Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

[peejay 327]

November 13, 2010

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” it said.

The report also documents divisions within the government over the effort and the legal pitfalls in relying on testimony from Holocaust survivors that was decades old. The report also concluded that the number of Nazis who made it into the United States was almost certainly much smaller than 10,000, the figure widely cited by government officials.

The Justice Department has resisted making the report public since 2006. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group, the National Security Archive, but even then many of the most legally and diplomatically sensitive portions were omitted. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times.

The Justice Department said the report, the product of six years of work, was never formally completed and did not represent its official findings. It cited “numerous factual errors and omissions,” but declined to say what they were.

More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the O.S.I., which was merged with another unit this year.

In chronicling the cases of Nazis who were aided by American intelligence officials, the report cites help that C.I.A. officials provided in 1954 to Otto Von Bolschwing, an associate of Adolph Eichmann who had helped develop the initial plans “to purge Germany of the Jews” and who later worked for the C.I.A. in the United States. In a chain of memos, C.I.A. officials debated what to do if Von Bolschwing were confronted about his past — whether to deny any Nazi affiliation or “explain it away on the basis of extenuating circumstances,” the report said.

The Justice Department, after learning of Von Bolschwing’s Nazi ties, sought to deport him in 1981. He died that year at age 72.

The report also examines the case of Arthur L. Rudolph, a Nazi scientist who ran the Mittelwerk munitions factory. He was brought to the United States in 1945 for his rocket-making expertise under Operation Paperclip, an American program that recruited scientists who had worked in Nazi Germany. (Rudolph has been honored by NASA and is credited as the father of the Saturn V rocket.)

The report cites a 1949 memo from the Justice Department’s No. 2 official urging immigration officers to let Rudolph back in the country after a stay in Mexico, saying that a failure to do so “would be to the detriment of the national interest.”

Justice Department investigators later found evidence that Rudolph was much more actively involved in exploiting slave laborers at Mittelwerk than he or American intelligence officials had acknowledged, the report says.

Some intelligence officials objected when the Justice Department sought to deport him in 1983, but the O.S.I. considered the deportation of someone of Rudolph’s prominence as an affirmation of “the depth of the government’s commitment to the Nazi prosecution program,” according to internal memos.

The Justice Department itself sometimes concealed what American officials knew about Nazis in this country, the report found.

In 1980, prosecutors filed a motion that “misstated the facts” in asserting that checks of C.I.A. and F.B.I. records revealed no information on the Nazi past of Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS soldier. In fact, the report said, the Justice Department “knew that Soobzokov had advised the C.I.A. of his SS connection after he arrived in the United States.”

(After the case was dismissed, radical Jewish groups urged violence against Mr. Soobzokov, and he was killed in 1985 by a bomb at his home in Paterson, N.J. )

The secrecy surrounding the Justice Department’s handling of the report could pose a political dilemma for President Obama because of his pledge to run the most transparent administration in history. Mr. Obama chose the Justice Department to coordinate the opening of government records.

The Nazi-hunting report was the brainchild of Mark Richard, a senior Justice Department lawyer. In 1999, he persuaded Attorney General Janet Reno to begin a detailed look at what he saw as a critical piece of history, and he assigned a career prosecutor, Judith Feigin, to the job. After Mr. Richard edited the final version in 2006, he urged senior officials to make it public but was rebuffed, colleagues said.

When Mr. Richard became ill with cancer, he told a gathering of friends and family that the report’s publication was one of three things he hoped to see before he died, the colleagues said. He died in June 2009, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke at his funeral.

“I spoke to him the week before he died, and he was still trying to get it released,” Ms. Feigin said. “It broke his heart.”

After Mr. Richard’s death, David Sobel, a Washington lawyer, and the National Security Archive sued for the report’s release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Justice Department initially fought the lawsuit, but finally gave Mr. Sobel a partial copy — with more than 1,000 passages and references deleted based on exemptions for privacy and internal deliberations.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department is committed to transparency, and that redactions are made by experienced lawyers.

The full report disclosed that the Justice Department found “a smoking gun” in 1997 establishing with “definitive proof” that Switzerland had bought gold from the Nazis that had been taken from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But these references are deleted, as are disputes between the Justice and State Departments over Switzerland’s culpability in the months leading up to a major report on the issue.

Another section describes as “a hideous failure” a series of meetings in 2000 that United States officials held with Latvian officials to pressure them to pursue suspected Nazis. That passage is also deleted.

So too are references to macabre but little-known bits of history, including how a director of the O.S.I. kept a piece of scalp that was thought to belong to Dr. Mengele in his desk in hopes that it would help establish whether he was dead.

The chapter on Dr. Mengele, one of the most notorious Nazis to escape prosecution, details the O.S.I.’s elaborate efforts in the mid-1980s to determine whether he had fled to the United States and might still be alive.

It describes how investigators used letters and diaries apparently written by Dr. Mengele in the 1970s, along with German dental records and Munich phone books, to follow his trail.

After the development of DNA tests, the piece of scalp, which had been turned over by the Brazilian authorities, proved to be a critical piece of evidence in establishing that Dr. Mengele had fled to Brazil and had died there in about 1979 without ever entering the United States, the report said. The edited report deletes references to Dr. Mengele’s scalp on privacy grounds.

Even documents that have long been available to the public are omitted, including court decisions, Congressional testimony and front-page newspaper articles from the 1970s.

A chapter on the O.S.I.’s most publicized failure — the case against John Demjanjuk, a retired American autoworker who was mistakenly identified as Treblinka’s Ivan the Terrible — deletes dozens of details, including part of a 1993 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that raised ethics accusations against Justice Department officials.

That section also omits a passage disclosing that Latvian émigrés sympathetic to Mr. Demjanjuk secretly arranged for the O.S.I.’s trash to be delivered to them each day from 1985 to 1987. The émigrés rifled through the garbage to find classified documents that could help Mr. Demjanjuk, who is currently standing trial in Munich on separate war crimes charges.

Ms. Feigin said she was baffled by the Justice Department’s attempt to keep a central part of its history secret for so long. “It’s an amazing story,” she said, “that needs to be told.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?hp

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

Written by Eric Lichtblau? That tells me a lot.

Of course, everybody knew that the brightest minds in Nazi-Germany were working for the Government, as there were not many privately- funded space programs and weapon development programs in place. More like zero. And the Government in the 1930s until 1945 was a Nazi Government . . . duhhh! For whom else would have they been working for? And what would have happened to them had they refused to work for the Nazis? They would have been killed!

Had it not been for the brilliant Germans who were leaders in about everything for Centuries, the US would not have had the atomic bomb and not the success in the space program. They wanted the German scientists, and they needed them in their goal to become World leaders!

Nobody cared, really, and it takes a Jewish journalist of German descent with a personal agenda to try to turn it into a story 75 years later. Nobody cared back then and very few care today, mostly Jews, as the folks of the Nazi regime are almost all dead and the few who are still sitting in a wheelchair will be dead very soon. I'm getting tired of this #######. No matter what you did back then, whether you were a university professor, a cop, or a "detention officer," you either worked for the Nazi-Government or you were eliminated. There was just no choice and there is really no point in trying to keep the wounds bleeding.

[scandal 951]

Nobody cared, really, and it takes a Jewish journalist of German descent with a personal agenda to try to turn it into a story 75 years later. Nobody cared back then and very few care today, mostly Jews, as the folks of the Nazi regime are almost all dead and the few who are still sitting in a wheelchair will be dead very soon. I'm getting tired of this #######. No matter what you did back then, whether you were a university professor, a cop, or a "detention officer," you either worked for the Nazi-Government or you were eliminated. There was just no choice and there is really no point in trying to keep the wounds bleeding.

You're absolutely right Just Bob. I couldn't have said it better myself.

It's just those insidious Jews who like to stir up trouble and old memories best left buried.

The Nazis really weren't so bad - they did advance German society in so many productive ways, so why dwell on some of their less glorious moments? As to those scientists - well, it's been well established from the Nuremburg Trials onward that "Just following orders" was a perfectly valid justification. Or-- at least it would have and should have been acceptable had not those insidious Jews (probably Socialist Jews, to boot) kept making such a ruckus about decent Germans just making the best of a bad situation, right?

Anyway, we see what the Jews have been up to since the War - supporting Israel and continuing to stir up their meddlesome trouble - just shifting focus from Europe to the Middle East. Plus, with their Fifth Column subversive campaign here in the US, AIPAC the Jewish Zionist Lobby dare to use our own tax dollars against US interests, funding the Zionists in Israel. Sheesh.

Very well put indeed, Just Bob. Your true colors show through clearly. Sieg Heil, and all that. The deutsche Volk will rise again in all their Aryan glory, a Master Race for all time.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

There are people on this board who are convinced that Nazis weren't so bad, and besides, all that unpleasant stuff was sooooo long ago. Why keep bringing it up?

Not an original argument at all.

[웃 910]

There are people on this board who are convinced that Nazis weren't so bad, and besides, all that unpleasant stuff was sooooo long ago. Why keep bringing it up?

Not an original argument at all.

And at the same time you say Jihadist Terrorism (which is an ongoing modern and present issue) is not so bad, after all, the number of deaths they rack up is a small fraction compared to Hitler and Stalin.

[peejay 327]

Written by Eric Lichtblau? That tells me a lot.

Of course, everybody knew that the brightest minds in Nazi-Germany were working for the Government, as there were not many privately- funded space programs and weapon development programs in place. More like zero. And the Government in the 1930s until 1945 was a Nazi Government . . . duhhh! For whom else would have they been working for? And what would have happened to them had they refused to work for the Nazis? They would have been killed!

Had it not been for the brilliant Germans who were leaders in about everything for Centuries, the US would not have had the atomic bomb and not the success in the space program. They wanted the German scientists, and they needed them in their goal to become World leaders!

Nobody cared, really, and it takes a Jewish journalist of German descent with a personal agenda to try to turn it into a story 75 years later. Nobody cared back then and very few care today, mostly Jews, as the folks of the Nazi regime are almost all dead and the few who are still sitting in a wheelchair will be dead very soon. I'm getting tired of this #######. No matter what you did back then, whether you were a university professor, a cop, or a "detention officer," you either worked for the Nazi-Government or you were eliminated. There was just no choice and there is really no point in trying to keep the wounds bleeding.

My main reason for posting the article was to point out that the Justice Department has gone out of its way to suppress releasing this report. I'm kind of curious why. What are they trying to hide?

Of course the US government held its nose and utilized many ex-Nazis for intelligence and scientific purposes. So did the Soviet Union. I think we all can differentiate the difference between a scientist working for the Nazi regime to develop military weapons or a common soldier in the Wermacht and members of the Einsatzgruppen or other such Nazi war criminals that went well beyond acceptable conduct in war.

As Scandal pointed out, the Nuremburg trials pretty much disproved the defense that these war criminals were forced to commit these crimes upon threat of death.

In any event, the Jews weren't the only victims of these war crimes, but they were the primary target of the regime. Eastern Slavs and other so called "Untermenschen" were also victims of the regime.

However, I do disagree with your opinion that there is "no point in trying to keep the wounds bleeding". It's not about pointing fingers at Germans or to foster modern day national guilt for Germans, it's about justice for victims of crimes. I have no animosity toward modern day Germans or Germany. However, as far as I'm concerned these war criminals cannot run away from their crimes through the passage of time. If they have to wheel some 90 year old ####### to the gallows and hang him in his wheelchair to pay for his crimes...so be it.

[scandal 951]

My main reason for posting the article was to point out that the Justice Department has gone out of its way to suppress releasing this report. I'm kind of curious why. What are they trying to hide?

Of course the US government held its nose and utilized many ex-Nazis for intelligence and scientific purposes. So did the Soviet Union. I think we all can differentiate the difference between a scientist working for the Nazi regime to develop military weapons or a common soldier in the Wermacht and members of the Einsatzgruppen or other such Nazi war criminals that went well beyond acceptable conduct in war.

As Scandal pointed out, the Nuremburg trials pretty much disproved the defense that these war criminals were forced to commit these crimes upon threat of death.

In any event, the Jews weren't the only victims of these war crimes, but they were the primary target of the regime. Eastern Slavs and other so called "Untermenschen" were also victims of the regime.

However, I do disagree with your opinion that there is "no point in trying to keep the wounds bleeding". It's not about pointing fingers at Germans or to foster modern day national guilt for Germans, it's about justice for victims of crimes. I have no animosity toward modern day Germans or Germany. However, as far as I'm concerned these war criminals cannot run away from their crimes through the passage of time. If they have to wheel some 90 year old ####### to the gallows and hang him in his wheelchair to pay for his crimes...so be it.

Very well stated, Peejay.

I would add a few more things to your words and to the OP itself.

I think we all know the context in the late 1940s - the primary concern was the USSR and the developing Cold War with Stalin. The need to get intelligence and expertise that could help in that fight took precedence over the "old" grievances of pre-1945, even if it involved Nazi scientists. So, Werner von Braun and Arthur Rudolph and others were brought to the US. I don't condone it, but I do understand the difficult decisions that were made, and the rationale behind them. I suspect the reason that even present-day government officials continue to be reluctant to share this information is that they are aware of the morally ambiguous circumstances that these Nazis were admitted to the US and are, shall we say, less than proud of the decisions made by their predecessors.

As to the "obvious" distinction between scientists vs. Einsatzgruppen - I quote directly from the OP regarding Arthur Rudolph:

Justice Department investigators later found evidence that Rudolph was much more actively involved in exploiting slave laborers at Mittelwerk than he or American intelligence officials had acknowledged, the report says.

Maybe not quite such an obvious distinction after all.

An additional point, regarding Demjanjuk. The OP states

A chapter on the O.S.I.’s most publicized failure — the case against John Demjanjuk, a retired American autoworker who was mistakenly identified as Treblinka’s Ivan the Terrible

While it's true that he was not Ivan the Terrible, it is also the case that he's on trial in Germany for 27,900 counts of accessory to murder for his role as a Nazi guard at Sobibor extermination camp. The man is hardly the innocent angel he protests, and is very likely to answer for his crimes of 65 years ago, wheelchair and all.

Finally, in complete agreement with Peejay's words: There is absolutely no Statute of Limitations, no past-due date, for the crimes of genocide and mass murder. However, there is also no room for guilt by association or collective guilt. Modern Germany and modern Germans know well what was done by the Nazis. Germany has come to terms with its past, has no countenance for Nazi ideology, has apologized for the actions of the Nazis and paid reparations to the victims, and remains a good and loyal friend to the Jewish people and to Israel. I bear no ill will to the modern Federal Republic or to Germans. Only to racists, Nazis, Nazi-apologists, Holocaust deniers and their ilk. To them I bear plenty of ill will.

[Atencio 43]

Read about Unit 731. Japanese water purification unit which really was a unit conducting biological and chemical warfare including vivo-section experimentation on American and British Soldiers. Given full immunity after WW2 in exchange for their information.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

Thirty years from now, hopefully, Bush, Cheney and Obama will be on trial for the same reasons: genocide of thousands of innocent Iraq and Afghan civilians for no other reason than greed, power and profit. What would I give to see these three getting charged, convicted and executed by not only the American people, but a tribunal of the United Nations! And all those in the lower ranks can say they just followed Presidential orders, just like it was the case with Hitler.

Let's see how this will play out . . .

[웃 910]

Thirty years from now, hopefully, Bush, Cheney and Obama will be on trial for the same reasons: genocide of thousands of innocent Iraq and Afghan civilians for no other reason than greed, power and profit. What would I give to see these three getting charged, convicted and executed by not only the American people, but a tribunal of the United Nations! And all those in the lower ranks can say they just followed Presidential orders, just like it was the case with Hitler.

Let's see how this will play out . . .

[Ban Hammer 13,337]

Thirty years from now, hopefully, Bush, Cheney and Obama will be on trial for the same reasons: genocide of thousands of innocent Iraq and Afghan civilians for no other reason than greed, power and profit. What would I give to see these three getting charged, convicted and executed by not only the American people, but a tribunal of the United Nations! And all those in the lower ranks can say they just followed Presidential orders, just like it was the case with Hitler.

Let's see how this will play out . . .

i would take up arms to defend the life of any president of the usa from a un tribunal.

[웃 910]

Thirty years from now, hopefully, Bush, Cheney and Obama will be on trial for the same reasons: genocide of thousands of innocent Iraq and Afghan civilians for no other reason than greed, power and profit. What would I give to see these three getting charged, convicted and executed by not only the American people, but a tribunal of the United Nations! And all those in the lower ranks can say they just followed Presidential orders, just like it was the case with Hitler.

Let's see how this will play out . . .

So you are comparing Hitler and Nazis to President Bush and US veterans of the war in Iraq?

What about Congress that also started the war? Should they be tried?

What about the other 30 or so countries that assisted in the occupation of Iraq? Should their leaders and their vets be executed as well?

Edited November 15, 2010 by Lord Infamous

[Sofiyya 1,687]

And at the same time you say Jihadist Terrorism (which is an ongoing modern and present issue) is not so bad, after all, the number of deaths they rack up is a small fraction compared to Hitler and Stalin.

That's not what I have ever said, but, it is what you read because you hate having to deal with the comparison. The folks who complain about non-Muslim mass murder are trying to impose a double standard that not only requires an absolute denial of inconvenient historical fact, but depends on exaggerating the terrorist threat in a way the intentially, or unintentionally smears all Muslims and their faith with the actions of a few. This is the same "them v. us" emotional reaction that led to internment camps for "scary and suspect" Japanese Americans, while ignoring any possible division of disloyalty among German (White Christian) Americans, who were a closer fit to the perceived norm.

But, hey, that's just more inconvenient history, distracting from your agenda. Sorry.

[peejay 327]

Thirty years from now, hopefully, Bush, Cheney and Obama will be on trial for the same reasons: genocide of thousands of innocent Iraq and Afghan civilians for no other reason than greed, power and profit. What would I give to see these three getting charged, convicted and executed by not only the American people, but a tribunal of the United Nations! And all those in the lower ranks can say they just followed Presidential orders, just like it was the case with Hitler.

Let's see how this will play out . . .

While I am not entirely comfortable with many aspects of our war effort regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, I think you are delusional if you honestly believe it compares to conduct of the Nazi regime.

You might spend some hours reading a recent book (2008) about the mechanics of the Nazi regime and how it operated. HITLERS EMPIRE: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are ignorant rather than stupid. Please educate yourself. The book is not an indictment of all Germans and is sympathetic to many innocent Germans that were unjustly persecuted after the war. However, it is quite graphic in describing the crimes the Nazi regime committed against not only Jews, but other peoples as well.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

You're absolutely right Just Bob. I couldn't have said it better myself.

It's just those insidious Jews who like to stir up trouble and old memories best left buried.

The Nazis really weren't so bad - they did advance German society in so many productive ways, so why dwell on some of their less glorious moments? As to those scientists - well, it's been well established from the Nuremburg Trials onward that "Just following orders" was a perfectly valid justification. Or-- at least it would have and should have been acceptable had not those insidious Jews (probably Socialist Jews, to boot) kept making such a ruckus about decent Germans just making the best of a bad situation, right?

Anyway, we see what the Jews have been up to since the War - supporting Israel and continuing to stir up their meddlesome trouble - just shifting focus from Europe to the Middle East. Plus, with their Fifth Column subversive campaign here in the US, AIPAC the Jewish Zionist Lobby dare to use our own tax dollars against US interests, funding the Zionists in Israel. Sheesh.

Very well put indeed, Just Bob. Your true colors show through clearly. Sieg Heil, and all that. The deutsche Volk will rise again in all their Aryan glory, a Master Race for all time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachman_Dushanski

Nachman Dushanski