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6. CIA evacuated Nazi war criminals through "rat lines" in Southern Europe, allowing these people to escape justice by relocating them incognito in South America.
7. CIA abused its legal authority to bring Soviet and Soviet Bloc defectors and other persons of interest to the United States.
8. CIA covered up these activities from Congressional and other Federal government investigators. (U)
The Agency's involvement with Nazis and their collaborators as well as the impact that these relationships had on both American foreign and domestic policies is the subject of numerous books and articles over the years. In his 1988 book, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, Christopher Simpson asserts that:
US intelligence agencies did know - or had good reason to suspect—that many contract agents that they hired during the cold war had committed crimes against humanity on behalf of the Nazis. The CIA, the State Department, and US Army intelligence each created special programs for the specific purpose of bringing selected former Nazis and collaborators to the United States. Other projects protected such people by placing them on US payroll overseas.[1] (U)
Simpson believes that the US Government's willingness to work with some of the Third Reich's worst elements "did contribute to the influence of some of the most reactionary trends in American political life."[2] (U)
Allan A. Ryan, Jr., a former director of Office of Special Investigations (OSI), is skeptical about claims that American intelligence deliberately brought Nazi war criminals to the United States. While he acknowledges that the government assisted in the
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