Denver Post Editorial: CIA inaction inexcusable
Recently released documents show that the Central Intelligence Agency kept secret the whereabouts of World War II criminal Adolph Eichmann in order to protect the identity of Nazis serving in the West German government.
Even the deadly Cold War rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union doesn't excuse such morally bankrupt conduct.
Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi SS, was the architect of the so-called "final solution," the Third Reich's heinous scheme for the extermination of European Jewry.
He once bragged of sending 5 million Jews to their deaths in a network of camps the Nazi regime operated with ruthless efficiency in Germany and occupied Europe.
Eichmann, using the name Otto Eckmann, briefly was held and released by the U.S. Army in 1945. He hid in Germany and then went to Italy, where he posed as a refugee named Ricardo Klement. A wanted man, he went to Argentina in 1950. In 1958, West German intelligence sources told the CIA that Eichmann was living in Buenos Aires under the name Clemens.
The CIA feared that Eichmann's past association with Hans Globke, national security adviser to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, would embarrass the Bonn government and so suppressed the information, a decision that cannot be justified on any level.
No matter. Israeli agents eventually captured Eichmann in Buenos Aires. He was taken to Israel, tried and convicted of crimes against the Jewish people, and hanged in 1962.
To its shame, the United States had no policy of pursuing Nazis during the Cold War years - indeed, documents released recently show that U.S. intelligence officials protected former Nazis out of a misguided belief that they could counter the Soviet threat.
Far from it. According to Norman Goda, an Ohio University historian who reviewed the documents, ex-Nazi Heinz Felfe, for example, became head of the West German intelligence service but turned out to be a double agent working for the KGB.
Some ex-Nazis, like rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, made valuable contributions in the post-war years. But a mass murderer like Eichmann was unworthy of protection for any reason.
Even the deadly Cold War rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union doesn't excuse such morally bankrupt conduct.
Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi SS, was the architect of the so-called "final solution," the Third Reich's heinous scheme for the extermination of European Jewry.
He once bragged of sending 5 million Jews to their deaths in a network of camps the Nazi regime operated with ruthless efficiency in Germany and occupied Europe.
Eichmann, using the name Otto Eckmann, briefly was held and released by the U.S. Army in 1945. He hid in Germany and then went to Italy, where he posed as a refugee named Ricardo Klement. A wanted man, he went to Argentina in 1950. In 1958, West German intelligence sources told the CIA that Eichmann was living in Buenos Aires under the name Clemens.
The CIA feared that Eichmann's past association with Hans Globke, national security adviser to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, would embarrass the Bonn government and so suppressed the information, a decision that cannot be justified on any level.
No matter. Israeli agents eventually captured Eichmann in Buenos Aires. He was taken to Israel, tried and convicted of crimes against the Jewish people, and hanged in 1962.
To its shame, the United States had no policy of pursuing Nazis during the Cold War years - indeed, documents released recently show that U.S. intelligence officials protected former Nazis out of a misguided belief that they could counter the Soviet threat.
Far from it. According to Norman Goda, an Ohio University historian who reviewed the documents, ex-Nazi Heinz Felfe, for example, became head of the West German intelligence service but turned out to be a double agent working for the KGB.
Some ex-Nazis, like rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, made valuable contributions in the post-war years. But a mass murderer like Eichmann was unworthy of protection for any reason.