Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Help Me Solve This CIA/Canadian Government Connection


This photo is from the documents released by the National Archive today which indicate that the CIA held back the location of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

What I'm trying to decipher, however, is the handwritten notation made at the bottom of the first page about Horst Otto Herbert IMS who was terminated by the CIA from the 'Staybehind' project in 1952 because he apparently was not an effective operative.

DIR 20195 (? 81786) - 6 Oct 1954 - written by ? - EE/OE
Canadian Minister to see Dulles - Tuesday - Oct 13 - re immigration of intell agents in Canada. EE/OE ? field (HARVARD) and various (disks?) (for?) names (Minister supposedly will present 35 names to Dulles). Above info + copy PRQ on IMS given to EE/OE - 7 Oct 54.

1. What is EE/OE?
2. It appears that Jack Pickersgill was Canada's immigration minister during the time specified in 1954. Did he meet with Dulles about this?
3. Whose names was he or the minister who met with Dulles passing on?
4. How many Nazi war criminals were allowed into Canada in 1954?
5. How many may have been relocated former CIA operatives?
6. Why is there a Horst Otto Herbert IMS listed in the August 08, 2000 'Index of Canadian Laid-Open [Patent] Applications'?
8. Was Ims a war criminal, a CIA operative in Germany or both?

According to the Deschenes Commission report:

Until 1949, Canada had no criteria for rejecting as immigrants either Nazis or the German military. The prohibition then introduced included past members of the Nazi party, the SS (Schutz Staffel, an élite Nazi police force), Waffen SS (an equally heinous military version of the SS), the German Wehrmacht or regular armed forces, and collaborators. The Nazi prohibition was dropped in 1950. Non-Germans conscripted into the Waffen SS after 1942 were exempted in 1951 as were, in 1953, Waffen SS German nationals under the age of 18 at the time of conscription and ethnic Germans (the Volksdeutsche) conscripted under duress. The more general ban on veterans of all German military and SS units was relaxed in 1956 in cases of exceptional merit or where these veterans had close relatives in Canada. Specific exclusions were removed altogether in 1962. There remained only the loose catch-all exclusion of those "implicated in the taking of life or engaged in activities connected with forced labour and concentration camps."

Given that, how many former CIA operatives may have ended up in Canada during that time and what did they know about the whereabouts of some of the most heinous war criminals like Eichmann?

This is all very curious and obviously requires much more research than I have the time to spend on. Perhaps some of you have some answers...

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