page_title: Peer de Silva
section_title: Pullach, West Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Peer de Silva / Early career / Pullach, West Germany
caption_attribution_description: Reinhard Gehlen (* 3. April 1902; † 8. Juni 1979) war General der Wehrmacht, Leiter der Organisation Gehlen und erster Präsident des deutschen Bundesnachrichtendienstes (BND)
context_page_description: Peer de Silva was a station chief in the Central Intelligence Agency. A 1941 West Point graduate, during World War II he served as an Army officer providing security for the Manhattan Engineer District; this undercover project sought to build the first atomic bomb. After the war, he joined a pre-CIA military intelligence unit. Then, having learned Russian, he worked in central Europe, frequently traveling to Moscow. Resigning from the Army, he rose within CIA ranks, becoming a chief of station. He first held such rank in Vienna, 1956-1959.
  He next led the CIA station at the American Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, where he played a role in two major events. First was the democratic April Revolution in 1960. Yet in 1961 a successful May coup d'état installed General Pak Chung Hee. De Silva then was assigned to Hong Kong as COS.
  Following the November 1963 military overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, President Johnson personally ratified de Silva as the CIA's new Chief of Station in Saigon. He quickly came to view the Vietnam War as political. He then advocated a counterinsurgency strategy, and took an active role in fostering such programs.
context_section_description: As "an Army officer on detail to the CIA" de Silva, from late 1949 to mid-1951, became deputy chief at the CIA base in Pullach, near Munich, in the newly independent Bundesrepublik Deutschland. The CIA then began to replace the Army intelligence in its role doing liaison work, begun during the Allied occupation of Germany with the reconstituted Gehlen organization. Also headquartered in Pullach, this West German intelligence organization was led by Reinhard Gehlen, who had during World War II commanded German military intelligence in the east.
  A major part of de Silva's job in Pullach was to assist with the various West German efforts to collect information from the occupied Soviet Zone of Germany. A chief target was the Russian military establishment, its intentions and capabilities. Deputy chief de Silva frequently met with Gehlen, a shy introvert, but intense and dedicated. They worked to recruit German agents (known as V-manner), sent to or already living in the Soviet Zone. Awareness of the status of these agents was tricky, as sometimes a V-mann might be turned or doubled by opposing Communist officials, corrupting any subsequent information. In 1956 Gehlen became the first chief of West German intelligence, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).
caption: General Major Gehlen in 1945 (Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps)
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