In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich.
The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.”
And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis’ massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania, according to a government official.
Speaking of that Lithuanian - this was one Aleksandras Lileikis. In 1939 - deputy head of the department of Lithuanian Security Police in Vilnius. After the accession of Lithuania in to the Soviet Union emigrated to Nazi Germany. In August 1941 - Head of Vilnius Lithuanian security police under Gestapo's jurisdiction. Americans, as confirmed in article, were fully aware of his involvement in the murder of 60,000 Lithuanian Jews. Nevertheless, in 1952-1955 Lileikis 'worked' in the staff (salaried) as CIA spy in the East Germany, then moved to the United States. He received citizenship in 1976. After 11 years of investigation (and despite all the tricks and bullshitery of the CIA) this bastard was stripped of the US citizenship in 1994 and deported to Lithuania... where the local authorities have found no evidence of his war crimes (despite the fact, that said evidence used in Lileikis persecution in the States were received from Lithuanian acrhives). He died peacefully in hospital in 2000 at the age of 92 years.
This "news" about just 1000 Nazis are only tip of the iceberg. Article comments that:
Evidence of the government’s links to Nazi spies began emerging publicly in the 1970s. But thousands of records from declassified files, Freedom of Information Act requests and other sources, together with interviews with scores of current and former government officials, show that the government’s recruitment of Nazis ran far deeper than previously known and that officials sought to conceal those ties for at least a half-century after the war.
In 1980, F.B.I. officials refused to tell even the Justice Department’s own Nazi hunters what they knew about 16 suspected Nazis living in the United States.
The bureau balked at a request from prosecutors for internal records on the Nazi suspects, memos show, because the 16 men had all worked as F.B.I. informants, providing leads on Communist “sympathizers.” Five of the men were still active informants.
And US hired not only suchs like Lileikis, who only committed "minor war crimes" (i.e. killed "only" 60 000 Jews):
Some spies for the United States had worked at the highest levels for the Nazis.
One SS officer, Otto von Bolschwing, was a mentor and top aide to Adolf Eichmann, architect of the “Final Solution,” and wrote policy papers on how to terrorize Jews.
Yet after the war, the C.I.A. not only hired him as a spy in Europe, but relocated him and his family to New York City in 1954, records show. The move was seen as a “a reward for his loyal postwar service and in view of the innocuousness of his [Nazi] party activities,” the agency wrote...
...When Israeli agents captured Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, Otto von Bolschwing went to the C.I.A. for help because he worried they might come after him, memos show.
Agency officials were worried as well that Mr. von Bolschwing might be named as Eichmann’s “collaborator and fellow conspirator and that the resulting publicity may prove embarrassing to the U.S.” a C.I.A. official wrote.
After two agents met with Mr. von Bolschwing in 1961, the agency assured him it would not disclose his ties to Eichmann, records show. He lived freely for another 20 years before prosecutors discovered his wartime role and prosecuted him. He agreed to give up his citizenship in 1981, dying months later.
USA used former Nazi's not only in the espionage work:
The Nazi spies performed a range of tasks for American agencies in the 1950s and 1960s, from the hazardous to the trivial, the documents show.
In Maryland, Army officials trained several Nazi officers in paramilitary warfare for a possible invasion of Russia. In Connecticut, the C.I.A. used an ex-Nazi guard to study Soviet-bloc postage stamps for hidden meanings.
In Virginia, a top adviser to Hitler gave classified briefings on Soviet affairs. And in Germany, SS officers infiltrated Russian-controlled zones, laying surveillance cables and monitoring trains.
So, the question is simple - sas the USA justified in the use of former Nazi personell against the USSR (Yes or No)? Why?
My opinion is equally simple. By actively employing not just Germans, but Nazis US of A marred themselves during the Cold War completely eliminating any claims for "moral" superiority and right to call anyone but themselves as the "Evil Empire".
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