
In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis - diodorus
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html
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voidlogic
The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the
future as a factor worthy of consideration in matters of espionage, state
security, etc.

Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest.

~~~
thesteamboat
> Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest.

Quoting from the article:

    
    
      But many Nazi spies proved inept or worse, declassified 
      security reviews show. Some were deemed habitual liars, 
      confidence men or embezzlers, and a few even turned out to 
      be Soviet double agents, the records show.

~~~
morley
I don't think the parent is levying any judgment about whether they were right
or wrong. I think they are pointing out that any reasonable person working in
a spy agency at the time would be doing the same thing. Or, to put it
differently: regardless of your ideology in the present, if you instead
happened to work for a US spy agency during the Cold War, you might have made
the same decisions, because

> The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the
> future

I don't know the parent's true intentions, but I read this less as approval of
their actions and more as a mournful observation about how few choices any of
us really have.

~~~
thesteamboat
I think I'm interpreting the parent's intentions the same as you -- but I was
hoping that quote would stand alone to challenge efficacy of those choices
(rather than their morality).

The rest of this comment is just my speculation/justification for why moral
considerations might make for more effective policies than "pragmatic" ones.

I think that (there's a reasonable chance) the security agencies did
themselves (by which I mean American society) more harm by acquiring flawed
assets than the cost of waiting to develop appropriate assets on their own.

It's the same general problem as security theater -- a system that focuses on
"doing something", rather than making a principled understanding of the
costs/benefits and trying to optimize some security tradeoff.

One reason principles are great is because they (are supposed to) act as
commitment devices that keep you from doing some tempting, short-term thing,
and keep your actions in line with your longer term goals.

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Osmium
> The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance,
> even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.”

Sincere question: what on earth would qualify as a "minor" war crime?

~~~
TallGuyShort
The term was probably used loosely and only as a relative term. Consenting to
unethical interrogation practices, for instance, is "minor" compared to
personally participating in the massacre of hundreds of unarmed people.
They're both serious, and they're both war crimes, but they make a big
difference in how "evil" that person ought to be perceived IMO.

~~~
voidlogic
...Esp. when said hiring organization might not have issues with "unethical
interrogation practices"

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alrs
Bringing Nazis into the US government is where the CIA and NASA came from.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip)

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myth_drannon
I can't recollect the name of the person, but once I read an article about how
the CIA hired a high ranking German official responsible for nazi propaganda
and the he was working as head of CIA's history department rewriting and
whitewashing the history of US involvement in Europe and basically doing
exactly what he was doing before but this time instead of jews his targets
were communists.

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ovulator
Hey, NASA too! (Well maybe not 1,000)

~~~
voidlogic
But to be fair, you could call anyone who joined the party a Nazi. I would
imagine this meant that any career minded scientist who wanted government
funding become a Nazi. That hardly meant they did anything unethical during
the war.

~~~
mamcx
They joined the Nazi party. Thats unethical.

BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy
too, nazi or not.

~~~
voidlogic
Give me a break, many/most normal people didn't know about the "final
solution". Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide
is. Many Germans fought hard in WWII, not for Hitler or his ideals, but
because they didn't want Germany to end up like after WWI again.

>>BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and
destroy too, nazi or not.

Are you saying anyone develops weapons is unethical? I can see how you might
hold that as a personal POV, but don't pretend there is consensus around that.

~~~
rdtsc
> Give me a break, many/most normal people didn't know about the "final
> solution".

Hard to say because many certainly were given the opportunity to pretend like
they didn't even if they did. Surely afterwards they probably wouldn't be
raising their hands proclaiming they knew but kept quiet.

Hundreds of thousands and millions of neighbours, friends, acquaintances
disappearing and everyone actually thought they are being sent to ... well
where ? the beach ? What did they think happened to this people.

> Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide is

Joining to fight a war of aggression is and willingly participating in it is.
Besides the most horrific and well calculated, scaled and optimized genocide,
"regular" Joes Barbers committed countless tortures, rapes and execution in
Easter Europe.

My Russian teacher was telling us a personal story how as a child she watch
through a fence how German soldiers, raped and then dismembered her childhood
friend.

~~~
voidlogic
>Joining to fight a war of aggression is and willingly participating in it is.

Think of all the modern conflicts the US is in- If people actually voted on
such things, they would happen less often. Nazi Germany quickly went from a
"fighting mob" democracy to a "not really a democracy at all", proposing WWII
was the choice of the average German citizen is nonsense. Even if your country
is fighting a war you didn't support- you probably still want it to win...

>My Russian teacher was telling us a personal story how as a child she watch
through a fence how German soldiers, raped and then dismembered her childhood
friend.

And the Russians were just as bad later in the war... Are you claiming the
Germans were especially brutal? This behavior has been the norm for solders
for most of history- (Not saying its right, just saying it wasn't abnormal or
unique).

~~~
rdtsc
> And the Russians were just as bad later in the war..

I never said Russians were better.

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hammock
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip)

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dba7dba
Let's not forget officers/officials of the Japanese Empire who went on to stay
in power of Japan after WW2.

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myth_drannon
NY Times published very similar article 4 years ago by the same author.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html)

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walshemj
considerably less than ended up in both the GDR and FDR police forces

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rurban
Of course, fascist regimes need to hold together.
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-a-fascist-society-
exa...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-a-fascist-society-examining-
the-existence-of-fascism-in-the-united-states/5377146)

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stefantalpalaru
There's also the stay-behind paramilitary organization meant to resist a
soviet invasion - the one in West Germany employed former nazis:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Germany](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Germany)

