CIA suppressed information about Eichmann to protect West German national security advisor

Newly released CIA documents show that the US kept mum about Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts to protect a high-ranking German official with a dubious past.

The United States learned the location and alias of fugitive Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann two years before Israel captured him but kept the information secret as part of its efforts to combat communism in post-war West Germany, according to a historian who reviewed 27,000 pages of newly declassified documents.

The Central Intelligence Agency knew that senior Gestapo officer Eichmann was hiding in Argentina in 1958 under an alias, but left it up to Germany to deal with him, said University of Virginia historian Timothy Naftali, who reviewed thousands of documents on CIA ties to Nazis from the US National Archives released Tuesday.

The papers also show that from 1952, West Germany knew that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina under an assumed identity, but kept quiet about it fearing the fugitive might talk about Hans Globke, a former Nazi was a top national security advisor to then-chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

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