Anti-Communism and PsyWar in the 1950s (Giles Scott-Smith, 2012)

October 30, 2012 10:50 MAC/SCOTT Page-13 9780230221260_03_cha01

1Anti-Communism and PsyWarin the 1950s

It is only common sense to respect the strength of the Communistadversary and in particular his extraordinary pertinacity, but it isequal sense to remember that he is the slave of his own theory.

Information Research Department, 19631

While the input for Interdoc came from various nationalities andinstitutions through the 1950s, the origins can best be located in WestGermany, the front-line state of the Cold War, and it was the Germans whobecame the driving force behind the institution in the 1960s. The reasonsfor this are not hard to find. The establishment of the Federal Republic ofGermany in May 1949 had been followed by that of the German Demo-cratic Republic (GDR) in October of the same year. The occupying forces ofthe Americans, British, French, and Russians were still effectively in charge,but from this point on the relations between the two Germanies would be atthe centre of East–West relations. The regimes in Bonn and East Berlin wouldregard each other as illegitimate upstarts, equally claiming the mantle of theone true Germany. They would also work hard to undermine each other.The Federal Republic’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, wasted no time insetting out the basis for the Western attitude. Germany was divided onlybecause of Soviet design, not popular will, and until it could be reunitedonly the government in Bonn would be its legitimate representative. Forthe time being the GDR – referred to as “The Zone” or “Pankow” – mustbe denied recognition and diplomatically isolated. This approach was codi-fied in the mid-1950s by the so-called Hallstein doctrine, named after StateSecretary Walter Hallstein of the Federal Republic’s Foreign Ministry. Thedoctrine vowed to break relations with any nation state that had the temerityto recognize the GDR.2

Of course, this state of affairs was complicated by the presence of theoccupying powers in the two Germanies. Fortunately for Adenauer, London,Paris, and Washington all agreed that the GDR should not be grantedde jure nor be able to claim de facto recognition, which meant opposing

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14 Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network

diplomatic and consular relations and allowing only trade relations vianon-governmental outlets. The outbreak of the Korean War also highlightedthe need to fast-track a Federal Republic contribution to NATO. In September1950 Washington sanctioned Adenauer’s claim to speak for all German peo-ple and not just those in the West, as part of its containment strategy. Yet,while this support was welcome, it also demonstrated where the rules werereally being set. Greater concerns over East–West relations and Moscow’s atti-tude would always overshadow the Allies’ direct interest in West Germany’swishes. Thus a United Nations (UN) meeting in late 1951 revealed clearlythat “The task of blocking East Germany’s admission to international confer-ences fell to the Western Allies; West German delegations were instructed tooffer no more than a few sentences of support in favor of positions argued bythe American, British, or French delegates.”3 The threat of Moscow capitaliz-ing on relations with newly independent countries across Asia and Africa didprovoke London and Paris to say they would intervene in foreign capitals ifnecessary. But the Federal Republic would have to carve out a diplomaticspace for itself and develop its own means to counteract the presence of theEast Berlin regime.

Adenauer was determined to build a position of strength in the West thatwould, together with the policy of isolation, eventually force the GDR intoreunification on the West’s terms. But this approach did not envisage anyreal contact between the peoples of the two Germanies themselves. TheSocial Democrats (SPD) especially found this difficult to accept, due to thetraumatic circumstances of the formation of the GDR, when the party’sfusion with the communists in 1946 led to dissenters either fleeing to theWest or being imprisoned in former World War II concentration camps.When the Soviet Union granted formal sovereignty to the GDR in a treatyin September 1955, the SPD’s Erich Ollenhauer argued that the East Berlinregime was becoming a fact and that Bonn had to get used to dealing withit. While recognition remained unacceptable, Ollenhauer supported arrang-ing deals to allow cross-border economic and social contacts.4 The rigid,dogmatic policy propagated by Hallstein could potentially lead to the iso-lation of West Germany itself. A further field of interest was the fact that theEastern European region had been a valuable trading partner for Germanybefore World War II. From the Eastern side, increased trade would be auseful channel through which to normalize relations with the West, gainindustrial products in short supply, and contribute to the Soviet aim for ageneral increase in East–West interchange. From the late 1950s onwards,trade between the Federal Republic and Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland,and Romania showed a steadily upward trend. Eastern Europe representedonly 5 per cent of West German trade, but the market had potential. Whatis more, interdependence via trade could be a means to open up the Eastto political influence.5 From the late 1950s onwards political, social, and


Anti-Communism and PsyWar in the 1950s 15

economic interest groups were therefore pressing for an easing of restrictionson contacts with the East.

Gehlen and the BND

The formation of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the foreign intelli-gence service, on 1 April 1956 was an important mark of full sovereignty forWest Germany. But the BND was of course not created out of thin air. Theman who had been at the centre of its gestation was Reinhard Gehlen, a for-mer member of the Wehrmacht General Staff, who prior to 1956 had beenrunning the prototype for the BND, the Gehlen Organization. For more thanfifteen years he had been preoccupied with monitoring developments in theEast. With the arrival of the BND, this task took on new dimensions.

Gehlen had been appointed Head of Operations of the General Staff’sEastern Group in late 1940, placing him at the centre of preparations forthe invasion of the Soviet Union. In April 1942 he received a fateful reas-signment, becoming chief of Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), the General Staff’sintelligence service on the Eastern front. From this position he built a repu-tation as a good organizer and cool evaluator who ran the FHO as an efficientoutfit.6 By late 1943 Gehlen seemed convinced that the entry of the US intothe war had made it impossible for Germany to win. Instead of joining anti-Hitler plots such as the failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944, he beganto make different plans. A Europe divided and under the occupation of theUS and the USSR looked a highly likely outcome. In these circumstances,the information held by the FHO on Soviet forces was potentially of greatsignificance. Gehlen, confiding in his closest associates, sought to preserveboth material and personnel from his organization for a post-war era wherethe US should value what they had to offer.7

Following his surrender to US forces in Bavaria in late May 1945, Gehlenand his colleagues went through several nerve-racking years trying to estab-lish themselves as a recognized asset for US security interests. Fortunately,certain key individuals saw the merits of Gehlen’s plan early on. In the sum-mer of 1945 G-2 (US army intelligence) officer John Boker and his superiorGeneral Sibert tried to initiate “Operation X” to allow Gehlen’s group toreassemble and show what they could produce. When Gehlen and six otherswere suddenly flown to Washington for interrogation at US army intelli-gence headquarters, Sibert continued to gather other Gehlen associates andformer Abwehr (German military intelligence) personnel at the US Deten-tion and Interrogation Center in Oberursel. Operation X became OperationRusty. Following Sibert’s departure in 1946, the G-2 apparatus maintainedits hold over the Gehlen Organization via its liaison officers John Deane andEric Waldman. It was Waldman, wanting to give the scattered and vulnerableoutfit a secure location, who first heard of the former Nazi party compound



in Pullach, south of Munich. In December 1947 the Organization began tomove into what would be the base for West German intelligence for the restof the Cold War.8 Two decades later Waldman, by then an academic basedin Canada, would reappear as a participant in the Interdoc network.

Although this sounds like a straightforward development, the confusedperiod after the war made it anything but. US intelligence was beingreformed, with the winding up of the Office of Strategic Services inSeptember 1945 followed by the creation of the Central Intelligence Groupin January 1946, the first stepping stone towards the Central IntelligenceAgency a year and a half later. US security goals were undefined immediatelyafter the war, and there were differences of opinion over how harsh the ret-ribution should be towards former members of the German General Staff.What is more, General Sibert had more or less run Operation Rusty as a sep-arate outfit, disconnected from the rest of the US intelligence infrastructurein Germany at that time. Sibert’s intention that the Gehlen Organizationwould simply become part of the US intelligence infrastructure also did notfit with what Gehlen himself was aiming for:

He intended to develop the FHO into a national intelligence service sup-ported by the Americans but possessing a German character that wouldbe amenable to a future German government. He planned to move hisorganization as rapidly as possible into some defined legal status within anew German government. In the meantime he would limit U.S. access toinformation about his organization, its members, and its operations.9

To this end Gehlen assembled as many members as he could of the formerGeneral Staff and Abwehr to form a core of personnel for the future secu-rity apparatus of an independent Germany. In July 1949, when the FederalRepublic of Germany was founded, responsibility for the Gehlen Organiza-tion was passed from the US Army to the CIA, with James Critchfield as headof the CIA’s Pullach Operations Base. Gehlen’s network was considered toovaluable as a source of information on the situation in the East for it to beabandoned. A working relationship was hammered out whereby Critchfieldwould set the requirements for operations and oversee the results. There wereplenty of risks involved. For Gehlen this was no more than a “trusteeshiparrangement” for a future of complete independence. Critchfield had estab-lished that the 300 individuals linked to the organization had come out ofthe war “with reasonably clean slates” and were not on the Nuremberg arrestlist.10 But others further down the chain of command were not so clean.Not only did Gehlen try to prevent the CIA from obtaining full informa-tion on his personnel and agent network, but he also consciously developedthe political outlook of his service. The result was a feeling of suspicionand mistrust within both the CIA and the US Army as to Gehlen’s realmotives. Donald Galloway of the CIA wrote in December 1948 that “we



do not know very much about the inner workings of the RUSTY organiza-tion [the Gehlen Organization’s code name], and it is probable that the [US]Army does not either”.11 In the mid-1950s this even led to a wide-ranginginvestigation (code-named Operation Campus) by an Army G-2 unit thatstrongly suspected Gehlen’s organization of being riddled with former Nazisand communist spies. The exposure of many Gehlen agents by the EastGermans in Operation Hacke in 1953 only confirmed the worst thoughtsof many: that the Pullach set-up was completely penetrated. Campus wasright, but the bungling of this unauthorized investigation meant that theproblem would not be dealt with for several more years.12 This would havea direct impact on US participation in Interdoc.

Psychological warfare against the East

While Gehlen was trying to establish his bona fides with the CIA in Pullach,discussions were being held elsewhere in the fledgling West German govern-ment on how to deal with the threat from the East. Anti-communism wasfar more than simply a policy option, since “For Bonn’s political elites, thevery raison d’être of the infant West German state was to act as a bulwarkagainst Soviet expansionism”, and the portrayal of the Federal Republic asa vital Western rampart against the Soviet threat is constantly repeated inofficial documents from that time.13 The trigger for these first moves camein 1951, due to concerns within German industry about the threat posedby communist-inspired agitation among the workforce.14 By late 1952, inthe wake of Stalin’s proposal for a settlement of the German question thatMarch, the first steps were taken towards a comprehensive psychologicalwarfare strategy for the Federal Republic.15

The starting point for the Germans was the global mission of the USto combat Bolshevism, from which followed opportunities for the FederalRepublic to utilize this strategy for its own national interests. First andforemost, the West German mission was to secure Soviet withdrawal fromthe “Zone” and prepare for a “favourable decision” on unification and theEastern borders “beyond the Oder–Neisse”. To be successful, the US–WestGerman strategy had to be “tuned” (abgestimmt) to Soviet methods: the useof “fifth column” supporters in non-communist organizations, the coor-dinated manoeuvring of communist parties, the development of a “wareconomy”, and the constant dissemination of propaganda. In response,Bonn’s specific goals towards the Soviet Zone involved the underminingof its administrative and economic infrastructure, monitoring the level ofresistance of the populace, and carrying out acts of sabotage to reduce thecredibility of the regime. Within the Federal Republic itself it was vital toeducate the citizenry on the situation in the East and the constant needto identify and repel communist infiltration. Most important here was theneed to coordinate the many already-existing private organizations that



were active in anti-communist agitation, and to redirect counter-propagandatowards “a comprehensive banishment of the communist movement” (eineallgemeine Ächtung der kommunistischen Bewegung) from public consciousness.For this, print media and radio were insufficient: mass organization wasrequired.

In late 1952 it was proposed to set up a German–American committeeto coordinate the mobilization of civilian resistance, with representativesfrom the US High Commission and, under the leadership of the Ministry forAll-German Affairs (BMG: Bundesministerium für gesamtdeutsche Fragen),representatives from the German Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of the Inte-rior, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamtfür Verfassungsschutz), and the Chancellery. This committee, which had toensure a complete separation from existing military activities in this field,would define the overall strategy, the potential of each organization in thatstrategy, and the financial means required to carry it out. This also involvedensuring that selected private organizations would be “necessarily subordi-nated under official German supervision”, including where appropriate achange of leadership and tasks. A list of 43 anti-communist organizationswas assembled, 15 of which were located in Berlin. Responsibilities werenow being shared out between the Germans and the Americans, and offi-cial liaison channels established. The BMG, with its mission to “maintain anational consciousness” and promote democratic principles as an essentialpart of the process of reunification, took on a leading role.16

The implications of this document for German government involvementin the Cold War were considerable, not least in terms of expanding officialresponsibilities and defining who was to lead this mobilization and how itwould be carried out. Over the next few years a running discussion was held,involving the Ministry for All-German Affairs, the Chancellery (particularlyState Secretary Hans Globke), and the Ministry of the Interior (particu-larly Dr Toyka), on how best to run this extensive state–private network,whereby organizations became a sort of extended government departmentor remained private but received all or part of their finances from Bonn.17

The necessary expertise on how to run this was still lacking. The sensitivity ofthese developments meant there was a great need to keep those involved to aminimum, even though participation was spread across several departments.In October 1953 a proposal was put forward for a committee of expertsto fill this gap. The author, Rudolf Grüner, remarked how the openness ofdemocratic society left it vulnerable to the kinds of subversion practised bycommunist parties and their fellow-travellers. There was a great need for anorganization, “on the basis of mass psychology”, to intervene in Germansociety at an earlier stage than the security service and the courts. Grüneremphasized that the communist threat was changing from a simplistic “onthe barricades” radicalism led by the Communist Party to a sophisticatednetwork of front organizations. This required nothing less than a broad



“vaccination” (Schutzimpfung) of the people to help them understand andwithstand the threat. A counter-network, directed from a central bureau, wasrequired to supervise this. While the communist infiltration of Western civilsociety was expanding into all areas of social activity (“from film produc-tion to pigeon-breeding associations”), Grüner remarked that the responseup till then had been simplistic, ineffective, or, due to scandal, badlydiscredited.18

The scandal Grüner was referring to concerned the Bund Deutscher Jugend(BDJ), an anti-communist youth movement established in June 1950 (justprior to the outbreak of the Korean War) by World War II veterans. The BDJ,which received financial support from the Ministry for All-German Affairsand Chancellor Adenauer’s office, ran operations to confront and disruptthe activities of the East German Freie Deutsche Jugend and related pro-communist or neutral front organizations. Yet the activities of the BDJ werewound up in October 1952 when it was discovered that it also maintained aparamilitary wing known as the Technischer Dienst (TD), a stay-behind net-work that would run reconnaissance and guerrilla operations in the event ofa Soviet invasion. While the BDJ was a German affair, the TD was largely acreation of US Army Counter-Intelligence and the Office of Policy Coordi-nation (the US government’s covert action unit that was absorbed by theCIA in 1952), who provided funds, training, and weapons. What turnedthis into a serious scandal was the fact that members of the TD assembleda “Proscription list” of potential enemies to the nation, and this includednot only suspected communists but also members of the SPD. While theTD’s actual intentions with this list were never clarified, the fact that theTD was operating under the orders of the US, an occupying power, meantthat its members could not be prosecuted under German law. The US secu-rity establishment, in the interest of strengthening anti-communist forces,was therefore backing a ramshackle network of former Nazis and nation-alists who, despite involvement in criminal activity, were immune fromprosecution. This caused serious outrage from the SPD, and the ramifi-cations for German sovereignty and democratic stability were obviouslyimmense. It also seriously undermined the credibility of American inten-tions to promote a democratic Germany, and the arrogant manner withwhich US authorities responded to the German investigation further dam-aged relations.19 In short, the affair demonstrated the need for the Germanauthorities to develop their own approach to deal with the communistthreat. Allowing the CIA to run its own programmes without German con-trol was no longer acceptable. It also showed the necessity for centralizedcoordination to ensure a clear strategy, clear goals, and reliable personnel.The German roots of what would later become Interdoc lie in the responseto the BDJ–TD fiasco.

Through 1953–54, as the Federal Republic headed towards full sovereignty,discussions with the US authorities on the sharing of responsibilities



in psychological warfare continued. The US position was clarified in a“Statement of Intentions vis-à-vis Resistance Groups” passed to State Sec-retary Ewert von Dellingshausen, the BMG official now responsible forthis dossier, in October 1954.20 The document, which updated a previ-ous Statement of Intent from October 1952 (following the BDJ–TD affair),described six organizations which received US support “as instruments ofpsychological warfare”. Two of them, the Investigating Committee of FreeJurists (Untersuchungsausschuss Freiheitlicher Juristen) and the FightingGroup against Inhumanity (Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit), werein terms of finance and direction more or less direct extensions of US covertaction aimed at exposing injustice and undermining the functioning of EastGerman authorities. The others – the Association of Political Refugees fromthe East, the Marbach Group of writers (under Karl-Heinz Marbach), thesatirical magazine Tarantel, and the People’s League for Peace and Freedom(Volksbund für Frieden und Freiheit) – received to varying degrees US fund-ing and supervision. The Statement emphasized that it was the intention toensure these activities “recognize a valid official German interest”, that therewould be sufficient liaison and exchange of information, and that “the coor-dination of policy guidance for such operations” would continue, “lookingforward to the time when the Federal Government will be in a position toplay a more direct role in the management of the organizations mentionedherein”. But much ground still had to be covered.21 Who was going to beresponsible for coordination, both on a national and on an internationallevel? And how would it be carried out?

International liaison: NATO and Bilderberg

The entry of West Germany into NATO in May 1955 took these discussionson to a higher plane. The Soviet shift to peaceful coexistence and the renewalof diplomacy with the Geneva Conference in 1955 presented dangers for anAlliance that could not coordinate a response. As Canadian Foreign Min-ister Lester Pearson put it, the Soviet leaders “hope NATO will fall apart indétente”.22 Thinking ahead to Germany’s involvement, in October 1954 vonDellingshausen, who saw the Soviet propaganda threat as a common prob-lem requiring greater coordination at the international level, was writing ofthe need for a “General Staff” within NATO to define the goals, methods,and means required to run a collective psychological warfare campaign.23

The development of diplomatic relations between the Federal Republic andthe Soviet Union, exemplified by Chancellor Adenauer’s visit to Moscow in1955, only emphasized this further. The new coordination apparatus mustbe civilian, not military – a separation of tasks was necessary. A new kind ofwar demanded new kinds of organization. Working through NATO wouldalso allay the fears of others that the Federal Republic was getting too keenon upgrading its propaganda capabilities.



Propaganda and counter-propaganda had been a live issue withinNATO since its beginning. While Article 2 of the North Atlantic Treaty high-lighted the need for the signatories to strengthen “their free institutions,by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon whichthese institutions are founded”, there was disagreement on whether NATO’spublic information activities should also involve anti-communist counter-propaganda.24 Two issues were contentious. One was the suggestion thatNATO project its anti-Soviet activities to the East. General Kruls, until 1951Chief of the Dutch General Staff, wrote of the need for a collective psy-chological warfare strategy to project the West’s message of support for“liberation” to the oppressed peoples of the Eastern bloc. Despite supportfrom Field Marshal Montgomery, who became the Deputy Supreme AlliedCommander Europe in 1951, this was a step too far because it did not fitwith the Alliance’s posture as a defensive organization.25 The second issuewas to what extent NATO should actually function as a centre to coordinatepsychological warfare activities. Among the supporters were the French, whoproposed exploring the practice of “ideological warfare” at the NATO levelin early 1951.26 In November 1951 a more moderate American proposal wasput forward for a high-level Information Advisory Committee to advise theNorth Atlantic Council on strengthening morale. The committee, made upof “individuals of the highest standing [. . .] from science, education, businessor labour groups” should “consider the psychological problems of publicopinion in the free nations of the West.”27 This initiative was an extensionof the newly formed Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) in the US, which wasmeant to coordinate all anti-communist psychological operations abroad.28

But even this was not widely accepted, precisely because it threatened tooverride national prerogatives. For the moment any effort in this field wouldhave to be undertaken either through private initiatives or at the nationallevel, with NATO acting as no more than a supportive institution.

It was during this period that French politician Jean-Paul David, with thebacking of the French government, attempted to fill the gap. His organi-zation, Paix et Liberté, made its appearance in France in September 1950.Prime Minister René Pleven had called a meeting of like-minded politicalleaders to propose the formation of a new organization to confront com-munist “fifth column” infiltration in French society. David, at 37 the leaderof the Rassemblement des gauches républicaines (RGR), deputy for Seine etOise, and mayor of Mantes-la-Jolie, “was not an intellectual but an orga-nizing genius, a courageous man endowed with some straightforward ideas,notably an urgent need to combat Marxist influence”. Finance in the regionof two to three million francs a year was assembled from French industry andbanks, and a high-profile campaign was begun utilizing posters, brochuresexplaining the communist threat and the reality of concentration camps,radio transmissions, and even a film, Crève-Coeur, about the French battalionfighting in the Korean War.29 Links were also made with like-minded groups



across Western Europe. A key role in this was played by Eberhard Taubert, theformer Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda official andthe inspiration behind the Antikomintern, who had already proposed theblueprint for the Volksbund für Frieden und Freiheit (VFF) to US occupationauthorities in Germany in 1947.30 By August 1951 a European coordina-tion committee had been formed with representatives from France, Belgium,Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany, with meetings held in Paris everytwo months. All national affiliations were equal and acted separately accord-ing to local circumstances, but the intention was certainly to respond tocommunist propaganda strategy in unison across the West, thereby rebuff-ing Soviet-bloc efforts to cause divisions inside NATO by playing memberstates off against each other. By January 1955 there were 20 affiliates, rangingacross Europe and beyond.31

In the international context Paix et Liberté was therefore decentralized,the goal being to maintain regular contacts between its affiliates. Neverthe-less David, who gained notoriety as the network’s spokesman, became thepoint man for a determined attempt in 1952–53 to take it a step furtherby establishing a psychological warfare section within NATO itself. Withthe backing of French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, David carried outan intensive rolling tour of NATO countries during this period in order toraise governmental understanding and support for psychological warfareactivities.32 Always received at the highest levels, David’s visit to the USin February 1952 was recorded in the New York Times and was intended tolink up with like-minded American organizations and send a strong messagethat Europe was rearming not only militarily but also psychologically in thestruggle against communism.33 But responses were mixed. While the Greeksand the Turks were enthusiastic, a report of David’s visit to the Netherlandsin mid-1953 suggested that his goal was to combine “psychological defence”(sustaining morale within NATO countries) and “psychological warfare”(behind the Iron Curtain) within a single centralized coordinating body, aproposal the Dutch were not prepared to accept. The report also confirmsthat David’s efforts were carried out without holding any contact with theNATO Information Service (NATIS) itself, so much so that NATIS officialswere afraid he was actually doing more harm than good. Neither was thereofficial recognition from the North Atlantic Council.34

David’s second trip to the US in September 1953 involved meetings withAllen Dulles, Walter Bedell Smith, and members of the Operations Coor-dinating Board (the successor to the PSB), but the Americans were alsounwilling to back Paix et Liberté as a NATO venture. The US wanted tomaintain its own strategy of psychological warfare and maintain it as primusinter pares; it did not want to officially democratize Western strategy viaNATO meetings, which would only limit its freedom of action.35 Therehas always been strong suspicion of American covert funding for David’snetwork, but this link has never been categorically proven.36 Also, the



actual links between the national committees remained obscure. In FrancePaix et Liberté did function with the aid of a “brains trust” consistingof high-up figures within the French state, including members of theService de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE),France’s external intelligence agency, but David has flatly denied thatthere were ever any representatives from other NATO countries involvedin those twice-monthly meetings. Each national committee went itsown way.

David’s ambitions were never fully realized. The organization’s messageremained simple: communism was evil, and the Soviet Union, through itsproxy organizations in politics, the trade unions, and across society at large,propagated lies to cover this up by presenting itself as promoting peace andfreedom. Whereas this had a function in the tense days of 1950–51 when theKorean War broke out, by the mid-1950s the complexities of peaceful coex-istence had undermined Paix et Liberté’s usefulness. Reacting to the GenevaConference of 1955, the international committee could only announce thatthe Soviet leaders continued with “their slanderous accusations, resulting inthe creation of an atmosphere of distrust and hatred among the people in apolitical war with the aim to expand the rule of the USSR over the world”.37

The BVD came to the conclusion much sooner that such an outfit as Vredeen Vrijheid (VV) – the Dutch wing of Paix et Liberté – had a limited reachand shelf-life. VV had been established in August 1951 to “publicize anddefend the sentiments of peace and freedom” by means of various mediaoutlets: a newspaper (De Echte Waarheid), pamphlets, posters, exhibitions,TV and radio spots, and lectures.38 The movement was initially fully sup-ported by the BVD, since Einthoven knew its secretary, E.W.P. van Dam vanIsselt, from his days as Rotterdam police chief in the 1930s.39 Cooperationand financial support came from major Dutch companies, the trade unionleadership, and politicians, but the message was too basic. An intelligenceassessment from June 1953 of a VV press conference in Eindhoven con-cluded that the event “had a quite hopeless organization” and made “a verypoor impression”. It also managed to stimulate negative media interest inwhere funding for such an event could possibly come from.40 NeverthelessDe Echte Waarheid still continued until 1966, and Vrede en Vrijheid itself – atleast on paper – only closed its doors in 1986.41

In 1956 the French government ceased its support and the organiza-tion was renamed, the Paris bureau continuing as the Office Nationald’Information pour la Démocratie Française and the international commit-tee as the Comité International d’Information et d’Action Sociale (CIAS).The remnants of this network would provide one of the foundationsfor the development of Interdoc in a few years’ time. Paix et Liberté’snational committees functioned as “a sort of vigilance, of conscience” inthe war of ideas, but the changing East–West environment demanded a newapproach.42 This would ultimately involve not only a network separate from



NATO and – significantly – US direction, but also an outlook more profoundthan the negative propaganda of David and his associates, which offered noalternative beyond the need for Western anti-communist solidarity.

The discussions within NATO did not proceed very far. At the request ofthe Danes and the Greeks, a Special Committee on Information (AC/46)was formed in June 1952 for “the exchange of information” between intel-ligence and counter-intelligence services “on experiences in their effortsto counteract subversive activities”.43 In September the British, looking tobreak the deadlock on the NATO role, proposed a new committee to con-centrate on both “positive information work designed to find ways andmeans of convincing the peoples of NATO countries of the value of NATO”(such as television and radio interviews with government officials, newsreels,exchange of journalists and students, and youth camps) and a direct use ofcounter-propaganda. This involved focusing on “indirect Communist pro-paganda” from front organizations such as the World Peace Movement byunmasking their communist origin. To be effective, the organs for achiev-ing this would not be in the government but “non-official persons andorganizations”.44 These two positive–negative, offensive–defensive strandsfed into the formation of the permanent Committee on Information andCultural Relations (AC/52) in June 1953. It was a neat compromise, but dif-ferences of opinion prevented anything further than this. The Committeeon Non-Military Cooperation, assembled in 1956 to assess how to improvecooperation and a sense of unity, would soon recommend that “coordinatedpolicy [in the information field] should cover also replies to anti-NATO pro-paganda and the analysis of Communist moves and statements which affectNATO”.45 Disagreements between member states prevented any progress.Lord Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General, had this to say on the matterin 1955:

On the one hand, there is a feeling in some quarters that member coun-tries should examine in NATO the methods of combating the massiveanti-NATO propaganda made by the Communists and others hostile tothe Alliance. On the other hand, it is argued that this is a matter whichmust remain the prerogative of each government. Between the two pointsof view a compromise has been reached whereby NATO can act as a forumfor consultation about psychological warfare. Such consultation is, how-ever, restricted to matters affecting member countries only: NATO, as aninternational organization, has never envisaged carrying on propagandato the peoples of the Soviet Union or of the satellite countries.46

A further site of discussion on international cooperation in anti-communismand counter-propaganda were the Bilderberg conferences, begun inOosterbeek, Netherlands, in May 1954 as a meeting place for Europeanand American political, business, and media elites to discuss matters of



mutual concern. In particular the second conference, held in Barbizon inMarch 1955, devoted time to the communist challenge. Since Stalin’s deathpeaceful coexistence had improved the image of the communist worldby highlighting its cultural prowess and apparent willingness to negotiatewith the West. Resonant terms such as “peace” and “disarmament” hadbeen appropriated by communist information programmes and forced theWestern nations on to the defensive. Three options were put forward toregain the initiative: treat communism as a security threat to the state;improve coordination in counter-propaganda; approach communism as apolitical and economic challenge to democratic capitalism. While the firstoption was considered too repressive and (with McCarthy fresh in every-one’s mind) controversial, the second drew mixed responses. Paul Rijkens,former chair of Unilever, proposed forming a joint organization – a sortof “democintern” – but others disliked its implications. NATO was alreadydoing enough to expose front organizations, a standardized operation wouldnot fit into national contexts, and, according to Denis Healey, “a sin-gle Western organization would be perceived as an operation run by theAmericans, which would destroy its credibility in many European countries”.Instead, it was more important to consider the message that the West neededto convey. The real differences between communism and democracy hadto be spelled out. As the Norwegian Justice Minister Jens Christian Haugesaid, many doubters could be swayed if they were presented with “objec-tive information as to the degree to which the communist system reallydenies the very basis of their existence, namely free science, free art, freeliterature”.47 This was a significant comment. The propaganda war had tobe shifted on to terrain that would expose the weaknesses of the commu-nist bloc. It had to be done in a way that ensured maximum credibility –not based on obvious propaganda, but on objective, factual research. Thiswas to be the way forward. Following Barbizon, Bilderberg chairman PrinceBernhard of the Netherlands forwarded the transcripts of the discussion toBVD chief Louis Einthoven for consideration: “We shall certainly be glad tohave a series of propositions which we can recommend to relevant coun-tries for a genuinely effective response to this propaganda.”48 While theBilderberg meetings would not play a further role in this story, the Princecertainly would.

The colloques and the Studienbüro

The 1956 was a key year on the road to Interdoc at both national and inter-national levels. In West Germany proposals were put forward to establish aninstitute for the scientific study of Marxist ideology. With the usefulness ofthe VFF in question following the outlawing of the Kommunistische ParteiDeutschlands (the controversial Taubert was more or less forced out of hisleadership position), and the Kampfgruppe likewise undergoing an audit by



the BMG and the CIA, it was time for a new direction. While institutes suchas the Osteuropa-Institut in Munich and the Büro für heimatvertriebeneAusländer in Düsseldorf studied the history, economics, culture, and polit-ical developments of the Eastern bloc, a site was required to examine thepractice of dialectical materialism and its actual effects in the region.49 As aGerman official remarked, “this is why we need a research institute workingon a philosophical level”.50 Inter-departmental discussions on this issue hadbegun already in late 1955, and in May 1956 a proposal was sent to Chancel-lor Adenauer for “the foundation of an institute for scientific discussion withdialectical materialism”, a kind of Western counterpart to the Marx–EngelsInstitute in Moscow. This was to be coupled with an increased mobilizationof civil society groups against communist propaganda, and the creation ofan “elite school” to educate key sections of society (Multiplikatoren) in boththe theoretical and practical workings of communism and “the worth of ourideology of freedom and the powerful potential of the free world”.51 Theplan was well received in the Chancellery, particularly by Dr Hans Globke, astate secretary and trusted adviser on government organization to Adenauerwho had played a key role in introducing Gehlen to the Chancellor. Gehlenworked hard to secure a favourable audience in Bonn, particularly within theopposition Social Democratic party.52 An Inter-Ministerial Working Group(Arbeitskreis) was duly established in June to assess the next steps, but themove triggered something of a contest between the Ministry of Defence,the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry for All-German Affairs overwho would take the lead in terms of jurisdiction, personnel, and funding.By October 1957 von Dellingshausen had to admit that the hoped-for “Gen-eral Staff for the Cold War” to coordinate the private anti-communist groupsactive in German society (he used the Operations Coordinating Board asan example) was still a long way off: “in my opinion the entire coordi-nation effort has got stuck”.53 Instead, separate initiatives from differentparts of the government were confusing things.54 In July 1958 the ForeignMinistry, concerned about the dangers of peaceful coexistence, created theinter-ministerial, public–private Arbeitskreis für Ost-West Fragen, a “Politi-cal Advisory Board” modelled on the US State Department’s Policy PlanningStaff.55 Meanwhile, under the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior,the secret Arbeitsgruppe für geistig-politische Auseinandersetzung mit demKommunismus was assembled in January 1959. The BND, seen by the otherdepartments as a provider of information but not yet a full partner, wouldpursue its own plans.

In April 1956, less than a year after the occupation of the Federal Repub-lic was ended by the Bonn–Paris conventions, Gehlen’s BND was officiallyinvested as the federal government’s intelligence service. One of Gehlen’skey partners in laying out the future BND had been Hermann Foertsch, for-merly the chief of staff of the German army in the Balkans. Foertsch, “amongthe most intellectual of the German generals”, was closely involved (with



Globke and others) with plans for German remilitarization, and it was hewho began a monthly publication, Orientierung, to circulate news and anal-ysis within the military and the Gehlen Organization and foster an espritde corps and allegiance to the new German state.56 After 1956, with remil-itarization secured, Foertsch shifted his attention to psychological warfareand played a key role in the preparations for Interdoc. In his sombre assess-ment of October 1957 von Dellingshausen had also remarked that “a closerconnection with military and civilian intelligence services” would lead to amore comprehensive understanding of communist strategies and methods.The BND was becoming an accepted partner to the political discussions,although before 1960 they were still excluded from the Inter-MinisterialAbeitskreis.

The first meeting on the road to what would become Interdoc took placein Paris in April 1956 – the same month that the BND officially came intoexistence – between the French and the Dutch. One of the participants wasjournalist Jerome Heldring, asked to attend by Louis Einthoven. Fifty-fiveyears later Heldring remembered that it involved a series of meetings withthe French and a group of Czech military defectors about communism andthe situation in the Soviet bloc.57 In the previous year Einthoven had metColonel Antoine Bonnemaison, chief of the Guerre/Action Psychologiquesection of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage.An expert on Soviet tactics, Bonnemaison was closely involved in devel-oping psychological warfare capabilities in the French military during theAlgerian War.58 His role in SDECE was as coordinator of a network of psy-chological warfare organizations – the Cinquième Bureau – via a public front,the Centre de Recherche du Bien Politique, run out of Bonnemaison’s resi-dence, 14 rue de la Pépinière in Paris.59 A return visit by the French to theNetherlands was hindered by the Hungarian uprising in November 1956(and presumably by Suez as well).60 Einthoven then went to Nigel Clive,then head of MI6’s Special Political Action section, to assess his interest inthe following question: “To what extent can an intelligence service assist inthe conduct of psychological warfare?” Van den Heuvel went to Paris to dis-cuss the same question. In May 1958, following the accession to power ofde Gaulle, Bonnemaison finally replied that a meeting to discuss the mat-ter would be held later that year. General Jean Olié, de Gaulle’s Chief of theGeneral Staff, would lead the French delegation, but Bonnemaison was thebrains behind it.61

The SDECE did have intelligence-sharing arrangements with other ser-vices (CIA, BND, MI6, Italy, Belgium) under an agreement system knownas TOTEM but, as Bonnemaison’s chief remarked later, “these remainedtoo informal and limited in scope”.62 Bonnemaison’s venture was to bemore far-reaching. He had already sought out contact with the Germans,initiating in early 1957 a series of discussions or colloques as a forumfor Franco-German intelligence cooperation. This was a significant extra



step in the gathering rapprochement between the two countries, aided bythe processes of European integration, German rearmament within NATO,and the French focus post-Suez on finding European solutions to com-mon strategic problems. The Suez crisis “created the impression that theUnited States was willing to sacrifice Western European interests” in thecontext of its overarching global contest with the Soviet Union in theThird World, and suggestions that the US military commitment to WesternEurope was fragile caused doubts among the Germans as well.63 For ReinhardGehlen, who had nurtured contacts with French intelligence for severalyears, the Franco-German meetings represented a further step towards legiti-macy and prestige for the BND.64 However, the Franco-German relationshipwas severely complicated by the Algerian War and the determination ofthe French secret service to eliminate support from German businessesfor the Algerian nationalists. Long-running suspicions would not so eas-ily be overcome.65 Nevertheless in late 1958 the French, Germans, andDutch came together for the first time at Jouy-en-Josas, to the south-westof Paris.

In summer 1958 events took a new turn when Minister of Defence Franz-Josef Strauss announced plans for a “psychological defence department”under Lieutenant Colonel Mittelstaedt, an entity that, according to theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “carried a strong American accent” althoughStrauss openly compared it to the French Cinquième Bureau and “similarinstitutions in Switzerland and Sweden”.66 This openness notwithstanding,the paper predicted “a whirlwind of objections”, and it was right – the SPD’spress service was soon sending out an article that accused Strauss’s initia-tive of potentially bringing McCarthyism to Germany in order to silenceopposition to the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union)–CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union) government.67 The timing was significant, because the stakesin the contest between East and West Germany were rising. In October 1957Tito’s Yugoslavia became the first country outside the Sino-Soviet bloc toofficially recognize East Germany. In November 1958 Nikita Khrushchevissued his first ultimatum on Berlin, threatening to end Soviet responsibili-ties as an occupying power and hand them to the GDR authorities, therebyforcing Western recognition. Emboldened by these moves, during 1958–59the GDR carried out a major diplomatic campaign across Asia and Africato obtain greater recognition.68 The Hallstein doctrine was under pressure.Not surprisingly, therefore, Strauss’s move re-energized discussions withinthe federal government on the coordination of anti-communist measures.By September 1958 a unit had been set up in the Chancellery to overseethe Inter-Ministerial Working Group, and one month later the Ministryof the Interior, via the Verband für Wirtschaftsförderer in Deutschland,established an “Information Centre” to work closely with German indus-try on psychological warfare, with an annual budget of DM (Deutsche Mark(deutschmark)) 300,000. Strauss’s new department also became the refer-ence point for planning similar national bureaux with the same concerns.



Throughout the 1950s there was much talk of the necessity of “immuniz-ing” the West German citizenry against communist influence, but that waseasier said than done. Clarifying the organizational structure of this emerg-ing network of anti-communist activity kept all of the participants busy inmeeting after meeting.69 Meanwhile the BND kept the colloques as a sepa-rate affair, and revealed neither their purpose nor their very existence to itsgovernmental “partners”.

A network – or, better said, networks – were beginning to form. Along-side the French initiative – or “right through the middle of it”, asEinthoven put it with some indignation – came the Studienbüro Berlin,established by the Ministry for All-German Affairs in late 1956 as a meansto bypass bureaucratic obstacles. This was part of the Ministry’s networkof “outreach institutes” involved in research, information, and liaisonactivities, which by the early 1960s included the Haus der Zukunft andthe Europahaus in West Berlin, the Büro für politische Studien and theVerein zur Förderung der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands in Bonn, and theGesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik at Haus Rissen in Hamburg.Von Dellingshausen described the Studienbüro as a meeting point for“politically interested individuals in West Germany and West Berlin” tofacilitate the trans-European study of communist strategy and tactics. Vanden Heuvel first attended in autumn 1957, and other invitees came fromFrance, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, and the US.70

Von Dellingshausen noted that the special place of the Federal Republic inthis scenario meant that the Berlin Büro would maintain leadership of thegroup, although locations outside of West Germany were used – such as inDenmark in early 1963.71 Also, “cooperation with American institutions isguaranteed”. While NATO still offered the most logical location for devel-oping a Western response to communist propaganda, the preferable wayforward was exactly via a private initiative such as the Studienbüro, as thisoffered a solution that was not only less bureaucratic but also – crucially –open to participation from neutral states (Switzerland and Sweden being ofspecial importance in this regard).72

The sixth Büro meeting, held in September 1961, which discussed theactivities of communist parties and the various responses to them, indi-cates that its clientele consisted mainly of officials working for governmentor government-assisted public information bureaux, giving it more of astrict policy orientation that the broader themes dealt with by the originalcolloques.73 From the beginning, therefore, the colloques and the Studienbürowere overlapping – if not parallel – informal arrangements with similar inter-national goals initiated around the same time, the former by the French andthe latter by the Germans. Both were initiated as responses to the lack ofsuch a meeting point within NATO. Both represented attempts by differ-ent wings of the German government – the Ministry for All-German Affairsand the BND – to fill this gap. But the Büro was meant as a fully Germaninitiative, with a central theme being the mapping of Soviet initiatives to



influence West German public opinion through “devious routes” via otherWestern countries.74 In contrast the colloques began as a common Franco-German operation and were intended to be a multinational endeavour. This,from day one, was the view of the Dutch, although German dominancelater caused them to compromise. There was undoubtedly some competi-tion over who would lead these trans-European ventures into intelligenceand psychological warfare cooperation.

Fact-finding missions 1958–59

European cooperation had of course begun much earlier. The British For-eign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD), making use of themultinational platforms provided by the Brussels Treaty and NATO, tookon a leading role in disseminating information on communist front orga-nizations and manipulation in the public sphere. However, this was largelylimited to the sharing of information and definitely did not extend into therealm of coordinated responses, as this would undermine national controlover sensitive anti-communist activities.75 Through the 1950s the Dutch, incontrast, began to search out ways in which coordination in anti-communistactivities could be achieved as a common enterprise. In February 1953 a BVDdelegation had attended a seminar in London on intelligence-gathering oncommunist parties and the ways and means of undermining their popu-lar support. One method discussed was the possibility of spreading dissentwithin the party by creating opposition to the leadership. In November 1953Einthoven took up these ideas with his governmental superior, Minister ofthe Interior Louis Beel, and was able to convince him that the BVD shouldbe able to go on the offensive in this manner, even if it was not strictly cov-ered by its official mandate. Beel reluctantly agreed, and Dutch psychologicalwarfare was given the green light.

Van den Heuvel became the coordinator of these efforts to undermine theDutch Communist Party (CPN: Communistische Partij Nederland). Along-side acting as BVD liaison with Vrede en Vrijheid (the Dutch wing of Paixet Liberté), Van den Heuvel regularly fed selected journalists useful informa-tion and was directly involved in “Project Toekomst” (Future), a sustainedand surreptitious plan to cause division within the communist movementin 1956–58. The success of this last venture prompted further interest inthe internationalization of offensive anti-communist activities. Already in1954 Van den Heuvel had been directed by contacts in business circles tovisit one of the annual meetings of Moral Rearmament, held in Caux, inSwitzerland. He returned impressed and convinced that “the only effectiveresponse to communism is to oppose it with a superior ideology”.76 In April1958, with both the colloques and the Studienbüro in mind, Einthoven wasable to secure the support of Interior Minister Teun Struycken for continu-ing these efforts, now termed Phoenix, in a European setting.77 While BVD



historian Dick Engelen is correct in taking note of this development, hebased his analysis wholly on BVD files, in particular those of H.C. Neervoort,head of the BVD’s operations section. What is clear from other sources is thatby 1958 Einthoven and Van den Heuvel were already developing plans forfuture operations outside of official BVD channels. Interdoc was being nur-tured three to four years before either of them left the BVD to pursue itfull time.

Both the colloques and the Studienbüro meetings were held twice a year,and both invited similar clientele: representatives from the military, politics,business, academia, and the media, as well as intelligence personnel. From1959, in a similar way to the Büro, the colloques brought in participants fromBritain, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.78 It is clear thatfor Einthoven and Van den Heuvel the colloques were their primary venue.The BND was excluded from the Büro meetings, and while they proved tobe a useful site for exchange of information they did not represent – norwere they meant to evolve into – a permanent centre. From here on, unlessotherwise mentioned, the colloques will be discussed. The locations for themeetings that are known were as follows:

1958 Jouy-en-Josas (France)1959 Wolfheze (The Netherlands) and Ettal (West Germany)1960 Aix-en-Provence (France) and Heelsum (The Netherlands)1961 Bad Soden (West Germany) and Barbizon (France)1962 Mont-St-Michel (France) and Noordwijk (The Netherlands)1963 Bad Godesberg (West Germany).

In 1958 Foertsch put forward a proposal for the colloques with the aim ofinventarizing the purpose, methods, and targets of all communist entities –formal and informal, open and “front” organizations, and non-communistorganizations “that consciously or unconsciously support the spirit of inter-national communism” – that each participating nation could identify. Basedon this, the possibilities for developing a response in each case could beclarified.79 In a meeting between Einthoven and Van den Heuvel in mid-December 1958, it was decided to put forward three themes for the colloquethe following April: the cultural offensive of the Soviet Union under “peace-ful coexistence”; revisionism on the left; and, significantly, the possibility ofa “central documentation bureau” to back up anti-communist psychologicalwarfare in Europe. Einthoven went off to Munich a few days later to dis-cuss further contact with Gehlen, Foertsch, and BND liaison officer HaraldMors.80

In his subsequent report on peaceful coexistence, Van den Heuvel empha-sized that, while the Soviet approach proposed peaceful relations andeconomic competition among states, it still held on to the irreconcilable dif-ferences between ideologies. While most people in the West were taken in by



what appeared to be a new positive outlook on East–West relations, the hid-den reality was “the continuation of the Cold War by other means”.81 Thethreat had not diminished: it had only taken on new and more subtle forms,making it harder to differentiate and appreciate. While opposition to com-munism in the Netherlands remained strong, increasing political, economic,and cultural contacts with the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc were alter-ing perceptions: “As the communist party in the Netherlands decreases as apolitical factor, the feeling that communism is a real danger also declines.”As East–West contacts increased, particularly in non-political fields, “the sit-uation arises that many no longer believe in the aggressive intentions ofcommunism and are no longer prepared to offer resistance. When this pointis reached, communism has won the Cold War.”82 Economic convergencewas also a factor. The impressive achievements of Soviet industry, coupledwith the introduction of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev, suggested thatover time the differences between the Soviet-bloc command economy andWestern social democracy could gradually be reduced. This was amplified bythe fact that, in a broad social sense, there were common tendencies at workin the US, Europe, and the Soviet Union that marked the twentieth centuryas one of contact, communication, and collectivity (as opposed to the nine-teenth century’s individualism and subjectivism). Under the conditions ofmodernity, similarities between East and West could not be denied.83 Oneof the colloques, held in Aix-en-Provence in 1960, involved a presentationby Raymond Aron on the convergence of the different systems caused byindustrialization and technological development.84

Van den Heuvel, increasingly taking a leading role in this process ofinternationalization, also devoted 1958–59 to organizing a series of fact-finding missions. The goal of these missions was twofold: to gather a coregroup of Dutch employers and businessmen and attract their support fora national institute to further the anti-communist ambitions of the collo-ques; to report back to the colloques on what was learnt, for future reference.Contacts with Dutch business circles had already been nurtured for severalyears via regular conferences in Heelsum on the communist threat and secu-rity issues, run by the BVD. Extending the investigation to see what otherswere doing was therefore logical. The first trip was to West Germany inNovember–December 1958, taking in Haus Rissen (Institut für Wirtschafts-und Sozialpolitik) in Hamburg and the Haus der Zukunft, located in theBerlin suburbs of Zehlendorf and Grunewald. The group of nine includedthe chair of Vrede en Vrijheid, Ruud van der Beek, and those responsiblefor internal security at business concerns such as the railways, postal ser-vices, mining, Unilever, the oil industry, and the employers’ union. The headof the Haus der Zukunft, Herbert Scheffler, was chair of the Studienbüro,and the director of Haus Rissen was also a Büro participant. Both workedtogether with the Volksbund für Frieden und Freiheit, the German wing ofthe Paix et Liberté/CIAS network.85 Zukunft had been set up by the BMG



in 1955 as a study centre on the GDR and East–West questions in gen-eral, hiring in experts to run specific courses for both Germans and thosefrom abroad (amounting to around 15,000 participants between 1955 and1958). Haus Rissen was a conference centre dedicated to the study of socio-economic issues and promoting the responsibilities of particular professionsand groups in a free society.

The one-week visit to these institutes, which involved a VFF lecture inHamburg and a course on communist infiltration in German industry inBerlin, greatly impressed the Dutch group in the quality and depth of infor-mation provided on the socio-economic reality in the two Germanies (theGDR of course being referred to as “the Zone”) and the methods used topenetrate the West. The scale of GDR infiltration and subversion in WestGerman industry struck the Dutch, particularly since this well-orchestratedcampaign had been escalated after the outlawing of the KommunistischePartei Deutschlands in 1956. The Berlin visit, which included meeting someof the more than 700 refugees coming west every day, also had a stark impacton the group. Khrushchev had made his first ultimatum only three weekspreviously, causing an extra-tense atmosphere. G. Diepenhorst of the Dutchemployers’ union (and formerly of the BVD) spoke of being “confrontedfrom close up with unfreedom. The sight of East Berlin behind the Iron Cur-tain made an oppressive impression.” Van den Heuvel himself remarked how“a stay on the East–West front” strengthened the resolve to oppose com-munist activities.86 The visit lay the grounds for what would later becomeInterdoc Berlin, an attempt to organize regular study trips to the beleagueredcity on the reality and consequences of Germany’s division. No further struc-tural link was developed with Haus der Zukunft until 1968, when study tripswere once again organised in cooperation with Rolf Buchow and InterdocBerlin.87

The second trip was to the US, in February 1959. This was made by asmaller group of experts: Van den Heuvel, director of the State PsychologyService F.J.E. Hogewind, Leiden professor J.H. van den Berg, sociologist andpsychological warfare researcher J.M.M. Hornix, and head of railway securityK.D. de Pous. Van den Berg was an important member of the group, havingopened up the field of historical psychology – the study of how ways of lifealtered human thought and self-understanding over time – with his bookMetabletica in 1956.88 Einthoven’s good friend Frans den Hollander, direc-tor of the Dutch Railways, became the financier, and although Shell agreedto contribute Den Hollander was unable to convince Frits Philips that heshould do likewise.89 While problems with securing the money delayed thetrip, Van den Heuvel’s preparatory planning was clear: an in-depth survey ofmethods to oppose communist influence as practised by US research insti-tutes, the media, education, in the military, and in business circles. Indeed,US society as a whole was of interest, because of the strong belief in self-help,resistance to government interference, “freedom of thought and action”,



and what could be learnt from these traits for application elsewhere.90 It wasclearly a fact-finding trip not so much for the case of the Netherlands, butfor the case of the ideological contest between West and East as a whole.91

The Dutch were acting as pathfinders for the European operation.Enquiries by Einthoven with the CIA led him to Dr John Gittinger, a psy-

chologist with the Agency, who was able to arrange a visit to the Societyfor the Investigation of Human Ecology (SIHE) in New York.92 Established atCornell University Medical College by Professor Harold Wolff and his col-league Lawrence Hinkle in 1955, and with Adolf A. Berle Jr. on the board,the Society was run as a legitimate research centre while it carried out stud-ies for the CIA. The focus was on “human ecology”, or what has sincebecome known more derogatively as “mind control”: the study of ways tocontrol the interaction between humans and their immediate environment,and the consequent possibilities for manipulating behaviour.93 CIA interestin this field, ranging from sensory deprivation to experimental drug con-coctions, had begun seriously in 1949 following the Cardinal Mindszentyshow trial in Hungary, a process stimulated further by the scare during theKorean War about US prisoners of war undergoing Chinese brainwashingtechniques and renouncing their homeland as a result (a scare partly fuelledby CIA propagandist-journalist Edward Hunter, who gave us the term “brain-washing” in his exposé of this phenomenon in 1950).94 The Society’s reportfor 1957 spelled out the main concern:

Basic beliefs have apparently been altered by Communist indoctrinationmethods. It must certainly be recognized as a distinct possibility that thehuman personality is not as stable as we often assume; that, in fact, itis susceptible to marked change if the right environmental conditionsexist.95

By the late 1950s the “brainwashing” scare – a real fear that “the ‘Reds’had cracked the problem of controlling human behaviour” – had shiftedto a more objective interest in “immunization”. Social science was keento “demystify” the processes involved in order “to undermine the popu-lar image of the robotic brainwashee.”96 In the Federal Republic the GrünerReport of October 1953 still spoke of “vaccination”, but von Dellingshausenwas referring to the “necessary immunization” of German society from 1957onwards.97 It was not always used in public documents: Einthoven had writ-ten to James Monroe at SIHE that he wanted to develop an “Adult Educationprogram on Communism” – but the issue was the same.98 Writing to Monroeprior to departure, Van den Heuvel set the following questions:

What effect has the Soviet offensive in the field of peace, science, cul-ture, and sports on the different strata of the population, in particular theworking classes, intellectuals, youth, and the military?



In what ways could these groups be immunized against this psycholog-ical offensive?

What conditions should be fulfilled for an institution – and above allits collaborators – to be successful in the field of counter-influencing?99

The resulting itinerary, with SIHE personnel James Monroe and WalterPasternak as the group’s guides, was impressive. Learning more about thetechniques of brainwashing was at the centre of the trip.100 A “special con-ference” on this subject was held at the SIHE office on Connecticut Avenuein Washington, DC, involving various scientists connected with US AirForce research programmes on prisoners of war. The reason for this interestwas clear:

Brainwashing in its narrow sense (as applied by Chinese and Russian com-munists to prisoners) is assumed to be related in some way or other tobrainwashing in its wider sense (such as the political indoctrination ofthe Chinese people) and with brainwashing in its widest sense (such asthe communist propaganda to the non-communist world).101

Brainwashing had potential if it could offer blueprints for the appliance ofinfluence on a societal basis. The key was to link the micro and macro levelsof analysis – to study the forces used to maintain the cohesion of communistsocieties (and their efforts to influence outsiders) from the perspective of theindividual in a controlled environment.

In the Western world these techniques are questioned, especially in thefield of freedom and ethics. Indeed they are contrary to Human Rights.

Nevertheless, the Western world has seriously to reckon with thesemethods, both in cold and hot war.

The microscopic contemplation of the whole non-communist world asone large prisoner-of-war camp – with communist camp-leaders applying“brainwash” techniques in the sense of psychological warfare and propa-ganda techniques – can afford elucidating insight into the tactical andstrategical [sic] methodologies of the communists.102

Yet, while the danger was recognized, the micro–macro link was difficultto define, and further advances in social psychology research were neededbefore definitive conclusions could be drawn. The report noted that humanshad made use of a whole variety of forms of influence for centuries, perhapsincreasing vulnerabilities: “Are not we, Western people, for this reason, if forno other, more susceptible to the system practiced by the communists bothin micro and macro situation [sic]?”103

The Dutch group attended several other meetings. One, with invitedacademics and journalists, degenerated into a wayward discussion on the



meaning of “American”, but another, the All-American Conference to Com-bat Communism, was more useful. While it certainly did not produceunanimous positions, the All-American Conference did show the Dutch theadded value of gathering like-minded organizations into one movement,which allowed for the information and research generated to be spread firstamong a wide field of supporters, and beyond via the press. Having said that,the conclusion was “it seems to be extremely difficult to rouse people fora positive cause.”104 Lectures by managers of General Electric and Du Pontexplained the ins and outs of American corporate culture and their contribu-tions to fostering a positive business climate, both amongst their workforceand beyond in the community at large.105 The visitors then attended MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the Russian Research Centerat Harvard, discussing with Daniel Lerner, Adam Ulam, Max Millikan, andothers the extent of US research on Soviet society, before going on to meetwith representatives of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) (WilliamC. Sullivan and his staff) to talk over the contribution a security service couldmake to “psychological defence” in society as a whole. The Department ofState provided an overview of their course for government personnel oncommunist theory, Sino-Soviet foreign and domestic policies, their influ-ence in various regions, and counter-measures. The Dutch group then metColonel John Broger, head of the Pentagon’s Office of Armed Forces Informa-tion and Education. Broger had been the instigator of the Militant Libertyprogramme, a plan to train “freedom cadres” to proselytize the values ofthe democratic, capitalist, self-reliant, god-fearing way of life around theworld.106 Using a straightforward logic, Broger argued that since “Commu-nism is a dynamic ideology” it “can only be defeated by a stronger dynamicideology”.107 Although Militant Liberty was not adopted beyond one or twopilot projects, in 1956 Broger was given the task of educating armed forcespersonnel on communism. Positive references to this approach did appear inthe Dutch group’s subsequent attempts to define “Western values” and howto proselytize them (discussed in Chapter 2), but Broger also triggered somequestions on how much information should be provided and by whom (forexample, was it effective for a military officer to lecture at universities onanti-communism?).

The report from the trip, which was compiled collectively by the groupmembers after meeting at Hotel Wolfheze in Heelsum, concluded with somelessons learnt. Counter-measures against communist influence must be ofboth a defensive and offensive nature, but the accent was on the defen-sive: no moves could be made without first conducting a thorough studyof the theory and practice of the opponent. A careful appreciation of thestrengths and weaknesses of communist ideology was needed: “ethicallyno goal can be attacked which has as its principal element ‘everyone getswhat he needs’ ”. Different forms of “political education” must be adaptedfor each segment of society, but, because communist strategy focused on



disintegrating capitalism by highlighting its contrasts and contradictions,the initial emphasis lay on “immunizing” the working classes as themost vulnerable group. To carry this out, a national institute predomi-nantly funded by big business was required to study, connect, advise, andtrain, building networks throughout the media, trade unions, universities,churches, and the armed forces. If Western nations would pursue this, “thesecentres will coordinate their activities in such a way that internationalcommunism will be met with truly international opposition”.108

Following the trip, contacts were maintained between the Society’s exec-utive secretary, James Monroe, and the Dutch. The Dutch report was sentaround to many of those who had participated in the visit, eliciting variousresponses: Lewis Galantière (Free Europe Committee) disliked the way “theTeam took its whole view of America from the businessmen it talked to”,while Glen Perry of Du Pont felt they should focus more on “a process ofenlightenment than ‘immunization’ against undesirable influences”. ArthurBarron of Columbia’s Russian Institute commented that any Dutch instituteshould “work effectively with the non-communist Left”, and this could becomplicated if the main source of income was business. He also commentedthat the whole focus on immunization and brainwashing was directed at the“working class”, whereas “the pivotal group” was probably the intellectuals.The strongest response came from the FBI, who objected to the claim thatthe value of the Communist Party of the US for the Soviet Union was declin-ing. An addendum was added to the US version of the report that insisted theparty “remains a serious threat to the internal security of that country”.109

Monroe himself visited the Netherlands with Gittinger and Samuel Lyerlyfrom SIHE in October 1959 (which included a side-trip to “our refugeeproject in Nijmegen”) and returned to the US with plans for cooperationwith several institutes in Scandinavia and elsewhere.110 Monroe also becamea conduit for soliciting support for the Dutch initiative in various US busi-ness and military circles, a shrewd move considering that SIHE already hada foothold in the Netherlands. In November 1959 Monroe reported that theNational War College’s seminar on national strategy (closely linked to theForeign Policy Institute at the University of Pennsylvania) had establishedan association which, he hoped, would “provide a ready-made ‘US Commit-tee’ and a continuing source of financial support” for the proposed Dutchinstitute.111 Van den Heuvel remarked that European activities in psycholog-ical warfare remained scattered and post-Nazi reservations about centralizingthese kinds of activities had led to bureaucratic obstacles in the FederalRepublic, but “If American and European forces join in such a project, muchcould be achieved.” By May 1960 Van den Heuvel could report that the collo-ques were expanding in membership to include others from “Free Europe”, sothat “the time will come when there will be insistence on the invitation of anAmerican observer for a general conference”. Looking to move things along,a “working party” of two Germans, two French, and two Dutch (Van den



Heuvel and Hornix), under the leadership of Einthoven, had been formed topush forward the plans for an international institute.112

But things did not work out so smoothly thereafter. Monroe pointedout that there was “a real potential for cooperation” with the Institute forAmerican Strategy, part of the American Security Council’s network, butMonroe was now working for the African Research Foundation as well asSIHE and he had little time to set this up.113 Einthoven went to the US in late1960 to generate US financial interest, but the Dutch were now being heldback by the problem of having to provide specific details for the Americanson the planned purpose and activities of the international institute, whereasthe delicate business of securing inter-European cooperation prevented this.There is a strong suggestion that Einthoven, who had aimed to retire as headof the BVD and transfer his activities to the new institute in April 1961, nowdelayed this precisely because of the lack of American backing. Einthoveninstead spent several months securing support in France, Italy, and the Fed-eral Republic before returning to the US in November. By the end of 1961 afinancial commitment had been obtained from French, German, and Dutchcompanies, but the start did not happen in January 1962 as intended.114

By this stage Monroe had left SIHE (renamed the Human Ecology Fund) tobecome a consultant for the US Air Force and the Bureau of Social ScienceResearch.115 However, the developments Monroe had referred to did lead tothe formation of the National Strategy Information Center, later to becomeInterdoc’s main US partner.

Following the US came Britain, where Van den Heuvel visited theEconomic League in November 1959 with an eleven-man delegation similarto the group that went to Hamburg and Berlin. The League was establishedas a private organization in 1919 by a group of industrialists (and the for-mer head of naval intelligence) who were concerned that the combinedeffects of post-World-War-I demobilization and the Russian Revolution couldlead to socio-economic disturbance in Britain. It aimed to counter disruptiveactivity by the left (or right) within the working class through “constructiveeconomic education”, which focused on opposing radical claims with facts,generating positive employer–employee relations, and creating “an atmo-sphere in which it would be difficult for extremists to make any headway”.This was carried out by means of a variety of factual publications and bytraining programmes for lower management positions.116 The two-day visitwas appreciated by the Dutch, who were able to see the League at workwhen Helen Bailey, one of its public speakers, addressed London dockwork-ers leaving the harbour for lunch.117 The training programmes in particularattracted Van den Heuvel’s attention, and a return visit by the League’s direc-tor general, John Dettmer, and publicity director, John Baker White, tookplace in November 1960. They participated in sessions on anti-communisttactics in Dutch industry at De Baak, the employers’ union’s conferenceand training centre at Noordwijk. Soon after, Van den Heuvel brought



Dettmer into contact with Günter Triesch of the Deutsches Industrie-Institutto share information on their respective campaigns, and the following yearboth Dettmer and Baker White were invited to the colloque in Barbizon.118

The British example brought home to the Dutch an important point bestsummed up by historian Scott Anthony: for any anti-communist campaign,“no matter how ideologically motivated, reaching a broad adult audiencein the early Cold War period depended on aligning yourself with materialconcerns against abstract interests”.119

With these fact-finding trips laying the basis, during 1959 the colloquesstarted to plan ahead to take the French–Dutch–German meetings to thenext level. Leading the way, Van den Heuvel drew particular conclusionsfrom his new-found knowledge on British and American “psychologicaldefence”. The British in general were somewhat lackadaisical about theSoviet threat, but their information services – particularly the BBC (BritishBroadcasting Corporation) – provided excellent examples of impartialityand truthfulness in reporting, building valuable credibility as a result. TheAmericans understood the Cold War as a global confrontation with com-munism, but were at times drawn to excessive responses to oppose it. Bothnations offered inspiration, but also signs of what to avoid. In particular,Van den Heuvel stressed their understanding of anti-communist activities asdefensive, a mentality which needed to be reversed in order to highlight theWestern world and what it stood for as a vibrant alternative.120 In Octobertwo proposals were put forward: one from Hermann Foertsch for a Docu-mentation and Information Centre, and the other from the Dutch. Both pro-posals foresaw a network of national institutes along the lines of the Dutchproposal from the US trip. Connecting these efforts would be a new inter-national institute to integrate and distribute the results from the nationallevel, particularly to nations outside of Western Europe, who were increas-ingly the target of communist propaganda. A public apparatus separate bothfrom the intelligence services and from existing organizations was neededto act as a collecting point and outlet for the research produced on commu-nism. It would also serve as a means to link up with professional elites fromthe private sector and the military, in order to identify vulnerabilities in theirworking environment that required attention, to act as channels for the dis-semination of material, and to provide funding from outside government.Looking to distance the enterprise from government, Van den Heuvel lookedtowards the (Dutch and American) multinationals and hoped that “theinternational institute might be financed by funds placed at its disposal byprivate enterprises of a world-wide scope (Royal Dutch, Unilever, StandardOil, Philips, etc.), and well-known foundations (Carnegie, Ford etc.)”.121

Foertsch foresaw the Centre’s role in the fields of research, planning andimplementation, and networking and distribution, making the colloques intoa concrete form of cooperation.122 For this apparatus he also sketched adefensive/offensive strategy, whereby the limiting of communist influence



in “vulnerable” areas of Western society (religion, the economy, and thearts were mentioned) would ideally be combined with an offensive counter-campaign on a broad front, ranging from publishing the experiences ofEastern-bloc refugees to deliberately disrupting the gatherings of peace andyouth congresses through “the transmission of Western opinions, influ-encing susceptible participants, influencing the final resolutions”.123 Specialattention was also reserved for those travelling to communist countries, suchas businessmen. Both Einthoven and Van den Heuvel saw opportunities toturn the tables on peaceful coexistence:

This does not mean that contact with the Soviet Union should be as littleas possible. Those who hold this opinion point to the disadvantageousinfluence that visits of Western delegations to countries behind the IronCurtain can have. The assumption is that these contacts are more to theadvantage of communism. This is often the case when Western delega-tions are not sufficiently prepared for meeting the communist world,and meanwhile insufficient attention is given to the ways in whichcommunist delegations visiting the Western world can best be received.124

Such an offensive would require the careful training of those chosen to carryout such measures, and there was general agreement that this was still a fewyears ahead. Reacting to Foertsch’s deliberate plan, Van den Heuvel was moreambitious. The new institute should reach beyond Europe, and it shouldlook to coordinate all existing anti-communist organizations: the lack ofsuch a body was precisely the problem. The French wanted to improvecooperation to assist rather than centralize or control: “It is more urgent toimprove what exists, to extend, enhance efficiency, than to create an addi-tional body trying more or less to empty the substance of that which alreadyexists.”125 The Germans agreed:

Interdoc does not step on the space of already-existing institutions andorganisations that are dedicated to similar missions. There shall be muchmore mediation and connection between existing institutions and organ-isations in order to achieve a far-reaching collective result for the fight onthe broadest possible basis across Europe.126

NATO was still regarded as the most logical location to attempt this. TheKhrushchev ultimatum on Berlin on 10 November 1958 put Western unityto the test, and Adenauer discovered that both the Americans and theBritish seemed prepared to put negotiations with Moscow ahead of sup-port for the Federal Republic’s hard-line non-recognition stance towardsthe GDR.127 Through 1959 Soviet propaganda was exploiting intra-alliancedisagreements by portraying Adenauer as a “frustrated and embitteredsupporter of continued East–West tension and revanchist policies”. Only



de Gaulle backed the Chancellor’s position.128 In March 1960, under theinstigation of Strauss, the West German delegation circulated an official pro-posal within the North Atlantic Council entitled “NATO-Wide Co-operationand Co-ordination in the Field of Psychological Warfare”.129 The proposalclaimed that the “political and ideological attacks” of the Soviet Unionwere aimed at undermining the belief in collective defence, solidarity, andmutual confidence that NATO rested upon by creating mistrust towardsGerman ambitions. There was also the fear that partial reconciliation withthe East would undermine the Federal Republic’s own identity and cohe-sion. Referring to the changing nature of the Soviet threat, from potentialmilitary attack to actual ideological subversion, the German proposal eveninvoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty because “in this psychologicalwar, that attack against one NATO ally is also an attack against them all andagainst NATO as a whole”. There was no point, as Strauss explained to hisNATO colleagues, in equipping Western armies with the latest weaponry ifno effort was made to simultaneously establish “a moral solidarity”.130

The West German initiative did lead to a Working Group on Psycho-logical Warfare in October 1960 (which included Strauss’s psychologicalwarfare expert Lieutenant Colonel Mittelstaedt), but resistance from otherNATO nations (including Britain and the Netherlands) prevented the cre-ation of a new body to coordinate Western “counter-measures”. Therewas too much concern that such a centralization would make effectivesecurity impossible and would take control away from the national govern-ments. The German delegation’s call for an offensive psychological strategytowards the East also made others nervous about potential consequences.Von Dellingshausen noted in early 1961 that American proposals for a com-mon NATO programme did not address any of the central issues of concernfor the Federal Republic itself.131 The last remaining outcome of the Germanattempt, a study group of experts meeting irregularly to discuss psychologi-cal warfare and youth, was disbanded in April 1963.132 By that stage it wasperfectly clear that other arrangements would have to be made to establishthe desired permanent contact points. The Netherlands may have opposedGerman plans within NATO, but the BVD was active in realizing them else-where. Nevertheless NATO would always stay in the picture as the ideal“base” for a common Western anti-communist initiative, however cautiousand unwilling the organization itself proved to be.

An American role?

Although the Gehlen Organization had been incorporated into the CIA’sEuropean operations, after 1956 the relationship changed. For one thing, inline with the Federal Republic gaining almost complete sovereignty in 1955,the CIA was prepared to allow Bonn to play a greater role in anti-communistpsychological warfare within Germany itself, with the Germans accepting



full political responsibility for any future actions taken.133 What is more,according to Gehlen the CIA played a decisive role in establishing the BNDas an accepted partner within Western intelligence circles as part of the polit-ical rehabilitation of the Federal Republic.134 The CIA certainly contributedby connecting MI6 with the BND and so undermining the long-runningBritish mistrust of Gehlen, but others have suggested that the value of theGerman service actually declined for the Americans, both in terms of thequality of its intelligence and its liability for security leaks.135 While a sem-blance of trust was built up between the Americans and several other Alliedservices (including the British and Dutch), “such trust had not developedwith the BND, except between a few individuals at the Pullach level”.136

A gradual rapprochement between British and German political and busi-ness elites had been achieved through the important informal Königswinterconferences from 1950 onwards, but these did not stretch to include theGehlen group.137 The ground was not fertile enough for substantial coop-eration, and this goes some way to explain why the BND was so keen totrade whatever information it could with its US ally in order to maintain itsposition.138

But the misgivings were two-way. Whereas the Studienbüro, accordingto von Dellingshausen, “guaranteed” American participation (although thiswas not always the case), the colloques were different. The influence ofGaullism is noticeable here, as well as the deep mistrust of the CIA withinthe SDECE due to the Americans’ secret involvement in shipping armsto the Algerian rebels in the late 1950s.139 The Germans may not havebeen so militant about it, but similar negative sentiments certainly existed.Foertsch’s proposal for an Information Centre from October 1959 includes asignificant aside. Referring to the necessity of obtaining funding and experi-enced personnel, the document remarks that ideally this could be arrangedthrough “the authority of one or more ‘major promoters’ (a personality ofthe Catholic Church, a prominent Jewish personality, not an American)”.140

There were practicalities involved here, since the aim was to avoid the newventure immediately being stamped as a CIA operation. But it also revealsthe extent to which Interdoc was intended to move away from a US-centricoutlook on Cold War ideology. In this sense BND interest in Interdoc exactlyrepresented a bold move towards propagating its own perspective on thedivision of Germany in particular and the Cold War ideological contest ingeneral. Van den Heuvel’s response to Foertsch was revealing:

It seems to me decidedly incorrect to exclude the Americans. In the firstplace because of their position as leader in the Western world. In thesecond place because that is precisely where we will find a great willing-ness to support this project. In the third place because the possibility formaterial help is predominantly present there. I am not so concerned forthe label “American help”; the communists will call it that anyway.141



The US was present in these deliberations, albeit at a distance. Accord-ing to a letter from Einthoven to Prince Bernhard from early 1962, theDutchman had undertaken the task of establishing Interdoc due to requestsfrom “French, German, and American friends (Allen Dulles)” to make use ofhis remarkable array of contacts in both NATO and the neutrals (Sweden andSwitzerland).142 It was to be expected, therefore, that at the very least theCIA would be fully informed of developments, if not as an actual partner.The Dutch also had a trump card in hand. In discussing possible locationsfor the institute, Foertsch remarked that “as neutral a site as possible isdesired, to counter national misgivings”. Two possibilities were mentioned:The Hague or Geneva. What is most interesting in this regard is that theNetherlands was far from being a neutral country in official diplomaticterms. Foertsch was clearly referring to neutrality in a more general sense,as in how others would perceive a leading role for the Dutch and the localreactions that such an institute might trigger. In this sense The Hague wasideal. It made use of both the networking and the informal internationalbridge-building skills of the Dutch (think of Bilderberg), and it recognizedthe value of the BVD in developing the project as a whole. It reflectedthe long-running concern of both Einthoven and Van den Heuvel to bringgreater cohesion to Western anti-communism, and their lack of any greatpower pretentions. The other nations (particularly the Americans) saw theDutch as useful arbitrators and “middle-men” and not as competitors. ForFoertsch, it also indicated the willingness of the Dutch to act as a front sitefor German interests.

But the Dutch had their own agenda as well. The close relationsbetween the Dutch and American intelligence services did suggest that agreater American involvement in the new organization would be inevitable.As ex-BVD officer Fritz Hoekstra has recorded, “in the 1950s the Americansstarted to strengthen their ties with the Dutch services by providing aid:They simply purchased a more or less ‘master–servant relationship’ with asubstantial amount of dollars.”143 CIA technical and financial support pro-vided up to 10 per cent of the total BVD budget through the 1950s and1960s, BVD personnel took part in CIA training programmes, and the Dutchwillingly supplied intelligence to the Americans without there being a quidpro quo arrangement (or, for that matter, a formal governmental authoriza-tion for such an exchange).144 It is understandable, therefore, that the Dutchmade consistent efforts in the following years to bring the Americans in.

Documents

Anti-Communism and PsyWar in the 1950s (Giles Scott-Smith, 2012)