The CIA & Nazi War Criminals
(Updated February 2005)
The National Security
Archive posted the CIA's secret documentary
history of the U.S government's relationship
with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German
army's intelligence chief for the
Eastern Front during World
War II. At the end of the
war, Gehlen established a close relationship
with the U.S. and successfully maintained
his intelligence network (it ultimately became
the West German BND) even though he employed
numerous former Nazis and
known war
criminals.
The use of Gehlen's group, according to the
CIA history, Forging
an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the
Origins of the BND, 1945-49, was a “double
edged sword” that “boosted
the Warsaw Pact's propaganda efforts” and “suffered
devastating penetrations by the KGB.” [See
Volume 1: Introduction, p. xxix]
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The declassified “SECRET RelGER” two-volume
history was compiled by CIA historian Kevin Ruffner
and presented in 1999 by CIA Deputy Director for Operations
Jack Downing to the German intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst)
in remembrance of “the new and close ties” formed
during post-war Germany to mark the fiftieth year of
CIA-West German cooperation. This history was declassified
in 2002 as a result of the work of The
Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records
Interagency Working Group (IWG) and contains 97
key documents from various agencies.
This posting comes in the wake of public
grievances lodged by members of the IWG that the CIA
has not fully complied with the mandate of the Nazi
War Crimes Disclosure Act and is continuing to withhold
hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation related
to their work. (Note
1) In interviews
with the New York Times, three public members
of the IWG said:
- “I think that the CIA has defied the law,
and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust,
thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust
and also at the Americans who gave their lives
in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War
II.” - Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman
- “I can only say that the posture the CIA
has taken differs from all the other agencies that
have been involved, and that's not a position we
can accept.” - Washington lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste
- “Too much has been secret for too long.
The CIA has not complied with the statute.” -
Former federal prosecutor Thomas H. Baer
The
IWG was established in January 11, 1999 and has
overseen the declassification of about eight million
pages of documents from multiple government agencies.
Its mandate expires at the end of March 2005.
The documentation unearthed by the IWG reveals extensive
relationships between former Nazi war criminals and
American intelligence organizations, including the
CIA. For example, current records show that at least
five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf
Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached
by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers
within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers. (Note
2) The IWG enlisted
the help of key academic scholars to consult during
the declassification process, and these historians
released their own interpretation of the declassified
material last May (2004) in a publication called US
Intelligence and the Nazis. The introduction
to this book emphasizes the dilemma of using former
Nazis as assets:
“The notion that they [CIA, Army
Counterintelligence Corp, Gehlen organization]
employed only a few bad apples will not
stand up to the new documentation. Some
American intelligence officials could not
or did not want to see how many German
intelligence officials, SS officers, police,
or non-German collaborators with the Nazis
were compromised or incriminated by their
past service… Hindsight allows us to
see that ican use of actual or alleged war criminals
was a blunder in several respects…there
was no compelling reason to begin the postwar
era with the assistance of some of those
associated with the worst crimes of the
war. Lack of sufficient attention to history-and,
on a personal level, to character and morality-established
a bad precedent, especially for new intelligence
agencies. It also brought into intelligence
organizations men and women previously
incapable of distinguishing between their
political/ideological beliefs and reality.
As a result, such individuals could not
and did not deliver good intelligence.
Finally, because their new, professed 'democratic
convictions' were at best insecure and
their pasts could be used against them
(some could be blackmailed), these recruits
represented a potential security problem.”
(Note
3)
The Gehlen organization profiled in the newly posted
CIA history represents one of the most telling examples
of these pitfalls. Timothy Naftali, a University
of Virginia professor and consulting historian to
the IWG who focused heavily on the declassified CIA
material, highlighted the problems posed by our relationship
with Gehlen: “Reinhard Gehlen was able to use
U.S. funds to create a large intelligence bureaucracy
that not only undermined the Western critique of
the Soviet Union by protecting and promoting war
criminals but also was arguably the least effective
and secure in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
As many in U.S. intelligence in the late 1940s had
feared would happen, the Gehlen Organization proved
to be the back door by which the Soviets penetrated
the Western alliance.” (Note
4)
The documents annexed in the CIA history posted today
by the Archive echo the observations of Professor Naftali.
While placing much of the blame on the Army Counterintelligence
Corps' initial approach to Gehlen, this history emphasizes
the CIA's own reluctance to adopt responsibility for
Gehlen's organization, yet the documents show the CIA
ultimately embracing Gehlen.
Some of the highlighlights from this secret CIA documentary
history include:
- A May 1, 1952 report detailing how Gehlen and
his network were initially approached by U.S. army
intelligence. (Document
6)
- Two evaluations of the Gehlen operation from
October 16 and 17, 1946, advising against the
transfer of Gehlen's organization to CIG hands
and questioning the value of the operation as
a whole. (Documents 21 and 22)
- A March 19, 1948 memorandum from Richard Helms,
noting Army pressure for the CIA to assume sponsorship
of the Gehlen organization, and continued concern
over the security problems inherent in the operation.
(Document 59)
- A December 17, 1948 report outlining the problems
with the Gehlen organization, but ultimately recommending
CIA assumption of the project. (Document
72)
In answer to the question “Can we learn from
history?”, the IWG's consulting historians noted “The
real question is not whether we will make use of our
past to deal with the present, but rather how well
we will do so. To do it well, we need these documents.” (Note
5)
“This secret CIA history
is full of documents we never would have
seen under the Freedom of Information Act,
because Congress in 1984 gave the CIA an
exemption for its 'operational' files, on
the grounds that such files were too sensitive
ever to be released,” commented Thomas Blanton,
director of the National Security Archive.
“The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act has proven
this assumption false. Release of these files
has done no damage to national security,
has provided information of enormous public
interest and historical importance, and however
belatedly, has brought a measure of accountability
to government operations at variance with
mainstream American values.”
Sources: National
Security Archive, National Archives
and Records Administration Photo
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