At least 1,000 ex-Nazis – some of them certainly war criminals responsible for murdering thousands of Jews – were recruited to spy for the US at the peak of the Cold War, the New York Times reported.

They were reportedly protected by the Central Intelligence Agency and FBI, both institutions infused by the post-war paranoia of Communism.

So wrote Eric Lichtblau, a Times Washington DC reporter, in his book ‘The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe haven for Hitler’s Men’, which is published today.

American University Holocaust scholar Richard Breitman said there were no moral grounds for making using of war criminals to fight the Cold War.

In addition, they became “security headaches,” he said. “Most of the Nazis and Nazi collaborators used were…more trouble than they were worth in intelligence terms.”

Mr Lichtblau documents how the US was so obsessed with the threat of Communism that law enforcement and intelligence officials gave little thought to the moral implications of giving ex-Nazi murderers safe harbour.

One was Adolf Eichmann’s friend and SS officer Otto von Bolschwing, who was allowed to move to the US in 1954 “for his loyal postwar service,” in the CIA’s words then.

Another was Aleksandras Lileikis, linked to the massacre of 10,000 Lithuanian Jews.

The books says that the CIA never informed Israel of its knowledge of Bolschwing’s close ties to Eichmann even after Israel captured him for trial in 1960 for his lead role in coordinating the Holocaust.