Waldheim was blackmailed over his Nazi past, says CIA
By Ben Fenton in Washington

THE CIA suspected that Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary-general and president of Austria, was a victim of Russian blackmail over his wartime past, according to officials files released yesterday.

The agency opened 20 files on former Nazis - including papers on Mr Waldheim - which showed that the CIA knew from British intelligence as early as 1945 that Waldheim had worked as a relatively junior officer in a Nazi intelligence unit in the Balkans which was known to have committed atrocities.

Because Waldheim did not achieve political prominence for many years after the war, the document was filed and forgotten. When he was proposed as UN secretary-general in 1971, the CIA was not asked to check his background and did not know it had the document.

The files showed that agents had some suspicion that Waldheim's Nazi past was used against him by the KGB. However, the files also debunked recent claims that he worked as an informant for the Americans.

Waldheim served two terms at the UN, retiring in 1981 after a Chinese veto blocked his efforts for a third term. He became president of Austria in 1986, although his tenure was so controversial, because of allegations about his past, that the country became isolated.

Eli Rosenbaum, who led the American government's effort in 1987 to bar Waldheim from entering the United States as a suspected war criminal, said: "He was not used by the CIA, but the agency did suspect he had been compromised by the Soviets and questioned several defectors about this."

The CIA files dealt with prominent Nazis, including Hitler, but provide little startling information. However, they do give a fascinating insight into the use of war criminals by post-war intelligence organisations, including those in America and Britain.

Mr Rosenbaum said: "These files show that the real winners of the Cold War were Nazi war criminals." He said the files showed how several second-ranking Nazis, some of whom were certainly involved in mass murder, traded information for jobs with foreign intelligence services.

"America did employ Nazi intelligence officers after the war; people like Klaus Barbie [known as the Butcher of Lyons], Wilhelm Hoettl and Emil Augsburg," said Prof Richard Breitman, senior historian for the panel appointed by President Clinton to study America's archive on Nazi war crimes.

"These men had no business serving as intelligence sources or employees of America and this was an horrendous mistake on the part of American intelligence. It was a mistake morally, politically and practically, because many of these people were vulnerable to being compromised by the Soviet Union."

The CIA's file on Hitler has no new information.