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164-668: The agency was a precursor to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND or Federal Intelligence Service) which was formed in 1956. After World War II, Reinhard Gehlen acted under the tutelage of US Army G-2 (intelligence), but he wished to establish an association with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1947, in alliance with the CIA, the military orientation of the organization turned increasingly toward political, economic and technical espionage against

328-638: A Czech -run operation, the Org uncovered another network – a spy ring run by the Yugoslav secret service in several cities in western Europe. The Gehlen Organization was also successful in discovering a secret Soviet assassination unit functioning under the umbrella of SMERSH . An Org informant in Prague reported that the Red Army had been issued an advanced, multi-usage detonator of Czech design but manufactured in

492-563: A "grand opportunity" for the U.S. to emerge as "the premier power in the world." This vision of empire assumed the necessity of the US to "police the world" in the aftermath of the war. This was not done primarily out of altruism, but out of economic interest. Isaiah Bowman , a key liaison between the CFR and the State Department, proposed an "American economic Lebensraum ." This built upon

656-564: A consequence, the Chancellery issued an executive order banning BND operational measures against journalists with the aim to protect the service. The committee published a final report in 2009, which mostly confirmed the allegations, identifying the intent to protect the BND from disclosure of classified information and finding a lack of oversight within the senior leadership of the service but did not identify any responsible members from within

820-713: A continuation of nothing less than Hitler 's aims was at hand through the Org's "monstrous underground power in Germany". In 2006, after reviewing selected declassified CIA documents on the Gehlen Org, a Guardian article offered a new perspective on this attempt to fight communism with some ex-Nazis "... for all the moral compromises involved [in hiring former Nazis], it was a complete failure in intelligence terms. The Nazis were terrible spies". Communist groups and governments castigated Gehlen's group as fanatical and virulent agents of revenge and of American imperialism , fitting

984-537: A decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street ... Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. Following World War I, the British maintained occupation of

1148-573: A defense plant in Kharkiv . The CIA showed interest. Several weeks later, the Org's couriers presented the detonator, with complete technical data, to the CIA liaison staff at Pullach. Just afterwards, the Czech engineer and his family were smuggled across the frontier into West Germany and on to the United States. By identifying people who suffered under the new communist regimes in eastern Europe,

1312-459: A joint resolution with Alaska. Stuart Creighton Miller says that the public's sense of innocence about Realpolitik impairs popular recognition of U.S. imperial conduct. The resistance to actively occupying foreign territory has led to policies of exerting influence via other means, including governing other countries via surrogates or puppet regimes , where domestically unpopular governments survive only through U.S. support. The Philippines

1476-926: A nuclear-armed global superpower. Through the Truman Doctrine and Reagan Doctrine the United States framed the mission as protecting free peoples against an undemocratic system, anti-Soviet foreign policy became coercive and occasionally covert. United States involvement in regime change included overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran , the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, occupation of Grenada , and interference in various foreign elections. The long and bloody Vietnam War led to widespread criticism of an " arrogance of power " and violations of international law emerging from an " imperial presidency ," with Martin Luther King Jr. , among others, accusing

1640-533: A quarter of the banking industry. Industry and trade were two of the most prevalent justifications of imperialism. American intervention in both Latin America and Hawaii resulted in multiple industrial investments, including the popular industry of Dole bananas. If the United States was able to annex a territory, in turn they were granted access to the trade and capital of those territories. In 1898, Senator Albert Beveridge proclaimed that an expansion of markets

1804-523: A variety of areas such as international non-state terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation and illegal transfer of technology, organized crime , weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration and information warfare . As Germany's only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both military and civil intelligence . While the Strategic Reconnaissance Command  [ de ] (KSA) of

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1968-604: A wide sense, commerce is the mother of all wars." In 1942 this economic globalism was articulated as the "Grand Area" concept in secret documents. The US would have to have control over the "Western Hemisphere, Continental Europe and Mediterranean Basin (excluding Russia), the Pacific Area and the Far East, and the British Empire (excluding Canada)." The Grand Area encompassed all known major oil-bearing areas outside

2132-461: Is absolutely reliable." Helms' information came from the BND. A further laudable success involved the BND's activity during the Czech crisis in 1968; by then, the agency was led by the second president, Gerhard Wessel. With Pullach cryptography fully functioning, the BND predicted an invasion of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. CIA analysts on the other hand did not support

2296-700: Is all far from the fact." Gehlen discussed the Organization's work in his memoirs, published in 1977, entitled The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen . Once the Org emerged into the public eye, Gehlen and his group drew criticism from both sources in the West and the East. An article by Sefton Delmer , senior correspondent for London's Daily Express on 17 March 1952, made Gehlen public. Two and half years later, on 10 August 1954, Delmer wrote that "Gehlen and his Nazis are coming" implying in his story that

2460-524: Is archived for 10 years "for long-term analysis". Apparently though, this long-term storage doesn't hold any Internet communications, data from social networks, or emails. In December 2022, a high-ranking employee of the BND was arrested on alleged treason. Carsten L. is said to have disclosed information from his professional activity to the Russian domestic secret service FSB . The Public Prosecutor General accuses him of treason ("Landesverrat") because it

2624-671: Is located in central Berlin . The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2016, it employed around 6,500 people; 10% of them are military personnel who are formally employed by the Office for Military Sciences. The BND is the largest agency of the German Intelligence Community . The BND was founded during the Cold War in 1956 as the official foreign intelligence agency of West Germany , which had recently joined NATO , and in close cooperation with

2788-624: Is said to have been state secrets. The new BND headquarters in Berlin, near the former Berlin Wall , was completed in 2017. At the official opening in February 2019, Angela Merkel , then Chancellor of Germany , made this statement: "In an often very confusing world, now, more urgently than ever, Germany needs a strong and efficient foreign intelligence service". At the time, some 4,000 employees were expected to work from this location, moving here from

2952-644: Is sometimes cited as an example. After Philippine independence, the US continued to direct the country through Central Intelligence Agency operatives like Edward Lansdale . As Raymond Bonner and other historians note, Lansdale controlled the career of President Ramon Magsaysay , going so far as to physically beat him when the Philippine leader attempted to reject a speech the CIA had written for him. American agents also drugged sitting President Elpidio Quirino and prepared to assassinate Senator Claro Recto . Prominent Filipino historian Roland G. Simbulan has called

3116-637: Is supposedly collected across the world, but the exact locations remains unclear to this date. The Bundestag committee investigating the NSA spying scandal has uncovered that the German intelligence agency intercepts communications traveling via both satellites and Internet cables. It seems certain that the metadata only come from "foreign dialed traffic", that is, from telephone conversations and text messages that are held and sent via mobile phones and satellites. Of these 220 million data amassed every day, one percent

3280-732: Is the expansion of American political, economic, cultural, media, and military influence beyond the boundaries of the United States of America . Depending on the commentator, it may include imperialism through outright military conquest; military protection; gunboat diplomacy ; unequal treaties ; subsidization of preferred factions; regime change ; economic or diplomatic support; or economic penetration through private companies, potentially followed by diplomatic or forceful intervention when those interests are threatened. The policies perpetuating American imperialism and expansionism are usually considered to have begun with " New Imperialism " in

3444-626: Is the most significant unit within BND and has the highest number of employees. The department is located at the former BND HQ in Pullach , Bavaria. One of the major SIGINT stations after WW2 was Bad Aibling Station , which was operated for decades in cooperation with the National Security Agency (NSA). Furthermore, Station Gablingen, Station Rheinhausen , Station Schöningen , Station Starnberg-Söcking and Station Stockdorf . American imperialism American imperialism

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3608-657: Is typically called a representative expression of Manifest destiny with the added factor of trying to expand slavery into Central America. Walker failed in all his escapades and never had official U.S. backing. Historian Michel Gobat, however, presents a strongly revisionist interpretation. He argues that Walker was invited in by Nicaraguan liberals who were trying to force economic modernization and political liberalism. Walker's government comprised those liberals, as well as Yankee colonizers, and European radicals. Walker even included some local Catholics as well as indigenous peoples, Cuban revolutionaries, and local peasants. His coalition

3772-695: The Bundeswehr also fulfills this mission, it is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the KSA. The domestic secret service counterparts of the BND are the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ( Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz , or BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (State Offices for

3936-536: The Los Angeles Times , reported that he "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists". Reinhard Gehlen's memoirs, The Service, The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen (English title), were published in 1977, (World Publishers, New York). A Review of the book published by the CIA makes this comment about Gehlen's achievements and management style: "Gehlen's descriptions of most of his so-called successes in

4100-798: The Battle of Manila Bay , began again in earnest, culminating in the Philippine Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the First Philippine Republic . The Philippine–American War ensued, with extensive damage and death, ultimately resulting in the defeat of the Philippine Republic. The United States' interests in Hawaii began in the 1800s with the United States becoming concerned that Great Britain or France might have colonial ambitions on

4264-639: The Bundesnachrichtendienst was created from the Gehlen Organization, and was transferred to the West German government, with all staff. Reinhard Gehlen became President of the BND and remained its head until 1968. Several publications have criticized Gehlen and his organizations for hiring ex-Nazis. An article in The Independent on 29 June 2018 made this statement about some of the BND employees: "Operating until 1956, when it

4428-651: The Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces). One high point of BND intelligence work culminated in its early June 1967 forecast – almost to the hour – of the outbreak of the Six-Day War in the Middle East on 5 June 1967. According to declassified transcripts of a United States National Security Council meeting on 2 June 1967, CIA Director Richard Helms interrupted Secretary of State Dean Rusk with "reliable information" – contrary to Rusk's presentation – that

4592-453: The CIA . It was the successor to the earlier Gehlen Organization , often known simply as "The Organization" or "The Org", a West German intelligence organization affiliated with the CIA whose existence had not been officially acknowledged. The most central figure in the BND's history was general Reinhard Gehlen , the leader of the Gehlen Organization and later the founding president of the BND, who

4756-870: The Camp Grant Massacre of 1871 where up to 144 Apache were killed, most being women and children. Up to 27 Apache children were captured and sold into slavery in Mexico . In the 1860s, the Navajo faced deportation in an attempted act of ethnic cleansing under the Long Walk of the Navajo . The "Long Walk" started at the beginning of spring 1864. Bands of Navajo led by the Army were relocated from their traditional lands in eastern Arizona Territory and western New Mexico Territory to Fort Sumner. Around 200 died during

4920-736: The Central Powers at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . This separate peace led to Allied disdain for the Soviets, since it left the Western Allies to fight Germany without a strong Eastern partner. The Secret Intelligence Service , supported by US diplomat Dewitt C. Poole, sponsored an attempted coup in Moscow involving Bruce Lockhart and Sidney Reilly , which involved an attempted assassination of Lenin. The Bolsheviks proceeded to shut down

5084-690: The Eastern bloc and the moniker "Pullach" became synonymous with secret service intrigues. According to one report, the Org was for many years "the only eyes and ears of the CIA on the ground in the Soviet Bloc nations" during the Cold War . The CIA kept close tabs on the Gehlen group: the Org supplied the manpower while the CIA supplied the material needs for clandestine operations, including funding, cars and airplanes. Every German POW returning from Soviet captivity to West Germany between 1947 and 1955

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5248-774: The Monroe Doctrine in 1823, in order to stop further European colonialism in the Latin America. Desire for territorial expansion to the Pacific Ocean was explicit in the idea of manifest destiny . The giant Louisiana Purchase was peaceful, but the annexation of 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 km ) of Mexican territory was the result of the Mexican–American War of 1846. The Cold War reoriented American foreign policy towards opposing communism, and prevailing U.S. foreign policy embraced its role as

5412-677: The Northwest Indian War . Subsequent treaties such as the Treaty of Greenville and the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809) resulted in a rise of Anti-American sentiment among the Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, which helped to create Tecumseh's Confederacy which was defeated by the end of the War of 1812 . The Indian Removal Act of 1830 culminated in the deportation of 60,000 Native Americans in an event known as

5576-605: The Second World War , it began planning for the post-war world from the conflict's outset. This postwar vision originated in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an economic elite-led organization that became integrated into the government leadership. CFR's War and Peace Studies group offered its services to the State Department in 1939 and a secret partnership for post-war planning developed. CFR leaders Hamilton Fish Armstrong and Walter H. Mallory saw World War II as

5740-586: The Trail of Tears , where up to 16,700 people died in an act of ethnic cleansing . The deportation of Natives West of the Mississippi, resulted in significant economic gains for settlers. For example, the Arkansas firm, Byrd and Belding earned up to $ 27,000 in two years through supplying food. The policy of Manifest Destiny would continue to be realized with the Mexican–American War of 1846, which resulted in

5904-686: The Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed, which gave the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes territory from the North Platte River in present-day Wyoming and Nebraska southward to the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado and Kansas. The land was initially not wanted by White settlers, but following the discovery of gold in the region, settlers began to pour into the territory. In 1861, six chiefs of the Southern Cheyenne and four of

6068-690: The United States Virgin Islands , American Samoa , and the Northern Mariana Islands . (The federal government officially apologized for the overthrow of the Hawaiian government in 1993.) The remainder of acquired territories have become independent with varying degrees of cooperation, ranging from three freely associated states which participate in federal government programs in exchange for military basing rights, to Cuba which severed diplomatic relations during

6232-646: The aftermath of World War II , in the period after the surrender and occupations of Germany and Austria in May and later Japan and Korea in September 1945 and before the United States granted the Philippines independence on July 4, 1946 . In an October 1940 report to Franklin Roosevelt, Bowman wrote that "the US government is interested in any solution anywhere in the world that affects American trade. In

6396-654: The cession of 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 km ) of Mexican territory to the United States , stretching up to the Pacific coast. The Whig Party strongly opposed this war and expansionism generally. Following the American victory over Mexico, colonization and settlement of California would begin which would soon lead to the California genocide . Estimates of total deaths in the genocide vary greatly from 2,000 to 100,000 dead. The discovery of Gold in California resulted in an influx of settlers, who formed militias to kill and displace Indigenous peoples. The government of California supported expansion and settlement through

6560-521: The " New Imperialism " of the late 19th century, when the United States and the other great powers rapidly expanded their overseas territorial possessions. One of these factors was the prevalence of overt racism, notably John Fiske 's conception of " Anglo-Saxon " racial superiority and Josiah Strong 's call to "civilize and Christianize." The concepts were manifestations of a growing Social Darwinism and racism in some schools of American political thought. Early in his career, as Assistant Secretary of

6724-428: The "war against terror". The Bundestag constituted an investigative committee ("Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss") to investigate the allegations. The committee tasked the former Federal Appellate Court (Bundesgerichtshof) judge Dr. Gerhard Schäfer  [ de ] as special investigator, who published a report confirming illegal BND operations involving and targeting journalists between 1993 and 2005. As

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6888-522: The 1960s. The BND was quickly established as the western world's second largest intelligence agency, second only to the CIA. Both Russia and the Middle East remain important focuses of the BND's activities, in addition to violent non-state actors . The BND today acts as an early warning system to alert the German government to threats to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on wiretapping and electronic surveillance of international communications . It collects and evaluates information on

7052-436: The 2003 incident which ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq . The payments of 3,000 Euros monthly were made by a cover firm called Thiele und Friedrichs (Munich). As a result of the premature cancellation, al-Janabi filed a lawsuit at the Munich labour court and won the case. Several former senior BND officials publicly stated that the agency had repeatedly warned the CIA not to take Curveball's information as fact. Hanning,

7216-565: The American people fighting them to give them liberty. The two peoples are fighting on parallel lines for the same object." However, from 1898 until the Cuban revolution , The United States of America had significant influence over the economy of Cuba. By 1950, US investors owned 44 of the 161 sugar mills in Cuba, and slightly over 47% of total sugar output. By 1906, up to 15% of Cuba was owned by American landowners. This consisted of 632,000 acres of sugar lands, 225,000 acres of tobacco, 700,000 of fruits and 2,750,000 acres of mining land, along with

7380-463: The American public of the justice in intervening, the United States government used paternalist propaganda, depicting the Haitian political process as uncivilized. The Haitian government would come to agree to U.S. terms, including American overseeing of the Haitian economy. This direct supervision of the Haitian economy would reinforce U.S. propaganda and further entrench the perception of Haitians' being incompetent of self-governance. In World War I,

7544-414: The Arapaho signed the Treaty of Fort Wise which saw the loss of 90% of their land. The refusal of various warriors to recognise the treaty resulted in white settlers starting to believe that war was coming. The subsequent Colorado War would result in the Sand Creek Massacre in which up to 600 Cheyenne were killed, most of whom were children and women. On October 14, 1865, the chiefs of what remained of

7708-506: The BND also found out from its sources, the Cuban exiles living in Miami, that Cuba was also trying to get hold of weapons through German dealers. According to a BND report, Cuba was also able to recruit four former Waffen-SS officers as instructors for the Cuban armed forces. However, the identity of the men was blacked out in the report. "This negative view of BND was certainly not justified during ... [1967 and] 1968." The BND's military work "had been outstanding", and in certain sectors of

7872-422: The BND has been lost. An exasperated Chancellor Helmut Kohl called the service "idiots". A few weeks later BND president Konrad Porzner and minister of defence Gerhard Stoltenberg rated the transfers as not to be problematic, since the equipment was only handed over for trials and was supposed to be returned afterwards. On 5 February 2003, Colin Powell made the case for a military attack on Iraq in front of

8036-411: The BND president at the time, even formulated his concerns about that in a letter to then CIA Director George Tenet . The CIA however ignored those warnings and presented the information as facts. Following the 2006 Lebanon War , the BND mediated secret negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah , eventually leading up to the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange . In the beginning of 2008, it

8200-578: The BND's historical department show that the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, was also informed about the matter. According to these documents, Reinhard Gehlen, head of the Org and later president of the BND, told the Bundestag's Committee on European Defense on Dec. 11, 1953, that around 40 of his employees came from the SS and SD. ... If there was ignorance on the matter, it was only because no one wanted to know – not Gehlen, not Adenauer, not Globke and presumably many others as well. An article in The Independent on 29 June 2018 made this statement about some of

8364-451: The BND's many successes under Wessel but noted that there had been "a number of incidents of East Germans infiltrating the West German government, particularly intelligence agencies, on Gen. Wessel's watch". The kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich was a watershed event for the BND, following early warnings from other countries, because it led the agency to build counter-terrorism capabilities. In 1970

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8528-413: The Black Hills resulted in a surge of White settlement in the region. The gold rush was very profitable for the White settlers and the American government, with just one of the Black Hill Mines yielding $ 500 Million in gold. Attempts to purchase the land failed, and the Great Sioux War began as a result. Despite initial success by Native Americans in the war's first few battles, most notably the Battle of

8692-488: The British and U.S. embassies. Tensions between Russia (including its allies) and the West turned intensely ideological. Horrified by mass executions of White forces, land expropriations, and widespread repression, the Allied military expedition now assisted the anti-Bolshevik Whites in the Russian Civil War , with the US covertly giving support to the autocratic and antisemitic General Alexander Kolchak . Over 30,000 Western troops were deployed in Russia overall. This

8856-432: The British government began talks to try and keep them in the war effort. British diplomat Bruce Lockhart cultivated a relationship with several Soviet officials, including Leon Trotsky , and the latter approved the initial Allied military mission to secure the Eastern Front , which was collapsing in the revolutionary upheaval. Ultimately, Soviet head of state V.I. Lenin decided the Bolsheviks would settle peacefully with

9020-458: The CIA "US imperialism's clandestine apparatus in the Philippines ". The U.S. retained dozens of military bases, including a few major ones. In addition, Philippine independence was qualified by legislation passed by the U.S. Congress . For example, the Bell Trade Act provided a mechanism whereby U.S. import quotas might be established on Philippine articles which "are coming, or are likely to come, into substantial competition with like articles

9184-429: The CIA and the BND bought the Swiss informations and communication security firm Crypto AG , for $ 5.75 million. Already in 1967 the BND tried, together with the French intelligence service, to buy the company from its founder Robert Hagelin. This deal though fell through due to Hagelin, who was already cooperating with the CIA, refusing. The CIA at the time did not cooperate with the French. In 1969, after negotiations with

9348-402: The CIA launched Operation Ajax with support by the United Kingdom to overthrow Mosaddegh. The coup saw an increase in power of the monarchy, which went from a constitutional monarchy to an authoritarian nation. In the aftermath of the coup, the Shah agreed to replace the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium—British Petroleum and eight European and American oil companies. In August 2013,

9512-496: The Cold War saw increased US interest in Latin America . Since the Guatemalan Revolution , Guatemala saw the expansion of labour rights and land reforms which granted property to landless peasants. Lobbying by the United Fruit Company , whose profits were affected by these policies, as well as fear of Communist influence in Guatemala culminated in the USA supporting Operation PBFortune to overthrow Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1952. The plan involved providing weapons to

9676-553: The Cold War. The United States was a public advocate for European decolonization after World War II (having started a ten-year independence transition for the Philippines in 1934 with the Tydings–McDuffie Act ). Even so, the US desire for an informal system of global primacy in an " American Century " often brought them into conflict with national liberation movements . The United States has now granted citizenship to Native Americans and recognizes some degree of tribal sovereignty . Yale historian Paul Kennedy has asserted, "From

9840-445: The East German security service, later known as Stasi . Several informants in East Berlin reported in June and July 1961 of street closures, clearing of fields, accumulation of building materials and police and army deployments in specific parts of the eastern sector, as well as other measures that BND determined could lead to a division of the city. However, the agency was reluctant to report communist initiatives and had no knowledge of

10004-432: The GDR regime. They knew the carrying capacity of every bridge, the bed count of every hospital, the length of every airfield, the width and level of maintenance of the roads that Soviet armor and infantry divisions would have to traverse in a potential attack on the West. Almost every sphere of eastern life was known to the BND. Unsung analysts at Pullach, with their contacts in the East, figuratively functioned as flies on

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10168-479: The Gehlen Organisation to the BND. ... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them – at least for a few years". The authors of the book A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe state that Reinhard Gehlen simply did not want to know the backgrounds of the men that the BND hired in the 1950s. The American National Security Archive states that "he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals". On

10332-417: The Gehlen Organization had an annual budget of US$ 1,500,000 (inflation adjusted US$ 19 million present day). Bundesnachrichtendienst The Federal Intelligence Service ( German : Bundesnachrichtendienst , pronounced [ˌbʊndəsˈnaːχʁɪçtnˌdiːnst] ; BND ) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany , directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office . The BND headquarters

10496-413: The Haiti expedition and the highest-decorated Marine of that time, considered virtually all of the operations to have been economically motivated. In a 1933 speech he said: I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it...I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba

10660-482: The Hawaiian Kingdom. In 1849 the United States and The Kingdom of Hawaii signed a treaty of friendship removing any colonial ambitions Great Britain or France might have had. In 1885, King David Kalākaua, last king of Hawaii, signed a trade reciprocity treaty with the United States allowing for tariff free trade of sugar to the United States. The treaty was renewed in 1887 and with it came the overrunning of Hawaiian politics by rich, white, plantation owners. On July 6, 1887,

10824-435: The Hawaiian League, a non-native political group, threatened the king and forced him to sign a new constitution stripping him of much of his power. King Kalākaua would die in 1891 and be succeeded by his sister Lili'uokalani. In 1893 with support from marines from the USS Boston Queen Lili'uokalani would be deposed in a bloodless coup. Hawaii has been under US control ever since and became the 50th US state on August 21, 1959 in

10988-503: The Israelis would attack on a certain day and time. Rusk shot back: "That is quite out of the question. Our ambassador in Tel Aviv assured me only yesterday that everything was normal." Helms replied: "I am sorry, but I adhere to my opinion. The Israelis will strike and their object will be to end the war in their favor with extreme rapidity." President Lyndon Johnson then asked Helms for the source of his information. Helms said: "Mr. President, I have it from an allied secret service. The report

11152-445: The Japanese which retook both allied territory as well as took over Japanese territories. In October 1944 American started their plan to retake the Philippine islands. Japanese troops on the island ended up surrendering in August 1945. After the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, the United States occupied and reformed Japan up until 1952. The maximum geographical extension of American direct political and military control happened in

11316-456: The Little Bighorn , the United States eventually won and ended the reservation, carving it up into smaller reservations. The reservation system did not just serve as a way to facilitate American settlement and expansion of land, but also enriched local merchants and businesses who held significant economic power over the Native tribes. Traders would often accept payment for goods via annuity money from land sales contributing to further poverty. In

11480-554: The MGB. The WIN mission to Poland was a failure due to the compromising of the mission by counter-spies; as it turned out, the so-called Fifth Command of WIN organization within Poland had been created by the Soviet intelligence services. Since the early 1950s, the Soviets were getting reports from Org insiders Heinz Felfe , Hans Clemens and Erwin Tiebel . All three were finally discovered in 1961 and tried for treason; they were convicted in 1963. Clemens and Felfe had admitted to having transmitted great amounts of secret information to

11644-408: The Man that invents new Trades, Arts or Manufactures, or new Improvements in Husbandry, may be properly called Fathers of their Nation, as they are the Cause of the Generation of Multitudes, by the Encouragement they afford to Marriage." Thomas Jefferson asserted in 1786 that the United States "must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North & South is to be peopled. [...] The navigation of

11808-644: The Middle East, most notably Turkey and portions of formerly Ottoman territory following the empire's collapse. The occupation led to rapid industrialization, which resulted in the discovery of crude oil in Persia in 1908, sparking a boom in the Middle Eastern economy. By the 1930s, the United States had cemented itself in the Middle East via a series of acquisitions through the Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) , which saw US control over Saudi oil. It

11972-420: The Mississippi we must have. This is all we are as yet ready to receive.". From the left Noam Chomsky writes that "the United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly". A national drive for territorial acquisition across the continent was popularized in the 19th century as the ideology of manifest destiny. The policy of settlement of land

12136-428: The Native Americans continued intermittently after independence , and an ethnic cleansing campaign known as Indian removal gained for European American settlers more valuable territory on the eastern side of the continent. George Washington , a founding father and first president of the United States, began a policy of United States non-interventionism which lasted into the 1800s. The United States promulgated

12300-524: The Navy, Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in preparing the Navy for the Spanish–American War and was an enthusiastic proponent of testing the U.S. military in battle, at one point stating "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." Roosevelt claimed that he rejected imperialism, but he embraced the near-identical doctrine of expansionism . When Rudyard Kipling wrote

12464-500: The Org and BND employees: "Operating until 1956, when it was superseded by the BND, the Gehlen Organisation was allowed to employ at least 100 former Gestapo or SS officers. ... Among them were Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Alois Brunner, who would go on to die of old age despite having sent more than 100,000 Jews to ghettos or internment camps, and ex-SS major Emil Augsburg. ... Many ex-Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer,

12628-644: The Org recruited many agents who "wished nothing more than to drive the Bolsheviks from Europe". The Gehlen Org employed hundreds of former members of the Nazi Party, which was defended by the CIA. James Critchfield , former chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia division, stated to The Washington Post in 2001, "I've lived with this for 50 years," and that, "Almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, in which he has been described as an ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals – this

12792-475: The Pacific. The majority of these territories were military bases like Midway, Guam, Wake Island and Hawaii. Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was what ended up bringing the United States into the war. Japan also launched multiple attacks on other American Territories like Guam and Wake Island. By early 1942 Japan also was able to take over the Philippine islands. At the end of the Philippine island campaign

12956-674: The Philippines genuine independence." When World War I broke out in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson promised American neutrality throughout the war. This promise was broken when the United States entered the war after the Zimmermann Telegram . This was "a war for empire" to control vast raw materials in Africa and other colonized areas, according to the contemporary historian and civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois . More recently historian Howard Zinn argues that Wilson entered

13120-491: The Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The published materials had been submitted in 2015 as part of a German parliamentary inquiry into the surveillance activities of the BND and its cooperation with the US National Security Agency . The BND has been reported to store 220 million sets of metadata every day. That is, they record with whom, when, where and for how long someone communicates. This data

13284-733: The Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organisation, the Military Counterintelligence Service ( Militärischer Abschirmdienst , or MAD). The predecessor of the BND was the German eastern military intelligence agency during World War II , the Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost or FHO Section in the General Staff, led by Wehrmacht Major General Reinhard Gehlen . Its main purpose

13448-632: The Red Army – and was bilked by the many mass murderers he hired". James Critchfield later went on to say in an interview with a reporter, "There's no doubt that the CIA got carried away with recruiting some pretty bad people." The American National Security Archive states that Gehlen "employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals". An article in Der Spiegel featured this headline on 16 February 2011: "The Nazi Criminals Who Became German Spooks". The article states: "CIA documents turned up by

13612-491: The Reichsführer-SS) men "reluctantly, under pressure from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to deal with 'the avalanche of subversion hitting them from East Germany'" There were also reports of "moles" within the agency, which undermined its credibility. In fact, a CIA document published some years later spoke of a "catastrophic" Soviet penetration of the Gehlen Organization. Most of the moles were ex-Nazis recruited by

13776-416: The Reichsführer-SS) men "reluctantly, under pressure from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to deal with 'the avalanche of subversion hitting them from East Germany.'" From 2011 to 2018, an independent commission of historians studied the history of the BND in the era of Reinhard Gehlen. The results are published in comprehensive studies. So far (as of April 2020) eleven volumes have been published. During

13940-564: The Republic of Kosovo" had accepted responsibility for the bomb attack. Laboratory tests had shown no evidence of the BND agents' involvement. However, the Germans were released only 10 days after they were arrested. It was suspected that the arrest was a revenge by Kosovo authorities for the BND report about organized crime in Kosovo which accuses Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi , as well as

14104-680: The Socialist People's Republic of Korea . After which, the USA quickly allied with Syngman Rhee , leader of the fight against the People's Republic of Korea that proclaimed a provisional government. There was a lot of opposition to the division of Korea , including rebellions by communists such as the Jeju uprising in 1948 and further Communist partisans in the Korean War . The Jeju Uprising

14268-665: The South-West, various settlements and communities had been established thanks to profits from the American Civil War . In order to maintain revenue and profit, settlers often waged war against native tribes. By 1871, the settlement of Tucson for example had a population of three thousand, including saloon-keepers, traders and contractors who had made fortunes during the Civil War and were hopeful of continuing their profits with an Indian war. Desire to fight resulted in

14432-774: The Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos agreed to live south of the Arkansas, sharing land that belonged to the Kiowas, and thereby relinquish all claims in the Colorado territory. Following the victory of Red Cloud in Red Cloud's War over the United States, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) was signed. This treaty led to the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation . However, the discovery of gold in

14596-695: The Soviet Union was an expansionary dictatorship that threatened American interests. In their theory, Moscow's weakness was that it had to keep expanding to survive; and that, by containing or stopping its growth, stability could be achieved in Europe. The result was the Truman Doctrine (1947). Initially regarding only Greece and Turkey, the NSC-68 (1951) extended the Truman Doctrine to the whole non-Communist world. The United States could no longer distinguish between national and global security. Hence,

14760-632: The Soviet Union, largely at the behest of corporate partners like the Foreign Oil Committee and the Petroleum Industry War Council. The US thus avoided overt territorial acquisition, like that of the European colonial empires, as being too costly, choosing the cheaper option of forcing countries to open their door to American business interests. Although the United States was the last major belligerent to join

14924-512: The Soviets, including 15,000 classified documents. There were also Communists and their sympathizers within the CIA and the SIS ( MI6 ), especially Kim Philby , himself a Soviet secret agent. As such information appeared, Gehlen, personally, and the Gehlen Organisation, officially, were attacked by the governments of the Western powers. The British government was especially hostile towards Gehlen, and

15088-635: The Truman Doctrine was described as "globalizing" the Monroe Doctrine. A second equally important consideration was the need to restore the world economy, which required the rebuilding and reorganizing of Europe for growth. This matter, more than the Soviet threat, was the main impetus behind the Marshall Plan of 1948. A third factor was the realization, especially by Britain and the three Benelux nations, that American military involvement

15252-476: The U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. In Korea, the U.S. occupied the Southern half of the peninsula in 1945 and dissolved

15416-546: The UN Security Council. Powell supported his case with information received from the BND, instead of Mr. Hans Blix and the IAEA . The BND had collected intelligence from an informant known as Rafid al-Janabi alias CURVEBALL, who claimed Iraq would be in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction , apart from torturing and killing over 1,000 dissidents each year, for over 20 years. Rafid was employed before and after

15580-493: The US government should not be underestimated, because the BND was able to regularly provide the CIA with detailed information about Soviet arms deliveries through its very good sources in Cuba. There are indications that the secret service was also informed about military actions against Cuba. Ten days before the Bay of Pigs invasion , Gehlen reported to Bonn : "Within a relatively short period of time, large-scale military operations to defeat Fidel Castro will begin." In 1962,

15744-471: The US of a new form of colonialism . In terms of territorial acquisition, the United States has integrated (with voting rights) all of its acquisitions on the North American continent, including the non-contiguous Alaska . Hawaii has also become a state with equal representation to the mainland, but other island jurisdictions acquired during wartime remain territories, namely Guam , Puerto Rico ,

15908-473: The US's actions mentioned within it. Historian Jay Sexton notes that the tactics used to implement the doctrine were modeled after those employed by European imperial powers during the 17th and 18th centuries. From the left historian William Appleman Williams described it as "imperial anti-colonialism." In the older historiography William Walker's filibustering represented the high tide of antebellum American imperialism. His brief seizure of Nicaragua in 1855

16072-851: The US, Britain, and Russia had been allies for seven months, from April 1917 until the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November. Active distrust surfaced immediately, as even before the October Revolution British officers had been involved in the Kornilov Affair , an attempted coup d'état by the Russian Army against the Provisional Government. Nonetheless, once the Bolsheviks took Moscow,

16236-463: The US, the BND approached Hagelin anew and bought the company together with the US intelligence service. Crypto AG produced and sold radio, Ethernet, STM, GSM, phone and fax encryption systems worldwide. Its clients included Iran, Libya, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican. The BND and the CIA rigged the company's devices so they could easily decipher

16400-457: The United States claimed to colonize in the name of anti-colonialism: "We are coming, Cuba, coming; we are bound to set you free! We are coming from the mountains, from the plains and inland sea! We are coming with the wrath of God to make the Spaniards flee! We are coming, Cuba, coming; coming now!" Filipino revolutionary General Emilio Aguinaldo wondered: "The Filipinos fighting for Liberty,

16564-441: The United States of practicing neocolonialism —sometimes defined as a modern form of hegemony —which leverages economic power rather than military force in an informal empire ; the term "neocolonialism" has occasionally been used as a contemporary synonym for modern-day imperialism . The question of whether the United States should intervene in the affairs of foreign countries has been a much-debated topic in domestic politics for

16728-530: The allegations. In 2014, an employee of BND was arrested for handing over secret documents to the United States. He was suspected of handing over documents about the committee investigating the NSA spying in Germany. The German government responded to this espionage by expelling the top CIA official in Berlin. In December 2016, WikiLeaks published 2,420 documents from the BND and the Federal Office for

16892-493: The caper would stay under wraps, the real spy was told to be ready for recall; he made his move to the West at the appropriate time. The East German regime, however, fought back. With still unhindered flight to the west a possibility, infiltration started on a grand scale and a reversal of sorts took hold. During the early 1960s as many as 90% of the BND's lower-level informants in East Germany worked as double agents for

17056-595: The captor of Anne Frank, transferred over from the Gehlen Organisation to the BND. ... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them – at least for a few years". The authors of the book A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe state that Reinhard Gehlen simply did not want to know the backgrounds of the men that the BND hired in the 1950s. The American National Security Archive states that Gehlen "employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals". On

17220-555: The codes that countries used to send encrypted messages. In 1986, the BND deciphered the report of the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin regarding the "successful" implementation of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing . According to an interview with Stasi defector Col. Rainer Wiegand, BND agents were assigned to use the anti-Stasi protests in East Germany in order to covertly obtain files from Building No. 2, which houses

17384-577: The colony of Liberia , which became independent in 1847. By 1857, Liberia had merged with other colonies formed by state societies, including the Republic of Maryland , Mississippi-in-Africa , and Kentucky in Africa . President James Monroe presented his famous doctrine for the western hemisphere in 1823. Historians have observed that while the Monroe Doctrine contained a commitment to resist colonialism from Europe, it had some aggressive implications for American policy, since there were no limitations on

17548-644: The counterespionage directorate. Wiegand assisted by providing the blueprints of the building and indicated which offices the agents should prioritize. Operation Summer Rain was a highly classified joint mission involving the Federal Intelligence Service and special units of the German Armed Forces during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. The primary objective of the operation was to gather intelligence on

17712-623: The country's entire history. Opponents of interventionism have pointed to the country's origin as a former colony that rebelled against an overseas king , as well as the American values of democracy, freedom, and independence. Conversely, supporters of interventionism and of American presidents who have been labelled as “imperialists” — most notably Andrew Jackson , James K. Polk , William McKinley , Woodrow Wilson , Theodore Roosevelt , and William Howard Taft — have justified their interventions in (or whole seizures of) various countries by citing

17876-585: The coup, American enterprises saw a return of influence in the country, in both the public level of government but also in the economy. On the March 15, 1951 the Iranian parliament, passed legislation that was proposed by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Company , which gained significant revenues from Iranian oil, more so than the Iranian government itself. Mosaddegh

18040-554: The deal, saying it would result in several hundred millions of dollars in back tax payments, the sale remains controversial, as a government agency has paid for possibly stolen data . In November 2008, three German BND agents were arrested in Kosovo for allegedly throwing a bomb at the European Union International Civilian Office , which oversees Kosovo's governance. Later the "Army of

18204-476: The economic infrastructure of the postwar American Lebensraum. FDR promised: Hitler will get lebensraum, a global American one. Prior to his death in 1945, President Roosevelt was planning to withdraw all U.S. forces from Europe as soon as possible. Soviet actions in Poland and Czechoslovakia led his successor Harry Truman to reconsider. Heavily influenced by George Kennan , Washington policymakers believed that

18368-582: The exiled Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas , who was to lead an invasion from Nicaragua. This culminated in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état . The subsequent military junta assumed dictatorial powers, banned opposition parties and reversed the social reforms of the revolution. The USA would continue to support Guatemala through the Cold War, including during the Guatemalan Genocide in which up to 200,000 people were killed. After

18532-464: The first years of oversight by the State Secretary in the federal chancellery of Konrad Adenauer of the operation in Pullach , Munich District , Bavaria , the BND continued the ways of its forebear, the Gehlen Organization. The BND racked up its initial east–west cold war successes by concentrating on East Germany . The BND's reach encompassed the highest political and military levels of

18696-515: The former Sicherheitsdienst (SD), SS and Gestapo , after their release by the Allies . The latter recruits were controversial because the SS and its associated groups were notoriously the perpetrators of many Nazi atrocities during the war. The organization worked at first almost exclusively for the CIA, which contributed funding, equipment, cars, gasoline and other materials. On 1 April 1956

18860-908: The former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj of far-reaching involvement in organized crime. According to reporting in Der Standard and profil , the BND engaged in espionage in Austria between 1999 and 2006, spying on targets including the International Atomic Energy Agency , the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries , the Austria Press Agency , embassies, and Austrian banks and government ministries. The government of Austria has called on Germany to clarify

19024-476: The former headquarters in Pullach , a suburb of Munich . The agency's total number of employees, in Germany and other countries, was approximately 6,500. The Bundesnachrichtendienst is divided into the following departments: BND is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes with content of German interest. The department Technische Aufklärung ( TA )

19188-560: The general MacArthur stated "I came through and I shall return" in response to the Americans losing the island to the Japanese. The loss of American territories ended the decisive Battle of Midway . The Battle of Midway was the American offensive to stop Midway Island from falling into Japanese control. This led to the pushback of American forces and the recapturing of American territories. There were many battles that were fought against

19352-748: The government. In 1990, BND gave the Finnish Security Intelligence Service the so-called Tiitinen list —which supposedly contains names of Finns who were believed to have links to Stasi . The list was classified and locked in a safe after the Director of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Seppo Tiitinen, and the President of Finland, Mauno Koivisto , determined that it was based on vague hints instead of hard evidence. In

19516-717: The ideas of Time-Life publisher Henry Luce , who (in his " American Century " essay) wrote, "Tyrannies may require a large amount of living space [but] freedom requires and will require far greater living space than Tyranny." According to Bowman's biographer, Neil Smith : Better than the American Century or the Pax Americana, the notion of an American Lebensraum captures the specific and global historical geography of U.S. ascension to power. After World War II, global power would no longer be measured in terms of colonized land or power over territory. Rather, global power

19680-565: The imperialist poem " The White Man's Burden " for Roosevelt, the politician told colleagues that it was "rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view." Roosevelt proclaimed his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine as justification, although his ambitions extended even further, into the Far East. Scholars have noted the resemblance between U.S. policies in the Philippines and European actions in their colonies in Asia and Africa during this period. By one contrast, however,

19844-464: The intelligence field the BND still showed brilliance: in Latin America and in the Middle East it was regarded as the best-informed secret service. The BND offered a fair and reliable amount of intelligence on Soviet and Soviet-bloc forces in Eastern Europe, regarding the elaboration of a NATO warning system against any Soviet operations against NATO territory, in close cooperation with

20008-484: The late 19th century, though some consider American territorial expansion and settler colonialism at the expense of Indigenous Americans to be similar enough in nature to be identified with the same term. While the United States has never officially identified itself and its territorial possessions as an empire, some commentators have referred to the country as such, including Max Boot , Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. , and Niall Ferguson . Other commentators have accused

20172-568: The march. During the march, New Mexican slavers, assisted by the Ute often attacked isolated bands, killing the men, taking the women and children captive, and capturing horses and livestock. As part of these raids, a large number of slaves were taken and sold throughout the region. Starting in 1820, the American Colonization Society began subsidizing free black people to colonize the west coast of Africa. In 1822, it declared

20336-444: The most part, came from observation and not from clandestine penetration". The agency's second president, Gerhard Wessel, retired in 1978. According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times in August 2002, the "former intelligence officer in Adolf Hitler's anti-Soviet spy operations" ... "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists". The New York Times News Service obituary lauded

20500-480: The necessity of advancing American economic interests, such as trade and debt management; preventing European intervention (colonial or otherwise) in the Western Hemisphere , manifested in the anti-European Monroe Doctrine of 1823; and the benefits of keeping "good order" around the world. Despite periods of peaceful co-existence, wars with Native Americans resulted in substantial territorial gains for American colonists who were expanding into native land. Wars with

20664-469: The notion of "fraternal assistance" by the satellite states of Moscow; and US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn Thompson , quite irritated, called the secret BND report he was given "a German fabrication". At 23:11 on 20 August 1968, BND radar operators first observed abnormal activity over Czech airspace. An agent on the ground in Prague called a BND out-station in Bavaria: "The Russians are coming." Warsaw Pact forces had moved as forecast. However,

20828-435: The organization's credibility, and dazzling achievements became an infrequent commodity. A veteran agent remarked at the time that the BND pond then contained some sardines, though a few years earlier the pond had been alive with sharks. The fact that the BND could score certain successes despite East German communist Stasi interference, internal malpractice, inefficiencies and infighting, was primarily due to select members of

20992-457: The other hand, Gehlen himself was cleared by James H. Critchfield of the Central Intelligence Agency who worked with the Gehlen Organization from 1949 to 1956. In 2001, he said that "almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, [as an] ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals ... is all far from the fact," as quoted in The Washington Post . Critchfield added that Gehlen hired former Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service of

21156-429: The other hand, Gehlen himself was cleared by the CIA's James H. Critchfield , who worked with the Gehlen Organization from 1949 to 1956. In 2001, he said that "almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, as an ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals ... is all far from the fact," as quoted in The Washington Post . Critchfield added that Gehlen hired former Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service of

21320-417: The party's general line that the West was plotting a revival of Nazi power. Alois Brunner , alleged to be an Org operative, was formerly responsible for the Drancy internment camp near Paris and linked to the murders of 140,000 Jews during the Holocaust. According to Robert Wolfe , historian at the US National Archives , "US Army intelligence accepted Reinhard Gehlen's offer to furnish alleged expertise on

21484-403: The passage of the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians which legalized the enslavement of Native Americans and allowed settlers to capture and force them into labor. California further offered and paid bounties for the killing of Native Americans. American expansion in the Great Plains resulted in conflict between many tribes West of the Mississippi and the United States. In 1851,

21648-400: The political intelligence field are, in my opinion, either wishful thinking or self-delusion. ... Gehlen was never a good clandestine operator, nor was he a particularly good administrator. And therein lay his failures. The Gehlen Organization/BND always had a good record in the collection of military and economic intelligence on East Germany and the Soviet forces there. But this information, for

21812-428: The politically liberal British press ensured full publication of the existence of the Gehlen Organisation, which compromised the operation. On 1 April 1956, the Gehlen Org was formally superseded by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (or Federal Intelligence Service) of the Federal Republic of Germany, which still exists. Reinhard Gehlen was the first president; he stepped down in 1968 after reaching retirement age. In 1948,

21976-446: The product of the United States". It further required U.S. citizens and corporations be granted equal access to Philippine minerals, forests, and other natural resources. In hearings before the Senate Committee on Finance, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs William L. Clayton described the law as "clearly inconsistent with the basic foreign economic policy of this country" and "clearly inconsistent with our promise to grant

22140-479: The requested GDR weapon systems (an SA-6 system, a ZSU-23/4 and other equipment) to Israel. The transfers were shipped using the ports and airports of Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven , Manching and Alhorn . In late 1991, a shipment labeled "agricultural machinery" was unexpectedly inspected by the Wasserschutzpolizei and weapons were discovered. A state’s attorney started an investigation and parliamentary designated BND-overseer Willy Wimmer concluded, that control over

22304-429: The scope and timing because of conflicting inputs. The erection of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 thus came as a surprise, and the BND's performance in the political field was thereafter often wrong and remained spotty and unimpressive. There was a great success for the Federal Intelligence Service during the Cuban Missile Crisis . In 1962, the BND was the first Western intelligence service to have information about

22468-410: The slowly sinking efficiency of BND in the last years of Reinhard Gehlen became evident. By 1961, it was clear that the BND employed some men who were Soviet "moles"; they had come from the earlier Gehlen Organization. One mole, Heinz Felfe, was convicted of treason in 1963. Others were not uncovered during Gehlen's term in office. Gehlen's refusal to correct reports with questionable content strained

22632-469: The staff who took it upon themselves to step up and overcome then existing maladies. Abdication of responsibility by Reinhard Gehlen was the malignancy; cronyism remained pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll). Only slowly did the younger generation then advance to substitute new ideas for some of the bad habits caused mainly by Gehlen's semi-retired attitude and frequent holiday absences. Gehlen

22796-434: The stationing of Soviet medium-range missiles on the caribbean island and passed it on to the United States . Between 1959 and 1961, Reinhard Gehlen called on Washington several times in vain to "insert the dangerous communist bastion, which at the same time represents an excellent starting point for the communist infiltration of Latin America , into the [USA] sphere of power by rapid access." Gehlen's influence on

22960-404: The time can be viewed as imperialism to stop the advance of democracy in countries such as Haiti . The United States invaded Haiti on July 28, 1915, and American rule continued until August 1, 1934. The historian Mary Renda in her book, Taking Haiti , talks about the American invasion of Haiti to bring about political stability through U.S. control. The American government did not believe Haiti

23124-580: The time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation." Expanding on George Washington's description of the early United States as an "infant empire", Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Hence the Prince that acquires new Territory, if he finds it vacant, or removes the Natives to give his own People Room; the Legislator that makes effectual Laws for promoting of Trade, increasing Employment, improving Land by more or better Tillage; providing more Food by Fisheries; securing Property, etc. and

23288-418: The wake of the German reunification in 1991, Israel requested access to GDR weapon systems. In March 1991 a parliamentary commission decided to not give the requested weapons to Israel. Six month later, under the supervision of BND-director Volker Foertsch, the service, in conjunction with elements within the Federal Ministry of Defence , still without political clearance to do so, arranged several transfers of

23452-416: The wall in ministries and military conferences. When the Soviet KGB suspected an East German army intelligence officer, a lieutenant colonel and BND agent, of spying, the Soviets investigated and shadowed him. The BND was positioned and able to inject forged reports implying that the loose spy was actually the KGB investigator, who was then arrested by the Soviets and shipped off to Moscow. Not knowing how long

23616-426: The war in order to open international markets to surplus US production. He quotes Wilson's own declaration that Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process... the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. In a memo to Secretary of State Bryan, the president described his aim as "an open door to

23780-403: The weapons systems utilized by Soviet forces. In 2005, a public scandal erupted (dubbed the Journalistenskandal , journalists scandal) over revelations that the BND had placed a number of German journalists under surveillance since the-mid 1990s, in an attempt to discover the source of information leaks from the BND regarding the activities of the service in connection with the war in Iraq and

23944-422: The world". Lloyd Gardner notes that Wilson's original avoidance of world war was not motivated by anti-imperialism; his fear was that " white civilization and its domination in the world " were threatened by "the great white nations" destroying each other in endless battle. Despite President Wilson's official doctrine of moral diplomacy seeking to "make the world safe for democracy," some of his activities at

24108-434: Was a foundational goal of the United States of America, with one of the driving factors of discontent with British rule originating from the Royal Proclamation of 1763 , which barred settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains . As part of the desire of Manifest Destiny to open up land for American settlement came campaigns in the Great Lakes region which saw the United States fight the Northwestern Confederacy resulting in

24272-401: Was absolutely necessary, "American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours." American rule of ceded Spanish territory was not uncontested. The Philippine Revolution had begun in August 1896 against Spain, and after the defeat of Spain in

24436-409: Was clear to the US that further expansion in Middle Eastern oil would not be possible without diplomatic representation. In 1939, CASOC appealed to the US State Department about increasing political relations with Saudi Arabia . This appeal was ignored until Germany and Japan made similar attempts following the start of World War II . At the start of World War II , the US had multiple territories in

24600-445: Was elected Prime Minister by the Majlis later in 1952. Mosadeggh's support by the Tudeh as well as a boycott by various businesses against the nationalised industry resulted in fears by the United Kingdom and the United States that Iran would turn to Communism. America would officially remain neutral, but the CIA supported various candidates in the 1952 Iranian legislative election . In late 1952, with Mosaddegh remaining in power,

24764-408: Was forced out in April 1968 due to "political scandal within the ranks", according to one source. His successor, Bundeswehr Brigadier General Gerhard Wessel, immediately called for a program of modernization and streamlining. With political changes in the West German government and a reflection that BND was at a low level of efficiency, the service began to rebuild. Years later, Wessel's obituary in

24928-434: Was infiltration in the Baltic States using former Kriegsmarine E-boats , manned by German crews and skippered by Lieutenant-Commander Hans-Helmut Klose  [ de ] . Another mission by the Gehlen Organization was Operation Rusty, which carried out counter-espionage activities directed against dissident German organizations in Europe. The Org's Operation Bohemia was a major counter-espionage success. By penetrating

25092-455: Was interviewed by Org agents. Those returnees who were forced to work in Soviet industries and construction, and who were willing to participate, represented an incomparable source of information: a post-war, up-to-date picture of the Soviet Union as it evolved. The Org had close contacts with East European émigré organizations. Unheralded tasks, such as observations of the operation of Soviet rail systems, airfields, and ports were as important as

25256-400: Was measured in directly economic terms. Trade and markets now figured as the economic nexuses of global power, a shift confirmed in the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, which not only inaugurated an international currency system but also established two central banking institutions—the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—to oversee the global economy. These represented the first planks of

25420-526: Was much too complex and diverse to survive long, but it was not the attempted projection of American power, concludes Gobat. The Indian Wars against the indigenous peoples of the Americas began in the colonial era . Their escalation under the federal republic allowed the US to dominate North America and carve out the 48 contiguous states . This can be considered to be an explicitly colonial process in light of arguments that Native American nations were sovereign entities prior to annexation. Their sovereignty

25584-423: Was needed. Geir Lundestad has commented on the importance of "the eagerness with which America's friendship was sought and its leadership welcomed.... In Western Europe, America built an empire 'by invitation'" According to Lundestad, the U.S. interfered in Italian and French politics in order to purge elected communist officials who might oppose such invitations. The end of the Second World War and start of

25748-465: Was ready for self-government or democracy, according to Renda. In order to bring about political stability in Haiti, the United States secured control and integrated the country into the international capitalist economy, while preventing Haiti from practicing self-governance or democracy. While Haiti had been running their own government for many years before American intervention, the U.S. government regarded Haiti as unfit for self-rule. In order to convince

25912-404: Was regarded as "one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters." From the early days of the Cold War the Gehlen Organization and later the BND had an intimate cooperation with the CIA, and often was the western intelligence community's only eyes and ears on the ground in the Eastern Bloc . The BND is also regarded as one of the best informed intelligence services in regards to the Middle East from

26076-414: Was revealed that the BND had managed to recruit excellent sources within Liechtenstein banks and had been conducting espionage operations in the principality since the beginning of the 2000s. The BND mediated the German Finance Ministry's $ 7.3 million acquisition of a CD from a former employee of the LGT Group – a Liechtenstein bank owned by the country's ruling family. While the Finance Ministry defends

26240-427: Was superseded by the BND, the Gehlen Organisation was allowed to employ at least 100 former Gestapo or SS officers. ... Among them were Adolf Eichmann 's deputy Alois Brunner , who would go on to die of old age despite having sent more than 100,000 Jews to ghettos or internment camps, and ex-SS major Emil Augsburg . ... Many ex-Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer , the captor of Anne Frank , transferred over from

26404-420: Was systematically undermined by US state policy (usually involving unequal or broken treaties ) and white settler-colonialism . Furthermore, following the Dawes Act of 1887 native american systems of land tenure and communal ownership were ended, in favour of private property and capitalism . This resulted in the loss of around 100 Million acres of land from 1887 to 1934. A variety of factors converged during

26568-405: Was the first event that made Russian–American relations a matter of major, long-term concern to the leaders in each country. Some historians, including William Appleman Williams and Ronald Powaski , trace the origins of the Cold War to this conflict. Wilson launched seven armed interventions, more than any other president. Looking back on the Wilson era, General Smedley Butler , a leader of

26732-554: Was to collect information on the Red Army. After the war Gehlen worked with the U.S. occupation forces in West Germany. In 1946 he set up an intelligence agency informally known as the Gehlen Organization or simply "The Org" He recruited some of his former co-workers at Gestapo Trier: Dietmar Lermen, Heinrich Hädderich, August Hill, Friedrich Walz, Albert Schmidt, and Friedrich Heinrich Busch. Many had been operatives of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris ' wartime Abwehr (counter-intelligence) organization, but Gehlen also recruited people from

26896-459: Was violently suppressed and led to the deaths of 30,000 people, the majority of them civilians. North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War . With National Security Council document 68 and the subsequent Korean War, the U.S. adopted a policy of " rollback " against communism in Asia. John Tirman , an American political theorist has claimed that this policy was heavily influenced by America's imperialistic policy in Asia in

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