Poppo
In the Cooler
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2012
- Messages
- 3,457
it is only now, with the declassification of many old documents now more than 50 years, the New York Times was able to reconstruct almost completely the use of intelligence in an army of people who had fought for the Third Reich. An accounting impressive in Postwar America recruited nearly a thousand Nazis, using them in the battle against communism and against the USSR. A comparison was then America was afraid of losing.
For this two grim soldiers - the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA, Allen Dulles - decided to set aside any moral restraint: it was more important to have agents able and determined to use against Moscow and punish these Nazi crimes against Jews made a few decades earlier.
Another story embarrassing to US intelligence, although this time it is now remote events: none of Nazi war criminals protected by the Secret Service in Washington is still alive. An ugly chapter of American history whose names are to be found in anguish and paranoia of the Cold War era. Hoover personally approved the recruitment of informants with a past in the SS arguing that the meticulous and visceral anticommunism of these "moderate Nazis" were precious weapons to dispose of what America could make some sacrifices in terms of ethics.
A cynical reasoning that, apart from any consideration of legal and moral, it turned out just based on a practical level: very few of the thousands of Nazis recruited agents proved to be effective and faithful. The documents published now reveal that many of them were inept, incurable liars, or worse, double agents at the service of the Kremlin.
The embarrassment of the CIA is all obstinate refusal to comment on the case: difficult to justify the attempt to steal the courts those responsible for horrendous crimes. The New York Times reports that in 1994, when the Ministry of Justice was preparing to prosecute Aleksandras Lileikis, a Gestapo chief responsible for the massacre of 60 thousand Lithuanian Jews, the CIA tried to defend his now ex-spy recruited in 1952 with a salary $ 1,700 per year plus two cartons of cigarettes a month. The judges stood firm and eventually a compromise was reached: the judiciary would fail to condemn Lileikis only if the process had come out issues such as endangering US national security. It did not happen and the Nazi criminal ended up in jail.
For this two grim soldiers - the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA, Allen Dulles - decided to set aside any moral restraint: it was more important to have agents able and determined to use against Moscow and punish these Nazi crimes against Jews made a few decades earlier.
Another story embarrassing to US intelligence, although this time it is now remote events: none of Nazi war criminals protected by the Secret Service in Washington is still alive. An ugly chapter of American history whose names are to be found in anguish and paranoia of the Cold War era. Hoover personally approved the recruitment of informants with a past in the SS arguing that the meticulous and visceral anticommunism of these "moderate Nazis" were precious weapons to dispose of what America could make some sacrifices in terms of ethics.
A cynical reasoning that, apart from any consideration of legal and moral, it turned out just based on a practical level: very few of the thousands of Nazis recruited agents proved to be effective and faithful. The documents published now reveal that many of them were inept, incurable liars, or worse, double agents at the service of the Kremlin.
The embarrassment of the CIA is all obstinate refusal to comment on the case: difficult to justify the attempt to steal the courts those responsible for horrendous crimes. The New York Times reports that in 1994, when the Ministry of Justice was preparing to prosecute Aleksandras Lileikis, a Gestapo chief responsible for the massacre of 60 thousand Lithuanian Jews, the CIA tried to defend his now ex-spy recruited in 1952 with a salary $ 1,700 per year plus two cartons of cigarettes a month. The judges stood firm and eventually a compromise was reached: the judiciary would fail to condemn Lileikis only if the process had come out issues such as endangering US national security. It did not happen and the Nazi criminal ended up in jail.
