Home/ Resources / Projects / CIA Pseudonyms / pseudonym: SUTTON_HENRY

Pseudonym: Sutton, Henry

Definition:
Head of C/CA/Propaganda in the early 60s. Editor of "Propaganda Notes". Identity unknown.
Category:
pseudonym
Status:
Unknown
Discussion:
A man buried under the name Henry C. Sutton is entombed in Rock Creek Park, under the emblem "U.S. Army" - 1907-1977. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/203005055/henry-c_-sutton, See 104-10291-10001: page 99 - In 1960, Joseph B. Smith was listed as being with the Propaganda Group, Guidance Section.
Sources:

https://books.google.com/books?id=CXpevhKJwQYC&pg=PA253-IA23&lpg=PA253-IA23&dq=%22tubby+blond%22+sutton&source=bl&ots=0YR5BGSz12&sig=ACfU3U0A3P-TNZOlN4FfsCv9NN9HXp2mow&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiv9uD8vqT8AhWtK0QIHbzWB1gQ6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22tubby%20blond%22%20sutton&f=false

Re 1952: Wilson A. Heefner, Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., p. 276: "One of the more serious problems facing Truscott was the activities of the Bunddeutsche Jugend (Young German League), a German youth organization formed in 1950 by a tubby blond ex-Austrian labor organizer who spooked as Henry C. Sutton and who was operating under U.S. Army cover. Sutton had formed the league to counter the youth organizations the European Communists were then forming. The group, many of whom were not young Germans but old SS officers, had been set up as a stay-behind group that would develop and carry out plans to oppose the Soviets if they someday overran West Germany. In October 1952 Truscott learned that the league had drawn up a secret list of leftist West German politicians whom they had targeted for assassination on the day of a Soviet attack. Unfortunately, the list included nearly all of the members of the German Social Democratic Party, including Dr. Georg Zinn, the minister-president of the German state of Hesse, in which Frankfurt is located. Truscott immediately informed the high commissioner of Germany, who directed him to discuss the matter personally with Dr. Zinn, and, since Sutton was operating under US Army cover, relay the information to Gen. Matthew B. Ridgeway, then serving as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe."

Burton Hersh, The Old Boys, pg 336

Re 1952-1953: The free spirit who fabricated this debacle was a tubby blond ex-Austrian labor organizer who spooked as Henry C. Sutton... " "'Sutton was not a Nazi,' insists another Agency stalwart, "but certainly by 1953 the Bunddeutsche Jugend was predominantly Nazi in nature. Ex-Nazis were the only ones Sutton felt we could rely on in case the Russians came in. With Sutton as their main brain they stashed radios in a number of places, along with weapons and money...It was still possible in those days to suppress the majority of the details, but there were a few flaps in the German press...Projects across the board got leveled, and Henry Sutton, shrugging, wound up buried alive in Washington, once more an insignificant clerk..."

104-10005-10339: PROPAGANDA NOTES SERIES A: BULLETINS WARREN COMMISSION REPORT-POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS AS STATED IN PROPAGANDA NOTES ISSUE OF 22 SEP 64

9/22/64 Propaganda Notes, Series A, Bulletin: "The long awaited Warren Commission Report...will be sent to the White House September 24th and will probably be released sometime over the weekend...Communist regimes have used both murders to denigrate American society and the release of the Report will undoubtedly be used as a new peg for the same purpose. Covert assets should explain the tragedy wherever it is genuinely misunderstood and counter all efforts to misconstrue it intentionally - provided the depth of impact warrants such action...American presidents can be shown to have been the victims (with the exception of Lincoln) of single, fanatical individuals..." Also see attached 9/18/64 Dept of State telegram, highlighting: "Report should be selectively presented to editors, jurists, Government leaders, and other opinion-leaders, at post discretion immediately after repeat after formal release time." USIA preparing in addition: Newsreel clips, newspix, illustrated pamphlet of highlights of Report in language version through RSC's and principal posts. Wireless file and VOA will backstop with interviews, panels, official comment, domestic and foreign editorial comments, columns and commentaries. Also possibly later 30 minutes TV commentary, and 16 mm film for direct projection. Maximum post effort needed to assure foreign recognition that truth concerning assassination fully set forth in Commission's findings."

104-10005-10339: PROPAGANDA NOTES SERIES A: BULLETINS WARREN COMMISSION REPORT-POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS AS STATED IN PROPAGANDA NOTES ISSUE OF 22 SEP 64

9/22/64 routing slip from Henry C. Sutton, Chief, Propaganda Group: "Attached is the latest issue of Propaganda Notes: Distribution of this issue is limited to Headquarters. Please circulate it to all officers of your Division (Branch) and consider taking action along the lines suggested herein. ("limited to Headquarters" and "action" are highlighted.) Additional copies may be obtained from this office. If you write a dispatch to the field based on the attached material, send us an information copy. Your comments and suggestions for future issues are always welcome."

180-10070-10404: INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH BURKHOLDER SMITH

5/8/78 interview by Gaeton Fonzi with Joseph Burkholder Smith, a former chief of Propaganda Guidance of the Covert Action staff, where he directed David Phillips, chief of the Propaganda Branch of the Cuban Task Force for the Bay of Pigs invasion: "Smith was asked whether there was a possibility that the New Orleans intelligence operation headed by Banister was funded by right-wing groups through J.C. King/Oliver Galbond. Smith said, "Oh yes, I should think so. And I do know that the WH Division had some activities running out of New Orleans and I think some of these were used as fronts for funding. King's friends were mostly right-wing, certainly.' Asked for specifics, Smith said, 'I do know that through the Bay of Pigs period, King did run and fund some Batista types. I didn't know their true names and I can't remember their cryptograms now. Smith said he learned that from Henry Sutton (a false name) and Dave Phillips when he worked with them...'Henry" is Henry Sutton, real name unknown."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1977/05/25/henry-sutton-retired-cia-aide-fled-austria-paris-before-nazis/249b9437-0e88-45f5-bc63-1db2f3054a36/

1977: Henry C. Sutton, 69, a retired employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, died Friday at his home in Washington after an apparent heart attack. He had been with the CIA and its Predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, from 1941 until retiring in 1969. Born in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Sutton had been and active member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and head of the White Collar Workers Union in Corinthia province in the late 1920s and early 1930s. When all political parties were outlawed in Austria, he went under ground to continue active work with the Social Democrats. Mr. Sutton eventually was arrested and imprisoned for his political activities. He was later among those released in a general amnesty by the Austrian government. In the late 1930s, he fled to Paris just before Austria fell to Hilter. He headed an Austrian refugee organization in Paris, then fled to Portugal just before the German invasion of France. Mr. Sutton came to this country in the early part of 1941, settling in New York. He enlisted in the U.S. Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was assigned to the OSS and sent to London. He returned here after the war and became a naturalized citizen. There are no immediate survivors.

Deborah Kisatsky, The United States and the European Right, 1945-1955, pp. 59-60

"On 8 October 1952, Georg August Zinn, the Social Democratic minister president of the West German state of Hesse, made a startling announcement. Zinn informed the Hessian legislature that the United States secretly funded and armed a right-wing German paramilitary group, the Technical Service of the League of German Youth (Bund Deutscher Jugend-Technischer Dienst (BND-TD). This organization allegedly trained dozens of ex-Nazi and Waffen SS officers to resist 'Case X', a Soviet invasion of the Federal Republic..." ...Investigators first learned in September 1952 that the Bund Jugend (BDJ) an anticommunist youth alliance in existence since June 1950, operated a secret, US-backed paramilitary branch called the Technical Service (Technischer Dienst, TD). Hans Werner Franz Otto, the TD's former security chief, divulged the organization to the Frankfurt police, claiming that the agency's activities troubled his 'conscience'...Otto in 1949 became a paid informer for the British secret service. He simultaneously joined the 'Brotherhood' (Bruderschaft) an alliance of war veterans, which secretly planned an 'anticommunist defensive army' to defend a "united Europe with Africa as its hinterland'...Here Otto joined many right-wing partisans, including the BDJ's co-founder, lieutenant commander Erhard Peters. Peters and the ex-Nazi doctor Paul Luth together formed the Bund Deutscher Jugend as an 'independent, nonpartisan, transconfessional, political youth movement for all of Germany'...Many, though not all, had been Hitler Youth or military officers."

Deborah Kisatsky, The United States and the European Right, 1945-1955, pp. 77-79

- Page 78: The testimony of CIA veteran Peter Sichel provides one clue. ... the Technical Service's chief architecwas “a tubby blond ex-Austrian labor organizer who spooked as Henry C. Sutton” for the OPC. Sichel's claim conforms with Otto's ...

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