Hitler's Shadow Reaches toward Today

[Judi Lynn]

Hitler's Shadow Reaches toward Today
by Robert Parry
Published on ConsortiumNews.com on Friday, 17 December 2010

The U.S. government protected Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the years after World War II and later unleashed the infamous Butcher of Lyon on South America by aiding his escape from French war-crimes prosecutors, according to a new report issued by the National Archives.

The report, entitled “Hitler’s Shadow ,” concentrates on the decisions by the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps to use Barbie and other ex-Nazis for early Cold War operations, but other work by investigative journalists and government investigators has shown how Barbie’s continued allegiance to Nazi ideology contributed to the spread of right-wing extremism in Latin America.

With his skills as an intelligence operative and his expertise in state terror, Barbie helped shape the particularly vicious style of anti-communism that dominated South America for most of the Cold War. He also played a role in building a conduit for drug proceeds to fund right-wing paramilitary operations, including Ronald Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

In 1980, Barbie used his perch in Bolivian intelligence to organize an alliance of military leaders and cocaine barons to overthrow Bolivia’s democratically elected leftist government in a bloody coup. Though fitting with Washington’s distrust of left-wing populist governments in South America, the so-called Cocaine Coup had other long-term consequences for the United States.

~snip~
When Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, uncovered additional evidence of Contra-drug trafficking, the Washington Times denounced him, too. The newspaper published articles depicting Kerry’s probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. “Kerry’s anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain,” declared the headline of one Times article on Aug. 13, 1986.

More:
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/121710Parry.shtml

[JustAnotherGen]

1. I'm a bit of a student on The Butcher

I was involved for some time by a man whose mother is still waiting for her father to come home from Montluc. :-( Her father is credited as one of the men that came up with the idea to 'Booby Trap' the railroad booby traps in France during the Petainist Regime/Nazi Occupation of Northern France.

Eh? He died cold and alone in prison at the end - but his many victims and their survivors never got to see justice done because of our actions/behavior in regards to this vile monster.

[Doctor_J]

2. This is not too surprising since the Bush family and others were Nazi

supporters. A sampling of current US Newspapers shows an enormous reverence for terrorists, criminals, fascists and right-wing dictators. And the TV and radio are completely fascist. People like to believe that Moon, Mellon-Scaife, Murdoch, Koch, ...invented propaganda and brainwashing. Not a chance - they have just perfected it.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Klaus Barbie: The Nazi who ruled Bolivia

Klaus Barbie: The Nazi who ruled Bolivia
Posted on September 28, 2010 by Forrest Hemp

1939: Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie leads an infamous raid on a Jewish farm village in Holland, where he rounds up 420 Jews to try out an experimental gas chamber.

1941: Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union – Battle of Moscow. Klaus Barbie is on the Eastern front. His unit’s task is to murder every communist and Jew they can find without regard to age or sex. In under a year, these mobile death squads kill over a million people. The CIA later models its own squads (in Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia and Argentina) on this SS Einsatzgruppen.

1942: Barbie is back in Lyons, France. He and his men raid a country home for Jewish orphans, sending the children and teachers to the concentration camps. Barbie’s lamentation: no money or valuables are seized. Barbie also runs Montluc prison, where he delights in leaving prisoners in cells for days with the corpses of friends and family. Victims endure mock firing squads, hot pokers, their heads plunged in toilets full of piss and shit, and Barbie’s dog Wolf biting their genitals. Barbie personally shackles Lise Leserve’s naked body to a beam and beats her with a spiked chain, but never gets her to talk. She survives his torture and a year in a brutal work camp to testify against him.

1944: With the Allies advancing on Lyons, Barbie cleans house before fleeing. He has 109 Jews and 120 French Resistance prisoners machine-gunned. The abandoned warehouse is then drenched in gas and destroyed with grenades and dynamite. The explosion sends body parts flying into the town 1000 feet away. The OSS then urges FDR to allow guys like Barbie into the US to continue their “work”.

1947: Klaus Barbie goes on the US payroll in Germany, then escapes to Bolivia with US help. Barbie runs mobile death squads, killing Jews, Slavs and French Resistance. He tortures many to death. In Bolivia, Barbie works for the secret police trafficking drugs and arms. His torture skills are always in demand. Barbie is a sadistic monster who cares more for inflicting pain than extracting information. His Bolivian citizenship papers are personally signed by VP Hernan Siles Zuazo, making his extradition more difficult.

1962: Klaus Barbie is helping the CIA put a US-backed Bolivian thug in power. Barbie also helps suppress popular insurgencies throughout Latin America.

More:
http://forresthemp.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/klaus-barbie-the-nazi-who-ruled-bolivia/

[abq e streeter]

4. I don't know if it's more upsetting to think about how the vast majority of Americans don't know

about things like this having been done in their name, or that most people, if confronted with this knowledge and proof of it, would just shrug their soldiers and walk away,or even worse, defend it.

[awoke_in_2003]

5. ignorance can be forgiven...

complacency cannot.

[abq e streeter]

7. I don't disagree with that at all, but so much of the ignorance is born of complacency .

[awoke_in_2003]

8. very true. nt

[Kablooie]

6. Wow. I'm going to make my daughter get rid of her Klaus Barbie doll.

[VioletLake]

9. I have mentioned before how my grandmother was involved in this.

As far as I know, there is at least 1 person who knows the story in detail. All I have to do is send an email. I have not because I'm afraid of what it will do to my family. Perhaps that is the reason she has kept quiet all these years.