U.S. Intelligence Involvement With German and Japanese War Criminals After World War II

U.S. Intelligence Involvement With German And Japanese War Criminals After World War II

While the United States was involved in the prosecution of war criminals, principally at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo, the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, and other judicial proceedings, US military and intelligence agencies protected some war criminals in the interest of obtaining technical or intelligence information from them, or taking part in ongoing intelligence or engineering (e.g., Operation Paperclip). Multiple US intelligence organizations were involved (the Central Intelligence Agency was not created until 1947 and in control of its clandestine services until 1952). The relationships with German war criminals started immediately after the end of the Second World War, but some of the Japanese relationships were slower to develop.

The concealment was not always deliberate, but simply because the records were scattered among a huge volume of government records. In some cases, prosecutors actively developed cases against individuals, yet were unaware the US had detailed records on them. The US Congress required an interagency working group (IWG), under the auspices of the National Archives and Records Administration to report on the big picture. Since the CIA was formed in 1947, and did not have full control of its clandestine HUMINT functions until the formation of the "Directorate of Plans" (DD/P) in 1952, where relationships were formed with individuals suspected of war crimes, other intelligence agencies obviously established the relationship. Many of these relationships were formed before the creation of the CIA in 1947, but the CIA, in some cases, took over the relationships and concealed them for nearly 60 years. Most often, when these were established before the formation of the CIA, they were done by United States Army Military Intelligence, or by its traditional name of the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC). In General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's commands, the intelligence service was called G-2. Under the direction of Major General Charles A. Willoughby, it was fairly autonomous of Washington, DC.

Others might have been formed by the Second World War Office of Strategic Services (OSS), or various interim groups that existed between 1945 and 1952, such as the Strategic Services Unit or Office of Policy Coordination. Some of these relationships were dropped when the CIA established its authority, others were continued under the CIA, and yet others moved from US control to their home nations.

That picture features substantial sufficient differences between the European and Pacific areas of operations, such that only some broad principles of US postwar policy were shared. As an example of a key difference, US intelligence in Europe worked closely with their British counterparts. OSS needed good relations with SIS and SOE, and it was reasonably obvious that the working relationship would need to be preserved in the postwar period. OSS had a much lower presence in the Pacific, so there was relatively little pressure from allies to hide information not necessarily for reasons of benefit to the US, but to the ally with whom the OSS' successor, the CIA, needed to work.