A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL WITH A HIGH US CONNECTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120070-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 25, 2011
• Sequence Number: 70
• Publication Date: May 29, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/25: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120070-3
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGEI_ BOSTON GLOBE
29 May 1984
A Nazi war criminal with. a high
Walter Rauff, the Nazi war criminal, US-,
connection STAT
died this month in South America, but '
the controversy over his escape from
justice continues.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los
Angeles for the Documentation of Nazi
War Crimes recently alleged that Rauff
escaped from an allied concentration
camp in Italy, and was smuggled to
South America by the Vatican. A
French history of the postwar period ac-
cuses Rauff of supervising the smug-
gling of 5000 Nazis out of the port of
Genoa during the same period.
How could a man who' coordinated
the SS use of mobile gas vans used to
.kill thousands of Jews be allowed to op-
erate such an enormous evacuation sys-
tem under the noses of allied intelligence
in Italy? Why would the Vatican protect
such a man?
Recently declassified American intel-
ligence documents provide a cold-blood-
ed explanation. Rauff was told to use
the Vatican as a cover for an illegal Nazi
.recruitment program under the direc-
tion of Allen Dulles. Rauff was working
for the American branch chief of the Of-
fice of Strategic Services even before the
JOHN LOFTUS According to usually reliable nt
gence sources, Dulles then employed
Rauff on anti-Communist-operations in
war was over,. was .611en_ L)uIIc&_thr_
future head of State Department covert
intelligence, and later the CIA, who
freed Rauff from alli d_cual y. Rauff
knew all along who his true patron was.
To the astonishment of US Army
Counter-Intelligence Corps agents, Wal-
ter Rauff, the SS intelligence chief for
northwestern Italy, calmly turned him-
self into the allies on April 27. 1945.
Rauff was on the CIC automatic arrest
list, not only because of his involvement
with the gas vans, but also because he
'had tortured and murdered allied agents.
and partisans in Italy.
Rauff knew he had nothing to fear.
He told Army CIC that he had made "ar-
rangements" for his surrender "in order
to avoid further bloodshed in Milan."
i,According to the secret CIC report of
May 1, 1945. Rauff stated that the ar-
rangements could be confirmed "by
Hussman and Mr. Dulles, allied agents
in Switzerland." Rauff then told the CIC
that he would not give them any more
The interrogator described Rauff as a
"typical member. of the SD hierarchy
[secret servi,x division of the SS) who
has brought his organization of political
gangsterism to streamlined perfection
and is proud of the fact. By nature cyni-
cal and overbearing ... his contempt
and everlasting malice toward the Allies
are but slightly concealed."
Rauff had reason to be contemptu-
ous of the US military; he had higher
connections. In paragraph 5 (g) of his
voluminous statement, Rauff played his
ace. Rauff had been the go-between in
negotiating the secret surrender of the.
SS armies in Italy. He described his con-
tacts in Switzerland as "Professor Huss-
man and Major Weibel of the Swiss In-
telligence Service."
There is a picture of Hussman and
Weibel in Leonard Mosley's history of
the Dulles family. They were the negoti-
ators for Allen Dulles in Operation Sun-
rise. Dulles himself recounted how in
late February and early March of 1945,
his aides negotiated with two SS offi-
cers, Zimmer and "Col. Eugen Doll-
mann." -
It is clear from the dates and times
that Dulles lied in his memoirs on one
point: The SS colonel was Walter Rauff,
not "Dollman," as Rauff s top-secret file
confirms. Rauff was the colonel who
went to Lugano in March 1945, to ar-
range the release of allied prisoners in
Raufl's custody as a sign of good faith.
In return for the surrender of all SS
forces, Dulles promised that none of the
negotiators would ever be prosecuted as
war criminals.
? When Truman and Stalin discovered
what Dulles had done, there were out-
:raged orders to call off Sunrise, but Dul-
"les went ahead anyway, with Truman's
reluctant concurrence, on April 27 - the
day that Rauff turned himself in. De-
spite the Army interrogators' pleas that.
Rauff "is considered a menace if ever set
information. ; free, and failing actual elimination, is
From May 1 to May 25, 1945. Rauff , recommended for life-long internment,"
was debriefed in a military interroga-; Dulles kept his bargain and Rauff was
tion center. Rauff's'statement Was ~?, released.
classified as top secret, a designation
usually reserved only for allied agents'
Italy, which was RaufT's-specialty under
the Nazis. Dulles asked the Vatican to
continue his wartime arrangement of
using Catholic monasteries and con-'
vents to hide OSS agents.
'After the war, Dulles explained,
these safe houses were still needed to
smuggle out anti-Communist refugees.
The Vatican's. Involvement with Dul-
les's program was minimal. The church
provided food, shelter, and identity
cards, as it did to all refugees. It was
Dulles's contacts, not the Vatican, who
handled the smuggling of Nazis.
According to top secret State Depart-
ment documents, the Italian police pro-
vided the false passports for allied
agents; the visas came from the Argen-
tine consulate in the allied intelligence
unit-based at Trieste; and the embarka-
tion paperwork was handled by, a US
State Department officer in Genoa.
Genoa, incidentally, was Rauff s area of
jurisdiction.
All of them worked for Dulles, who
sePup the unwitting Vatican to be the
scapegoat if it were ever discovered that
Dulles's anti-Communist refugees were
really SS intelligence agents. To be sure,
there were a few priests, and even one
bishop, who smuggled a few of 'their
own Nazi countrymen through Italy, but
that was at extremely low levels of the
Vatican, and was quietly squelched
after the exposure in the Italian press in
1948.
The higher-level connection between
the Vatican and Dulles is still classified
by the government.
John Loftus, a iawyer-tn Rockland,
resigned from the Justice Department
to write "The Belarus Secret" on the
government's coverup of Nazi smug-
gling. _
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/25: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120070-3
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