- 4 months ago
History's darker side revealed... Join us as we examine controversial alliances between the US government and notorious figures accused of heinous crimes. Our countdown includes Klaus Barbie, Unit 731, Operation Paperclip, Saddam Hussein, and other cases where political expediency seemingly outweighed moral considerations. Was it justified? Let us know below!
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00:00The idea that they were involved in war crimes was really necessary to be kept secret, and that's exactly what happened.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're exploring the notorious times when the United States of America worked directly or through programs with those accused or convicted of committing war crimes.
00:16Because we were learning by experience, and occasionally the experience was not good.
00:21Roberto Dolbisson.
00:23Before it was renamed from the School of the Americas to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,
00:28this U.S. Department of Defense school had Dolbisson as a student.
00:32After getting his military training, Dolbisson would later return to El Salvador,
00:36where his alleged crimes took place as he joined death squads to wipe out opposition to the country's leaders.
00:41The Carter administration felt so strong about Roberto Dolbisson's death squad activities that we classified him as a terrorist.
00:53Dolbisson would viciously interrogate political prisoners earning the nickname Blowtorch Bob.
00:57after his modus operandi.
01:09According to the U.N.'s Truth Commission, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was known for speaking against the atrocities in the country,
01:17was murdered by Dolbisson and his team in 1980.
01:19El pasado nos marcó bastante a todos los salvadoreños, y él fue como la voz de todos.
01:26However, he was never convicted of the crime, and Dolbisson died in 1992.
01:30Jorge Rafael Videla.
01:31From 1974 to 1983, Argentina engaged in a state terrorism campaign known as the Dirty War.
01:37It was a time when the authorities committed atrocities against anyone they deemed against them.
01:42The sinister symbols of the Dirty War were unmarked green Ford falcons like these cruising the streets of Argentina's cities.
01:49Inside plainclothesmen with lists of suspects to be picked up and carried off to brutal interrogation, often to death.
01:56It's estimated that up to 30,000 people were killed.
01:59A key figure in the terror was Videla, who came into power as president in a military coup in 1976.
02:05Argentina was a part of Operation Condor, through which the U.S. backed right-wing dictatorships in South America.
02:10There is no question that the U.S. had full knowledge of the scope and brutality of what was taking place.
02:15Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reportedly met with Argentine military officials to support their Dirty War and advised them to finish before the human rights violations became known to Congress.
02:24Kissinger was then involved in several aid deals to Argentina worth millions.
02:28I hope, but you know, there's not much hope left.
02:34Masanobu Suji.
02:36Described as a fanatical colonel in the Japanese army during World War II, Suji was a key figure in planning several war crimes committed by Japan.
02:42After Japan took over Singapore in 1942, he contributed to the massacre known as Suk Ching, where up to 50,000 people were executed.
02:51A month later, Suji helped organize the Bataan Death March, where up to 18,650 American and Filipino prisoners of war were killed following a forced transfer.
03:01Under these conditions, it was unbearable.
03:05After the war, Suji escaped prosecution before returning to Japan as a politician.
03:09However, he vanished in 1961.
03:10CIA documents indicate he indeed traveled to North Vietnam in 1961 and some place him in Hanoi several years later.
03:19According to documents released in 2005-2006, Suji was recruited by the CIA following Japan's surrender to spy for the United States during the Cold War.
03:28Operation Gladio.
03:29Following World War II, the Western Union followed by NATO instigated Operation Gladio,
03:34a stay-behind project where operatives were left in Western European countries to act as resistance if required.
03:40I knew what Gladio was.
03:43In fact, I didn't know anything, except that this day, in a Italian journal, on the journey between Le Caire and Bruxelles.
03:53The CIA, MI6, and other intelligence agencies were said to be involved.
03:58It's alleged that the operation secretly recruited far-right extremists to destabilize left-wing movements and instigate attacks.
04:04In Italy, in France, in Suisse, in Belgium, in any case, and probably, yes, in Spain, before September 1949.
04:12So, before the creation of the CIA.
04:14But, as they do it often, the Americans are mounted on the train in march.
04:18In 1990, Italy's then Prime Minister, Julio Andriotti, confirmed the existence of Operation Gladio.
04:25In 1980, the project was linked to the Bologna Massacre, where 85 people lost their lives following an attack by neo-fascists.
04:32In 2006, the U.S. State Department issued a statement denying the violence allegations.
04:57Instead, stating it was a hoax by the Soviets during the Cold War.
05:00Augusto Pinochet.
05:01Even before becoming a member of Operation Condor, Pinochet was involved with the U.S. and, of course, Kissinger again.
05:07The country supported Pinochet's successful 1973 coup in Chile that installed his military junta in power and removed the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.
05:18The CIA and U.S. military even hired those involved in the dictatorship as contacts, despite accusations that they were involved in human rights violations.
05:26More than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared under Pinochet's rule.
05:31Almost 40,000 were tortured.
05:33Pinochet and his government persecuted anyone with left-leaning views, causing thousands to be executed and up to 80,000 placed in concentration camps, along with many horrible crimes.
05:44Pinochet passed away in 2006 as he faced hundreds of charges of human rights violations.
06:02The state has officially recognized 1,460 disappeared people from the Pinochet era, but there are believed to be many, many more.
06:11Well, Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon, Barbie was the head of the Gestapo in the French city during its occupation by Germany in World War II.
06:18When Barbie was last here, 15,000 were arrested.
06:234,000 were murdered.
06:25He took great pleasure in personally committing atrocities toward prisoners, especially Jews and resistance fighters.
06:30Following the war, France sentenced Barbie to death in absentia.
06:33He has never expressed any regret at all for his actions.
06:36However, the European nation discovered that he was working for the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps for anti-communist spying.
06:42Rather than the states handing him over to France, they helped smuggle Barbie to Bolivia under the name Klaus Altman in 1951.
06:48Thanks to the work of Serge and Beata Klarsfeld, who discovered Barbie, he was later extradited and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 before dying four years later.
06:58Saddam Hussein
06:59While an invasion of his country by the U.S. led to Hussein's arrest and execution in 2006, the two parties were at one point allies.
07:05The date, I believe, was in December 20, 1983. You were meeting with Saddam Hussein. I think we have some video of that. Of that meeting. Tell me what was going on during this.
07:18Following the revolution in Iran, the U.S. wasn't too keen on the country spreading its ideology.
07:23So they offered support to Iraq in several ways before and during the Iran-Iraq War, which began in 1980.
07:29Shat al-Arab was where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers came together.
07:32It had been disputed territory for centuries, and it was Iraq's only access point to the waters of the Persian Gulf.
07:39As well as supplying intelligence reports on Iran's forces, some of which Hussein blamed failures on.
07:44The U.S. also gave armament and technology to the country.
07:47Some of this was reportedly used in Iraq's chemical weapons.
07:50The U.S. also provided Iraq with billions in aid from Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush's respective administrations.
07:56Two years later, Saddam Hussein would take his nation to war again, this time invading his neighbor, Kuwait.
08:01Which prompted the first Gulf War, and more bloodshed.
08:05Galen Organization.
08:07With the title of Hitler's super spy, Reinhard Galen quickly rose up the ranks to lead Germany's intelligence gathering during World War II.
08:13To his enemies, the most dangerous man in Europe.
08:17To his admirers, the most brilliant spy there's ever been.
08:20After Germany's defeat, Galen surrendered to the U.S. military's counterintelligence corps, where he offered his expertise in spying on the Soviet Union.
08:28This led to the U.S., especially the CIA, funding the Galen Organization, which focused its operations on the Soviet bloc of countries.
08:36Galen was flown to Washington, to the Pentagon, in August 1945, along with three of his top A's.
08:42Galen used his position to hire former colleagues in Germany, including those who allegedly committed war crimes.
08:48One alleged hire in the Org, as it was nicknamed, was Alois Brunner, who was heavily involved in extermination policies.
08:55Galen continued in this position until 1956, when he then headed West Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND.
09:02Galen, in effect, became head of the West German Secret Service.
09:06Unit 731. During World War II, Unit 731 was the Japanese Army's secret research branch that developed chemical and biological weapons,
09:14and committed horrific human experiments, mostly on prisoners.
09:17If the aggressor does not reflect, and instead insists on denying what happened and falsifying history, then how could we, the victims, ever forget?
09:25Within its facility, an estimated 14,000 people were killed, and up to a further 300,000 more died from the weapons it created.
09:32Crimes against humanity are not just acts of war. They strip away any sense of humanity. They obliterate any semblance of human ethics.
09:41Following the war, the U.S. offered those involved with Unit 731 a deal.
09:45Immunity from prosecution for an exchange of data. The U.S. then suppressed information about their crimes.
09:51One of the biggest names to partake in this deal was Shiro Ishii, who led Unit 731.
09:56After getting immunity, he was hired to lecture officers on bioweapons and allegedly helped the U.S. in the Korean War.
10:01He was never prosecuted before dying in 1959.
10:04World War II delivered some sickening events and despicable cruelty, but the actions of Unit 731 were on a different level.
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10:28Operation Paperclip
10:29Following World War II, the U.S. instigated Operation Overcast, which later became Operation Paperclip.
10:35This secret program involved the government hiring over 1,600 people to work in scientific fields for the U.S.,
10:41despite many of the workers being connected to war crimes.
10:43And the idea was, certainly at the Pentagon, and among the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were really running this program,
10:50was, if we don't get these Nazi scientists, surely the Soviets will.
10:55Paperclip became heavily involved in the space race with the Soviet Union.
10:59Werner von Braun, in particular, helped with the 1969 moon landing mission,
11:03and later became the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
11:07However, while von Braun escaped direct ties to war crimes, others did not.
11:11You know, this becomes, of course, a story of practical versus ethical choices.
11:17Walter Schreiber, a physician, and Hubertus Strughold, a medical researcher,
11:21were alleged to have taken part in human experimentation during the war.
11:25Yet both were involved in Operation Paperclip, and neither faced prosecution.
11:28This idea that you can just whitewash someone's past, I think, is important to look into and to investigate
11:36so that that truth can be reconciled.
11:39Was the U.S. justified in aiding these war criminals, or did it go too far?
11:42Let us know below.
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