What most people don't mention--but should--is that President
Harry Truman gave General
Reinhard Gehlen asylum in
America so that he wouldn't have to go to trial with the other
Nazis (we did that a lot more than most people know--that's how most of
NASA got most of its scientists; our Nazis were--in the long run--smarter than
Russia's Nazis). In exchange, Gehlen agreed to reorganize the
OSS to be more like Hitler's Intelligence agencies. Gehlen was head of the Nazi's anti-
Soviet Intelligence agency during WWII, and so it is arguable that paranoid fascist beliefs about the
Communists helped fuel the
Cold War on the American side (of course, the
USSR didn't help--I'm not about to let
Stalin off the hook). He went on to become one of America's most powerful spies, even forming his own group, the
Gehlenapparat, mostly made up of ex-Nazis and
Czarist Russians. Better yet, they didn't answer to the CIA, they answered to Gehlen. And who did Gehlen answer to? (Who does the CIA answer to, also? The
president? I don't know if that's good or bad.)
Now--don't you feel better knowing that the CIA takes its cues from the Nazis? Do you still believe that its always working in our--or anyone's--best interest?
By the way--this is true; the CIA now admits to this dark little piece of history.