Saturday, February 05, 2005
From Reuters:
A U.S. senator has demanded that the CIA director release thousands of pages of documents detailing the agency's ties with former Nazis who aided in Cold War espionage against the Soviet Union, officials say.
Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, Republican co-author of a 1998 bill ordering the disclosure of government records on Nazi war criminals, wants CIA Director Porter Goss to say publicly why his agency has not agreed to divulge the records.
DeWine has asked Goss to appear this month at an open hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which the Ohio lawmaker sits, a Senate aide said. The CIA had no immediate comment on the invitation.
"Sen. DeWine wants an explanation from the CIA. Our hope would be to have (Goss) there and that's what we're working toward," said DeWine spokeswoman Amanda Flaig.
Congressional officials said DeWine and Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, lead sponsor of the 1998 bill, were also trying to broker agreement on the documents through closed-door dialogue.
The CIA has already released an estimated 1.25 million pages of documents about Nazi war criminals. Most are records of the agency's wartime predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.
The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 requires federal agencies to make public records of individuals alleged to have committed Nazi war crimes by turning them over to a special working group.
