Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line: America’s Undeclared War Against the Soviets

316 Pages·2000·3.45 MB·English

by  James V. Milano

America's Undeclared War Against the Soviets
Col. James V. Milano, USA (Ret.) and Patrick Brogan

This book is dedicated to the
members of the intelligence
community
who served with the U.S. Army in
Austria following World War II.
They were a group of talented and
dedicated people who lived and
worked under the growing cloud of
the cold war. Their contributions
greatly aided the American
government's understanding of the
Soviet threat that led to more than
four decades of global
confrontation and conflict.
Acknowledgments ...............................................Ix
Preface .............................................................xi
1. The Chilean Connection ..............................1
2. The Cover-up I I ..........................................
3. A Start in the Business ............................. 19
4. Austrian Beginnings .................................29
5. The Rat Line ...........................................43
6. Running the Rat Line ................................55
7. Mauthausen and the Underground Railroad..67
8. Trouble in Naples ....................................81
9. The Pursuit of Love ..................................95
10. The Central Intelligence Agency ............... 105
1 1. Operation Backfire 1 ................................. 15
12. Tales of the Vienna Woods ...................... 131
13. Rivals and Enemies ................................I39
14. Former Enemies, Future Allies .................. 147
15. Peering over the Iron Curtain ................... 155
16. The Rover Boys ..................................... 171
17. The Goulash Connection ......................... 177
18. The Major and the Hooker ....................... 191
19. The Butcher of Lyons ..............................201
20. The End of the Rat Line 1 ..........................21
Appendix ........................................................223
Index .............................................................229
I would like to thank my son, James, for his valuable assistance in planning and
organizing the initial phase of the project. Also, John B. Burkel, former agent in
charge of the Counter-Intelligence Corps in Salzburg, Austria, during those
exciting days. John was most helpful in recalling many of the details of those
times.
I am most grateful for the clerical assistance extended by Anna Amato, our
office coordinator at Pfizer Aviation.
Last, special thanks to my wife, Ann, for her patience and understanding. We
spent those years together in Salzburg when, due to security restrictions, she had
virtually no knowledge of what I was doing. Fellow workers came to the house
after office hours, and she was never included in the conversations. Telephone
calls to report to the code room often came in the middle of the night, and she
endured many lonesome hours due to my extensive meetings after work.
-James V. Milano
This is a story of the secret beginnings of the cold war in Europe. It concerns
intelligence operations carried out for the U.S. Army in Austria immediately
after World War II-before the CIA came on the scene-and the "Rat Line" that
was used to smuggle Soviet deserters to South America. The operation was kept
secret from civil officials of the U.S. government, and from most military
officers, and remained hidden for nearly forty years.
It is Jim Milano's story. He was a young intelligence officer with the
American army in Italy that fought its way from Sicily to the Alps and then
undertook the occupation of Austria. He directed American military intelligence
against Soviet targets from 1945 to 1950, and established the Rat Line. The line's
existence, and Milano's role in it, emerged in 1983 when the public learned of
the case of Klaus Barbie. Barbie was a Nazi war criminal who had been
smuggled out of Germany in 1951 by American officers there and who used the
escape route that had been set up by their colleagues in Austria. Milano had left
Europe by then and never heard of Barbie until the case became public decades
later. The Rat Line, while he operated it, was never used by war criminals; it was
reserved exclusively for Soviet defectors and their families. His successors in
Austria, at the bidding of their associates in Germany, broke that rule. There was
a great outcry in the United States when the public learned that U.S. Intelligence
had employed Barbie and had then sent him to safety in South America to escape
prosecution for war crimes. The Justice Department held an inquiry. Jim Milano
was interviewed and gave an account of his activities in the postwar period and a
history of the Rat Line. The inquiry concluded that between 1945 and 1950 the
Rat Line may have acted with dubious legality, but did not help war criminals.
Milano and his team had nothing to do with Klaus Barbie.
Now Jim Milano has told his own story of those dramatic events. No files
survive of the Rat Line or any of the other operations he directed. After forty-
five years, a great many of those who had a part to play have died, and very
many details of their secret campaigns, their triumphs and failures, have been
lost for good. Old men forget, but he offers his imperfect recollections as the
best record still available of this corner of modern history. He gave these and his
papers to Patrick Brogan, a writer living in Washington. These are Jim Milano's