© 2004 by Oxford University Press
Symposium on Contributions to the History of International Criminal Justice |
Intelligence Agencies and War Crimes Prosecution
Allen Dulles’s Involvement in Witness Testimony at Nuremberg
1 Professor of International law, University of Helsinki. Member of the International Law Commission.
Legal responses to international crimes can be shaped by complex and contradictory factors. The present case study of the contribution of former-CIA director Alan Dulles to the Nuremberg process reveals that a series of geo-political, interpersonal and institutional factors shaped the selective deployment of evidence and other expertise on Nazi war crimes, provided by a number of his former intelligence agents and informants, particularly Hans Gisevius. Amongst these factors was the ‘fall out’ from the failed plea-bargain arrangement for defendants Schacht and Göring, brokered by the then head of US intelligence, General W.J. Donovan. Ultimately, Gisevius’s testimony was admitted as part of an ambush of the defence counsel, which, although largely successful, particularly with respect to Göring, raised some embarrassing geo-political issues for the Anglo-Americans. It also lent powerful support to one of Dulles’s wartime informants, the defendant, Hjalmar Schacht, who was subsequently acquitted.