Lis­ten now: One Seg­ment

Her­alded by the media as “the last war crimes trial of the Sec­ond World War,” the trial of for­mer SS offi­cer Eric Priebke for his role in the World War II mas­sacre of Ital­ian hostages has revealed more about the Post-World War II world than about the mas­sacre. Like so many SS offi­cers and Nazi war crim­i­nals, Priebke appears to have been aided in his flight from jus­tice by the Vat­i­can, U.S. intel­li­gence and the ODESSA net­work (the post war SS under­ground formed to aid vet­er­ans of Hitler’s SS.) The pro­gram dis­cusses the ongo­ing assis­tance given men such as Priebke by the intel­li­gence ser­vices of many coun­tries (includ­ing the United States) and suc­cess­ful efforts to form alliances between these men and pow­er­ful, trans-national cor­po­ra­tions. One of the star wit­nesses against Priebke, fel­low SS offi­cer and mas­sacre par­tic­pant Karl Hass, has worked for U.S., Ital­ian and Ger­man intel­li­gence fol­low­ing the war. (Recorded in August of 1996.)