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CIA to Detail Cold War Ties to Former Nazis

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From Reuters

The CIA, under pressure from Congress, has agreed in principle to release new documents detailing its ties to former Nazis who aided U.S. Cold War espionage against the Soviet Union, officials said Sunday.

Facing demands for public testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, CIA officials have conceded that records on former Nazis who have not been accused of war crimes, including members of the German SS, should be subject to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, the officials said.

“This means the information we thought would come out when we wrote the law will now come out,” said Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), who co-wrote the disclosure legislation.

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The CIA, which had no immediate comment, has released about 1.25 million pages of documents about Nazi war criminals in compliance with the disclosure act, which requires government agencies to divulge records of war criminals to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.

The CIA had refused to disclose documents on former Nazis who had not been targeted as war criminals. Members of the working group and U.S. lawmakers contend the law applies to any individual who belonged to an organization guilty of war crimes.

The records at issue include hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, including material on CIA dealings with former members of the Nazi party and the German SS, who joined the allied Cold War effort against the Soviet Union in Europe, congressional officials said.

The CIA’s position changed last week after DeWine, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded that CIA Director Porter J. Goss appear before the panel to provide a public explanation of his agency’s refusal to disclose the records.

DeWine is expected to seek a two-year extension for the working group, which had been scheduled to dissolve at the end of March.

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