Nazis were given safe haven in the USA

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Alkindus
Alkindus Members Posts: 1,677 ✭✭✭
edited November 2010 in The Social Lounge
Like Otto von Bolschwing(notorious for his part in the holocaust) was given a job and visum/home by the CIA. A lot of Nazis were used for developing weapons(cause ? tech was superior to that of the allied forces, think konigstiger/sturmgewehr etc)

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says
Left and center, Dave Dieter/The Huntsville Times, via AP; C.H. Pete Copeland/Plain Dealer, via AP
Dr. Josef Mengele in 1956, left. Arthur Rudolph, center, in 1990, was a rocket scientist for ? Germany and NASA. John Demjanjuk in 2006.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: November 13, 2010

. WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s ? -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.

Document The O.S.I. Report
.
Interactive In Hunt for Nazis, an Incomplete History.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 ? 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 ? 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 ? 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 Adolf 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 ? affiliation or “explain it away on the basis of extenuating circumstances,” the report said.

The Justice Department, after learning of Von Bolschwing’s ? 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 ? 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 ? 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 ? 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 ? 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 ? -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.

Yo I couldn't post the entire article(can only be 10.000 caracters long) so for the rest of the artcile please follow this link:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?pagewanted=all

Comments

  • KTULU IS BACK
    KTULU IS BACK Banned Users Posts: 6,617 ✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    they were given safe haven every place the Catholic church could smuggle them in

    Nazis were Christians, don't forget this
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    edited November 2010
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    Alkindus wrote: »
    A lot of Nazis were used for developing weapons(cause ? tech was superior to that of the allied forces, think konigstiger/sturmgewehr etc)
    not that superior, if at all
  • The Jackal
    The Jackal Members Posts: 1,897 ✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    Is this suppose to be new news? It's well know that the us had ? scientist working for them
  • StoneColdMikey
    StoneColdMikey Members, Moderators Posts: 33,543 Regulator
    edited November 2010
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    I knew this for so long
  • playmaker88
    playmaker88 Members Posts: 67,905 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    Damn i thought.. only muslims were terrorist......
  • FieldTripsToTheHood
    FieldTripsToTheHood Members Posts: 6,054 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    Brazil is a faaaar bigger offender than the US when it comes to this topic. Just saying.
  • KTULU IS BACK
    KTULU IS BACK Banned Users Posts: 6,617 ✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    they found a village full of blond-haired blue-eyed twins in argentina in the 70's

    guess who had been hiding out there
  • JackRichards
    JackRichards Members Posts: 103
    edited November 2010
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  • Alkindus
    Alkindus Members Posts: 1,677 ✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    lol I know its not new news, but there actually is a detailed report now with actual names of who the cia for example helped live comfy on us soil(eventhough they were responsible for te deaths/torture of thousands), this are not only scientists btw...
  • Alkindus
    Alkindus Members Posts: 1,677 ✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    janklow wrote: »
    not that superior, if at all

    the tank + assault rifle in question were indeed superior to any allied forces tanks and assualt rifles, this is well known jank(whether the konigstiger was of any use in the ardennes is another question offcourse) but pure tech wise the ? 's het the allied forces in their pocket.
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    edited November 2010
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    Alkindus wrote: »
    the tank + assault rifle in question were indeed superior to any allied forces tanks and assualt rifles-
    actually, i don't agree with this at all. first, to be fair, calling the King Tiger the best tank is arguing that a tank has to be a heavy tank to be the best; it's probably more important that the best overall tank of the war was something like the T-34, a medium tank (Soviet design based on American/British work). that King Tiger barely saw service and was largely unreliable; it had a beast of a gun and i wouldn't call it a bad tank, but best tank of the war? meh. it's also worth noting that some of the issue on the American side is that the US wasn't trying to fight tank battles; they were trying to crank out Shermans (a solid tank but not a match for a King Tiger) and fight tanks with antitank guns. could the US have made an equally good heavy tank if they wanted to? i'd say yes, but hey, it's unknowable.

    as for the StG44, calling it superior to allied assault rifles is comparing it to... what, exactly? it's an intriguing weapon and a sign of things to come, so if you want to give it credit for that, okay, it was ahead of its time. but is it so resoundingly ahead of an M2 carbine in technical terms for me to say the Allies were technologically in the pocket of the Germans? nah. and then we could go back slightly and note that the M1 was far superior to any other nation's standard infantry rifle, right?

    summation: the Germans might technically be #1 in military technology for the war if we break it down somehow; i'm arguing it's not some ridiculous advantage that no other nation could dream of comparing to
  • Alkindus
    Alkindus Members Posts: 1,677 ✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    janklow wrote: »
    actually, i don't agree with this at all. first, to be fair, calling the King Tiger the best tank is arguing that a tank has to be a heavy tank to be the best; it's probably more important that the best overall tank of the war was something like the T-34, a medium tank (Soviet design based on American/British work). that King Tiger barely saw service and was largely unreliable; it had a beast of a gun and i wouldn't call it a bad tank, but best tank of the war? meh. it's also worth noting that some of the issue on the American side is that the US wasn't trying to fight tank battles; they were trying to crank out Shermans (a solid tank but not a match for a King Tiger) and fight tanks with antitank guns. could the US have made an equally good heavy tank if they wanted to? i'd say yes, but hey, it's unknowable.

    as for the StG44, calling it superior to allied assault rifles is comparing it to... what, exactly? it's an intriguing weapon and a sign of things to come, so if you want to give it credit for that, okay, it was ahead of its time. but is it so resoundingly ahead of an M2 carbine in technical terms for me to say the Allies were technologically in the pocket of the Germans? nah. and then we could go back slightly and note that the M1 was far superior to any other nation's standard infantry rifle, right?

    summation: the Germans might technically be #1 in military technology for the war if we break it down somehow; i'm arguing it's not some ridiculous advantage that no other nation could dream of comparing to

    well I'm no expert, I just watched the history channel and saw allied forces(from generals to footsoldiers) calling the german 'wonder weapons'(lol) superior just like many historians called the ? weapons in general superior than those of the allied forces.....so I just went with that.

    I have to disagree with the bolded though: At the beginning of the battle of brittain 4 example, ? used rockets, which nobody back than ever saw or knew such weapons existed. The ? 's used many of during those times revolutiare weaponry, there are thousands of reports of allied forces espionage whose main task it was to study the (in their eyes) superior german weaponry and bomb the ? outta the factories, dismantle the supply chains etc.

    I mean the people here in Holland surrended to the germans because of the superior weaponry: they fought for days untill the ? 's bombed the centre of rotterdam, they than proceeded to threat to bomb all of historical dutch cities.....so the dutch surrended....dutch soldiers dreamt of having such weapons as the ? 's had, if they did than holland would have never surrendered(like that).

    Hell germany conquered allmost all of europe with their superior rifles/tanks/airplanes adn blitzkrieg tactics, they were using far superior guns than the dutch, french, polish etc by the time a dutch soldier shot 2 bullets a german would have already shot 20, how you gonna say the nazis didn't have a ridiculous advntage lol? without the superior weaponry blitzkrieg wasn't even possible. Compare the guns/tanks (and lakc of airplanes) of the french/dutch/polish to that of the germans, you telling me with a straight face that the german ? weaponry was not superior?
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    edited November 2010
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    Alkindus wrote: »
    At the beginning of the battle of brittain 4 example, ? used rockets, which nobody back than ever saw or knew such weapons existed. The ? 's used many of during those times revolutiare weaponry, there are thousands of reports of allied forces espionage whose main task it was to study the (in their eyes) superior german weaponry and bomb the ? outta the factories, dismantle the supply chains etc.
    well, let's be clear: Nazis did not invent the concept of rocket; rockets were used in military ways for decades before the Battle of Britain and were studied by a lot more than Germans. also, the Battle of Britain was a conflict between the air forces of Germany and Britain; i have to assume you're thinking more of the V-1s and V-2s, and these weren't being used until about four years AFTER the Battle of Britain.
    Alkindus wrote: »
    I mean the people here in Holland surrended to the germans because of the superior weaponry: they fought for days untill the ? 's bombed the centre of rotterdam, they than proceeded to threat to bomb all of historical dutch cities.....so the dutch surrended....dutch soldiers dreamt of having such weapons as the ? 's had, if they did than holland would have never surrendered(like that).
    but here's the thing: this is not because of "superior weaponry," this is because of superior force. Germany could bring a lot more to bear against the Netherlands than the Netherlands could withstand.
    Alkindus wrote: »
    Hell germany conquered allmost all of europe with their superior rifles/tanks/airplanes adn blitzkrieg tactics, they were using far superior guns than the dutch, french, polish etc by the time a dutch soldier shot 2 bullets a german would have already shot 20, how you gonna say the nazis didn't have a ridiculous advntage lol?
    because what you're saying is simply not accurate.

    the rifles the Germans used to conquer Europe were generally bolt-action rifles like the K98. it's a solid rifle, but it's not wildly superior to what the Dutch were using... which was a bolt-action rifle. the tanks the Germans had weren't notably superior (if they weren't inferior) to French and Czech tanks. what you're doing is looking at guns developed much later in the war, well after Germany had conquered these countries, and assuming they had them TO conquer the countries. but rifles like the StG44 that you mention weren't in service until years later.
    Alkindus wrote: »
    without the superior weaponry blitzkrieg wasn't even possible. Compare the guns/tanks (and lakc of airplanes) of the french/dutch/polish to that of the germans, you telling me with a straight face that the german ? weaponry was not superior?
    i am, because blitzkrieg is a philosophy, not a line of weaponry. the Germans used some superior planning and tactics when confronting France, not a series of tanks that were just "better" than French tanks.
  • KTULU IS BACK
    KTULU IS BACK Banned Users Posts: 6,617 ✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    the german guns are superior in battlefield 1942 tho
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2010
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    I'm shocked.....but I'm not shocked either.

    I always thought it was just a few scientists who were given safe haven, but WOW, tons were given safe haven. ? ......the history of the CIA looks more crazy and evil by the day.

    Makes me wonder if the CIA really did plant drugs in the Black community. Oh wait, that's been proven already. Here's part of the reason Reverend Wright is a hero in my eyes. Some call him crazy, but only because they haven't done their research (for the record, I don't believe AIDS was created by the govt, but who really knows)

    http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm

    THE CIA-CONTRA-? ? CONTROVERSY:
    A REVIEW OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S
    INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

    Chapter I: Introduction

    A. The San Jose Mercury News Articles

    On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published the first installment of a three-part series of articles concerning ? ? , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Nicaraguan Contra army. The introduction to the first installment of the series read:

    For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of ? to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.

    This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's ? cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "? " capital of the world. The ? that flooded in helped spark a ? explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.

    The three-day series of articles, entitled "Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the ? Explosion," told the story of a Los Angeles drug operation run by Ricky Donnell Ross, described sympathetically as "a disillusioned 19-year-old . . . who, at the dawn of the 1980s, found himself adrift on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles." The Dark Alliance series recounted how Ross began peddling small quantities of ? in the early 1980s and rapidly grew into one of the largest ? dealers in southern California until he was convicted of federal drug trafficking charges in March 1996. The series claimed that Ross' rise in the drug world was made possible by Oscar Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, two individuals with ties to the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), one group comprising the Nicaraguan Contras. Blandon and Meneses reportedly sold tons of ? to Ross, who in turn converted it to ? and sold it in the black communities of South Central Los Angeles. Blandon and Meneses were said to have used their drug trafficking profits to help fund the Contra army's war effort.