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.
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.
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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On February 22, 1972 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Lufthansa flight 649, demanding a $5 million ransom for the release of 192 onboard.
The skyjackers also had a celebrity hostage: 19 year-old Joseph Kennedy, son of #RFK — their human bargaining chip.
Young Kennedy had been touring India with his uncle and aunt, Senator and Mrs. Edward M. Kennedy.
The Senator's wife, Joan, had accompanied Joseph to New Delhi while her husband returned to the United States, but left India ahead of her nephew.
Joe boarded the plane alone.
The PFLP hijackers seized the plane about an hour after it took off from New Delhi, around 1 a.m.
Bombay air control authorities said they received this message from the plane: “Call us victorious Jidda. If you call us Lufthansa, we won't answer you.” ✈️
When he was arrested after the #RFK assassination, one of Sirhan’s appellate lawyers says there was a newspaper clipping in Sirhan’s pocket that discussed the incongruity of Kennedy’s advocacy for the oppressed while also supporting Israel over Palestine. bentley.umich.edu/news-events/ma…
Sirhan’s friend and appellate attorney says he cannot be certain there was not some sort of conspiracy, but has little doubt Sirhan shot Kennedy. “Sirhan never said there was somebody else,” Jabara insists.
The official motive for Sirhan’s murder of #RFK was “anti-#Zionism.”
Sirhan blamed his murderous rage on trauma he had suffered as a child in Palestine.
At age 4 he witnessed the bombing of Damascus Gate, the death of his older brother, a man disemboweled by a bomb and the family was forced to relocate after Israel was created in 1948.
Nazi Germany waged an extensive propaganda campaign to spread Nazi ideology in the Arab world.
University of Maryland Prof. Jeffrey Herf and American University Prof. Richard Breitman discuss how Nazi ideology still lingers in the 21st Century.
Prof. Breitman served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
If some of these talking points sound familiar today, now you know where they originated…
According to an April 25, 1966 Tom Wicker article in the New York Times (“CIA: Maker of Policy, or Tool?), President #Kennedy vowed privately to an aide after the Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba, that he would “splinter the CIA in 1000 pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
#JFK didn’t complete his mission to fully destroy the CIA (some believe the Agency got him first) — but here’s what he DID do.
In June 1961, two months after the Bay of Pigs — he issued National Security Action Memos (NSAM) 55 and 57.
NSAM 55 called for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the CIA, to be his primary military advisors.
NSAM 57 declared “any large paramilitary operation wholly or partly covert… is properly the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role.”
#RFKJr grew up in a family that strongly supported #Israel. He says he was “shocked” when his kids came home from college with views of Israel as an evil, apartheid state.
No matter what side you take, I hope you’ll listen to RFK argue his position.
It is important to understand the history of why generations of Democrats (and Republicans) have supported Israel.
It all started in 1944, when both parties adopted planks in their platforms advocating for a Jewish state in Palestine.
A fascinating story that Benjamin Netanyahu’s father played a key role in. Read this thread 🧵…