Thursday 3 February 2005

CIA Faces Pressure to Divulge Ties to Ex-Nazis

I guess if they did it would prove that the Nazis really have taken over America and Bush really is constructing the 4th Reich!

A U.S. senator demanded on Wednesday that the CIA director release thousands of pages of documents detailing the agency's ties with former Nazis who aided in Cold War espionage against the Soviet Union, officials said.

Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, Republican co-author of a 1998 bill ordering the disclosure of government records on Nazi war criminals, wants CIA Director Porter Goss to say publicly why his agency has not agreed to divulge the records.

DeWine has asked Goss to appear this month at an open hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which the Ohio lawmaker sits, a Senate aide said. The CIA had no immediate comment on the invitation.

"Sen. DeWine wants an explanation from the CIA. Our hope would be to have (Goss) there and that's what we're working toward," said DeWine spokeswoman Amanda Flaig.

The CIA has already released an estimated 1.25 million pages of documents about Nazi war criminals. Most are records of the agency's wartime predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.

The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 requires federal agencies to make public records of individuals alleged to have committed Nazi war crimes by turning them over to a special working group.

The working group, known formally as the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, includes officials from the National Archives, the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and other agencies.

Goss co-sponsored the legislation during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he led the chamber's intelligence committee.

But the CIA has refused to disclose documents about its postwar dealings with former Nazis who have not been accused of war crimes but belonged to organizations like the German Nazi party and the SS, congressional officials said.

Some of the material is believed to deal with former Nazis who joined the allied Cold War effort against the Soviet Union in Europe, the officials said.

The CIA defines the 1998 law to require only the disclosure of documents on war criminals.

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