The day before yesterday, 6 June 2006, the New
York Times reported the following:
“The Central
Intelligence Agency took no action after learning the pseudonym and
whereabouts of the fugitive Holocaust overseer Adolf Eichmannn in 1958,
according to CIA documents that shed new light on the spy agency’s use of
former Nazis as informers after World War II.
The CIA was
told by West German intelligence that Eichmannn was living in Argentina under
the name ‘Clemens’ -- a slight variation on his actual alias, Klement -- but
kept the information from Israel...”[1]
For those unfamiliar with the history of the
Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann was the central architect of Adolf Hitler’s Final
Solution: the German Nazi program of extermination of the European Jews. What
the New York Times is reporting is that the CIA protected Eichmann
after he became a fugitive. This is amazing, but the whole truth is even more
amazing, and that's what the New York Times fails to report.
When the New York Times says that “[the]
CIA...use[d] former Nazis as informers after World War II,” it is leaving
most of the truth out. What is true is that the CIA itself was created by
absorbing practically the entire Nazi war-criminal infrastructure. This
was documented already in 1988 with material obtained from the US government
through the Freedom of Information Act by historian Christopher Simpson:
Simpson,
Christopher. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its
effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
The documents Simpson obtained allowed him to
establish just the tip of the iceberg, but that is already plenty. In the
same year of 1988, when Simpson’s book was published, the Washington Post
reviewed it, and said:
“It is no
longer necessary -- or possible -- to deny the fact: the U.S. government
systematically and deliberately recruited active Nazis by the thousands,
rescued them, hired them and relied upon them to serve American interests and
purposes in postwar Europe.”[2]
I’ve read Simpson’s book, so I know that the Washington
Post was pulling its punches: it was tens of thousands -- not
“thousands” -- of Nazi war criminals that the CIA absorbed, and these Nazis
did not serve “American interests and purposes,” but the interests and
purposes of the US ruling elite, whose values, I would submit, do not
coincide with the values of the great majority of ordinary US citizens.
In its own review of Simpson’s book, the Toronto
Star explained one of the consequences of bringing a veritable horde of
Nazis in secret to US soil, with new identities:
“Many East
European Nazi collaborators, leaders of fascist groups and governments in
Eastern Europe, and leaders of pro-fascist East European émigré organizations
soon became politically active in the [United] States and gained remarkable
access to the most powerful intelligence chiefs, politicians, business
associations and media moguls in America.”[3]
Now, one of the most important Nazi assets absorbed
by the CIA, according to Simpson’s documentation, was Reinhard Gehlen, a
major war criminal who during World War II was head of the Nazi German
Foreign Armies East (Fremde Heere Ost). According to the released US
government documents, “Working immediately after the war with Army
Intelligence, the Gehlen Organization became the responsibility of the CIA,
which continued the relationship until 1956.”[4] What happened in 1956?
“Gehlen’s organization became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), West
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency,” when the CIA handed over the Gehlen
Organization to the West Germans.[5]
So, after the world war, the
CIA made sure that a major Nazi war criminal, and his organization,
became the foreign intelligence agency of West Germany.
It is a good idea to pause, here, until the
significance of this has been absorbed. Because it means that the US
government, after the war, followed a generalized pro-Nazi policy. Not only
did the US ruling elite create the CIA by absorbing tens of thousands of Nazi
war criminals, but it made sure that the country whose Nazi government had
plunged the entire world into a genocidal war continued to be run by the same
Nazis after the war!
Once you have absorbed this, you can understand
something else that the New York Times says. I will now complete the
sentence that I left hanging at the top, from the same NYT article that got
us started:
“The CIA was
told by West German intelligence that Eichmann was living in Argentina under
the name ‘Clemens’ -- a slight variation on his actual alias, Klement -- but
kept the information from Israel because of German concerns about exposure of
former Nazis in the Bonn government, according to Timothy Naftali, a
historian who examined the documents. Two years later, Israeli agents
abducted Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel, where he was tried and
executed in 1962.”
As you may recall from the first quote at the top,
the year that the CIA learned the whereabouts of Adolf Eichman was 1958. This
was two years after the CIA had handed over the Gehlen Organization,
with Reinhard Gehlen running it, to the West Germans. So the “former Nazis in
the Bonn government” included the multitude of Nazis that the CIA had just
installed in West Germany to be its foreign intelligence service. Thus, what
we learn is that the CIA was protecting not only Adolf Eichmann, chief
architect of the Holocaust, but the CIA's own Nazis in West Germany.
By the way, given that the West Germans accepted the
Gehlen Organization from the CIA, it follows that the CIA’s pro-Nazi covert
operations in Europe, including in Germany, had been successful, and that
such forces were in power already in Germany in 1956, when the Gehlen
Organization became the West German foreign intelligence agency.[6]
Whitewashing the CIA’s Nazi history
_______________________________
It is certainly interesting that in this recent
article about the CIA protecting Adolf Eichmann, the New York Times never
mentions Simpson’s book. But I can establish that the New York Times is
aware of it. Here is an excerpt from the New York Times’ review of
historian Christopher Simpson’s investigation, the year that the book came
out:
“Christopher
Simpson’s ‘Blowback’ [documents] ... the recruitment of leftover Nazis and
Nazi henchmen after World War II for the incipient cold war. ...Some of these
people had tied their lot to Nazi Germany to pursue national and political
goals that had little to do with Hitler’s agenda, some had actively
collaborated with the Nazis and some, like Klaus Barbie [the ‘Butcher of
Lyons,’ head of the Gestapo in that city, and responsible for the deportation
of French Jews to the death camps, including many children, and the torture
and rape of Jewish women], were certifiable criminals.”[7]
The New York Times is obviously aware of
Christopher Simpson’s investigation. So why, in this latest article, does the
NYT not mention Christopher Simpson -- not even in passing?
One hypothesis is that the New York Times is
protecting the CIA.
In other words, if the NYT were to mention
Christopher Simpson’s meticulously documented investigation, some readers
might go look for this book in a library or buy it from Amazon, and then they
would learn that the CIA did not merely recruit some Nazis, as the latest NYT
article on Eichmann appears to imply, but that the CIA was created
essentially as a Nazi agency. They would also learn how this CIA immediately
set about corrupting the US press, the most important component of which is,
of course, the New York Times.[7a]
In support of my hypothesis that the New York
Times is protecting its boss, the CIA, I will point out that when the NYT
reviewed Christopher Simpson’s book in 1988, it likewise tried to apologize
for the CIA, and dramatically. That 1988 review began with the following
inoculation for any reader who might be tempted to conclude, on the basis of
Simpson’s documentation, that the ruling elite of the US is composed of people
with objectionable values:
“The Central
Intelligence Agency is a perennial object of fascination and revulsion, and
many a Marcos or Somoza has been recruited for the great struggle with the
devil Communism only to find himself discarded and
reviled for corrupting American ideals. But confusing as this ambivalent
behavior may seem, it is likely to continue as long as America remains an
insular and idealistic superpower intimately engaged in every corner of the
globe but separated from much of it by vast oceans.”
Notice: the CIA, the intelligence service of an
“idealistic superpower” was opposing “the devil.” Sometimes bad people, such
as Anastasio Somoza, were “recruited for the great struggle,” but they were
“discarded and reviled for corrupting American ideals.” The slant is very
clear.
The New York Times concludes its review of
Christopher Simpson’s investigation with an attack on Simpson for criticizing
the US government, claiming that Simpson “damages his own case by blurring
the distinction between the means and the end.” In other words, the
idealistic and well-meaning CIA recruited tens of thousands of Nazi war
criminals to do good, and so Simpson should
hardly be frowning on this effort.
This defense of the CIA requires that the New
York Times completely contradict the historical facts, and this should be
enough to make us skeptical of the NYT’s interpretation of the CIA as
propelled by lofty values. If such a case could honestly be made, after all,
it would be idiotic for the NYT to lie in order to defend it.
Let us take the very example that the NYT invokes:
US support for the Somoza regime in Nicaragua.
The US backed the brutal right-wing Somoza regime
(which it installed in power[8]) until the very end. And
beyond. The Somoza regime was deposed by the Sandinista movement in
1979 and the CIA immediately began training Somoza’s right-wing thugs,
turning them into the Contra terrorists. To get a sense for what the Contras
were like, consider this description:
“The Contras
have ambushed religious-aid workers, beheading a nun and riddling her body
with bullets. They have also eviscerated a pregnant woman, shot campesinos
(peasants) and slaughtered their animals, cut down Red Cross workers and
bombed towns with their schools and hospitals.”[9]
This was a continuation of the same terror that the
US-backed Somoza regime had directed against the same Nicaraguan peasants
when Somoza was in power. So the New York Times has simply lied: it is
false that Somoza’s repression contradicted the goals of the US ruling elite,
and it is false that the US government “discarded and reviled [Somoza] for
corrupting American ideals.” On the contrary, many sources report that
Franklin Delano Roosevelt once remarked about the first Somoza: “Somoza may
be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”[10] Whether he said it or not, one
thing is for certain: Somoza was indeed the US ruling elite’s son of a bitch,
and so was his son (who succeeded him, and who ruled Nicaragua until the
Sandinista movement threw the Somoza regime out).
So why does the New York Times pretend that
the US ruling elite suddenly discovered Somoza contradicting their supposed
values and discarded him, when the US ruling elite did no such thing? Because
the New York Times can. Most people do not have the time, motivation,
or energy to check whether the New York Times is baldly lying to them,
and it does not occur to them to check in the first place because most people
assume that what the New York Times says must be the truth. This is
why Historical and Investigative Research exists.
And the New York Times lies because it must.
Along with the rest of the Western mainstream media, the NYT has been
parading the terrorist in charge of creating the Contras, and in charge of
training the Contras in various techniques for slaughtering civilians,
Vincent Cannistraro, as a supposed counter-terrorism expert. The man
is a media darling, these days. Should the New York Times speak frankly
about US support for the Contras, somebody might notice the New York Times
applauding the man who created this terrorist force.
To learn more
____________
To learn more about Vincent Cannistraro, creator of
the terrorist Contra force, consult the following three HIR investigations:
“The mainstream Western media loves Raymond McGovern
and Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA agents and anti-Israeli propagandists”;
Historical and Investigative Research, 25 Aug 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot2.htm
“Should you believe ‘former CIA officials’ such as
Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro?”; Historical and Investigative
Research, 25 Aug 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot3.htm
“How the mass media covers for Vincent Cannistraro,
terrorist, and creator of the Nicaraguan Contras”; Historical and
Investigative Research, 25 Aug 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot4.htm
To learn more about the consequences of the creation
of the CIA, in the 1947 National Security Act, for freedom of the press,
consult:
“DID THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947 DESTROY
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?: The red pill”; Historical and Investigative Research;
3 January 2006; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/national-security.htm
To learn more about the CIA absorption of the Nazi
war criminal infrastructure, in its historical context, consult:
After 1945, the US created US Intelligence by
recruiting tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals; from “IS THE US AN ALLY
OF ISRAEL?: A chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and
Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm#1945
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Footnotes and Further Reading
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