U.S. Confirms Its Agencies Employed, Aided Ex-Nazis

The Justice Department said Thursday it has confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies often employed former high-level Nazis as informants in the years after World War II and sometimes even helped them avoid prosecution for their war crimes.

In a 92-page report compiled after a two-year investigation, the department’s Office of Special Investigations documented a case in which Robert Jan Verbelen, a convicted Nazi war criminal now living in Austria, “manipulated” the Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) into providing him with significant help in escaping punishment for his crimes. Verbelen served as a CIC informant from 1946 to 1956.

The report cited the cases of 13 others who were on the CIC payroll in Austria but did not disclose their names because of security regulations. It said that in some instances the Army took steps to protect the informants from arrest.

The investigation was conducted as a fact-finding exercise at the request of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The report is the first to document in detail the relationship between the war criminals and the U.S. agencies.

Neal Sher, director of the Office of Special Investigations and the Justice Department’s chief Nazi hunter, told a news conference there was no doubt that the practice was a direct consequence of the intense competition that developed among Allied intelligence services at the start of the Cold War.

Sher said the fact that in many such cases U.S. intelligence agencies did not know their informants’ true identities “suggested a sloppiness” on the part of some U.S. agents. “In many instances,” he said, “they were just taken for a ride.”

Sher said the department is not planning to prosecute the informants it cited or to seek their extradition. The laws of Austria, where Verbelen is now living, prohibit the extradition of its citizens.

Wants Case Reopened

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, hailed Thursday’s report as “landmark in its scope and shocking in its revelations.” He called on the Austrian government to reopen the case and “bring Verbelen to account for his crimes.”

The Justice Department report said that Verbelen, a Belgian who escaped to Austria at the end of World War II, was tried in absentia by a Belgian court and convicted in 1947 of having murdered 101 people while he was commander of a Flemish fascist security corps. After escaping to Austria, he assumed another name.

The report said that although the CIC employed Verbelen as an informant for 10 years, it did not learn his true identity until 1956. It then dismissed him but classified him as “suitable for intelligence reemployment” so that he could work for a West European intelligence agency.

Ultimately Verbelen joined the Austrian State Police, which recommended him for Austrian citizenship in 1959. The report said neither of the two CIC units that employed Verbelen had ever investigated his background.

The report said the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of Verbelen’s identity and knew of his war crimes conviction, but did not tell CIC officers until Verbelen himself disclosed the information.

Among the 13 other ex-Nazis who were employed as CIC informants, the report also cited the case of a former major in the SS known as Informant M.

U.S. authorities arrested Informant M after the war and turned him over to the British, who in turn transferred him to the Austrians. The CIC eventually hired the man as an agent, only to learn that he was also working for the British and French--while actually serving the Soviet Union.

It said the case of Informant M “exemplifies the danger entailed in trusting a former Nazi and SS officer to be loyal to the United States out of hatred for the Soviets.”