"These materials show that the United States retained Nazi war criminals -- no question about it," said a member of the interagency group that worked with the CIA to release these papers. "It's always been hinted at, but now you're going to get (some) specifics." These newly declassified documents reveal that during World WII, in Switzerland, OSS official Allen Dulles conducted secret negotiations with Nazi war criminals -- who, after the war, used their ties to Dulles (by then CIA chief) to protect themselves U.S. Tried to Find, Employ Nazis By RON KAMPEAS .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - There were the Nazis the United States wanted to try as criminals, and there were other Nazis it wanted to try out as employees. Some 10,000 pages of declassified CIA documents made public Friday reveal a wartime agency tracking Nazis as deadly enemies, and a postwar organization hiring newfound ``friends'' to spy on the Soviet Union and its satellites. Some of the Nazis on the CIA payroll were wanted as war criminals, and some lived well, apparently profiting from stolen Jewish property. ``These files demonstrate that the real winners of the Cold War were Nazi criminals,'' said Eli M. Rosenbaum of the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations. In fact, many of the documents from the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's wartime predecessor, show the OSS was determined to identify and track down Nazis. A 1946 description of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the murder of 6 million Jews, has him as a ``desperate type, who, if cornered, will try to shoot it out.'' Eventually, however, the CIA's fledgling Cold War operations led it to rely on men wanted for crimes against humanity. The Nazis' patrons were well-connected. Allen Dulles, a senior OSS agent, never forgot Guido Zimmer, a midlevel Nazi SS officer who negotiated the surrender of German troops in northern Italy in May 1945. The success led to Dulles' eventual promotion to CIA director. A September 1945 memo from another, anonymous OSS official expresses pointed resentment at Dulles' protection of Zimmer, who had helped organize the murder and deportation of Italian Jews. Zimmer ``is evidently receiving protection from some high (OSS) quarter, on the basis of his contribution'' to the surrender, writes the agent, code-named BB8. ``We, for our part, see no particular reason why Zimmer should be treated any differently than General (Karl) Wolff,'' Zimmer's superior who was tried and convicted of war crimes. Zimmer worked for postwar intelligence in West Germany, and was never tried. Another Nazi employed by West German intelligence on the basis of a CIA recommendation was Emil Augsburg, a strident ideologue who joined an SS unit responsible for killing Jews and other ``undesirables,'' and who was wanted for war crimes in Poland. Augsburg worked for U.S. intelligence from 1947-48. After that, he joined German intelligence, and a 1952 CIA assessment describes him as ``honest and idealist ... unprejudiced mind, excellent scientist.'' Perhaps the most famous U.S.-paid Nazi is Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo officer infamous for ordering the murder of French Jewish children. After the war, he helped U.S. intelligence keep track of communists, and was eventually smuggled out of France. A 1967 U.S. Army document nervously contemplated emerging reports that Barbie was in Bolivia: ``Exposure of Counterintelligence Command's role in evacuating him from Germany to avoid prosecution would have serious consequences for the U.S. government.'' Barbie was eventually extradited to France, where he was tried and imprisoned for war crimes. The documents reveal the murky depths beneath the shifting Cold War alliances. In 1953, U.S. authorities contemplated arresting two former Nazis, Wilhelm Krichbaum and Wilhelm Hoettl, who were on the U.S. payroll - not for alleged war crimes, but for treason. The two had failed to report as Soviet double agents Curt Ponger and Otto Verber, two German Jews who had fled to the United States in the 1930s and who returned to Germany as U.S. Army interrogators. They interrogated Krichbaum and Hoettl, and eventually befriended them. U.S. authorities wondered whether the former Nazis had been ``turned'' by their Jewish friends. Another time in 1953, U.S. occupying forces in Austria considered arresting Hoettl when it became evident that he enjoyed publicizing his exploits as a spy. They worried the relationship ``could constitute a source of embarrassment.'' Other records show a different CIA, one trying hard to track down prominent Nazis. Countering rumors that the CIA had recruited Heinrich Mueller, the Gestapo chief, and Josef Mengele, a doctor who experimented on Jewish children, documents from the 1960s and 1970s show the agency pursuing leads as to their whereabouts. Similarly, the documents show that the CIA knew little of the past of Kurt Waldheim, the SS officer who went on to become U.N. secretary-general and president of Austria. So far, U.S. government agencies have declassified more than 3 million pages, and they are now available for research in the National Archives and Records Administration. CIA files show Nazis worked for allies after war By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA Friday released files on Adolf Hitler, Josef Mengele and other Nazis, including some who later worked with U.S. and other intelligence agencies and evaded prosecution during the Cold War. "These files demonstrate as a body that the real winners of the Cold War were Nazi criminals, many of whom were able to escape justice because East and West became so rapidly focused after the (Second World) War on challenging each other that they lost their will to pursue Nazi perpetrators," the Justice Department's Eli Rosenbaum said of the released documents. "And they even deemed some of the criminals to be useful allies in conducting Cold War intelligence operations," said Rosenbaum at a news conference at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The 20 files released included those of Hitler, Mengele, who carried out medical experiments at Auschwitz concentration camp, Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller, Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the plan to exterminate Jews and others, and Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in occupied Lyon, France. Also included was former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, who was barred from entering the United States while president of Austria in the 1980s after accusations that he had been involved in Nazi wartime atrocities. There were few new revelations about Hitler, except an intriguing second-hand personality analysis by a German surgeon, predicting in 1937 that the Hitler would "end up as the craziest criminal the world had ever seen." The U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, got this information only in 1944, one year before the end of the war, according to the documents. The other 14 of the CIA's formerly classified "personality files," also known as "name files," involve those who served Nazi Germany, survived the war and were suspected of being involved in Nazi criminal and intelligence operations. U.S. RETAINED NAZI WAR CRIMINALS Of these, nine had some contact with the West German intelligence organization established by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, which was initially under the control of the U.S. Army and was taken over in 1949 by the Central Intelligence Agency to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union. "These materials show that the United States of America retained Nazi war criminals and there will be no question about it," said Thomas Baer, a member of an interagency group that worked with the CIA to release these papers. "It's always been hinted at but you're going to get some specifics." The specifics on Mueller fail to clear up questions about whether or not he survived the Third Reich's last days or died in Berlin in 1945. Some observers believe he survived in Soviet hands, with key German police files. But Mueller's CIA file does rule out that the Gestapo chief was ever an intelligence source for the United States. And "strong evidence" suggests that Mueller died at the war's end, according to the documents. Some of these 14 less prominent individuals "tried to use their intelligence expertise, acquired in Nazi Germany and often directed against the Soviet Union, to ingratiate themselves with the Western powers," historian Richard Breitman wrote in an analysis of the findings released with the files. By Rosenbaum's count, at least six of these may have been used by U.S. intelligence agencies, with four of these implicated in Nazi crimes; five may have been involved in the Gehlen organization, with two of these implicated in Nazi crimes. Rosenbaum said that six -- including Waldheim -- may have been used by Soviet intelligence organizations, with five of these implicated in Nazi crimes; three may have been involved with West German intelligence, with two of these implicated in Nazi crimes; two may have been involved with French intelligence, with one of these implicated in Nazi crimes; and one may have been involved in British intelligence. Rosenbaum, who is a member of the interagency group and was formerly a noted Nazi hunter with the World Jewish Congress, said one question about Waldheim had been cleared up: he was not an intelligence resource for the United States. These files were the latest in over 3 million pages of U.S. intelligence material released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 2000. The documents also indicated that OSS official Allen Dulles conducted secret negotiations in Switzerland with German officials who had committed war crimes; these officials subsequently used their contacts with Dulles, who became head of the CIA, to protect themselves after the war.
