John Hadden
| John Hadden (Spook) | |
|---|---|
| File:No image available (photo).jpg | |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | Buckley School, Groton, Harvard, West Point |
| Children | John Hadden Jr. |
| Interests | Max Brauer |
CIA officer active in West Germany and Israel, where he worked on investigating the Israeli nuclear weapons program. | |
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John Lloyd Hadden, Sr. was a CIA officer active in West Germany and Israel, where he worked on investigating the Israeli nuclear weapons program.
Background
He was born into the Hadden family, a formerly wealthy family, but reduced by the time he was born. His grandfather was the general editor of the official history of the Manhattan project, in thirty-six volumes, about a third of which remains classified.[1]
Education
He attended Buckley School and Groton. He attended West Point, but WW2 was over before he finished.
Career
He worked for the CIA in West Berlin under Peter Sichel.
He was appointed inaugural Chief of Base for Hamburg in 1954 under diplomatic cover at the US consulate. Hamburg was then in the British Occupation Zone of West Germany. Hadden was responsible for the entire British Zone. He developed good liaison with all the Germans in the area, and in his memoirs as good as admits recruiting, Max Brauer, then "a very powerful fellow - chief of police in Hamburg and outlying sectors." [2] His successor in 1956 was Thomas Polgar.
His next placement was in Salzburg, Austria. According to himself "Austria was a 'stay-behind' operation. The idea was to hide stashes of gold and weapons, explosives and stuff, and recruit people to be insurgents, underground armies in all NATO countries and beyond, to literally stay behind when the Soviets rolled over Europe ... and it was all supposed to work. And no one was supposed to know about it."[3]
In 1964 he was sent to Israel. He did not do much there, "Cause Mossad was following me all the time. And of course they tapped the phone; they listened to every phone conversation, and they trailed me all over Israel."[4] "I talked to as many people as I could. Architects, archeologists, farmers, professors, opera singers, athletes, as well as businessmen and so on. Most of these people had nothing to do with what I was there for, but this is how I forced the guys who were watching me to waste their time keeping tabs on a bunch of tennis players and opera singers [5] But there was nothing that he could do, "Cause I never made any formal arrangements. I just talked to them." He never paid anybody, as "it was politically too dangerous to get caught with an actual agent in Israel"[6]
Hadden's most important tasks while in Israel was to monitor the nuclear project.He did collect bits of shrubbery from around the Israeli nuclear plant at Dimona, for further analysis.
He retired in in 1972. It was principally because of James Angleton that he ended his career early.
He spent much of the last bit of his career assembling a report on the development of the Israeli bomb based on his experience as the Tel Aviv station chief. He found that there had been deep collusion by American corporate and federal entities that were working with the Israelis, including diversion of nuclear material from the NUMEC plant. He delivered a report to selected members of the Department of Energy in 1979, well after his retirement.[7]
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References
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 21
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 83
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 85
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 101
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 98
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 102
- ↑ Written by his son John Hadden Jr., Conversations with a masked man _ my father, the CIA, and me, page 22