The Gehlen Organization, Part 2: Peter and Paul | Historical
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Content warning. This episode contains references to suicide. Incoming transmission. Welcome. This is True Spies. The podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time. Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in. True Spies. You'll meet the people who live life undercover. I love you.

What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? This is True Spies. The funny thing about this is Galen was spectacularly unsuccessful during World War II in predicting Soviet operations, partly because the Soviets were feeding the Germans disinformation. He learned nothing.

I'm Daisy Ridley and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios. The Galen Organization Part 2: Peter and Paul November 1953, East Berlin. At an East German government press conference, officials present two men to the watching world. The Stasi have arrested each of them in the past few months. And now the captives are telling their story.

Both are agents for the Galen Organization. In the months leading up to the press conference, they had disappeared. The Galen Organization informed the CIA that they must have been kidnapped. But the truth was very different. Two of Galen's counterintelligence officers defected to East Germany. And now the two officers were denouncing the Galen Organization and the West.

For the first time since his arrest by US troops in 1945, self-styled master spy Reinhard Galen was vulnerable. What that seemed to show Galen, as stubborn as he was, was that there were moles in the Galen organization. And to make matters worse… He really wasn't equipped to find out who they were.

In this, the second part of True Spies look at the Galen Organization, the West German intelligence service founded after World War II, we'll hear how it became one of the most controversial spy networks of the post-war period. This is really one of the most incredible spy stories of the Cold War. It's almost unbelievable.

By 1949, former Nazi General Reinhard Galen had secured what he coveted most for his fledgling West German intelligence network: CIA sponsorship.

Codenamed "Utility" by his American counterparts, Galen portrayed himself every inch the upstanding Prussian staff officer that so impressed many of his American patrons. And he never played the game with the Americans of being an independent actor, at least not when he wanted something. This is Norman Goder, a professor of history and Holocaust studies at the University of Florida.

He has studied Nazi Germany and intelligence for over 30 years. The Galen organization, as far as the CIA was concerned, was not going to just go off on its own, set its own agenda, make its own policy, run its own operations. Before co-opting the organization, the CIA had told Galen that it wanted the names of everyone inside.

When it did take over, though, the CIA soon saw how difficult this would be. The Galen organization never kept a central registry of who they hired. And the idea behind this was if the Soviets rolled up one network, they would only get that network. They wouldn't get the entire organization.

But James Critchfield, the CIA officer tasked with overseeing Galen, wasn't wholly convinced by this logic. He and many others in the agency thought the organization was protecting former Nazis on its payroll. If it ever got out that this was an organization that was riddled by former Gestapo, former SD, and people who had real criminal backgrounds,

it would be a tremendous embarrassment to the US occupation authorities. And many in the CIA questioned Galen's true motives. Maybe they want to undertake revanchist operations against the Soviets. After all, the eastern parts of Germany had been amputated from Germany and the Soviet zone was the Soviet zone. Is it committed to democracy? We know they're anti-Soviet.

That's fine, but was it going to serve US interests? Nobody really knew. Critchfield confronts Galen about both shady personnel and poor unauthorized intelligence work in many of his departments. But he's met with a fierce response from the German spy. He told Critchfield that the questions that the Americans were asking were questions that he was not going to answer.

And he simply wasn't going to cooperate. Not wanting to cut the organization loose completely, Critchfield concluded it was better not to push the matter further. Instead, he would do what he was trained to do. He would spy on the Galen organization. Which was ostensibly allied with them, but was insubordinate at the same time. This is the irony.

By now, the Galen organization had moved out of U.S. military barracks and was based at a former Nazi villa in Pulach, Bavaria. So Critchfield moves in. - Critchfield set up something called the Pulach Operations Base, ostensibly to give Critchfield access to Galen whenever he wanted. In fact, the Pulach Operation Base spied on Galen's headquarters.

With no names of Galen personnel forthcoming, Critchfield improvises. The Pulach operations base and Galen's headquarters actually shared a courtyard and camera equipment was set up so that the CIA could see who was going in and coming out of Galen's headquarters. Before long, Critchfield and his men become concerned by what, or more accurately, who they see.

They spotted people like Otto von Bolschwing, for example, who had worked under Adolf Eichmann. To this day, most of the details of this particular piece of counterintelligence are still classified. But we do know that Critchfield expanded his operations beyond courtyard cameras. And soon he came across a particularly rich source of information.

Once Germany was sovereign, after October 1949, all of these Galen officials had to be paid. And they weren't going to get paid under their false names. You had to be paid under your real name. To prepare for a possible takeover of the organization, the West German government sent two accountants to Pulak to begin auditing Galen's books.

Critchfield's team ultimately gained access to the resulting files and pieced their own picture of the organization together. What they saw shocked even the most cynical among them.

There were hundreds of former SS, SD and Gestapo who were working in the Galen organization, who had been on roving shooting squads on the Eastern Front, who had killed large numbers of Jews in these operations. Among the names were men like Emil Alsberg, an SS functionary convicted of war crimes in Poland.

Galen had hired him as chief specialist on Soviet intelligence tactics, giving him the alias Dr. Alberti. The Americans were appalled, but not in the way you might think.

The moral issue came up, but ultimately it wasn't really U.S. intelligence officials saying to themselves, my God, you know, how could we possibly hire a person like this? The problem was more that they thought hiring a person like this would come back to bite them in one way or another.

These were nationalists. Some of them were very sympathetic to the old idea of Nazism. This could possibly be the germ of a resistance association. Fed up, the CIA moved to replace Galen with a more malleable figure. But by this point, Reinhard Galen's cozy relationship with the West German government insulated him from any fallout.

You really see someone who has figured out how to play the game, right? I mean, he runs to the German government. He didn't run to just anybody in the German government. He ran to the office of the German chancellor, met the right people, formed the right relationships, and gained their confidence.

In August 1951, a senior CIA officer traveled to West Germany to meet with Hans Globke, Secretary of State and right-hand man to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. "Is Galen acceptable to Adenauer?" the CIA agent asked. "Absolutely," Globke replied.

The CIA now knew that Reinhard Gehlen would likely become head of the official intelligence agency of West Germany, a key American ally during the Cold War. Keeping the relationship cordial seemed the wise move long term. So, that October, Critchfield invited Gehlen for a tour of the US.

Critchfield's view was, well, this is who we've got. And so, you know, we have to smooth the feathers where we can. The two men watch the World Series at Yankee Stadium, drink at Chicago's finest speakeasy, marvel at the Redwoods in Sequoia National Park, and meet with CIA director Beatle Smith in Washington, D.C.,

The CIA was still spying on him, but on the surface anyway, it was important to sort of maintain this image of two entities that were working together and sort of give him the image of equality. But the thaw in relations was not to last.

In November 1953, two Galen spies appeared at that East German press conference. Spies that Galen said were kidnapped while operating in the Soviet zone. But they hadn't been kidnapped at all. They were double agents returning to the East. For the CIA, the press conference was only the start. It was convinced there were many more moles in the Galen organization, especially in its counterintelligence unit.

which went under the very vanilla name of Generaladministration L, Generalvertretung L. GVL in particular was full of former SS and SD men, and the CIA was sure that many of them were just as anti-American as they were anti-anybody else, an opinion shared by the Soviets.

And the Soviets tried to penetrate the Galen organization right from the start, and they targeted counterintelligence. CIA liaison officer James Critchfield confronts Reinhard Galen again, demanding all the names in GVL. For once, Galen relents.

And as of this moment in 1953, he begins working a little bit more closely with the CIA again, and the CIA tries to help him figure out who might be working with the Soviets. Galen agrees to disband GVL and bring most of its members under a tighter leash at Pulak headquarters.

Even after receiving the names of war criminals like Emil Ausberg though, Critchfield and the CIA made no attempt to get any of them sacked. It'll come as no surprise to regular True Spies listeners that the CIA of the time weren't exactly averse to consorting with ex-Nazis themselves.

The Americans had a number of operations of themselves going on in the 1950s using former Nazis. And from time to time, you know, there were actually arguments between American judicial officials on the one hand and American intelligence officials on the other. And the judicial officials would say, "We can't believe you have a relationship with so-and-so."

Nevertheless, the relationship would continue when it was a direct U.S. relationship with someone with a criminal background. Even the British Secret Service was sounding the alarm. But ultimately, the only concern the CIA had was whether these former Nazis were in fact double agents. And that they could cause embarrassment down the road.

Indeed, by 1954, Soviet penetration of the Galen organization blew up again, in spectacular fashion. Hello, True Spies listener. This episode is made possible with the support of June's Journey, a riveting little caper of a game which you can play right now on your phone. Since you're listening to this show, it's safe to assume you love a good mystery, some compelling detective work,

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And I absolutely love all the little period details packed into this world. I don't want to give too much away because the real fun of June's journey is seeing where this adventure will take you. But I've just reached a part of the story that's set in Paris.

And I'm so excited to get back to it. Like I said, if you love a salacious little mystery, then give it a go. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast, What Should I Read Next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tech all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read.

They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page-turner to help them escape the stresses of work, socializing,

school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for What Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more. February 1954, Vienna.

A freight train leaves the city's central station packed with cargo. But on board, there's more than just raw materials and packaged goods. Hidden in one box is KGB agent Peter Deryabin. Arriving in the American zone, Deryabin requested asylum from authorities. Soon after, he was flown to America for debriefing.

And soon, he dropped a bombshell on his interrogators. He told the Americans that there were two moles in the Galen organization, codenamed Peter and Paul. The CIA's worst fears about Galen had been realized. And the Americans decided that they were going to find out who this was. But the CIA doesn't want its fingerprints on the investigation.

If it got out that the CIA was penetrating the Galen organization, the agency knew that Reinhard Galen would be outraged, potentially acting further beyond its control. So, the CIA asked Galen's old sponsor to do it instead.

This was kind of the odd thing is that the CIA wanted the CIC, that's the US Army Counterintelligence Corps, to run this operation against the Galen organization. So the CIC, Galen's first American patron, start to penetrate the organization instead. And they recruited a guy named Ludwig Albert.

Now an agent in Gehlen's counterintelligence unit, Ludwig Albert was part of the Wehrmacht secret field police during the war. A behind-the-front criminal organization that was supposed to take care of partisans and Jews.

But to the CIC, Albert is a promising source. His intel on Galen's penetration looks solid, and it points in the direction of one person in particular, a man called Heinz Felfa. Heinz Felfa was a former SS officer. He was hired into the Galen organization because he already had SD comrades in it. And he begins to make his way up Galen.

the latter in the Galen organization. And FALFA is actually in headquarters in the counterintelligence section by 1953.

After a little more digging, Albert is adamant. The mole is Heinz Felfa. Felfa is the one who is disrupting counterintelligence organizations and the counterintelligence mission of the Galen organization. And Felfa is also the one giving the Soviets information they could have gotten it from no place else.

While ongoing, the CIC keeps the investigation under wraps, not briefing the CIA on any developments. And the Americans were more and more convinced that Albert was right and that Falfa was the mole. But then, in mid-1955, the investigation got blown apart.

West German authorities went into Albert's home. They found all kinds of microfilms and other kinds of things that Albert wasn't supposed to have, including wads of cash. He was arrested. Ludwig Albert, the CIC's mole catcher within Galen, was, in fact, the mole. And more than that, Heinz Welfa got the tip-off that caught him.

And it turned out that he also worked with the East Germans. And soon after, Albert was dead. His wife said, "If he can't explain all of this, then he can hang himself," which Albert did.

The CIC had been duped. Albert was telling them, "Felfa's the mole, Felfa's the mole, Felfa's the mole." But when Albert got arrested, the counterintelligence corps felt, "Well, looks like Albert was the mole, right?" And that we were back in the wrong horse here all along. But the investigation is still private. The CIC haven't shared any of their work with the CIA.

And now embarrassed, they kept it that way. Because the whole thing made them look bad, that we had been buying this bill of goods from this guy who winds up getting arrested and hanging himself. So the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, they were not really anxious to advertise the fact that they had been taking down all of this false information that was coming from Albert.

By now, James Critchfield and his team had worked with Heinz Wölffer for some time. They knew he was a dependable ally in the fight against the Soviets. And with the Molle Court, Wölffer and his boss Reinhard Gehlen are vindicated.

Felfa was now the hero who had uncovered the mole in West German counterintelligence. And so he gained Galen's confidence all the more after this. And Galen gained Adenauer's confidence and Globka's confidence all the more after this as well. Shortly after Albert's death, Felfa was promoted. He winds up heading up counterintelligence for the Galen organization.

Felfa devises several ingenious plans to foil the Soviets. He ran these big, bold, brazen organizations. Including one involving an East German spy codenamed Lina.

Felfa proposes to Galen that through Lina, they give the Soviets so-called build-up material. That is intelligence that the Soviets already know, but is nonetheless true. This would establish Lina's credibility in the eyes of the Soviets. And in return, Lina will get important intelligence from the Soviets. Felfa runs the scheme for years, with Galen's approval.

The Soviets were giving Lina information on who their spies were in the Federal Republic. Who were then rounded up by the West German authorities.

Which, by the way, made Galen look very, very good. You know, the more Felfa is doing this, the more Galen can go to the federal chancellor's office and say, "Ho, ho, ho, let me tell you what we're doing here." These big operations which are, you know, bringing the Soviets to their knees. As one of Galen's top agents, the Americans invite Heinz Felfa to Washington, D.C.

and made a visit to the CIA with a delegation from the Galen Organization. And he offered to share information and maybe work with the CIA. And the CIA was very happy to work with Felfa because, you know, Felfa claimed to have all of these sources in East Germany. And so they began to share information.

But 1956 was momentous for another reason also, as Reinhard Gehlen's organization changed hands once again. West Germany got its full sovereignty in 1955, and in 1956, the West German state officially took over the Gehlen organization. Giving it a new name in the process. Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Information Office, or the BND for short.

The stars and stripes that flew over Galen's Pulak compound were replaced by the red-black-gold tricolor of the Federal Republic of Germany. For the first time since 1945, Galen's organization was off America's books. But only a few years after becoming an official part of the West German state, the Soviets came back to haunt the Galen organization in another way.

In 1959, a very important Polish intelligence official named Michal Golaniewski made his way west and defected and started getting debriefed by the CIA. And soon enough, like Peter Deryabin before him, this defector also has a bombshell to share about Galen's network.

He tells the CIA how a KGB colleague had once bragged that of the six BND agents who had visited America in 1956, two were in fact KGB. Looking at the six names, the CIA remembers that Heinz Felfer was one of those on the US trip.

And the CIA began to study Felfa seriously at this point. They began tapping his phone and they began following him. And before long, the CIA discovers some irregularities in Felfa's life. They began to figure out that he had more money than he really ought to have and that he had a second home right on the Austrian border, strangely enough.

At first, the CIA kept the investigation from Galen, as the CIC had done with its own molehunt back in 1954. But by early 1961, the CIA felt it had no choice but to tell Galen their suspicions of Felfa. After all, the BND was now independent. Reluctantly, Galen starts his own investigation.

Ironically, the BND investigation picks up the old threads from the Albert case in 1954. All the stuff that Albert had told the CIC in 1954, which everyone discounted after he was arrested, now they're looking at it again. And in this new light, Ludwig Albert's accusation of Felfa started to make more sense.

Albert, he was a triple agent. It's hard to say where his real loyalties were, but they were probably ultimately with the West German state. Because Ludwig Albert told the Americans, the mole is Heinz Felfa.

But Felfa's counterintelligence operations against the Soviets were bold, not the sort you would expect from a Russian mole. When you think of a penetration agent, you think of some guy passing envelopes or leaving them on a park bench, you know, or slipping somebody some microfilm or something like that. This was a guy who was actually running operations, and operations which seemed to be very successful

Nonetheless, Galen investigates Felfa's operations. They also began to review the Lina business.

Remember Lina? The operation fell for devised where he would give the Soviets apparently insignificant build-up information via their double agent, hoping the Soviets would offer up valuable intel as a result. They began to figure out, "Hmm, the people who have been getting arrested never seem to be really important Soviet spies, whereas the stuff we're handing over seems to be important stuff."

A stark realization dawns on Galen's investigators. Well, the build-up information that Felfa said the Soviets already knew, a lot of it they didn't know. And the Soviets were giving Lena information on who their spies were in the Federal Republic. But the Soviets gave Lena pawns, decoys.

Galen now sees that something similar may have happened during the first serious mole hunt back in 1954, which ultimately led to Ludwig Albert. And so what was going on here was that the Soviets had two agents in West German counterintelligence. One was Felfa, one was Albert. And when the trail got too hot on Felfa, who was the more valuable of the two,

They burned Albert. And it begins to occur to them that they had arrested a decoy and that the more important Soviet official had always been Felfa. Eventually, even Galen can't ignore the suspicions of his counterintelligence chief any longer.

In August of 1961, the Berlin Wall is built to the complete surprise of West German intelligence. A wall of East German police stands at the Brandenburg Gate. All communication between the Eastern sector and those of the West has been cut as though by a knife.

This is kind of what your counterintelligence person is supposed to figure out. In November 1961, the West German police arrest Heinz Felfe, along with the man who recruited him to the Galen organization's counterintelligence unit, who, it turned out, was also a Soviet spy. Comparing their backgrounds, the West Germans notice a striking parallel in the two men's lives.

Both of them were SS officers and both of them were from Dresden, which the Allies had bombed. So they kind of had a bone to pick with the Allies. After his arrest, it becomes clear just how damaging Felfa was as a Soviet double agent.

Felfel was not only burning West German agents who were working in East Germany, he also started burning CIA agents. The Soviets would not arrest them right away, but would arrest them from time to time and feed the others disinformation as well. The West Germans come to the same conclusion that Ludwig Albert gave the CIC back in 54.

it is likely that the BND's entire Soviet counterintelligence operation was penetrated by none other than the Soviets.

Which means that the Soviets can pretty much run anything in West Germany. And your top counterintelligence officer who is supposed to stop this is actually stopping a bunch of red herrings so that the real Soviet intelligence operations can proceed unhindered. So this is huge.

Over the course of their trial, Felfa and his colleague admit to passing over 15,000 classified documents to the Soviets. And soon, the CIA is rocked by another revelation. The British had hired Felfa in 1945. And tasked him with penetrating the West German Communist Party.

The problem was he was also working for the German Communist Party in the British zone. And then the information that he was collecting for the British, he was selling to other intelligence organizations. After learning of this, the British Secret Service dropped Welfar, but they didn't alert any of their allies to him. And so Welfar was able to become one of the most significant double agents of the Cold War.

Felfa was convicted of treason in 1963. And the newspapers are running stories. How many other SS officers, right, were in the Bundesnachrichten Dienst as well? This was a tremendous scandal. And not least for Reinhard Gehlen, the man who had promoted and vouched for Felfa.

Adenhauer starts to wise up. He starts talking about Galen's stupidity, Galen's incompetence, you know. And so Galen became more and more isolated.

Now calling Galen the runt, West German Chancellor Adenauer even dragged the local U.S. ambassador out of a luncheon to humiliate him over the Americans' hiring of such an idiot as Galen in the first place. Galen was an intelligence failure for decades and an intelligence failure on a grand scale. And it resulted from

from opportunism, venality on Galen's part, schmoozing the right people on Galen's part, and a reluctance to exercise real oversight, first on the part of the army, then on the part of the CIA, and then on the part of the West German government.

After a few more years clinging on at the top, Galen retired in 1968, forever tainted by the Felfa affair. This guy was playing chutes and ladders while the Soviets were playing advanced chess, and he simply never caught up and ran the organization in such a way that it never would. But to many, including in the CIA, he was still a treasured warrior in the Cold War against the Russians.

To mark his retirement, the CIA threw a banquet for Galen in Washington, D.C., thanking him for his years of service. After leaving the BND, though, Galen didn't go quietly.

In 1971, Galen releases his memoirs. - But for a true spy like Reinhard Galen, the taste for deception was ever present. - His memoirs, they're wonderful as a series of lies, half truths, and as a Cold War period piece. And here he represents himself once again as the master spy.

Every mistake he made in World War II, those were all Hitler's fault. He got every prediction right, but Hitler just wouldn't listen. But he also makes the argument that the Felfa case was really overblown. The press blew it up into something it never really was, and they were out to get me afterwards and that sort of thing.

At his lakeside retreat in southern Germany, Galen was only too happy to serenade the occasional visiting journalist with stories of his life's work. Once, when asked how he reflected on his career, Galen said: "I can only be grateful to fate. I don't know what fundamental mistakes I have made.

It's a very interesting story of this staff officer who kind of keeps his head down and does his job on the Eastern Front, who really wasn't up for the task, who reinvents himself under American tutelage in 1945 and begins to fall in love more and more with his own image, but who never understood that

how intelligence really worked was never really up to countering the way the Soviets did business. The legacy of Reinhard Galen, aka Dr. Schneider, utility, and Richard Garner, lives on to this day. The BND still has a base at the Pulak compound that Galen set up at just after World War II.

And clearly, much of the Galen organization's work is still too sensitive, even over 65 years later. There's still stuff that was never declassified and that may never be declassified. I'm Daisy Ridley. Join us next time for another secret rendezvous with true spies.