James H. Critchfield

James Hardesty Critchfield (January 30, 1917 – April 22, 2003) was an officer of the US Central Intelligence Agency who rose to become the chief of its Near East and South Asia division. He also served as the CIA's national intelligence officer for energy in the 1970s and after he retired in 1974, he became an energy policy consultant in the Middle East, serving such clients as Sultan Qaboos of Oman. Critchfield served as the president of a Honeywell, Inc. subsidiary called Tetra Tech International. Biography Born in Hunter, North Dakota to a doctor and a schoolteacher, he attended North Dakota State University, participating in its ROTC program and graduating in 1939. His younger brother, Richard Critchfield, was a journalist and essayist who wrote primarily about villages in the developing world. James served in the United States Army in World War II, first in North Africa and up through Europe, where he was one of the youngest Colonels, leading the 2nd Battalion of 141st Infantry of the 36th Infantry Division. He was awarded the Bronze Star twice, and the Silver Star for gallantry in resisting a German assault on December 12, 1944. Critchfield joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1948. He was tasked with gathering information about the Soviet Union from Reinhard Gehlen and his Gehlen Organization, the successor to the intelligence agencies of Nazi Germany. This work, which led to the creation of the post-war West German intelligence apparatus, came to include the use of Nazi war criminals. Critchfield defended his actions when the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act made it public knowledge, disputing that Gehlen himself was a war criminal but admitting to a Washington Post reporter that "there's no doubt that the CIA got carried away with recruiting some pretty bad people".