COMMENT: We’ve been following a paper chase entailing an ongoing German government/BND coverup of what the Federal Republic knew of Adolf Eichmann’s whereabouts following the war.
As we saw in FTR #558, Eichmann worked on contract for Gehlen’s organization in the Middle East. (The BND was the final incarnation of the Gehlen organization, which originated as the Third Reich’s Eastern Front intelligence service.)
Considering that the alleged “de-Nazification” of Germany was largely mythological, it should not be surprising that the BND failed to do anything substantive.
Brilliant Argentine author Uno Goki (author of The Real Odessa) has weighed in on the issue, once again.
EXCERPT: But Eichmann’s capture needn’t have been so long in the making. German newspaper Bild this weekend published a secret service document that revealed West German intelligence officials knew about his Argentine hideout as early as 1952. It appears as though the agency chose not to act on the information.
The typewritten file card obtained by Bild notes that Eichmann was living in the Argentine capital under the alias Clemens. “SS colonel Eichmann is not to be found in Egypt but is residing in Argentina under the fake name Clemens,” it read. “Eichmann’s address is known to the editor of the German newspaper ‘Der Weg’ in Argentina.” (German weekly Der Spiegel reported that Eichmann had in fact adopted the pseudonym Ricardo Klement.)
Argentine journalist Uki Goni — author of “The Real Odessa,” which chronicles the postwar flight of Nazi criminals to South America — told AOL News that he wasn’t surprised West German agents had discovered Eichmann’s whereabouts by 1952.
“The idea that the Nazis arrived in Argentina and faded into the jungle somewhere is just not the case,” he said. “There was quite a strong German community in Buenos Aires with its own newspapers and restaurants. So when the new arrivals came after the war, everyone knew exactly who they were, and they went to the same restaurants as everybody else.”
Goni adds that West Germany’s foreign intelligence service, then known as the Gehlen Organization, had nothing to gain by nabbing Eichmann.
“The agency was run by former Nazi officer Reinhard Gehlen, and it was packed with former SS officers and former Nazis,” he said. “So nobody had any interest in finding these Nazis and bringing them to trial. On the contrary, they would have been more likely to help them escape justice.”
Many senior figures in the new West German state also lacked the will to see Eichmann extradited back home and put on trial. Government ministries and private corporations were stuffed with ex-Nazis; some had been heavily involved in the Holocaust and were worried about what the former SS officer might say in the dock. . . .
COMMENT: Another reason for the reluctance of BND may have been their unwillingness to brook the wrath of the Borman network.
. . . Israeli agents who move too closely to these centers of power are eliminated. One such termination was Fritz Bauer, formerly attorney general for the State of Hesse in Frankfurt, a survivor of Auschwitz and the man who tipped off the Israeli Mossad about the presence of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, who was killed on orders of General Mueller. [Italics are mine–D.E.]. . .Mueller’s ruthlessness even today is what deters Artur Axmann from altering his testimony that he saw Bormann lying dead on the roadway the night of their escape from the Fuehrerbunker, May 1–2, 1945. . . .To this day, Axmann, the only so-called living witness to the ‘death’ of Bormann in Berlin, knows his life is in jeopardy if he reverses himself. General Mueller is thorough and has a long memory, and for a Nazi such as Axmann to go against Mueller’s original directive would make him a traitor; retribution would surely follow. . . .
Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile by Paul Manning; pp. 289–290.
compliments on your research.
in conjunction with your eichmann update:The german mgazine CICERO in the november issue 2010 has an interesting artcleof several pages on the complicity of the auswartiges amt (foreign affair-dept of state)during ww2. they also publish a “wannsee doc.” about who knew what,where and how about the final solution.A must read.
Page70-73 covers Gehlen and the politics of the CDU-CSU in respect to the BND.
How about an article on BASF-Wintershall and the russian gas pipeline under the Baltic.
Or?.....Why has the Quandt family(BMW) invested in a US company which inserts RFD’s in passports for 40plus nations in the world.(talking about databases)or....the Dutch HEEREMA affair(Pieter Schelte Heerema) who lays the pipeline under the baltic(ex nazi co.-now the largest pipeline under water layer in the world.Nazi-Heerema-BASF-
Russian gas(the old combine working again)Thank you for your work.Regards