The Bormann File: Volume 36

FOR hunters of heads or headlines, no war criminal has been a more tantalizing quarry than Adolf Hitler's evil aide Martin Bormann. Since he vanished from Hitler's Berlin bunker the night after the Fuehrer committed suicide in 1945, Bormann has been reported found hundreds of times: living as a recluse in the Amazon jungle, for instance, or masquerading as a monk in Italy. But none of the reports have ever been confirmed. Last week newspaper readers on both sides of the Atlantic were presented with the most elaborately packaged claim of all. In a six-part series that included photographs purportedly taken of Bormann last October and excerpts from supposedly secret documents, Hungarian-born U.S. Author Ladislas Farago contended that the missing murderer was alive and living as a prosperous businessman in Latin America.

The London Daily Express, which bought the series from Farago and syndicated it to the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, trumpeted the package as "incontrovertible evidence" of Bormann's movements over the past 27 years. In a breathless promotion story, the Express announced: "All speculation concerning his fate can be swept aside following a dramatic and sometimes dangerous nine-month search through six South American countries for Bormann, the world's most wanted and most elusive man." In fact, as the series unfolded, it stirred up more speculation than it swept aside. Among the questions it raised: Had Farago been duped by his sources? Had the Express been shortchanged by Farago? Had readers been oversold by the Express?

The possibility exists, of course, that Bormann is in fact somewhere in South America, as many before Farago have claimed. Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal, head of the Jewish Documentations Center in Vienna, believes that Bormann actually did reach South America and judges the odds at fifty-fifty that he is still alive. But Farago, whose latest book was the bestselling documentary of intrigue, The Game of the Foxes, failed to prove his case. Some of his evidence was indeed controvertible, and much of it was questionable. In addition, some of it, presented as if it were being disclosed for the first time, is rehashed material that had been published before. Above all, the series lacked convincing firsthand testimony to Bormann's existence. Farago did not claim to have seen Bormann with his own eyes. The best he could offer was the word of someone else, and that was quickly in dispute.

Safer Refuge. Fact, fantasy or a mixture of both, the tale spun by Farago was undeniably fascinating. Bormann, he said, left the Fuehrerbunker for safer refuge in another nearby bunker that had been prepared by Nazi Executioner Adolf Eichmann. According to Farago, Bormann later used clerical clothes supplied by an Austrian bishop to reach Bavaria, then moved on to Northern Italy to visit his fatally ill wife in Merano. After his wife died, Bormann lived in a Dominican monastery in Bolzano, awaiting a chance to flee to Argentina where he had stored a fortune in currency, precious stones and gold, much of which had been extracted from the teeth of gas-chamber victims. Bormann, said Farago, had consigned the hoard to Argentina by U-boat before the war ended. The fugitive Nazi finally reached Argentina in 1948 through the assistance of Eva Peron, who used contacts in the Vatican to get him a passport issued under the ironical Jewish name of Eliezer Goldstein. For making Bormann feel at home in Argentina, Farago claimed, Dictator Juan Peron extracted from Bormann's booty a ransom of nearly $200 million.

According to Farago, Bormann lived comfortably in Argentina for seven years, acting as a sort of "Godfather" to other Nazi refugees, including Eichmann. But in 1955, when Peron lost power, Bormann no longer felt safe. He fled to Brazil and Bolivia, where he seemed to lead a checkered existence. At one stage, Farago had him visiting "prurient nightclubs"; at another, the fugitive Nazi posed as a priest and took part in baptisms, weddings and funerals. In 1960, Bormann moved again--this time to Chile. He bought a farm near Valdivia or Linares (Farago varied the location), close to the Argentine border, and turned it into an armed fortress, complete with antiaircraft gun. From this stronghold, wrote Farago, Bormann regained control of his funds in Argentina and began to build a business empire with Mafia-type takeovers of legitimate businesses. Among other things, Farago added, Bormann gained a monopoly on the timber market in Northern Argentina and Southern Paraguay.

Bormann, who is 72 if he is alive, was depicted as being frequently on the move, sometimes out of fear and sometimes simply on business trips, but always accompanied by his chauffeur-bodyguard, "a German-speaking Chilean of Irish descent," Jorge O'Higgins. Bormann wears plastic gloves, said Farago, so that his fingerprints can never be taken, and had a mistress in Santiago who bore him four children. As of a few weeks ago, Farago contended, Bormann was back in Argentina, in Salta province, living in "a cottage on the Rancho Grande, the vast estate of Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, last scion of the Krupp family." Like so much of Farago's other material, this episode included authentic-sounding detail, stating, for instance, that Bormann's attentive host was the estate's manager, a naturalized Turk. But too many of the details do not stand up to examination. Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach does not own any ranch in Argentina. Al-fried Krupp's sister, Waldtraut Burckhardt, does own one in Salta province but it is called Finca Ampascachi, not Rancho Grande. The manager is a German, not a naturalized Turk.

Secret Files. In one installment of his series, Farago gave former Argentine President Arturo Frondizi credit for helping Israeli agents capture Eichmann on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1960. Frondizi, who protested at the time of the capture that it was a violation of Argentine sovereignty, denied Farago's report and called it libelous. In another installment, Farago quoted a Dr. Horacio A. Perillo, whom he described as the former "chief of Frondizi's Cabinet." Perillo was actually only a low-echelon adviser. But in Buenos Aires last week he was offering newsmen corroboration of Farago's material--for a fee of $1,000.

Farago cited secret files as the source of most of his material. The Express said that he had obtained the files by infiltrating the intelligence services of Latin American countries and then smuggling hundreds of pages of documents back to the U.S. and Europe. Two other authors who are Bormann watchers insisted in New York last week that the bulk of the material has been available at the Paris headquarters of Interpol for years. But Farago was obviously offering fresh information when he quoted a "high-ranking official of the Central Intelligence Agency in Buenos Aires," one Jose Juan Velasco, as having been face to face with Bormann just last October. That episode created more mystery than it solved.

According to Farago, Velasco had been tracking Bormann for nine years; he was called to Mendoza, near the Chilean border, by an immigration inspector who became suspicious of a man carrying a passport in the name of Ricardo Bauer. When Velasco confronted the man, he had no doubt that he was Bormann. But while Velasco sought instructions from Buenos Aires, the man slipped away. Why did Velasco, supposedly a supersleuth, not act on his own initiative? Newsmen in Buenos Aires tried to find him to ask him. But Argentine security officials said that he did not exist. (Farago told TIME in London that Velasco was in jail, being tortured by the very regime that Farago had extolled in the Express as anti-Nazi.) As for the border officials near Mendoza, they said that there was no record of anybody named Ricardo Bauer who had passed through the Mendoza checkpoint in the past 60 days.

A firm nonbeliever in the Farago series was Nazi Nemesis Simon Wiesenthal. "I'm skeptical about this story from A to Z," he said. Wiesenthal theorized that Farago may have been fed some false information by underground Nazi agents seeking to keep authorities off the trail of other war criminals. Wiesenthal, among others, further speculated that the government of Alejandro Lanusse may have leaked material to Farago to discredit Peron on his return to Argentina.

Intelligence sources in West Germany, Israel and Washington, as well as in Argentina, greeted the Farago series with caution.

But the newest account will be checked out, as always when the name of Martin Bormann crops up. Bormann was not just a minor staff man of the Third Reich or a banally evil bureaucrat like Eichmann. He was a man of incredible power, concerned with every aspect of Nazi policy, the pillar of the party, the tireless executor of Hitler's whims as well as his own. Brutal and ruthless, he was feared even by SS Leader Heinrich Himmler. He was, in fact, Hitler's alter ego, or as one historian put it, the "Devil's Beelzebub."

There is some evidence that Bormann died shortly after leaving Hitler's bunker. State Attorney Joachim Richter, who is in charge of West Germany's continuing investigation of the Bormann case, tends to believe it. But he keeps looking for the man, dead or alive. The Bormann file in his Frankfurt office now contains 35 volumes. Says Richter: "Every story we have checked turned out not to be true, or remained simply a story--unconfirmed." Now comes Volume 36.

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