Adolf Eichmann CIA Files

Description

Eichmann, the CIA, and the Shadow of the Holocaust

Detailed Timeline of Events:

• Pre-World War II: Karl Adolf Eichmann works with Otto von Bolschwing in Austria, planning the expropriation of Jewish property.
• World War II:Karl Adolf Eichmann becomes a pivotal participant in the deportation of European Jewry during the Holocaust, holding the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer.
• Otto von Bolschwing serves as the SS consultant to the forces that staged the bloody pogrom in Bucharest, Romania in 1941.
• Wilhelm Hoettl and Kurt Becher see and talk to Eichmann at the last RSHA Amt IV evacuation station in Bad Aussee, Austria, during the closing days of the war.
• End of World War II (1945):Eichmann is in American custody.
• Wilhelm Hoettl provides information to CIC interrogators.
• Kurt Becher provides information to CIC interrogators, successfully portraying himself as a “white hat” among the SS.
• Four-power negotiations in the summer lead to the London Charter establishing the Nuremberg trials, with Robert Jackson emphasizing the need for universal legal standards.
• 1946: Eichmann escapes from American custody.
• Post-War Period (Late 1940s – 1950s):The emerging Cold War shifts the focus of the United States, with resources and attention directed towards the Soviet Union, sometimes at the expense of locating and punishing Nazi war criminals.
• Eichmann lives in Argentina under the name Ricardo Klement and works with Dutch writer Willem Sassen to prepare a memoir about his escape.
• Late 1949: The CIA hires former SS officer Otto von Bolschwing.
• Early 1950: Austrian police begin asking questions about Otto von Bolschwing. The CIA decides to protect him from war crimes trials by denying access to his SS personnel file.
• 1953: The CIA pressures the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to allow Otto von Bolschwing to enter the United States in recognition of his work for U.S. intelligence.
• 1950s: The CIA recruits at least five of Eichmann’s associates and approaches at least 23 war criminals or Nazis for recruitment, prioritizing intelligence gathering during the Cold War.
• The CIA and its predecessor agencies (SSU and CIG) along with the Army’s CIC investigate rumors about Eichmann’s whereabouts, mainly based on hearsay and unsubstantiated claims.
• Late 1959: The CIA seriously enters the chase for Adolf Eichmann. They believe he might be in Egypt.
• May 1960: Israeli agents locate and abduct Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and transport him to Israel. This event surprises the CIA and refocuses public attention on Nazi war criminals who had evaded justice. CIA Director Allen Dulles demands more information about the capture.
• Summer 1960:CIA agents interrogate former RSHA colleagues of Eichmann in Argentina.
• The CIA becomes concerned that Argentina might bring the Israeli kidnapping before the United Nations Security Council. The US mediates a compromise to prevent this.
• Chief of the Ludwigsburg Central Office for Prosecution of Nazi Crimes, Dr. Erwin Schuele, comes to Washington seeking evidence against 1,200 Nazis, including Eichmann, whom West Germany had already indicted. Robert Wolfe of the American Historical Association is instructed to provide direct references from captured RSHA records.
• Israeli prosecutors preparing their case against Eichmann also request information from the captured RSHA records, which the CIA provides without attribution.
• The West German government is wary of exposing Eichmann, fearing what he might reveal about former Nazi officials like Hans Globke, a top national security advisor to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
• At the request of West Germany, the CIA persuades Life magazine to delete a reference to Hans Globke from Eichmann’s memoir before publication.
• CIA agents express concern about the “bona fides and intentions” of the West German investigators led by Dr. Schuele.
• 1960: Adolf Eichmann is rigorously interrogated by Israeli authorities in Israel.
• 1962: Adolf Eichmann is tried and executed in Israel.
• 1970s: The U.S. Congress forces an examination of U.S. policy toward Nazi war criminals, leading to the creation of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the Department of Justice.
• Post-1970s:The OSI investigates Otto von Bolschwing and eventually strips him of his U.S. citizenship. The CIA never turned him in to law enforcement.
• Kurt Ponger, a U.S. Military Government official, is convicted of supplying information to East Germany.
• Speculation arises that Eichmann, like Hitler, wrote his memoirs while in his Jerusalem cell.
• 1982: Otto von Bolschwing dies.
• 1997: Kevin C. Ruffner publishes an article “CIA’s Support to the Nazi War Criminal Investigations” in the CIA’s internal journal Studies in Intelligence, noting the CIA’s surprise at Eichmann’s capture in 1960.
• 2006: Much of the CIA files covering Adolf Eichmann are released to the public.

Cast of Characters and Brief Bios:

• Adolf Eichmann (1906 – 1962): A German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) who became the most pivotal participant in the deportation of European Jewry during the Holocaust. After WWII, he escaped American custody, lived in Argentina under the alias Ricardo Klement, was abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried in Israel, and executed in 1962.
• Otto von Bolschwing: A former SS officer who worked with Eichmann before the war on the expropriation of Jewish property in Austria and later served as the SS consultant for the 1941 pogrom in Bucharest. He was hired by the CIA in late 1949 and protected by the agency from war crimes prosecution. He was allowed to immigrate to the US and became a citizen, but was later stripped of his citizenship following an investigation by the Office of Special Investigations.
• Willem Sassen: A Dutch writer who worked with Adolf Eichmann in Argentina to prepare a memoir of sorts detailing Eichmann’s escape from Germany.
• Telford Taylor: A former Nuremberg prosecutor who publicly advocated that Adolf Eichmann be tried by an international tribunal rather than an Israeli court. This stance led to criticism from some, including an unnamed CIA agent who labeled him a “comsymp” or dupe.
• Wilhelm Hoettl: A former SS officer who provided information to CIC interrogators in 1945-46. He saw and spoke to Eichmann in the final days of WWII and later made a living by peddling hearsay.
• Kurt Becher: A former SS officer who also provided information to CIC interrogators in 1945-46. He successfully portrayed himself as a “white hat” within the SS.
• Robert Jackson: The U.S. Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. During the negotiations for the London Charter, he emphasized the importance of applying legal standards universally.
• Erwin Schuele: The chief of the Ludwigsburg Central Office for Prosecution of Nazi Crimes (Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen). In the summer of 1960, he sought evidence in Washington against 1,200 Nazis, including Eichmann.
• Robert Wolfe: An analyst for the American Historical Association who was preparing guides to the captured RSHA records. He was instructed to provide direct references to Dr. Schuele and later provided information to Israeli prosecutors. He also wrote an essay analyzing the CIA’s role in the search for Eichmann.
• Hans Globke: A former Nazi government official who was serving as a top national security advisor to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1960. The West German government was concerned that Eichmann might reveal damaging information about him.
• Konrad Adenauer: The Chancellor of West Germany in 1960. His government was wary of Eichmann’s potential revelations about former Nazi officials.
• Allen Dulles: The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1960. He was surprised by Eichmann’s capture by the Israelis and demanded that his officers gather more information about it.
• Edward Kennedy: A U.S. Senator who wrote a letter to the American Ambassador in Damascus regarding Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, a close associate of Eichmann.
• Alois Brunner: A close associate of Adolf Eichmann and a Nazi war criminal.
• Kurt Ponger: A U.S. Military Government official who was convicted of supplying information to East Germany. His case is mentioned in the Eichmann files.
• Kevin C. Ruffner: A historian who was serving on CIA’s History Staff. He authored an article in the CIA’s internal journal Studies in Intelligence about the CIA’s support for Nazi war criminal investigations, noting the agency’s surprise at Eichmann’s capture

Adolf Eichmann CIA Files

1,449 pages of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Files covering Adolf Eichmann.

Of the 1,449 pages, approximately 1,135 are discernible. They include English and German language material. Much of the materiel was not released by the CIA until 2006.

Documents in these files illustrate how the CIA and its predecessor agencies (the Strategic Services Unit and the Central Intelligence Group), as well as the Army’s CIC, went about investigating rumors about Eichmann’s whereabouts, mainly from hearsay and unsubstantiated assertions. The CIA did not seriously enter the chase for Eichmann until late 1959, but Israeli agents located him in Argentina first and spirited him out to Israel for trial. The file contains a vituperative diatribe by an unnamed CIA agent or source against former Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor, who he termed a “comsymp” or dupe because he publicly advocated that Eichmann be tried by an international tribunal, rather than an Israeli court.

Karl Adolf Eichmann (1906 – 1962) was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel). He became the most pivotal participant in the deportation of European Jewry during the Holocaust. After the end of World War II, he found himself in American custody. However, in 1946 he escaped. In 1960, Israeli agents abducted Eichmann in Argentina and flew him to Israel, where he was tried and executed in 1962.

Today, the world knows a great deal about Adolf Eichmann’s escape from Europe after the war. While he was living in Argentina under the name of Ricardo Klement, Eichmann worked with the Dutch writer Willem Sassen to prepare a memoir of sorts. In it Eichmann talks extensively about his escape from Germany. After Israeli agents brought Eichmann to Israel in 1960, the authorities interrogated him rigorously. The newer American declassifications found in this collection fill in some gaps. They show what the West knew about Eichmann’s criminality and his postwar movements. They show that no American intelligence agency aided Eichmann’s escape or simply allowed him to hide safely in Argentina.

The CIA and Nazi War Criminals

After World War II, the emerging struggle with the Soviet Union dominated the resources and attention of the United States, even at the expense of the task of locating and punishing war criminals. The May 1960 Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann, however, refocused public attention on those men who had managed to elude justice in the chaos of the immediate postwar period. For the CIA, this unexpected event would force a re-examination of some of the former Nazis it had recruited in the rush to produce intelligence results during the Cold War in the 1950s. CIA records show that at least five of Eichmann’s associates, each a significant participant in Hitler’s aggressive warfare and crimes against humanity, had worked for the CIA. Additionally, the records reveal that at least 23 war criminals or Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment.

In early 1950, the Austrian police began asking questions about Otto von Bolschwing, a former SS officer hired by the CIA in late 1949. Bolschwing’s SS personnel file had been among those captured at the end of the war. To protect this agent from any war crimes trial, however, the CIA decided that any prosecutors who asked for Bolschwing’s SS personnel file should be told, “no files available.” Bolschwing had worked with Eichmann before the war in planning the expropriation of Jewish property in Austria and later served as the SS consultant to the forces that staged the bloody pogrom in Bucharest, Romania in 1941. In 1953, in recognition of Bolschwing’s work for U.S. intelligence, the CIA pressured the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to let him enter the country. He later became a U.S. citizen. When the U.S. Congress in the 1970s forced an examination of U.S. policy toward Nazi war criminals, creating at the time the Office of Special Investigations in the Department of Justice, Boschwing was investigated and then stripped of his citizenship. OSI found Bolschwing on its own. The CIA never turned him in to law enforcement. He died in 1982.

Adolf Eichmann’s CIA Name File

CIA name files are rarely opened to the public. The files contain information from diverse sources on individuals the CIA considers significant. They include published materials, declassified documents, interrogations, confidential reports from agents or informants, and CIA analytical reports.

Eichmann’s file contains basic information about the man and his career in Nazi Germany, much from captured German records. Documents in this file mainly illustrate how the CIA and its predecessor agencies, the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), as well as the Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), went about investigating rumors about Eichmann’s whereabouts and postwar activities, mainly from hearsay and unsubstantiated assertions; the file also contains copies of newspaper and magazine articles.

Eichmann was purportedly in Egypt when the CIA entered the chase late in the game, toward the end of 1959. When Eichmann was accurately rumored to be in Argentina, CIA agents interrogated presumably knowledgeable persons, i.e., Eichmann’s former Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) colleagues. Eager to ingratiate themselves, they gladly peddled hearsay to their uninformed interrogators. Two persons had given some substantial information in 1945-46 to CIC interrogators: Wilhelm Hoettl, who made his postwar living peddling hearsay to the conquerors; and Kurt Becher, who successfully passed himself off as the “white hat” among the SS. These two had at least seen and talked to Eichmann at the last RSHA Amt IV (Gestapo) evacuation station at Bad Aussee in Austria during the closing days of the Second World War.

The CIA was interested particularly in how Eichmann was captured. A series of documents reflect United States concern that Argentina was threatening to bring the Israeli kidnapping of Eichmann before the United Nations Security Council. This was successfully forestalled by an American-mediated compromise.

In the summer of 1960, CIA agents were particularly concerned with the bona fides and intentions of three West German investigators, headed by the chief of the Ludwigsburg Central Office for Prosecution of Nazi Crimes (Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen), Dr. Erwin Schuele. He came to Washington seeking evidence against some 1,200 Nazis, including Eichmann, whom the Federal Republic of Germany had already indicted as war criminals to forestall inhibition of their prosecution by the long-standing West German 20-year statute of limitations. An analyst for the American Historical Association, Robert Wolfe, who was preparing guides to the captured RSHA records, was instructed to provide direct references to Dr. Schuele. When Israeli prosecutors preparing their case against Eichmann also requested this information, CIA investigators passed it on without attribution.

Also among the documents in the CIA’s file on Eichmann are 334 pages of German Foreign Ministry files (Auswartiges Amt: Inland II Geheim Endloesung), which include the 15-page, so-called Wannsee Protokoll. This file, not yet discovered during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, was released in the course of the American zonal trial of German Foreign Ministry defendants.

Also reflected in the Eichmann file are some difficulties with the International Tracing Service (ITS), which at first blocked access to its Eichmann files on grounds of protecting privacy of victims, a practice which inadvertently protected culprits. ITS, by then an agency of the International Red Cross, was the successor of the United Nations Rescue and Relief Agency (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization from which it derived its records, which was set up to trace the whereabouts of missing persons. After some persuasion, however, ITS did make its Eichmann material available.

A disturbing item in the Eichmann file is a vituperative diatribe against Nuremberg prosecutor and later author Telford Taylor by a patently biased CIA agent or informant. He dubbed Taylor a “comsymp” or dupe because Taylor had publicly advocated that Eichmann be tried by an international tribunal rather than an Israeli court. Some accused Taylor of anti-Semitism for this recommendation. But he was following precedent. During the four-power negotiations in the summer of 1945 which culminated in the London Charter establishing the Nuremberg trials, U.S. chief prosecutor Robert Jackson had demonstrated that he was not prepared “to lay down a rule of conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Taylor liked the notion of international standards that applied to everyone, including the United States.

One item in the Eichmann files supplies information on U.S. Military Government official Kurt Ponger, who was convicted of supplying information to East Germany. A document of interest discusses speculation that Eichmann, like Hitler at Landsberg Prison, was writing his memoirs in his Jerusalem cell.

Other items of interest include:

Documents showing that The West German government was wary of exposing Eichmann because officials feared what he might reveal that Hans Globke, then serving as a top national security adviser to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, was a former Nazi government official.

In 1960, also at the request of West Germany, the C.I.A. persuaded Life magazine, which had purchased Eichmann’s memoir from his family, to delete a reference to Mr. Globke before publication, the documents show.

Documents detailing the capture of Eichmann by Israel.

Senator Edward Kennedy Letter to the American Ambassador in Damascus on Nazi War Criminal Alois Brunner, a close associate of Eichmann.

Captured SS Documents and a Hand-Written Letter Signed by Eichmann.

Source: National Archives and Records Administration

Additional material includes:

“CIAs Support to the Nazi War Criminal Investigations” – Published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency. An article by Kevin C. Ruffner, who was serving on CIA?s History in the CIA’s internal journal, from the issue Studies in Intelligence, Volume 40, No. 5, Semiannual Edition, 1997, No. 1. Documents show that the CIA was surprised in May 1960 when the Israelis captured Eichmann. Cables from the time show that Allen Dulles, the CIA director, demanded that officers find out more about the capture.

“The CIA and Adolf Eichmann – Worldwide Media Bit on an Erroneous Sound Bite” – An essay by Robert Wolfe a National Archives and Records Administration former employee, and who at the time this essay was written, an independent contract historian with the Interagency Working Group (The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group). In the essay he gives his analysis of the CIA place in the search for Adolf Eichmann.