While the entire world looked for Adolf Eichmann, the colorless bureaucrat that headed the Nazi "Final Solution" that sent millions of Jews to their ghastly deaths, the CIA knew exactly where to find him. Why didn't they capture him, or at least reveal his whereabouts to the Mossad? The American government needed to protect a former Nazi who worked for the anti-Soviet West German government of Konrad Adenauer:

The United States was aware of the hiding place and alias of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal and architect of the "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jews, but did nothing to pursue him, according to CIA documents.

Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia historian who has looked through the newly released documents, said yesterday they showed that West German intelligence had told the CIA that Eichmann was living in Argentina under the pseudonym Clemens two years before he was abducted by the Israelis - but the Americans did not want him captured because they feared what he might say that could compromise Hans Globke, who supported America's anti-communist goals in Europe.

Globke supposedly never joined the Nazi Party, or at least that was the official line that allowed Globke to escape de-Nazification and to enter the West German government. This revelation casts serious doubt on that claim.

In its way, this provides a microcosm of the ambiguity that prevailed at the end of World War II, as our former ally swallowed all of Eastern Europe after we gave them the opening at Potsdam and Yalta to do so. As America saw a new kind of fascism succeed where Hitler had failed, we turned to the Germans in the Free Zone to assume the front lines in the new war within just a few years of our victory over them. This necessitated a number of compromises -- but hiding Eichmann, the man who engineered the most notorious genocide in history, went too far. This is an embarrassment that we will find difficult to live down.

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Tracked on March 30, 2007 11:42 AM