SEARCH FOR MENGELE FAULTED

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000503900002-6
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 27, 2012
Sequence Number: 
2
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
February 10, 1985
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000503900002-6.pdf48.63 KB
Body: 
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503900002-6 WASHINGTON POST 10 February 1985 Search for Mengele Faulted Ex-Investigator Says Nazi Avoids Paraguay United Press International BOSTON, Feb. 9-Josef Mengele is traveling among three South American countries, but Nazi hunters searching for him in Paraguay are on the wrong track, a former U.S. Justice Department Nazi inves- tigator said today. "The best information is, he's on the move between Chile, Argentina and Uru- guay," said John Loftus, who was a justice Department prosecutor during the Carter administration. Loftus discounted arguments that the Nazi doctor of Auschwitz must be dead, say- ing that Mengele, at 73, is younger than President Reagan. Now a private attorney in Rockland, Mass., Loftus left government work in 1981 to investigate the role of U.S. intelligence agencies in smuggling Nazis to the United States. Mengele is not in Paraguay, Loftus said, attributing his information to a U.S. attor- ney investigating nationalism in South America who just returned from Paraguay. "He [the source] is impeccable, and has ties with South American intelligence ser- vices," he said, adding that Mengele lived in Paraguay until 1979 but has been "on the move" since then and returned to Paraguay only briefly in 1982. "All the Nazi hunters are looking in the wrong country," Loftus said. Mengele, a doctor-turned-torturer at the Auschwitz, Poland, concentration camp who is wanted for sending 400,000 people to their deaths, was last seen in Paraguay in 1962. He slipped out of Germany at the end of the war before he could be tried for his crimes. Loftus, said he believed that Mengele es- caped to Argentina using a route like that of Nazis smuggled out by British intelligence agents working closely with U.S. State De- partment officials. He said Mengele went from Germany to Alt Ausse, Austria, and then went to British-controlled Trieste, Italy; from there he went to Genoa and on to Argentina. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503900002-6