Report shows how U.S. used Nazis after WWII

Newly released records reveal details on how U.S. intelligence officials used and protected some Nazi Gestapo agents after World War II, tracked Holocaust administrator Adolf Eichmann and relied on a suspected war criminal from Ukraine living in New York to try to disrupt the USSR, according to a report to Congress obtained by The Associated Press.

"Hitler's Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War" was written by historians hired by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

The report draws from an unprecedented trove of records on individuals and clandestine operations that the CIA was persuaded to declassify, and from more than 1 million digitized Army intelligence files that had long been inaccessible.

"The CIA records give us a much better picture of the movements of Nazi war criminals in the postwar period," said Richard Breitman, of the American University in Washington, D.C., who co-authored the report with Norman J.W. Goda, of the University of Florida.

The historians were able to work on the report after Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) requested in a 2009 appropriations bill that the National Archives complete the review of recently declassified CIA and Army Intelligence documents.

CIA spokesman George Little said Friday: "The CIA at no time had a policy or a program to protect Nazi war criminals, or to help them escape justice for their actions during the war."

The records answer some questions about Eichmann's movements before he was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence in 1960 and spirited away to be prosecuted for his crimes, the report said.

"They show what the West knew about Eichmann's criminality and his postwar movements. No American intelligence agency aided Eichmann's escape or simply allowed him to hide safely," the report said. - AP