The Eagle and the Swastika: A Secret History of the CIA, Nazi War Criminals and Collaborators

Historians, journalists, and politicians have long suspected the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of maintaining clandestine relations with Nazis and non-Germans who aided the Third Reich. 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. During the first three decades after the war, however, the presence of former Nazis and their collaborators in the United States generated little interest from the American public, and even less from the federal government. This book explores criticism of the Agency and its role, including that the CIA: - Employed German intelligence personnel as sources of information. - Sponsored the Gehlen Organization, the new West German intelligence service, whose ranks sheltered many officers of the German SS and SD whose loyalty to the new government remained in doubt. - Employed former collaborators of the Third Reich, primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe, initially as sources of information and later as the operational assets for activities behind the Iron Curtain. - Brought German and Eastern European individuals to the United States to provide detailed information on the Soviet Union. - Formed “secret armies” from various émigré groups in Europe and trained them in the United States, groups which included numerous former collaborators of Nazi Germany and some of whom remained active in other CIA projects. - Evacuated Nazi war criminals through “rat lines” in Southern Europe, allowing them to escape justice by relocating them incognito in South America. - Abused its legal authority to bring Soviet and Soviet Bloc defectors and other persons of interest to the United States. - Covered up these activities from congressional and other federal government investigators. The Eagle and the Swastika examines the CIA's role in the years after Nazi Germany’s collapse. The book 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.