Counterintelligence Corps (United States Army) - The "ratline" Controversy

The "ratline" Controversy

One of CIC's operations in post-war Europe was the operation of a "rat-line" – a conduit for spiriting informants and defectors out of the Soviet Zones of Occupation to safety in South America, via Italy, with false identities paid for by CIC. However in 1983 the arrest of former SS officer Klaus Barbie in Bolivia raised questions as to how the "Butcher of Lyon" had escaped. It was then revealed that Barbie had worked for CIC from 1947, and in 1951 had been provided with the means of escape in return for his services as an agent and informant.

A Department of Justice investigation also uncovered the CIC's dealings with Father Krunoslav Draganović, a Croatian cleric based in Rome, who while working for CIC, also operated his own clandestine rat-line to transport Ustaše war criminals to Latin America. A further report in 1988 also examined the CIC's use of Nazi war criminals and collaborators as informants in the years after World War II, "In June 1988, Office of Special Investigations within the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice issued a public report which revealed that at least 14 suspected Nazi war criminals, a number of whom likely were involved in the murder of Jews in occupied Europe, had been employed as intelligence informants by the CIC in Austria".