Revealed: German neo-Nazi who helped Palestinians was CIA agent

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A German far-right militant, whose animosity against Jews led him to aid Palestinians kill Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich massacre, says he was later recruited by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Willi Pohl, also known as Willi Voss, 68, was arrested by German authorities a few weeks after Palestinian terrorist group Black September stormed the Olympic village in Munich and took hostage 11 Israeli athletes. All of them were eventually killed by their captors during a botched escape attempt at the nearby Fürstenfeldbruck airport. Voss, who was a known neo-Nazi activist at the time, was charged with possession of weapons and providing logistical support to the Black September militants. However, after his sentence was suspended, Voss managed to secretly emigrate to Beirut, Lebanon, where he was recruited as an agent of Jihaz el-Razd, the intelligence service of the Fatah, the main group in the Palestine Liberation Organization. But in 1975, while on a PLO mission in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, he decided to switch sides. He made the decision after discovering that the car he and his girlfriend were transporting on behalf of the PLO from Beirut to Belgrade contained weapons and highly unstable explosives. He says that the PLO had apparently failed to mention the existence of the hidden items when they asked him to transport the car to Europe. According to Voss’ new book, which has just been published in Germany under the title UnterGrund (Underground), the guns and explosives were discovered by customs officers in Romania (then Rumania); but because at that time the communist country was an ally of the PLO, Voss and his girlfriend were allowed to travel to Belgrade, minus the car and the weapons. Once in the Yugoslav capital, they made the decision to walk in the US embassy, identify themselves as agents of the Jihaz el-Razd and offer their services to Washington. In an interview with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, published this week, Voss claims he was recruited by the CIA and given the operational codename GANYMEDE. The interview in Der Spiegel includes confirmation of Voss’ CIA role by his intelligence handler CIA officer Terrence Douglas. Douglas says he instructed Voss to return to the service of the PLO and Black September, which was a separate group, and provide the US with information about the activities of leading Palestinian militants from various factions, including Abu Daoud, Abu Nidal, and Abu Jihad, who led the Jihaz el-Razd. Voss claims that he gave the CIA numerous documents, which he photographed in secret inside the Jihaz el-Razd’s headquarters in Beirut, and that he helped prevent many Palestinian operations in Europe and the United States. He also told Der Spiegel that he identified several German neo-Nazis working for the Palestinians, including Udo Albrecht, who actively fought with the PLO forces in Jordan. Today Voss is a novelist, living in Germany. He has written over 30 books.