MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) – The CIA and FBI used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis of all ranks, from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich, as anti-Soviet spies during the years of the Cold War, according to a new book by Eric Lichtblau, “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men,” which was published on October 28.
Newly-declassified records and interviews put together by investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveal how the CIA, the FBI, and the military “all put Hitler's minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories.”
Even though it is not the first book on the topic, it is the first time when declassified government records have revealed the story of not only the Nazi scientists who were brought to US, but of the German spies and con men who followed them and lived for decades as ordinary citizens, Melvin Goodman, Director of the National Security Project of the Center for International Policy and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, explained to Radio VR.
As a division chief and senior analyst at the Office of Soviet Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 to 1986, Melvin Goodman says the book “Project Paperclip” (1971) by Clarence Lasby and “Secret Agenda”, by Linda Hunt win 1991 also revealed that right after the World War there were Nazi scientists who were recruited by the US to engage in weapons research.
While many former Nazi scientists such as Werner von Braun hadn’t been involved in the Nazi’s infamous war crimes and contributed greatly to the development of rockets and jet planes, Hunt describes how others were actively engaged in “Dachau-like experiments on over seven thousand US soldiers”, whom they exposed to LSD and other chemicals at Englewood, Maryland between 1947 and 1966.
Goodman adds new information, stressing that the CIA and the FBI actively sabotaged the efforts of the Justice Department to hunt down Nazis who had committed crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. According to Goodman, these agencies continued to block efforts to bring these war criminals to justice until as late as 1994.
Despite the moral quandaries the agencies were able to overlook in their attempt to protect American interests from the Soviet Union, Mr. Goodman states that the spy work conducted by the repurposed war criminals was effectively worthless at providing any insight into the inner workings of the Soviet Union or its leadership. Goodman used to get the FBI reports from their sources, including the German recruits, and he states that they mostly consisted of trivial information.
But the mere fact of their cooperation makes it a “shocking and shameful story of America becoming a safe haven for Hitler's men.”
