GERMANY: Caught Red-Handed

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Some of them fell embarrassingly close. Apparently the State Department and Donnelly were correct in saying no "responsible" American official at HICOG knew of BDJ's covert U.S. support. The previous High Commissioner, John J. McCloy, had steadfastly refused to meet BDJ leaders. But shortly after the Reds invaded Korea, the U.S. cloak & dagger Central Intelligence Agency decided to prepare for a similar Red move into West Germany. It organized BDJ as a potential partisan group, and thought it could control its sympathies. Whether CIA was worried by the Nazi caste in BDJ is not yet clear. But last spring, to its horror, the CIA discovered the BDJ blacklist and learned that it had been played by BDJ for a patsy. CIA quickly tried to shake itself free, but it was too late.

At week's end, the Reds ecstatically brought up their heaviest propaganda guns and boomed that the episode was "final proof" of a U.S.-Nazi conspiracy against democrats and for war. The independent Frankfurter Rundschau editorialized: "One would like to assume that the secret American sponsors knew nothing of the assassination plans. However, their support of a fascist underground movement is bound to produce distrust of American officials. We refuse to fight Stalinism with the help of fascism." No one seemed to understand that the U.S. had not been sinister, just silly.