by John Lof­tus
1982, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN 1557781389
197 pages.

John Lof­tus was a pros­e­cu­tor in the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions, where he inves­ti­gat­ed the war crimes and sub­se­quent activ­i­ties of the Beloruss­ian Nazis. In this capac­i­ty he coor­di­nat­ed a high­ly-clas­si­fied inquiry called the “Belarus Project.” This book describes what Lof­tus uncov­ered from the files of sev­er­al U.S. gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

In 1948 a secret sec­tion of the State Depart­ment began recruit­ing Beloruss­ian war crim­i­nals for guer­ril­la war­fare inside the Sovi­et bloc. When the oper­a­tions failed, these Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors were allowed to set­tle in the U.S. As recent­ly as 1978, gov­ern­ment depart­ments were lying to Con­gress in an effort to cov­er up this his­to­ry. Lof­tus blew the whis­tle on CBS’s “60 Min­utes” in May 1982, draw­ing head­lines across the nation.

This book also pro­vides insight into the foun­da­tions of U.S. Cold War bureau­cra­cy, still extant (ram­pant) today:

The suc­cess of the Ital­ian oper­a­tion [the fix­ing of the 1948 Ital­ian par­lia­men­tary elec­tions with funds siphoned from the M‑Fund] brought demands for sim­i­lar actions else­where. [. . .] Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Direc­tive 10/2, the OPC’s [Office of Pol­i­cy Coor­di­na­tion] char­ter, gave it the widest pos­si­ble lat­i­tude, which would include the use of clan­des­tine mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions to over­throw gov­ern­ments regard­ed as unfriend­ly to the Unit­ed States. [. . .] In 1948, this unit func­tioned as the oper­a­tional arm of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which had been con­sti­tut­ed the pre­vi­ous year. Pol­i­cy and plan­ning was the nucle­us of Amer­i­ca’s Cold War effort, with liaisons to each com­po­nent of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. The Belarus Secret, pp. 69–70]

The use of for­mer Nazis by U.S. intel­li­gence is also cov­ered com­pre­hen­sive­ly in Blow­back by Christo­pher Simp­son (1988). In anoth­er twist to this curi­ous his­to­ry, Mark Aaron teams up with Lof­tus to exam­ine the Vat­i­can’s Nazi-smug­gling and its prob­a­ble infil­tra­tion by Sovi­et intel­li­gence in Unholy Trin­i­ty (1992).

THIS BOOK IS IN PRINT.
Avail­able com­mer­cial­ly. Find out more about John Lof­tus.