WASHINGTON, June 6, 2006
Documents: CIA Hid Nazis' Locations
Eichmann, Other War Criminals Were Shielded Due To Cold War Security Concerns
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Aldolf Eichmann, who played a key role in transporting Jews to death camps during World War II, had his postwar location concealed by the CIA, according to documents released by the National Archives. (AP)
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The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the Central Intelligence Agency. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence — and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies, sometimes to detrimental effect.
The war criminals "peddled hearsay and gossip, whether to escape retribution for past crimes, or for mercenary gain, or for political agendas not necessarily compatible with American national interests," Robert Wolfe, an expert on German history and former archivist at the National Archives, said at a news briefing announcing the document release.
In a March 19, 1958, memo to the CIA, West German intelligence officials wrote that they knew where Eichmann was hiding. Eichmann played a key role in transporting Jews to death camps during World War II. "He is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias 'Clemens' since 1952," authorities wrote.
But neither side acted on that information because they worried what he might say about Hans Globke, a highly placed former Nazi and a chief adviser in West Germany helping the U.S. coordinate anticommunist initiatives in that country.
Two years later, when Jewish authorities captured Eichmann, the CIA pressured journalists to delete references to Globke.
"Entire material has been read. One obscure mention of Globke which Life omitting at our request," CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote in a Sept. 20, 1960, internal memorandum, after Life magazine purchased Eichmann's memoir.
Among the other findings:
The documents are among the latest released under a 1999 law — resisted by the CIA — that called for disclosure of government records related to war crimes committed by the Nazi and Japanese governments.
"CIA has been struggling with the nettlesome problem of how to balance the public's interest in the historical record of CIA's connections to Nazis, and an intelligence agency's need ... to protect the identities of sources," said Stanley Moskowitz, a former CIA official who is now a consultant to the agency. "The passage of time has shifted the balance."
Material relating to Japanese war crimes is scheduled to be released this summer.
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