> These many transcribed conversations are relatively short because Crowley
> was a man who tired easily but they make excellent reading. There is an
> interesting admixture of shocking revelations on the part of the retired
> CIA
> official and often rampant anti-social (and very entertaining) activities
> on
> the part of Douglas but readers of this new and on-going series are gently
> reminded to always look for the truth in the jest!
>
> Date: Wednesday, March 20, 1996
> Commenced: 9;32 AM(CST)
> Concluded: 10:08 AM (CST)
>
> RTC: Hello, Gregory. Sorry I was out the last time you called but we were
> off on family business. My son's family. By the way, I have some
> information
> for you that might interest you. You know, there are a number of people
> here
> who are not happy with you and they are certainly not pleased that I am
> talking with you. Not at all. This morning I had a call from some shit at
> Justice who wanted to warn me, being a friendly and caring person of
> course,
> that you were a very bad person and I would ruin my reputation by telling
> you anything. He had a similar talk with Corson yesterday. Bill called me
> last night about this and we both laughed about it. This is a sure sign
> that
> you must be right. Both of us know you were friends with Mueller and the
> thought of him loose in America is something the Company and now Justice
> does not want talked about. First off, they don't know what name he used
> while he was here.
>
> GD: Are you serious, Robert?
>
> RTC: Oh yes, very. You see, the CIA and don't forget the Army, used
> high-level Nazis after the Cold War broke out. We especially went after
> the
> Gestapo and SD people because they had the most to do with fighting the
> Communists, both in German in the '30s and then during the war.
>
> GD: I knew Gehlen very well and met some of them. I agree. His top
> recruiter
> was old Willi Krichbaum who was a Colonel in the SS and a top Gestapo
> person. I talked many times with Willi who had been in the Freikorps after
> the first war and he was quite a fellow. He was Mueller's top deputy in
> the
> Gestapo and in charge of the border guards at one time. And, don't forget,
> Willi was head of the Wehrmacht's Geheime Feldpolizei who had a terrible
> reputation with the troops. Hanging deserters at the end of the war. Yes,
> Gehlen told me the SS intelligence men were his best people.
>
> RTC: You have a grasp of this from the time, don't you. So, of course no
> one
> now wants to infuriate the rah-rah patriotic idiots and most especially
> the
> Jews by letting anyone know about this. You see, they brought Mueller and
> others over here and gave them new names and identities. The higher they
> had
> been, the more they concealed them. Now your friend Mueller's name was
> known
> to Truman, Beetle Smith, Critchfield, Gehlen and about three others. Now
> that everyone is dead and you are tearing open old caskets, they are
> absolutely frantic to find out what name Mueller was here under and
> actually
> so they can run around the files and burn anything with that name on it.
> Then they can say, like the pious frauds they are, that Oh no, we never
> heard of that person. We searched our records, sir, and believe us, there
> was no such person anywhere. That's what they want. Smith is dead, Truman
> is
> ditto, Critchfield will never talk because he ran Mueller and still has
> his
> pension to consider. I know the name but they have never brought the
> subject
> up to me. They think you're a loose cannon, Gregory, with no loyalty to
> the
> system and they think I am getting daft in my old age and marginalize me.
>
> GD: Think they'll shoot me? A boating accident? Something like that?
>
> RTC: When I was in harness, yes, they would. A bungled robbery or a rape
> like Kennedy's lady friend but not now. Besides, they don't know what you
> have on them and if you were crushed to death by an elephant falling out
> of
> a plane, who knows what might come out? I have to send you some
> documentation which you then have to let them know you have. But in a safe
> place, not in a local storage locker under your name or in your attic or
> garage. A gentle hint of joys to come. I have hinted at that and very
> strongly. The Justice oaf today got an earful from me and when I told him
> I
> would tell you about this, he got scared and hung up on me. Now, I can
> expect Tom Kimmel to call me and try to find out if I've told you or given
> you anything. You know, you got some rare documents that were very helpful
> to his case to clear the Admiral but now he's a torn person. The family
> want
> desperately to accept these as genuine but are furious that you, a
> terrible
> person in their eyes, had them. No gratitude. I suppose if that awful
> Wolfe
> had found them and passed them along, he would be a great hero to the
> Kimmel
> family but you are one whose name is never to be mentioned. You know,
> Gregory, I find this very entertaining. And Kimmel is horrified that Bill
> and I like you and talk to you. Both of us have been warned, I by people
> from the Company I haven't seen since I retired and Bill by the fringe
> wannabees like Trento and others. I think it's time we nailed Critchfield,
> don't you?
>
> GD: I'm game, Robert. If he ran Mueller, he must be scared.
>
> RTC: Will be scared shitless. In the old days, he'd have had you killed at
> once but those days are no more. You knew Gehlen and that will be my
> approach. You are quick enough with in house terms so that I can convince
> Jimmy that you were once part of his operation. You'll have to play it by
> ear but you are about ten times smarter than him so you should have fun. I
> want you to convince him that you were really there and knew some his
> people. And most important, convince him you knew Mueller. Oddly enough,
> Jimmy never met Mueller because he operated him out of Switzerland through
> Willi and later, Mueller moved up the ladder to the point where Jimmy had
> no
> access to him. Let's keep his bowels open, Gregory, what do you say?
>
> GD: I have no problem. Should I tape him?
>
> RTC: Why not get him on a speaker phone with both a tape recorder going
> and
> a reputable witness? That way, if something comes of this and they get to
> the witness, you have a backup.
>
> GD: I have a retired colonel acquaintance who was with your people in '
> Nam
> . He'd be perfect as a witness. Just let me know. Is Justice going to do
> something nasty to me?
>
> RTC: God no. They just want to scare me off of you, that's all. They're
> all
> such pinheads, Gregory. They chatter like old whores at a tea party and I
> can remind you that gossip is king here. Everyone inside the Beltway runs
> around like the little self-important toads that they are, pretending to
> be
> really important. They see a Senator in a restaurant, wave at him and get
> waved at back. This impresses their client who does not realize that the
> Senator will always wave back on the assumption that the waver might be
> someone important he might have forgotten. And they tell you that the
> President, or the Secretary of this or that said this to them when no one
> knows them at the White House or anywhere else. This jerk from Justice is
> a
> small, malformed cog in a big and brainless machine. Typical. I had to
> deal
> with these punks for years and I have more respect for a black tart,
> believe
> me. At least they don't try to hide the fact that they fuck for money.
>
> GD: (Laughter)
>
> RTC: It really isn't funny. If the public was aware of the crooked, lying
> sacks of shit that run this country, they would be boiling the tar and
> preparing the chicken feathers.
>
> GD: You know, speaking of Gehlen, he told me in '51 that his famous '48
> report about the Russians being poised to invade Europe was made up at the
> Army's specific request. Gehlen told me that far from moving hundreds of
> armored units into the east zone, the Russians had torn up all the
> railroad
> tracks after the war and shipped them back to Russia . And most of the
> armored divisions were only cadre.
>
> RTC: But it did work, didn't it? Big business got to gear up for a
> fictional
> coming war and the military got a huge boost.
>
> GD: Ever heard of General Trudeau?
>
> RTC: Oh yes, I knew him personally. What about him?
>
> GD: He found out about Gehlen and bitched like hell about what he called a
> bunch of Nazis working for the CIA and inventing stories about fake
> invasion
> threats.
>
> RTC: Now that's something I didn't know. You know they shipped him out of
> the European command and sent him to the Far East ? Yes, and I met him
> when
> I was in Hawaii . I'm surprised they didn't do to him what they did to
> George Patton. A convenient truck ran into his car and shut him up.
>
> GD: Why?
>
> RTC: George found out that the top brass was stealing gold from the salt
> mine and many generals and colonels were getting very rich. And then the
> accident and with George dead, they just went on stealing.
>
> GD: I can use that.
>
> RTC: I can get you some paper on that out of my files. Patton was strange
> but one of our better generals. Lying thieves. Gold has a great attraction
> for people, I guess.
>
> GD: A few years ago, one of your boys, Jimmy Atwood and I went down into
> Austria to dig up some Nazi gold. Atwood is a terrible asshole but very
> useful. I think he viewed me the same way. Anyway, we had a former SS
> officer and a Ukrainian camp guard along. What a wonderful adventure,
> Robert.
>
> RTC: Were you successful? Treasure hunts rarely are.
>
> GD: Oh, very. And we brought most of it back with us.
>
> RTC: How ever did you get it through customs?
>
> GD: Boat. Brought it in by boat. I'll tell you about this some time. Did
> you
> ever hear about it?
>
> RTC: No, I didn't. Should I have?
>
> GD: Probably a rogue operation. Two Limeys got knocked on the head and put
> over the side on the way to the Panama Canal but other than that, it was
> an
> uneventful trip.
>
> RTC: Well, someday, I'll discuss the Kennedy assassination and you can
> tell
> me about the gold hunt. Sounds fair?
>
> GD: Oh yes, why not?
>
> RTC: I remember the time we had to fly the KMT general out of Burma with
> an
> Air America transport full of gold. He was our boy out there but he had a
> hankering to make more money so he began to raise opium and used our
> weapons
> to kill of the locals. Thirteen million in gold and twelve trunks full of
> opium. Quite a problem getting it all into Switzerland and into a bank.
> But
> he performed and we kept our word. That fucking Colby was into drugs as
> well.
>
> GD: William?
>
> RTC: Yes, our beloved DCI. A nasty piece of work, Gregory. Was working in
> SEA doing the drug business when he was tapped for PHOENIX . And just kept
> on going when he got to Saigon . PHOENIX got to be a really nasty business
> and Bill set up torture centers all over our part of the country. Regional
> Intelligence Centers they called them. Well, Church got his hands on some
> of
> the goings on and guess what? Colby snitched on all his co-workers. I know
> for a fact from some of the old ones that they're going to kill him for
> that. I remember he has some kind of a telephone device hidden in his
> glasses. Princeton man. You can always tell a Princeton man, Gregory, but
> you can't tell him very much. Watch the papers pretty soon.
>
> GD: How will they nail him? Run down in a crosswalk? A stampede of
> elephants
> flatten him in his garden?
>
> RTC: You have an overheated imagination. I don't know the how but I do
> know
> the why. Give it six months and the Dictator of Dent Place will be another
> stone in the cemetery.
>
> GD: What about the one who killed himself by tying weights to his legs and
> shooting himself in the back of the head before jumping off his boat?
>
> RTC: John Arthur Paisley. He used to be the deputy director of the Office
> of
> Strategic Research. Paisley . Tragic. Shouldn't have sold out to the
> Russians. He was such a rotten mess when they found him that it took weeks
> to do an ID on him. There've been more.
>
> GD: I have a packet coming in from overseas and the mail truck is at the
> end
> of the block. Let me ring off now, Robert and I can call you back later
> today.
>
> RTC: Make it tomorrow. OK? Things to do.