The first question you should ask yourself about the #Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act is:
Why did we NEED a Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in the first place?
Second question: why are some records still classified nearly 80 years later? 🙋🏼♀️
The declassification of the US Government’s Nazi War Crimes documents process began in 1999.
The National Archives estimates “600 staff YEARS will be needed to complete the declassification review.”
Soooo what happened to all those #Nazis we were supposed to prosecute after #WWII but didn’t? How’d those guys get out of prison and out of the country?
We de-Nazified Germany, right?
Right?
Well, according to the documents that are declassified, it’s…complicated…
These documents reveal that many of the key “anti-communists in Europe” the CIA employed were Ukrainian #Nazi collaborators and war criminals like Stepan Bandera, and Mykola Lebed, his second-in-command, among many others.
Interestingly, immigration laws during the Cold War specifically prohibited foreign #Communist Party members from entering the United States— but INS looked the other way when the #Nazi Party members emigrated to America. (Under special protection of the CIA in many cases.)
The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act “did not explicitly prohibit Nazi war criminals and collaborators from entering the United States.”
But communists were strictly denied entry under the Act.
This continued until 1978.
Before 1973, the INS filed only 9 deportation cases against #Nazi collaborators, and only one was actually deported.
ONE ☝️.
Why so few? “Well, we just couldn’t seem to find them.” 🤷🏼♀️
“No investigation was conducted.”
Finally, in 1998 (after the fall of the Soviet Union, and nearly all Nazi war criminals and collaborators in the U.S. and abroad were already deceased) Congress passed the #Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, demanding declassification of documents revealing these unpleasant secrets.
As with the JFK Assassination Records Act passed in 1992, the CIA continues to withhold documents intended for declassification and release under the Nazi War Crimes Declassification Act also — to this very day.
This article from the National Archives provides more information on the US government’s dubious associations and alliances with Nazi war criminals and collaborators after #WWII, and implementation of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
archives.gov/iwg/reports/na…
More info and documents related to the CIA’s recruitment of Lebed here.👇🏽
I really have to give a shout-out to John Loftus in this thread 🧵— without his tireless efforts, we never would have had a Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
He made it his life’s mission to get these documents released. He deserves all the credit.
Here’s HIS amazing story! 👇🏽
The CIA’s lawyers defamed John Loftus as a crazy conspiracy theorist and repeatedly denied his allegations about the Agency’s top secret dirty work with Nazis.
As the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act has proven, Loftus wasn’t crazy, and the conspiracy was no theory. It was fact!
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