Initial selections were made from several demographic POW groups, Catholics, Austrians, and those who had been assigned to punitive battalions because of their political views. Potential recruits were cleverly transitioned from the main prison population through assignment to work details. After days of observation, the candidates were given intense interviews to determine their motivation to “betray their country” by returning to Germany as American spies.
It is far easier to recruit someone already embedded in the institutions you want to penetrate then it is to train someone up, ship them over and hope they land a job with the right access.
People that are too focused on race or a sense of what makes someone different might overlook spies that look like them and talk like them.
@[email protected] But there would also be fewer such “domestically grown” spies.
The OSS disagreed. They used Germans to spy on Nazi Germany.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/hitlers-nightmare-meet-americas-spies-nazi-germany-148301
It is far easier to recruit someone already embedded in the institutions you want to penetrate then it is to train someone up, ship them over and hope they land a job with the right access.