Covert U.S. effort led to Canada’s acceptance of dubious postwar immigrants: CIA resettled Nazis

The Maple ; A leading CIA officer in charge of resettlement was later posted to Ottawa. by Taylor C. Noakes

Keep in mind this is a VERY LIMITED release of information.

Large excerpt from the Maple- It’s a big read, so check the link

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.

Kelly was subsequently contacted by a U.S. intelligence official named George McManus, who requested Canadian security personnel accept certain immigrants recommended by U.S. authorities without conducting background checks.

In March of that year, Kelly reported to Ottawa that nearly 40 people had already been accepted into Canada in 1953 alone based on American recommendations. Some of those people, the Rodal Report alleged, were known to be Nazi collaborators.

“This isn’t old news; this is new,” said McBride in an interview with The Maple. Among others, McBride pointed to the revelation that the Americans provided individuals slated for resettlement with false documentation.

“It’s not surprising they did this,” said McBride, “but where are the records? We really need to see the U.S. documentation on this.”

One previously redacted section of the Rodal Report tells of an individual who had been rejected by Canadian officials in 1953, yet who was presented again three months later — with a completely different set of documents and a new identity — by an American intelligence officer working for U.S. Armed Forces Europe (USAREUR) named Oscar Holtz.

Holtz is also identified in the unredacted sections as having supplied Canadian officials with a list of 35 individuals who had made it to Canada in 1953 with the assistance of USAREUR.

Another four had been identified by Canadian officials separately. USAREUR is also said to have advanced another 52 applicants for resettlement to Canada who were rejected by the RCMP, mostly on security grounds.

“Not only did the Canadian government know at the time that it was being deceived by U.S. intelligence, but Canadian officials learned of this again in the 1980s,” McBride said.

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

No Canadian government is going to demand transparency from the US. Neither Conservative or Liberal.

“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.

The report has been gradually unredacted over the course of the last few years.

The US settled Nazis aplenty into their country–

In September, the Federal Court ordered the government to publish sections of the report that had been redacted for 40 years. The Maple received a copy on October 8 after the federal government chose not to appeal the court’s ruling.

Officially titled “Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present,” the Rodal Report was written in the context of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, also referred to as the “Deschênes Commission,” which investigated the subject of war criminals in Canada in 1985 and 1986.

The second part of the Deschênes Commission’s final report, which lists the suspected war criminals identified and investigated by the commission, remains secret.

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The study says that, according to that U.S. official, a number of these people had criminal records, some arising from cases involving “moral turpitude” — a category in which Nazi collaborators were included.

The USAREUR official provided the Canadians with a list of 35 people who had already gone to Canada with the assistance of the agency, the study says. It adds that subsequent RCMP checks led to the conclusion that nearly all of these individuals would have been “rejectable” on security grounds.

Rodal said the USAREUR episode suggests that in the years following the war — and particularly during the period before the RCMP’s discovery of irregularities in USAREUR’s activities — “American Intelligence personnel could well have assisted persons with war criminal background to immigrate to Canada.”

“They were in a position to provide such persons with false documentation and to report to Canadian Visa Control Officers in the course of their routine checks that there was nothing adverse about these prospective immigrants,” the study says.

Rodal concluded it would appear that large numbers of former agents were being resettled by the Americans, “and it was perhaps the less desirable ones, for whatever reason, whom they would have wished to resettle in another country, such as Canada.”