by TChris

This one can't be blamed on the Bush administration, although there is a tie-in to Iraq.

Declassified government documents shed new light on the secret protection and support given to former Nazi officials and Nazi collaborators by U.S. intelligence agencies in the years following World War II, according to a book released yesterday by historians who have been reviewing the records for the government.

One of the villians in this story is J. Edgar Hoover.

A set of FBI files analyzed in the book by historian Norman J.W. Goda of Ohio University shows that former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover resisted taking action against Viorel Trifa, a former officer in the pro-Hitler Romanian Iron Guard who emigrated to the United States in 1950. This helped Trifa stay in the country until he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1984.

The CIA subsidized a group of former SS officers who acted as intelligence sources in post-war West Germany, but failed to produce good intelligence. Therein lies the link to Iraq, says Timothy Naftali of the University of Virginia.

"This is the most troubling for me," Naftali said in an interview, "given the context of Iraq, where we once again have to reconstruct a foreign national security system, and we have to do it fast."