US Aided "Butcher of Lyon", Klaus Barbie to Escape

It was known amongst students of modern history and intelligence circles that the United States aided and abetted Nazi war criminals for its own purposes after World War II. Now two government reports, one from the Department of Justice and another from the National Archives confirm in detail the extent of US-Nazi collaboration in the aftermath of the Cold War. The United States created a safe haven for high level Nazis that could be put to use by the US  against the Soviet Union in counterespionage or technical endeavors. The Justice Department strove for four years to keep its report secret.  Ironically, one of the justifications used by the United States for the invasion of Afghanistan was the Taliban's creation of a safe haven for international terrorists. A scholar on the subject of the laws of war, law professor and former JAG officer, Jordan J. Paust, says the United States clearly violated its constitutional and international treaty obligations by giving aid to Nazi war criminals.

One of the most prominent of these perpetrators was Klaus Barbie [photo], known as the Butcher of Lyon for his torture of prisoners including Jean Moulin, a high ranking member of the French Resistance. He is thought to be responsible for the death of up to 4,000 people. Barbie became an agent for the US Army Counterintelligence Corps in 1947, and escaped to Argentina using a "rat line" organized by US intelligence. Barbie died in jail serving a life sentence after a public trial in France in 1977. The war time background of former UN Secretary-General and Austria President Kurt Waldheim became publicly known in 1986, however the OSS knew of his alleged Nazi connections from the time he turned himself in to British forces occupying southern Austria at the end of the war. Waldheim maintained his innocence of any war crimes to his death.

The US intelligence effort to infiltrate the East German Communist Party, "Project Happiness" (largely a failure) included other Nazi criminals such Rudolf Mildner, responsible for the execution of thousands of suspected Polish resisters. Mildner escaped from an internment camp in 1946, probably because of lenient treatment by American officials according to the National Archives report, "Hitlers Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence and the Cold War". The CIA moved to protect Mykola Lebed, a Ukrainian fascist leader, from a criminal investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He worked for US intelligence throughout the 1980's despite being "a well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans". Only a few known Nazi collaborators have ever deported or extradited for prosecution abroad by the United States. Former prison guards, John Demjanjuk ("Ivan the Terrible"), Feodor Fedorenko and Tartu camp commander Karl Linnas are examples. However, no former Nazi or collaborator has been prosecuted by the courts of the United States, despite this nation's ability and obligation to do so under the laws of war incorporated by 10 U.S.C. §818 and a prior codification in 1916. See Ex parte Quirin (1942). A co-author of "Hitler's Shadow" called the aid rendered Nazis by American agents "systematic"--part of an intense effort to counter what was then considered to be the existential threat of spreading communism.

The truly sad part of this continuing post world war narrative is that nothing has really changed in America.  The guilty--whether it be a president who tortures, pillaging Wall Street bankers, playboy oil company executives, fraudulent mortgage companies, crooked accountants--none of them have been prosecuted for the massive crimes committed and which contribute mightily to this empire's eventual demise.  It will join its predecessors on the trash heap of history, another victim of rot from within.