Book: Nazi Hunter Worked for Israeli Spy Agency

(Sept. 3) -- Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was long believed to work alone in his tireless obsession to find Adolf Hitler's war comrades, but a new book asserts he often really worked for the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

According to "Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends," a book released this week by Israeli historian and journalist Tom Segev, Wiesenthal was involved with Israel's intelligence agents a year before Mossad was even established, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The book claims that the Holocaust survivor participated in a failed, little-known 1948 attempt to capture top Nazi Adolf Eichmann, known as the architect of the Holocaust, who was grabbed more than a decade later in Argentina and executed in Israel following a televised trial. Segev also says that in the 1960s, Wiesenthal gave the intelligence agency details of Nazis working on Egypt's rocket program .

"I I have no reason to doubt it, but I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about him," Efraim Zuroff, director of Jerusalem's Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Jewish Chronicle. But "it doesn't in any way change our perception of him, or our understanding of his mission," said Zuroff, a historian who has also tracked down World War II criminals.

Wiesenthal died in his Vienna home in 2005, at age 96. He was long believed to be a one-man band in his zeal to bring justice to Nazi leaders.

"(It) is quite surprising in the context of his own story, because he was always regarded as a loner, someone who does everything alone against all odds and against local law enforcement," Segev told The Associated Press.

The 1948 plot to snatch Eichmann in Austria was likely botched by an Israeli comrade of Wiesenthal's, who regaled fellow bar patrons with tales of his country's war for independence, the book says, according to The New York Times. Word spread that an Israeli was in town, and Eichmann dumped his plans to visit his wife and child.

But some are claiming there is little new in Segev's assertion that Wiesenthal was on Mossad's payroll. "I'm delighted that Dr. Segev has added lots of new information to the story of Simon Wiesenthal, but I'm afraid that this particular scoop is not really his," author Guy Walters writes in a post on London's Telegraph website. Walters says he wrote about Wiesenthal's Mossad connections, based on historical documents, in his 2009 book "Hunting Evil."

Segev says his book is based on unprecedented access to unpublished material from Wiesenthal's personal archives and interviews with his alleged former handlers, according to the AP. Wiesenthal worked with the Mossad until 1970, operating under the code name "Theocrat" and providing Israeli intelligence information on suspected war criminals and neo-Nazi groups threatening Jewish communities in Europe.