With the deceptive and duplicitous congressional investigations and monotonous regime media campaign against President Trump and the spurious Russian “hacking” of the 2016 presidential election, it is imperative we recall this superb History Channel documentary which tells the tale of the CIA’s first major covert operation, the intervention into (and stealing of) the 1948 Italian election. The CIA has interfered in over 81 foreign elections.

The incredible story of the CIA and the recruitment of Nazi war criminals after World War II to be used against the Soviet Union has fascinated me since I was first blown away by Carl Oglesby‘s powerful account in his 1976 seminal book, The Yankee and Cowboy War (a volume highly praised by Murray N. Rothbard). In the four decades since there has been an ongoing battle between researchers and the intelligence community to reveal (or cover-up) the truth of this scandalous series of events in the covert history of America. The remarkable Oglesby continued unto his 2011 death pursuing this truth.

Here are other excellent scholarly resources on this despicable case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” going tragically wrong and the resulting “blowback” fueling Cold War animosity and belligerence: The CIA and Nazi War Criminals: National Security Archive Posts Secret CIA History Released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act; Christopher Simpson’s Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, and The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (.pdf); America’s Nazi Secret: An Insider’s Story by John Loftus; video interview with John Loftus, author of America’s Nazi Secret; General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection, by Mary Ellen Reese; Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War, by Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda (.pdf); U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, by Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe; New Information on Cold War CIA Stay-Behind Operations in Germany and the Adolf Eichmann Case, by Timothy Naftali; David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government;  Special: Nazis, the Vatican, and CIA — Covert Action Information Bulletin #25 (see especially Peter Dale Scott’s pioneering article, How Allen Dulles and the SS Preserved Each Other); NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe, by Ganser Daniele (.pdf); CIA’s Support to the Nazi War Criminal Investigations, by Kevin C. Ruffner; Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990, by Linda Hunt (.pdf); Operation Paperclip Casefile;  and The Nazi Hydra in America: The Suppressed History of a Century, by Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins (.pdf).

The Best of Charles Burris