Press Briefing: Government Group Opens Long-Secret Documents under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
Press Release · Thursday, May 6, 2004

Washington, DC

Press Release
May 6, 2004

Press Briefing: Government Group Opens Long-Secret Documents under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act

Historians’ Book Reveals Insights on the Holocaust and Significant New Information about the Relationship of War Criminals with Allied Intelligence Services

What: The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) will hold a briefing on the release of U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, a 15-chapter book that discusses hundreds of the millions of documents located, declassified, and released by the CIA, FBI, Army, State Department, and other U.S. agencies under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. The IWG also will announce the availability of additional records declassified under the Act and open to the public at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis demonstrates how the newly declassified documents alter and enhance our understanding of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. The book reveals new information about Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators and about the role of intelligence services, especially the use of war criminals by U.S. intelligence organizations after the war.

The newly released records include materials from the FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army:

• Approximately 240,000 pages from the FBI on espionage, foreign counterintelligence, domestic security, and treason. Highlights include files on the FBI’s interaction with Nazis who immigrated to the U.S. and files on U.S. corporations that profited from dealings with the Nazis.
  
  
• 419 additional CIA Name and Subject files, bringing the total number opened by the IWG to nearly 800.
  
  
• More than 3,000 pages documenting the U.S. Army’s involvement with German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen, whose post-war intelligence organization received U.S. funding to spy on the Soviet Union.

Who: Press will be briefed by IWG historians Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe, with additional comments by Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, U.S. Archivist John Carlin, IWG chair Steven Garfinkel, and IWG Public Members Elizabeth Holtzman, Thomas Baer, and Richard Ben-Veniste. Following the briefing, the historians will be available for comment.

When: Thursday, May 13, 10:00 A.M.
Pre-set time for television/radio is 9:30 A.M.

Where:

Jefferson Room
National Archives Building
700 and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Since 1999, the IWG has overseen the identification, declassification, and release of roughly 8 million pages of U.S. Government records related to war criminals and crimes committed by the Nazi and Japanese Imperial Governments during World War II as required by the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act of 2000. The IWG website is: http://www.archives.gov/iwg/.

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