on the US side of that peculiar intelligence relationship, acting as an on-site CIA supervisor of the Gehlen group.1
