CIA to Release Additional Documents About Nazi War Criminals

By Malia Rulon Associated Press Writer

Published: Feb 6, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP) - The CIA has agreed to release more information about Nazi war criminals it hired during the Cold War, ending a standoff between the intelligence agency and the group seeking the documents, Sen. Mike DeWine said Sunday.

DeWine, R-Ohio, was lead Senator author of a 1998 law that required all U.S. government documents related to Nazi war crimes to be declassified, but the Central Intelligence Agency had resisted giving up details about the work performed by agents with Nazi ties.

The law has led to the release of more than 8 million pages of documents, including 1.25 million from the CIA, which showed that the agency or its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, had a relationship with some individuals later found to be war criminals.

Some documents obtained by the working group, for example, show that the CIA recruited and hired five assistants to Adolph Eichmann, the man known as the architect of the plan for exterminating the Jews during World War II.

The CIA provided a general description of the operational tasks performed by war criminals that it hired, but a governmental working group created to declassify the documents wanted to know more about what these people did for the agency. The working group also sought documents on all former SS officers who worked for the CIA after WWII.

The agency resisted, saying it would only release information on people who were proven war criminals. It also claimed information on the intelligence operations these people performed was exempt from the disclosure law because on a rule that allows the CIA to protect its sources and methods. A letter sent Friday to the group - officially called the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group - reversed both stances.

"This is good, this is really what we anticipated when we wrote the law," DeWine said Sunday. "We have an obligation to bring this information out for the Holocaust survivors and their families and the public."

In the letter, Stanley M. Moskowitz, the agency's director of congressional affairs, said the CIA would make available previously unreleased documents, including operational files and East German intelligence, to group members on Monday.

"We agree that documents concerning acts performed by Nazi war criminals, to include members of the SS, on behalf of CIA are relevant and are subject to declassification review," the letter said.

Many of the former Nazi officials were sought by the CIA to provide expertise on the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. DeWine said it's important to "know what happens when our government deals with criminals and uses criminals for its own purpose."

The working group is to disband in March, creating an urgency for getting the documents released from the CIA. DeWine said he would seek legislation to extend the group's mandate for two years. A hearing on the matter set for Feb. 15 would be canceled if the requested documents are provided, he said.

The Washington Post

December 22, 1963 - page A11

Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role To Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
Copyright, 1963, by Harry S Truman

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.

But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.

I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

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