Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill and other leading European politicians in the fifties took money from the CIA to fund their propaganda efforts, according to documents in British and American archives.

In the summer of 1948 Churchill, then leader of the opposition in the British lower house, went to the Americans for money to finance the movement toward a united Europe. This money was to establish first an independent, international umbrella organization of all European groups in favor of a United States of Europe.

On orders from the later CIA chief Allan Dulles the Committee on United Europe was established to provide covert funding. This organized and paid for Chancellor Adenauer's plea for European unification made in New York in 1953, financed hundreds of pro-European-unity conferences and twice saved the European movement, of which Adenauer was honorary president, from bankruptcy. According to reports from the British political scientist Richard Aldrich this involvement in the European movement cost the CIA between three and four million dollars, more than half the money that the CIA then had at its disposal.

Original German version in Der Spiegel