Henry D. Hecksher (September 21, 1910 – March 28, 1990) was a career United States intelligence officer who served in both the

OSS OSS or Oss may refer to: Places * Oss, a city and municipality in the Netherlands * Osh Airport, IATA code OSS People with the name * Oss (surname), a surname Arts and entertainment * ''O.S.S.'' (film), a 1946 World War II spy film about ...

and

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. Hecksher was born in Hamburg, Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1934 or 1938. He joined the United States Army, achieving the rank of

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

. Hecksher took part in the

Normandy invasion Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Norma ...

, and was wounded in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

. He later became an intelligence officer with the Army and

interrogated Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...

some of the top Nazi leaders, including Julius Streicher. He joined the

and in 1946 became head of its counterintelligence section in Berlin. Later, this section would become the CIA's Berlin Operating Base, also known as ''BOB''. Hecksher would eventually work under CIA station chief William Harvey at ''BOB''. Hecksher became heavily involved in CIA covert operations, including the Berlin Tunnel project. He was CIA Station Chief in Santiago, and was involved in covert actions in the period before the coup d'etat which overthrew Chilean president

Salvador Allende Gossens Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (, , ; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the fir ...

in 1973. Accusations persist that Hecksher, the CIA and the US Government were instrumental in the coup. In 1990, Hecksher died from complications of Parkinson's disease in Princeton, New Jersey.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hecksher, Henry 1910 births 1990 deaths Military personnel from Hamburg People of the Central Intelligence Agency Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States