Cryptonym: ZIPPER
https://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-263-cia-records/second-release-lexicon.pdf
CIA document: Research Aid: Cryptonyms and Terms in Declassified CIA Files Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Disclosure Acts: Page 63: ..."Term: ZIPPER. Definition: Gehlen Organization..."
https://cryptome.org/2016/01/cia-nazi-collaboration.pdf
1946-1950: p. 318: "While the CIG and the Army debated the merits of Operation RUSTY (the Gehlen Organization) from a distant vantage point in Washington...the Army, in the meantime, took steps to improve its control over RUSTY, including the formation of a military cover organization, the 7821st Composite Group..." At p. 328: "The Agency dropped the use of the term RUSTY in 1949, and used a new operational code, ODEUM, through 1950 when it changed to ZIPPER. Following the establishment of the BND in 1956, the Agency referred to Gehlen's group as UPHILL and UPSWING. CIA's Pullach Base stopped using the Army's cover as the 7821st Composite Group and became known as Special Detachment, EUCOM, or the 7878th Signal Detachment. This later changed to Special Detachment, US Army Europe, and then to the US Army Technical Coordinating Activity..."
Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1949-1956 - https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA%20AND%20THE%20ORIGINS%20OF%20THE%20BND%2C%201949-56%20%20%20VOL.%201_0001.pdf
Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1949-1956 - p. 9: "The Central Intelligence Agency and the BND share a common history, because the Agency assumed responsibility for the Gehlen Organization, the BND's predecessor, from the U.S. Army in 1949. CIA held the Gehlen Organization in "trusteeship" until 1956, when the West German government established its own national intelligence structure."
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/doc90.pdf
04/21/49: National Security Archive website: Memorandum from Robert A. Schow, Assistant Director Special Operations to Director of CIA: Subject: EUCOM Support for the 7821 Composite Group (Operation Rusty): "In order to insure a smooth and efficient turnover of the 7821 Composite Group from the control of the European Command, U. S. Army, to the Central Intelligence Agency, it is necessary that EUCOM continue on the present basis for such time as may be required the administrative, logistical, and personnel support of the aforementioned Group. The nature of the support required is set forth below: I. Personnel: A. All Army personnel presently assigned to the 7821 Composite Group, should remain on duty with that organization under the control of the CIA representatives assigned to the project for a period of at least one year, or until such time as this Agency can properly staff the 7821 Composite Group. The Army personnel remaining is to include the ten (10) officers and twenty-five (25) enlisted men presently on duty. B. Should the transfer of any of this complement be required during the above-mentioned period, qualified replacements should be furnsihed by the European Command, U. S. Army..."
104-10178-10176: INFORMATION SHEETS ON MOOS AND MOSS
Re 1949: A CIA information sheet describes Arthur Moos, 201-9924, alias RITTER: "Born ca. 1890. Former German military officer who was employed by CIA (ZIPPER) after World War II. He resigned 1 December 1949."
104-10121-10321: SECURITY CLEARANCE U.S. MILITARY PERSONNEL ASSIGNED 7821ST COMPOSITE GROUP, EUCOM
12/30/49: Memo from Richard Helms to Chief, Special Security Branch: "It is requested that full security clearance be obtained for all persons listed below and cryptographic clearance where indicated. It is further requested that priority consideration be given those persons whose names are marked by asterisks. Personal history statements of all have been previously forwarded to your office. Attention is invited to your memorandum of 12 December 1949 granting limited clearance to Sergeant George Hardeman Jr. *Captain Donald Robert Redden (Crypto). *Sergeant George H. Hardeman, Jr. (Crypto). *Corporal David S. Morales (Crypto). *Corporal Robert F. Tipton (Crypto). *Corporal Frank H. Hernsen (Crypto). Sergeant Donald G. McNeil. Captain Leonard R. Daems. Major Richard Leffers. Major John W. Walker. Corporal Adam G. Woelfl." - - - 2022 release: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2022/104-10121-10321.pdf
104-10121-10317: A REVIEW REVEALS NOTHING WHICH WOULD LEAD THIS OFFICE TO ANY SECURITY OBJECTIONS
1/18/50 memo from George P. Loker, Jr. to Chief, FDM, re: Corporal David Sanchez Morales - 39418, "ref: FDM memoranda dated 19 December, 30 December 1949, and 12 January 1950 concerning United States Military Personnel assigned 7821st Composite Group, UCOM - A review of available data reveals nothing which would lead this Office to object to the Subject's use by this organization insofar as his security is concerned. This memorandum refers only to the Subject's use as proposed in the referenced correspondence. As has been requested, the Subject's case will be forwarded to the FBI for priority investigation so that a determination can be made relative to his full security and cryptographic clearances." Also see 104-10121-10165, a 10/26/49 CIA memo stating that Morales will be used in "some capacity by this Agency." Also see 104-10121-10321, the aforementioned 12/30/49 memo. Also see 104-10121-10339, 1/18/50 - Sheffield Edwards granted Morales a provisional crypto security clearance.
104-10121-10259: CABLE RE WHEREABOUTS OF SPECIAL PASSPORT.
02/28/54: Cable from LINCOLN to Director: Slugline RYBAT PBSUCCESS: REF: DIR 39574, LINC 645: "(Unintelligible) query ZIPPER desk as to whereabouts special passport. Pivall claims he turned passport in Tegucigalpa." At the bottom of this cable were the names Bauman, Col. A. R. Haney and E. R. Hobbing. - - - 2022 release: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2022/104-10121-10259.pdf
Sheila Fitzpatrick, 6 February 2020, Emigrés on the Make - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n03/sheila-fitzpatrick/which-face
"The NTS ideology, embracing a version of corporatism (‘solidarism’), nationalism of a quasi-imperial ‘Great Russian’ kind, antisemitism and the cult of action, was clearly influenced by contemporary fascism. NTS members sought to undermine the Soviet Union by crossing the border illegally to set up cells and distribute propaganda, and from the start they looked to various international intelligence agencies, from Polish to Japanese, to help them achieve their aims...With the end of the war, Vlasovites, NTS and other military collaborators scrambled to shed their German connections and establish relations with the Allies. Their chief facilitator was Reinhard Gehlen, the wartime head of an agency of the German Army that collected intelligence on the Soviet Union, who had extensive connections with the Russian exiles’ organisations and transferred them, along with his files, to the US military in 1945. Konstantin Boldyrev, NTS’s main contact person with the Americans, was briefly arrested as a collaborator but released after the intervention of American intelligence patrons, who also enabled him to set up his own NTS-dominated DP camp at Mönchehof near Kassel. The Vlasovites had their base in the Schleissheim DP camp outside Munich. Still, during the early postwar years, ex-collaborators – formally disbarred from the care and maintenance of the international refugee organisations running the DP camps – kept a low profile."
Research Aid: Cryptonyms and Terms in Declassified CIA Files Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Disclosure Acts: https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/declassified-records/rg-263-cia-records/second-release-lexicon.pdf
AESAURUS / AENOBLE (initially AEROSOL, renamed AEGIDEON / AENOBLE in 1958) operation (1950-61) maintained communications with agents of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Narodno Trudovoi Soyuz or NTS (CABOCHE-1, PDGIDEON, SHUBA-100)). NTS was founded in 1930s by Russian emigres with extreme rightest and anti-Semitic views and collaborated closely with the Nazis in Russia, providing local administrators, propagandists, and informants. NTS rebuilt itself in 1945 as an anti-Soviet émigré organization inside the USSR and with its own newspaper “Possev.” This project sought the development and exploitation of NTS agents as long-term hot war assets and as sources of operational positive and psychological intelligence. The Project included Operation CARCASS, training/dispatch into USSR of agents to organize resistance groups and collect FI; Operation SPAIN to establish NTS groups in US zone/Germany and Austria against Soviet occupation forces through propaganda, defection, resistance, and collecting FI; Operation RADIO to establish a mobile covert radio operated by NTS for propaganda into East Zone..."
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/AESAURUS%20AENOBLE%20%20%20VOL.%203_0011.pdf
"1. Area of Operations: USSR. 2. Purpose: The physical penetration of the USSR by agents recruited, trained, and dispatched under CIA supervision and control. 3. Background: a. Project AESAURUS/AENOBLE operative since 10 August 1951, has completed two cycles of agent training for penetration of the USSR which have resulted in the successful placement of four agents. These agents are in direct communication with CIA and are producing positive intelligence on Soviet documentation, on industrial and military targets, and on the political situation within the USSR. b. The third AENOBLE cycle (Cycle C), originally scheduled for dispatch in the spring of 1954, was postponed, pending project evaluation and a study by the Inspection & Review Staff. These studies were completed by the middle of December 1953 and a new protocol for AENOBLE operations, to be discussed with the NTS Operational Staff, was pouched to the field on 11 December 1953. Conferences with the NTS Staff were held in Frankfurt from 12 through 17 February 1954. CIA was represented by Chief, SR/3, and the senior AESAURUS case officer in Frankfurt...Objectives: a. The establishment of support facilities within the USSR, in direct communication with CIA. b. The procurement of operational intelligence which will permit infiltration of adequately briefed and documented agents into the same area for other operational tasks...Tasks: To establish the AENOBLE Operational Unit, consisting of a joint CIA-NTS Staff element and a joint CIA-NTS Training element..."