sent to Washington, D.C., for further questioning over the objections
of Boker and his superior, Edwin Sibert, the head of army intelligence
in the American occupation zone. There Gehlen established a personal
and intellectual rapport with his interrogator, Eric Waldman, an Aus-
trian Jew who had enlisted in the U.S. Army during the war. Gaining
Waldman’s support for the reconstitution of his group as an opera-
tional branch of U.S. Army intelligence, Gehlen returned to Germany
in June 1946. There he found that Hermann Baun, another former
FHO member, was to be in charge of collection, while Gehlen would
head the evaluation unit. With Waldman emphasizing the need for
a single intelligence head, however, Gehlen arranged that he would
retain authority over two subordinates: Baun charged with collection
and Wessel with analysis and collation. The Americans gave the Ge-
hlen project the code name rusty. In his later memoirs—attempting
to answer his German critics—Gehlen stressed that according to his
gentleman’s agreement with Sibert he was working “with” and not
“for” the Americans and that no operation was undertaken contrary to
Germany’s self-interest.
The Organisation Gehlen (OG) was based initially in Oberursel
in the Taunus and moved the following year to Pullach outside Mu-
nich. The recruitment of personnel began in fall 1946. The establish-
ment of the U.S. Central Intelligence Organization (CIA) in 1947
raised the question of the OG’s continued existence. After a nearly
two-month investigation, James Critchfield concluded that no other
viable alternative in Germany existed, thus providing the basis for
the relationship that officially started on 1 July 1949 under the code
name zipper. Gehlen resisted Critchfield’s attempts to gain a fuller
knowledge of the OG’s structure and sources, and with the establish-
ment of West Germany’s first elected government under Konrad
Adenauer in 1949, Gehlen began to bypass the CIA whenever pos-
sible. His key ally was Adenauer’s closest aide Hans Globke, who
supported the OG’s formal integration into the German government
and supplied him a special fund, approved by the CIA, to conduct
domestic surveillance as well.
Gehlen adroitly maneuvered against two competitors, Friedrich
Wilhelm Heinz and Otto John, and on 1 April 1956, after consider-
able political debate, the Bundesnachrichtendienst came into official
existence. Although Gehlen’s title changed from general director to130 • GEHLEN, REINHARD