West German spy agency 'employed about 200 former Nazi criminals'

London, Mar 20 : The Federal German Intelligence Service, which is also known as BND, has admitted that it employed about 200 former Nazi criminals for at least 15 years after the Second World War.

Some of these criminals were involved in massacres in Poland and Russia, while the others were Gestapo torturers. All of them found a berth in the West German intelligence service.

The cases have surfaced because the BND is compiling a history of its espionage activities since 1956 in a bid to shore up its image.

There was never any attempt to hide the fact that the BND employed Nazis — it was set up in a hurry, with US help, to create spying networks against the Soviet Union — but it has always been vague about its war records.

Now, according to The Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper has been given access to files from the 1960s that detail how the BND tried, belatedly, to weed out suspected war criminals.

"It has always been clear that the BND had a dark past," said Hansjoerg Geiger, who headed the BND between 1996 and 1998.

"But I would never have reckoned with such a high proportion," he added.

He urged the BND to continue digging.

"Only transparency about the past will clearly establish that the present-day BND has nothing in common with the service in its early years," he said.