Eagle and Swastika: CIA and Nazi War Criminals and Collaborators

Kevin Conley Ruffner

History Staff

Central Intelligence Agency

Washington, DC

April 2003

Eagle and Swastika: CIA and Nazi War Criminals and Collaborators examines the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with Nazis and their collaborators after World War II. It details the Agency's assistance to various US Government investigations, primarily by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation (OSI) and by the General Accounting Office (GAO), of dealings with Nazis from the 1970s to the present day. The study recounts the Agency's long involvement with Nazis — first as an enemy in World War II, then as a quasi-ally in the Cold War, and finally as the subjects of criminal investigations and prosecutions by Federal officials. 1 (U) As a secret, intelligence agency in an open democratic society, historians, journalists, and politicians have long suspected the Central Intelligence Agency of maintaining clandestine relations with Nazis and non-Germans who aided the Third Reich. 2 The story of escaped Nazis after the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 has long gripped novelists and Hollywood screenwriters, as seen by such bestsellers and subsequent box office hits as The Salzburg Connection, The Boys from Brazil, Marathon Man, and The ODESSA File. 3 Since the 1970s, the topic has also proven steady fare for historians and journalists. 4 (U)

