Mai - Vho

——————————————————————> Conseils de révisions / mai 2005
(Note 5), they reversed their decision. Richard Ben-Veniste, another public member of the IWG,
discussed the problems of CIA declassification during his testimony before the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Committee on Government Reform
of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 2, 2005:
As one of three non-government members of the IWG appointed by Clinton, I have had direct
experience with the difficulties of getting public release of records stamped "secret." So far, over 8
million pages of previously classified documents have been released. National security has not been
jeopardized. Yet, but for the Act, these records would still be secret. Recently, despite the fact that
relevant records are in some cases more than 50 years old, the CIA balked at full compliance, causing a
delay of more than a year in the IWG's work. Finally, to break the impasse, the IWG had to seek
Congressional intervention. The Act's authors, Sen. Mike DeWine and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, rejected
the CIA's argument for withholding important documents in a meeting with IWG and CIA officials.
Ultimately, the CIA abandoned its opposition and has promised to comply.
In a February interview with the New York Times, Elizabeth Holtzman, one of the public
members of the IWG, said of the CIA's reversal:
This is great news. The C.I.A. will now follow the rule of law, and the disclosure will be crucial to
the American public. I am very pleased.
The IWG was established in January 11, 1999 and has overseen the declassification of about
eight million pages of documents from multiple government agencies. Its original mandate
was to expire at the end of March 2005, but on March 14, 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives
voted to extend the deadline until March 2007 (a recommendation already passed by the Senate on
February 16, 2005.) The IWG is interested in obtaining further information on any war criminals or
suspected war criminals, [Bush Sr Clinton Bush sonny ] especially those with whom the CIA
had relationships, including information on the nature of the relationship and what the individual did
for the agency. The nature of the new requests for information come from leads found in documents
already released by the CIA and other agencies, as well as research done by the IWG historians.
The documents annexed in the CIA names file posted today by the Archive span from the time of
the war to the mid 1990s, and include both captured German documents and documents from various
U.S. government agencies. As with all the CIA names and subject files, only copies of the documents
were released to NARA, not the original documents. The names and subject files are artificial creations
made by the CIA for the purpose of obeying the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, while disguising how
the CIA organizes its own files. For a more detailed description of the Names Files and the history of
their compilation refer to this notice.
Some of the highlights from the CIA name file on Eichmann include:
• May 24 and 26, 1960 documents revealing CIA surprise at the capture of Eichmann,
requesting more details from an Israeli counterpart on the operation, and offering help in
supplying captured Nazi war documents (Documents 48 and 49, Vol 1) and a later June 15, 1960
document detailing efforts to locate relevant material in the "five-miles" of captured documents
(Doc 13, Vol 2)
• Documents detailing the capture of Eichmann by Israel, including specifics on how the
Israeli agents determined and verified Eichmann's identity. This included staking out his house in
Argentina on the day that would have been his 25th anniversary, and observing him returning
home with flowers and celebrating the date with his wife. He had remarried his original wife under
an assumed name, and the agents surmised that that the wife would not be celebrating the original
date she married Eichmann, unless it was Eichmann. Another document claims the Israelis also
brought in a man who had worked on a kibbutz with Eichmann, who identified him and also
engaged Eichmann in a conversation. In the conversation, the man intentionally made several
minor mistakes about their past meetings, and Eichmann corrected every one. (Documents 62 and
66 Vol 1, Documents 85 and 108 Vol 2)
• Attempts by the CIA in the wake of Eichmann's capture to gather more information on
names connected to Eichmann (Document 7 Vol 2). One CIA memo reveals the fear that
incriminating information on such individuals - including Franz Alfred Six (an SS Lt. Col and
Eichman's boss from 1936-39, and a section leader in the post-war Gehlen intelligence
organization - would make them vulnerable to Soviet recruitment (Document 23 Vol 2).
• An August 24, 1962 walk-in of a man claiming to be Eichmann's son, who offered to help
capture Josef Mengele in exchange for a changed identity (Document 72 Vol 3).
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