An account of the exposure in 1983 of Klaus Barbie as a war criminal and as a former employee of the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) in the postwar period. Barbie's wartime activities and participation in war crimes were known to the author, Barbie's former intelligence controller, by August 1948 and reported to his superiors. CIC decided to continue using him in order to penetrate communist circles in Germany. They misled French authorities as to his whereabouts and helped him escape to Bolivia. Notes that many other former SS officers and Nazis were employed by U.S. Intelligence. Criticizes the official report by the Justice Department justifying the U.S.'s use of Barbie's services.

The Devil’s Agent: The Life and Crimes of Nazi Klaus Barbie is a captivating and unique book that reveals the dark secrets and mindset of the Butcher of Lyon, his work as a U.S. and West German spy, his network of escaped Nazis in South America, and his nefarious connections with mercenaries, cocaine traffickers and military dictators. During 1942-1944, Klaus Barbie was a mid-level Nazi officer in charge of the Gestapo HQ in Lyon, France. His treatment of prisoners ranged from banal indifference to pleasure as he sadistically tortured and murdered his victims. After the war, what set him apart was the public role he played as an unscrupulous businessman and adviser to military rulers, and Western intelligence agencies, in close alliance with other escaped Nazis, while living in Bolivia. The unrepentant war criminal was the most important Nazi to continue operating as a public figure after World War II. The Devil’s Agent describes co-author Peter McFarren’s personal encounters with Klaus Barbie in 1981, when McFarren and his colleague Maribel Schumacher were arrested in front of the Nazi’s Bolivian home after trying to interview him for a story for The New York Times. McFarren obtained hundreds of Barbie’s personal photographs and letters from prison that have never been made public before. Beyond their historical significance, these shine a light into Barbie’s compartmentalized inner life: devoted husband, torturer, loving father, spy, adaptive businessman, anti-Semite, opportunist. Combined with extensive use of the wealth of historical materials released in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the authors connect the inner Barbie with his times to provide insight into how collective evil occurs. From crimes against humanity to Holocausts, it happens step by banal step. McFarren also worked on the documentaries Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie and My Enemy’s Enemy and wrote numerous articles about Barbie and the military regimes he supported. After an extensive, decades-long search by Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, Barbie was identified, captured and extradited to France. He was one of the few escaped Nazis tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity in occupied France. His expulsion from Bolivia to France in 1983 and his unprecedented trial and conviction generated tremendous publicity and deep soul-searching for a country that had still not faced up to its mixed record of supporting the Nazi regime while also resisting its occupation. The book also details Barbie’s family history, the role he played as a Gestapo officer in Germanoccupied France, his responsibility for the murders of more than 14,000 Jews and French Resistance fi ghters during the Nazi Holocaust, his fl ight from Europe after the war with the backing of the U.S. Government, the Vatican and the International Red Cross, and his settlement in Bolivia with his wife Regine and two children. In Bolivia, Barbie traffi cked in tanks and weapons and supported the hunt for the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla leader “Che” Guevara. He collaborated with cocaine traffi cking kingpin Roberto Suárez Gómez, authoritarian rightwing military governments and a network of escaped Nazis, paramilitaries and mercenaries from Europe and South America to overthrow a Bolivian civilian government in 1980. Klaus Barbie came to symbolize greed, inhumanity, hatred, abuse of power and collective and personal evil during the half century he operated in Europe and Latin America. His most sadistic and monstrous acts were committed during World War II, but it was in Bolivia that Barbie established a reputation as a cunning, ruthless and violent operative who acted without a moral compass. The Devil’s Agent serves not only as a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust; it takes us inside the inhuman and merciless mindsets that were behind these crimes and continue to plague our world today.

A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.

Studie over de activiteiten van oud-Nazi's en neo-Nazi's in Latijns-Amerika, met bijzondere aandacht voor de oorlogsmisdadiger Klaus Barbie (1913- ).

Tells how Nazi war criminals emigrated to America under assumed identities and now live quiet, prosperous lives among us.

A gripping history of one of the United States' most controversial Cold War intelligence operations. Project Paperclip brought hundreds of German scientists and engineers, including aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun, to the United States in the first decade after World War II. More than the freighters full of equipment or the documents recovered from caves and hastily abandoned warehouses, the German brains who designed and built the V-2 rocket and other "wonder weapons" for the Third Reich proved invaluable to America's emerging military-industrial complex. Whether they remained under military employment, transitioned to civilian agencies like NASA, or sought more lucrative careers with corporations flush with government contracts, German specialists recruited into the Paperclip program assumed enormously influential positions within the labyrinthine national security state. Drawing on recently declassified documents from intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the State Department, Brian E. Crim's Our Germans examines the process of integrating German scientists into a national security state dominated by the armed services and defense industries. Crim explains how the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency enticed targeted scientists, whitewashed the records of Nazis and war criminals, and deceived government agencies about the content of security investigations. Exploring the vicious bureaucratic rivalries that erupted over the wisdom, efficacy, and morality of pursuing Paperclip, Our Germans reveals how some Paperclip proponents and scientists influenced the perception of the rival Soviet threat by volunteering inflated estimates of Russian intentions and technical capabilities. As it describes the project's embattled legacy, Our Germans reflects on the myriad ways that Paperclip has been remembered in culture and national memory. As this engaging book demonstrates, whether characterized as an expedient Cold War program born from military necessity or a dishonorable episode, the project ultimately reflects American ambivalence about the military-industrial complex and the viability of an "ends justifies the means" solution to external threats.

Having led change successfully at three sprawling, monumental organizations—the CIA, Texas A&M University, and the Department of Defense—Robert M. Gates offers the ultimate insider's look at how leaders can transform large organizations and companies. For many Americans, bureaucracy and corporate structure are code words for inertia. Gates knows that it doesn't have to be that way. With stunning clarity, he shares how simple plans, faithfully executed, can cut through the mire of bureaucracy to reform organizational culture. And he shows that great leaders listen and respond to their teams and embrace the power of compromise. Using the full weight of his wisdom, candor, and devotion to duty, he empowers leaders at any level to effectively implement his leadership strategies.