Operation Paperclip, more specifically, the United States, recognizing the emerging Cold War threat from the Soviet Union, saw Gehlen’s knowledge and network as invaluable. 

Under Operation Paperclip and related efforts—though Paperclip is more commonly associated with scientists—U.S. intelligence, particularly the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), protected Gehlen from prosecution as a Nazi collaborator. 

Instead, they facilitated his return to Germany in 1946 to establish the Gehlen Organization, a secret intelligence service based in Pullach, near Munich. This group, initially funded and overseen by the U.S. Army G-2 and later the CIA, employed numerous former Wehrmacht and SS officers—hundreds, by some estimates—leveraging their anti-communist stance and wartime experience.

Gehlen’s operation codenamed the "South German Industrial Development Organization" for cover, focused on espionage against the Soviet Union and its satellites. By 1956, it evolved into the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), West Germany’s federal intelligence service, with Gehlen as its first president until 1968.