Well, That Only Took 40 Years

Canada has finally released a report showing how the Central Intelligence Agency resettled Nazis to Canada.

Gee, hoocoodanode?  (Well, me, as well as anyone who has followed the saga of the Nazis on the Victims of Communism Memorial,  [also here and here] a Ukrainian Nazi SS member was honored in parliament on live TV, and [of course] Chrystia Freeland's family history.)

Is anyone surprised that the CIA was running a ratline to Canada?

After 40 years the Canadian government has finally released a nearly fully unredacted version of historian Alti Rodal’s investigation into alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada.

The previously redacted sections reveal that the CIA was actively involved in resettling alleged Nazis in Canada after the Second World War, that the CIA deceived Canadian officials, and that a leading CIA officer in charge of resettlement operations was later the CIA’s representative in Ottawa.

“It was a ratline,” said historian Jared McBride, referring to the escape routes used by the Nazis and their collaborators to flee Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. “In an operational sense, this is what a ratline is.”

While the newly unredacted version of the Rodal Report doesn’t name the specific individuals who gained entry into Canada, it does reveal that Canadian visa control officers posted in Stockholm were aware of falsified documents coming from American sources as early as 1953.

Further, former RCMP deputy commissioner W.H. Kelly was informed in early 1954 of suspicious applications for security screenings coming from the U.S. zone of occupation in postwar Germany.

………

[UCLA historian Jared] McBride noted that the Canadian government has consistently sought to bury the story rather than demanding transparency from the United States.

“The lack of self-respect amazes me,” said McBride. 

The new version of the Rodal Report is not completely unredacted: there remains one censored line that appears to explain why, according to Oscar Holtz, the United States wouldn’t accept known Nazi collaborators, even though there was a standing provision to permit entry to as many as 100 per year at the time. 

McBride told The Maple he wonders what individuals would have been so disreputable they would be considered inadmissible for entry to the United States, but still valuable enough — or such a security risk — they merited resettlement in Canada instead. 

I'm not amazed at all, Dr. McBride.  Canada has served as a toxic waste dump for the detritus of American empire for well over a century.