The CIA and the Nazis reveals a CIA program known as Operation Paperclip, about how over 4,000 former Nazis went to work for the U.S. government, without thepublic's knowledge, to help fight the Soviet Union. Reinhard Gehlen, an intelligence officer forHitler's General Staff, wastapped to head the U.S. intelligence program in West Germany to spy on the Russians. At the sametime, former Nazi scientists and engineers were welcomed onto American soil. But the extent of these operations is only now becoming clear: In 1998, a law was passed mandating declassification of documents concerning recruitment of former Nazis. THE CIA AND THE NAZIS examines these files to see how far the U.S. went in recruiting its former enemy to fight itsnew one.
More on Project Paperclip, from Wikipedia: Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employmentby the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939--45). It was executed by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Soviet--American Cold War (1945--91), one purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific knowledge and expertise to the USSR andthe UK.
Although the JIOA's recruitment of German scientists began after theEuropean Allied victory (8May 1945), US President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of Operation Paperclip until August 1945. Truman's order expressly excluded anyone found "to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism." Said restrictions would have rendered ineligible most of the scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among them rocket scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a "menace tothe security of the Allied Forces".
To circumvent President Truman's anti-Nazi order,and the Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOA worked independently to create false employment and political biographies for the scientists. The JIOA also expunged from the public record the scientists' Nazi Party memberships and regimeaffiliations. Once"bleached" of their Nazism, the US Government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the United States. Paperclip, the project's operational name, derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists' new political personae to their"US Government Scientist" JIOA personnel files.
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?33609-The-CIA-And-The-Nazis-The-Secrets-They-Don-t-Want-You-To-Know..-
The CIA and the Nazis -Full Length Documentary - YouTube
http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DIKlQGKg1sa4&v=IKlQGKg1sa4&gl=US

Studies in Intelligence — Central Intelligence Agency
www.cia.gov > ... > studies
CIA's Supportto the Nazi War Criminal Investigations
CIA's Support to the Nazi War Criminal Investigations
A Persistent Emotional Issue
Kevin C. Ruffner
The story of escaped Nazis after the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 has long gripped novelists and Hollywood screenwriters andprovided the grist for such box office hits as The Boys From Brazil and The ODESSA File . Since the 1970s, the topic has also providedsteady fare for historians and journalists anxious to explore supposed cabals between American intelligence agencies and such personalities as Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz, and former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, a German intelligence officer in the Balkans during World War II. (1)
Separating fact from fiction about the alleged postwar relationships between American intelligence and its former German enemies and collaborators is both difficult andconfusing. The General Accounting Office (GAO), at the request of the US Congress, has conducted two major investigations since 1977 to ascertain whether the US Government assisted in the immigration of these individuals to the United States and later concealed Federal involvement. Inaddition, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and, later, the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) have proceeded with independent inquiries since the mid-1970s. OSI, dedicated solely to the investigation, denaturalization, and deportation of individuals who violated US immigration laws by covering up illegal activities during World War II, has stripped52 people of their citizenship and removed another 44 since 1979. In addition, OSI has conducted nearly 1,500 investigations and placed the names of some 60,000 individuals on a "watch list" that alerts US immigration officials to prevent their entry into the United States. (2)
Continuing Suspicions
Despite these efforts, doubts persist in some circles as to whether the United States Government has been fully honest about this emotion-charged issue. For example, Christopher Simpson, in his 1988 book, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War , asserts that "US intelligence agencies did know--or had good reason to suspect--that many contract agents they hired during the ColdWar had committed crimes against humanity on behalf of the Nazis. The CIA, the State Department, and US Army intelligence," Simpson states,"each created special programs for the specific purpose of bringing former selected Nazis and collaborators to the United States. Other projects protected such people by placing them on US payrolls overseas." (3) The fact that most US intelligence records from this time period are still classified only lends greater mystery to the issue.
The CIA comes under particular scrutiny because of its secrecy and reputation. Over the years, observers have charged that:
*. CIA, and its predecessor organizations such as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-45), the Strategic Services Unit (SSU, 1945-46), and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG, 1946-47), employed German intelligence personnel as sources of information. Full Investigation:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/97unclass/naziwar.html

Secrets of the CIA
http://m.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=en&client=mv-google&rl=yes&v=4RXPJmqkxmI
Hitler's Escape
http://m.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=en&client=mv-google&rl=yes&v=iCyfiG7aTB4

The CIA and the Nazis reveals a CIA program known as Operation Paperclip, about how over 4,000 former Naziswent to work for the U.S. government, without thepublic's knowledge, to help fight the Soviet Union.
Double standard?

Everyone knew who von Braun was..

Rank
Sturmbannführer , SS
Battles/wars
World War II
Awards
Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross (1944)
War Merit Cross , First Class with Swords (1943)
Other work
Rocket engineer, NASA, Built the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo manned moon missions.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

I am glad wikipedia is back online..

What is your purpose in starting this thread?

Explain your double standard question..

The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the CIA. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence — and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies.
The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped.
The C.I.A. helped Nazi war criminals in the U.S. by giving them sanctuary and jobs, and covering up …

Paperclip officially started in 1945 and the CIA didn't come into existence until 1947..

So the idea that Paperclip was a CIA operation isn't really accurate.

I realize this is rather trivial in a sense, but the OSS and CIA are two totally different organizations that operated under different circumstances and had vastly different protocols..

JIOA was actually responsible for the Paperclip operation and they felt that allowing the scientists to get into the hands of the Stalinists posed a much greater threat to US national security than any sympathies the scientists held towards Nazism..

The JIOA director was Bosquet Wev.. Look him up..

Everything the CIA gets involved in backfires.TP-AJAX,Iraq(twice) and Noriega,just to list a few.

Not only that, but what do we do? Treat every person who worked for, or who fought on the Germans side as a war criminal?

I dont think that is just. War crime is a specific charge with objective criteria that must be set forth. Sure things are kept under cover . . but the motivations are not always so clear.

..i suppose in 40 or 50 years we'll find out who Bin Laden was working for..

Some are suggesting that the secrecy laws should be extended to 70 years....that way most people alive now will be dead so no problem.