:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 3.16.2005 ::
:: "Congress OKs Bill on Nazi War Crime Papers" ::
From Newsday, NY
By MALIA RULON, AP
WASHINGTON -- The public soon will have access to reams of closely held U.S. government secrets about former Nazi war criminals hired by the CIA after World War II.
A bill to give a government group more time to declassify a new batch of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency passed the House 391-0, with 44 members not voting, on Monday, sending the measure to President Bush for his signature.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the bill's House sponsor, said it has been 10 years since she first proposed legislation seeking information about the U.S. government's involvement with former Nazis, and it's time to finish the job.
"History, and the memory of the millions who perished in the Holocaust, deserve nothing less than full disclosure," Maloney said.
Her bill led to a 1998 public disclosure law that required the release of all U.S. government papers related to the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes. So far, more than 8 million pages of documents have been brought to light, including 1.25 million from the CIA.
This information revealed for the first time that the CIA and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, had sought former Nazi officials to provide expertise on the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
For example, the documents revealed that German Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who served as one of Adolf Hitler's most senior military intelligence officers during World War II, later became a key U.S. intelligence resource after the war, Maloney said.
However, until an agreement reached last month, the CIA had refused to give up specific information about what the former Nazis it hired did for the United States. The agency had also refused to provide information on former Nazi SS officers who worked for the CIA.
The agency is now ready to release this information.
Read more here.
The bill is S.384.
On the Net: Interagency Working Group
posted by me
:: 11:00:00 AM [+] ::
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