The U.S. used known Nazis after World War II in Cold War spying efforts against Russia, with the CIA willing to overlook what it described as "moral lapses" during their service in the Third Reich, according to an exclusive investigation by
The New York Times, which reviewed now-unclassified documents about the once-covert program.
More than 1,000 Nazis participated in the program, set in place by the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA's Allen Dulles. And the government "concealed ties" to some known Nazis still living in the United States as recently as the 1990s, the Times reported.
So protected was the program, the FBI refused to even coordinate with the Justice Department in 1980 when it was hunting 16 Nazis who were suspected of living in the U.S., the Times noted. The information gleaned in the investigation came from the Times' review of unclassified documents and others obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, along with interviews of sources with knowledge of the spying program.
No known Nazi collaborator remains alive, the Times reported, but the scope of the covert program was staggering and numbered at least 1,000, according to American University Holocaust scholar Richard Breitman.
Historian Norman Goda of the University of Florida, who joined as a government appointee with Breitman on the records declassification team, said the number was likely much higher. "U.S. agencies directly or indirectly hired numerous ex-Nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes," he said.
"Information was readily available that these were compromised men," Goda told the Times.
The recruited Nazi spies included some in the highest levels of Hitler's leadership, including SS Officer Otto von Bolschwing.
He served as aide and mentor to Adolf Eichmann, who wrote the "Final Solution" and other papers, which discussed strategies on how to destroy the Jews.
Despite his dedication to terror, he was later hired as a CIA spy in Europe, the Times noted, and he later relocated along with his family to live in New York City. The move, records show, was to reward von Bolschwing "for his loyal postwar service and in view of his innocuousness of his [Nazi] path activities."
After Eichmann who had fled Germany for Argentina like many Nazis, was captured by Israelis in 1960, von Bolschwing quickly ran to the CIA for protection, fearing he might now be in trouble. He received cover and stayed in the U.S. for another 20 years before his work in Nazi Germany was uncovered by prosecutors, according to the Times.
The report comes as U.S. lawmakers are set to introduce legislation that would keep any known Nazi war criminals from receiving Social Security benefits,
according to U.S. News and World Report, which cited an Associated Press investigation that determined millions had been paid to those Nazis who had been forced out of the U.S. after living here for years.
"It is simply perverse that these criminals have been able to live comfortably abroad thanks to the American taxpayer," noted New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who will sponsor the Senate legislation.
The former Nazis were allowed to continue receiving the benefits while living abroad via a loophole in U.S. law that saw the Justice Department dangle that money as leverage if they voluntarily left the U.S. in lieu of deportation,
the Washington Times noted, citing the AP report.
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