corrente

More information/files released pertaining to US intelligence service recruitment of Nazis following WW2:

From the National Security Archive at The George Washington University:

CIA and Nazi War Criminals
National Security Archive Posts Secret CIA History
Released Under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 146
February 4, 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)

IWG report May (2004) US Intelligence and the Nazis:

"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 American 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 CIA and Nazi War Criminals

A good deal has been written in the past about the Gehlen organization including its relationship to the ODESSA network. As Martin A. Lee observes: [ed note to below: Otto Skorzeny, SS and Gestapo, is one of the guys who helped rescue Mussolini, on behalf of Hitler, from his detention in an Abruzzi mountain ski resort in 1943.]

Skorzeny's ongoing association with gehlen was emblamatic of the pivotal alliances between ODESSA and the Org - and, by implication, the CIA asw ell. For many of those unsavory characters who constituted the ODESSA underground, Gehlen was the life raft; he was the one who commandeered the vehicle to rescue the comradeship. In the end, the most important service performed by the Org had little to do with gathering information for the CIA. "Gehlen's organization was designed to protect the ODESSA Nazis. It amounts to an exceptionally well-orchestrated diversion," maintains historian William Corson, a retired U.S. intelligence officer. (Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens; pg. 44)

In later years, Skorzeny, then living in Spain, would adopt the Italian fascist terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie as one of his proteges. Chiaie would become a key player in a good deal of the nightmarish right wing terror that swept through Latin America. Helping orchestrate the "cocaine coup" in Bolivia, as well as assisting Pinochets DINA and d'Aubuisson's death squads in El Salvador.

Based in Latin America in the early 1980's, delle Chiaie also proffered his services to the fledgling Nicaraguan Contras in their war against the Sandinistas. At times he coordinated his efforts with the World Anti-Communist League, a neo-fascist umbrella organization that assisted U.S. intelligence operations in Latin America during the Reagan years. A CIA report during this period described the fugitive Italian as "the most prominent rightest terrorist...still at large." (Lee, The Beast Reawakens; pg. 189)

Chiaie, along with Klaus Barbie, are also credited with instructing mercenaries in the finer points of torture; especially during their service to the fascist military regime in Bolivia.

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