The Central Intelligence Agency admitted for the first time on September 20 that a high-ranking Nazi general placed his spy ring at the disposal of the US government during the early days of the Cold War.
A press release by the US National Archives stated that the CIA had filed an affidavit in a US District Court "acknowledging an intelligence relationship with German General Reinhard Gehlen that it has kept secret for 50 years".
"The CIA's announcement marks the first acknowledgement by that agency that it had any relationship with Gehlen and opens the way for declassification of records about the relationship", the National Archives statement said.
Gehlen was Adolf Hitler's general in charge of intelligence operations on the eastern front during the second world war. His spies' activities contributed to the deaths of millions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. While Gehlen's relationship with US intelligence during the 1940s and 1950s has been the topic of several books over the years, the US has steadfastly refused to admit that it allowed Hitler's fascist spy network to transfer to its payroll.
Gehlen's network of Nazi spies in Europe — including many who were smuggled out of prisoner of war camps by US intelligence officers — was known as the Gehlen Organisation and received millions of dollars in funding from the US until 1956.
The CIA's acknowledgement of its dealings with Gehlen came in a response to a Freedom of Information Act appeal by researcher Carl Oglesby, the National Archives said. The agency pledged to release its records on the general in accordance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
The act established the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, which for more than two years has been declassifying documents related to World War II war crimes and releasing them through the National Archives.
BY NORM DIXON