Focus VS.-Nazi Link Revealed Declassified documents shed light on U.S. ties with former Nazi criminals. Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington have the A Detroit Jewish News delivered to your door every Thursday 248.351.5171, visit www.JNonline.us call (click the subscribe link) or fill out and mail the form below 1 year@$56 2 years @$88 bill me L payment enclosed charge my Visa MasterCard exp date card # signature(required) phone# name street address state city zip email address I would like to be contacted about special offers and/or sending a gift subscription mail to: Detroit Jewish News • PO Box 2267 • Southfield MI 48,034-2267 Please allow 2-3 weeks to begin delivery. In-state subscriptions only. Out of state price $75 for 1 year, $132 for 2 years. JN t--- JEWISHOSPICE The * & CHAPLAINCY NETWORK - SALUTES ANOTHER HOSPICE HERO Merle Schwartz has gone above and beyond the call of volunteer duty time and again during her adult life. Yet nothing has touched the retired educational consultant more than the hands-on work she does with the terminally ill through the Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy Network. "Nobody should have to ever be alone," she says. "Many of my patients are lonely and isolated and just want someone to listen to them." Merle enjoys most meeting patients and hearing about their lives. "I have learned so much from them. I wish there was more time so I could learn more." Merle Schwartz is a .11-1CN volunteer and one of the Hospice Heroes 1010 0 J 78 elINIIreS No Jew Is Ever Alone June 15 2006 IN 6555 W. Maple Rd. • West Bloomfield, MI 48322 248.592.2687 • www.jewishhospice.org 2,20040 former Nazi rose to the high- est ranks of a Western intel- ligence agency — and was a Soviet mole. A lead to Adolf Eichmann was ignored. A spy's lies made him useless, but he escaped prosecution for war crimes. These are among the revelations found among 8 million pages of docu- ments released June 6 that deal with German and Japanese war crimes, including 27,000 pages that detail the relationship after World War II between U.S. government agencies and sus- pected Nazis war criminals. "Using very bad people can have very bad consequences',' Elizabeth Holtzman, a former U.S. congresswom- an -and a member of the Interagency Working Group that released the docu- ments, said at a news conference June 6 at the National Archives. The group was established in 1999 to declassify rooms full of documents related to Nazi war crimes. The mandate was later extended to Japanese war crimes. There is a pointed message as well for a United States currently at war with a terrorist enemy, speakers said. Considering human rights issues in recruiting spies "may not only be the right thing to do, but the wise thing to do',' Holtzman said. "We may want to understand this as a nation before we plunge ahead to repeat the mistakes of the past." The release of documents came eight years after Congress passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act requiring agencies to provide the information. Four historians who examined the documents outlined cases in which the active U.S. and Western recruitment of former Nazis was questionable at best and disastrous at worst. One of the most outstanding failures, outlined by historian Norman Goda of Ohio University, was Heinz Felfe, an SS officer who rose through the ranks of West Germany's Gehlen organization to become its counterintelligence chief in 1955. The Gehlen organization, an anti- Soviet spy agency headed by Richard Gehlen, a former German general during World War II, was a magnet for ex-Nazis who wanted U.S. sanction; the organization was sponsored by the United States. Felfe was exposed as a Soviet spy in 1961, but not before he had done considerable damage, some revealed for the first time in the papers released this month. For instance, Felfe success- fully advocated for greater cooperation between the Gehlen group and the CIA, which made him "the West German official most knowledgeable about CIA operations in Eastern Europe:' accord- ing to Goda. He was consequently able to sabo- tage one of the CIWs most important spy operations, against the KGB base in East Germany. The CIA subsequently estimated that Felfe had compromised 15,000 items. In another instance documented by Timothy Naftali of the University of Virginia, the CIA learned as early as 1958 that Eichmann, the architect of the destruction of European Jewry, was living in Argentina under the alias "Clemens:" In fact, Eichmann's alias was "Klement',' but that was close enough to have led to his capture, Naftali con- cludes in his study. The CIA refrained from action because of its policy of not pursuing Nazi war criminals. Some members of the working group, which in addition to historians, includes presidential appointees and representatives of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, said there was another message in the release of the materials that was relevant for the cur- rent government: the price of keeping too many secrets. The CIA was insisting on a literal interpretation of the law, and wanted to confine requests for papers to known war criminals, and not to others sus- pected of Nazi affiliation. Intervention from Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who had sponsored the legislation creating the working group, persuaded the agency to back down last year. Another factor in the release was the appointment in 2004 of Rep. Porter Goss as CIA director. He mandated greater openness. ❑