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THREAD. Declassified CIA documents indicate that Stepan Bandera's fascist secret police, or "security service" (SB) — which had a sordid & complicated history with the Agency — was largely under Soviet control during the Cold War.
The OUN-B organized its SB 1940-41. Acc to Per Rudling, Ukrainian Nachtigall (Abwehr special forces) & Schtuzmannschaft (Nazi auxiliary police) vets "came to constitute the heart" of the SB. In 1941 the OUN-B instructed SB to "exterminate" Jews & non-Ukr during German/Soviet war.
Acc to Bandera's biographer Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, SB & Ukr "police" were trained at Gestapo school in Zakopane. This is where future CIA agent Mykola Lebed reportedly led torture sessions of Jews to "harden" his pupils. Acc to GRL, SB may have killed more Jews than the UPA. 
The US Strategic Services Unit (SSU), a short-lived successor of the WW2-era OSS folded into the CIA, made contact with the OUN-B in 1946. After being introduced to SB chief Myron Matviyeyko, USG agents primarily dealt with the OUN-B via his SB 1946-1948. He defected in 1951.
With support from the US army Counter-Intel. Corps (CIC) the SB terrorized Ukrainian "DPs" (Displaced Persons) and OUN-B dominated Ukrainian refugee camps in postwar Germany, where Americans arrested hundreds of Ukr. DPs often "tortured by OUN-B members in US military uniforms."
Acc to Stephen Dorril all survivors of OUN torture were set free "for lack of evidence" but in the Mittenwald camp the SB tortured a number of accused Soviet agents (Ukrainians) to death. Acc to internal CIA historian Kevin Ruffner the USG "excused the illegal activities of [SB]"
Intelligence-wise, SB/OUN-B proved nil. US military Technical Intelligence Branch paid Matviyeyko $500/month for reports. "In many cases," it was later learned, "M. took reports brought by [OUN/UPA] couriers or other fugitive Ukrainians in 1945-46 and merely advanced the date..."
In 1947 the Americans instructed their new primary source on the OUN-B, Michael Korzhan, a former OUN leader, longtime friend of Matviyeyko & Abwehr counter-intel agent who offered his services to the USG in 1946, to accept Matviyeyko's job offer as SB counter-intelligence chief.
That yr a US double agent submitted a report indicating the Soviets had achieved "a high level penetration of the important Ukrainian groupings in Germany" & were instigating b/w Bandera-Stetsko's "Foreign Command" (ZCH/OUN) & Lebed-Hrinioch's "Foreign Representation" (ZP/UHVR).
A yr later in Mittenwald the OUN-B broke in two when Bandera demanded the total subordination of the UHVR group. W/o informing his CIA contact(s), Matviyeyko dispatched a mission to inform the UPA. It was arrested at the Czech border in US army uniforms w/ counterfeit US dollars.
This "fiasco" provoked the Treasury Department and led the CIA to cut off the SB+ZCH/OUN and partner with the ZP/UHVR. Matviyeyko went into hiding and his deputy Ivan Kashuba replaced him as SB chief between 1948-1950. The CIA soon gave up on trying to interrogate Matviyeyko.
CIA, 1950: "Current plans and policies of [SB] are interference with operations of all other intelligence groups presently contacting UPA in the Ukraine." If use of its couriers refused, "the SB is INSTRUCTED TO BLOW THE OPERATION by passing [any & all info] on to the Soviets..."
Korzhan left the SB in 1948 but kept close to Matviyeyko's loyal deputy and successor Kashuba throughout the 1950s. Korzhan's case officer knew he wasn't "playing a straight game with us," but the CIA considered him its best source on Ukrainian emigres in western Europe.
A 1952 lie detector test revealed Korzhan to be "barely fairly reliable," quite capable of deceiving the machine, and hiding something about his past. A few years later: "After hours of file checking ... one is forced to conclude ... we [CIA] know very little about this man."
In 1954 Korzhan's wife, with whom he had not spoken in 10 yrs (she left him for a German officer), surfaced in Munich from East Germany. He had to explain to her & CIA that Nazi military counter-intel arranged his marriage to another woman during WW2 to pose as a Soviet couple.
The ZCH/OUN sent Matviyeyko to Ukraine in 1951, at which point he began to help the Soviet secret police wipe out the last of the UPA according to Bandera's biographer Rossoliński-Liebe. Matviyeyko didn't announce his defection until after Bandera's 1959 assassination by the KGB.
In late 1959, Kashuba invited Korzhan, long suspected by Matviyeyko to be working for the Americans, to lead the ZCH/OUN's internal investigation into Bandera's death. The Soviets wanted it to look like a suicide; Kashuba and Korzhan insisted it was, contrary to the evidence.
SB chief Kashuba & CIA agent Korzhan pushed a conspiracy theory that Bandera killed himself in such a way that the Soviets would be blamed and suicide never suspected, and to tumble down the stairs so he might die in the arms of a neighbor's Jewish au pair that he had a crush on.
1960: A "random note" in the CIA's files contained the horrible realization, if the recent surfacing of Matviyeyko was "part of the same RIS [Russian Intel Service] master operation" as Bandera's death, then perhaps so was Kashuba's "fancy talk [of] Bandera's love for a maid"!
In 1961, Mykola Lebed told the CIA he had long suspected Matviyeyko of being a turncoat, "before the 'bunker' murders in West Germany," since "perhaps 1942 — Matviyeyko was trained as an agent by the Germans and dispatched behind Soviet lines. He disappeared for around a year..."
Korzhan didn't mention the only logical reason Bandera would have killed himself, as told by Lebed: "if an RIS rep had gone to Bandera, told him that for years he had put confidence in Soviet agents ... [and] that he liquidated the Uke [sic] underground by his own stupidities..."
Korzhan literally bet his intel career on Bandera's death being a suicide, so the CIA dropped him shortly after the KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky defected & came forward with the truth. Neither Korzhan nor Kashuba were proven to be Soviet agents, but they were clearly suspect.
The CIA, believing ZCH/OUN to be "controlled by the opposition," was alarmed to learn that Kashuba and Yaroslav Stetsko traveled to the US in 1963 "in connection with plans to resettle its HQ from Munich to the United States ... with the approval of ... US Congressional circles."
@I_Katchanovski @jonathbruns @A_SHEKH0VTS0V @TarikCyrilAmar @MarkAmesExiled @jaredgmcbride @yashalevine @kooleksiy @ColborneMichael @leonidragozin @ChristopherJM sorry I'll stop tagging you every time I post
