June 6



USA:

CIA papers: U.S. failed to pursue Nazi----West Germany gave location of
Eichmann, historian says


The United States was told the location and approximate alias of Nazi war
criminal Adolf Eichmann more than two years before his capture but did
nothing to pursue him, according to CIA documents released Tuesday.

The release of the latest set of intelligence records is part of an
ongoing effort to declassify documents as part of the Nazi War Criminals
Disclosure Act of 1998.

Eichmann, mastermind of the "final solution" to exterminate Jews, was
captured by Israel and executed in 1962.

However, in 1958 the West German intelligence service informed the CIA
that Eichmann was living in Argentina using the alias Clemens, University
of Virginia historian Timothy Naftali said the newly released CIA
materials indicate.

The West Germans did not want to see Eichmann captured because they feared
what he might say about Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's national security
adviser, Hans Globke, Naftali said.

Globke had served in the Jewish Affairs department of the Nazi government
during World War II and was involved in writing laws designed to remove
Jews from German society.

"The CIA, which worked closely with Globke, assisted the West Germans in
protecting him from Eichmann," said Naftali.

Eichmann remained at large until May 1960, when the Israeli government
discovered his whereabouts and captured him in Argentina, where he was
living under the name Klement.

Israeli agents kidnapped him from his Argentine hideout and smuggled him
to Israel, where he was tried, convicted and hanged in 1962.

The Eichmann revelation is one of several outlined by historians who are
working with members of the Interagency Working Group responsible for
locating, declassifying and releasing U.S. documents related to Nazi war
crimes.

In another case, Ohio University historian Norman Goda discussed records
showing how former Nazi SS intelligence officer Heinz Felfe, who was
recruited by the Soviet KGB after the war, was able to join the West
German intelligence service set up by the United States. He eventually
rose to become chief of the division responsible for surveillance of the
Soviets, the records show.

"He was no common mole," Goda said in a press briefing at the National
Archives Building. Felfe was in charge of operations against the Soviets
while "he took his orders from the Soviets."

Goda said Felfe caused "massive damage ... as large an intelligence
disaster as occurred during the Cold War."

Unlike previous releases, the documents made available Tuesday were
largely unredacted.

The interagency group credited former CIA Director Porter Goss for
changing the level of cooperation and allowing the release of documents.

The group, chaired by Steven Garfinkel of the National Archives and
Records Administration, expects to complete its declassification efforts
early next year.

"We are not yet done, but we are continuing with the important work of
finding out what was done in the past so we can learn from it for the
future," said one of the 1998 bill's co-sponsors, Republican Sen. Mike
DeWine of Ohio, at Tuesday's briefing, according to prepared remarks.

The group includes representatives from eight federal agencies and three
public members. Since 1999, the group says, it has overseen the release of
some 8 million pages of U.S. government records related to crimes
committed by the Nazi and Japanese governments during World War II.

(source: CNN)





CANADA:

Canada's Nazis not leaving----Slow system fails to deport them; 'Time is
passing; this is last chance'


In spite of substantial efforts to bring suspected Nazi war criminals to
justice, Canada's system for deporting them is a "travesty," says the
director of Jerusalem's Simon Wiesenthal Center, the leading organization
for pursuing and prosecuting those who took part in the crimes of the
Holocaust.

"The problem is that the system is not streamlined," said the centre's
chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff.

"For the past few years, eight cases against war criminals have been won
by the government, they have been stripped of their citizenship, but with
delay after delay, the government has not succeeded in kicking them out of
the country."

Zuroff was in Toronto yesterday en route to Ottawa, where he will present
the centre's sixth annual report on the worldwide investigation and
prosecution of Nazi war criminals. He will also attend the launch of its
"Operation: Last Chance" project, which offers financial rewards for
information that facilitates the prosecution and punishment of Holocaust
perpetrators.

"It's the end of the hunt, and the end of the possibility of justice,"
Zuroff said. "What people have to understand is that everyone guilty of
those crimes should pay for them, even if it is 60 years after the event.
But time is passing, and this really is the last chance."

But the centre's report which grades three dozen countries that were the
site of war crimes, or took in war criminals after World War II gave
Canada a mediocre "C" grade for its efforts, along with Australia,
Germany, Hungary, Latvia and Poland. Countries in that category, it said,
had "minimal success that could have been greater," and "additional steps
are urgently required."

The U.S. won top marks for its success in convicting and deporting Nazi
war criminals, just ahead of Croatia, Lithuania and Italy, while some
European countries were given a failing grade, including Austria, Norway,
Romania and Sweden.

The report said that in the past year there was a dramatic 320 per cent
upswing in the investigation and prosecution of suspected war criminals,
which continues in 15 countries, including Canada, where there are 265
ongoing cases.

During the year, 16 convictions were obtained worldwide, a dramatic rise
over five in the previous year. The number of indictments of suspects also
rose to eight, from five in the previous year.

Zuroff said that Nazi hunters are now in a race with time, as suspected
war criminals age and die. The youngest are in their late 70s, and some
are in their 90s. Yet, he said, "there are probably at least 10,000 of
those war criminals still at large."

War criminals are often beneficiaries of "misplaced sympathy," because
they are elderly and have lived in their countries of residence for many
years, Zuroff said.

In Canada, "appeals are fine, but at a certain point you're bending over
backward to help people who are guilty."

To let war criminals escape because so much time has elapsed is creating
an "artificial limit on justice," Zuroff said. And he added, "trials are
the best education to prevent future genocides."

Members of Ottawa's War Crimes Program were unavailable for comment
yesterday.

A policy statement says "the Canadian government is unequivocal: Canada is
not and will not become a safe haven for persons involved in war crimes,
crimes against humanity or other reprehensible acts regardless of when or
where they occurred."

The first war criminal to be tried by Canadian military authorities,
Major-General Kurt Meyer of the Nazi SS, was sentenced to death in 1946,
but eventually served nine years in prison, dying in 1961.

(source: Toronto Star)