Reinhard Gehlen [SEP] conflict
Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German general and intelligence officer who was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East (FHO) military-intelligence unit during World War II (1942–45); spymaster of the CIA-affiliated anti–Communist Gehlen Organisation for the United States (1946–56); and the first president of the Federal Intelligence Service ("Bundesnachrichtendienst", BND) of West Germany (1956–68) during the Cold War. Gehlen was regarded as "one of the most
and gone to ground. Wiesenthal claimed that the ODESSA network shepherded escapees to the Catholic ratlines in Rome (although he mentions only Hudal, not Draganović); or through a second route through France and into Francoist Spain.
ODESSA was supported by the Gehlen Organization, which employed many former Nazi party members, and was headed by Reinhard Gehlen, a former German Army intelligence officer employed post-war by the CIA. The Gehlen Organization became the nucleus of the BND German intelligence agency, directed by Reinhard Gehlen from its 1956