Unholy Trinity [antikvár]

Preface Unholy Trinity is the story of the Vatican's underground Nazi-smuggling networks, code-named 'Operation Radine.' The first hints of the existence of the Vatican's Radines emerged in America. This was perhaps appropriate, as it was US intelligence which gave this name to the Holy See's escape networks. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services coined the term 'Radines' for their escape and evasion networks used by US Air Force crews shot down in occupied Europe. Radine, in fact, did not refer to the Nazi vermin who were going out through the Vatican underground (although in hindsight it was an appropriate description). A radine is the rope ladder reaching to the top of the mast, the last place of safety when the ship is going down. Thus Ratline became a generic intelligence term for an evacuation network. Although OSS veterans like to boast about their Radines, the Vatican's were supposed to remain hidden forever. But beneath the sleepy town of Suidand, Maryland, there are twenty underground vaults, each an acre in size, crammed from floor to ceiling with classified documents from World War II and the Cold War. For nearly half a century they have been hidden from public scrudny. As the decades passed, the successors to the original custodians had no idea what awful secrets lay buried in the vaults, until piece by piece they lifted the veil of Vatican secrecy By the time the intelligence chiefs read this book, it will be too late. It does not matter that these events are still highly classified or that the files were released by error; the fact remains that so many documents have been legally released that any further cover-up is pointiess. The Vatican's Ratiines have passed from secrecy to history. It is an ugly legacy of spies, scandals, and Nazi smuggling. It is the sad history of the Vatican's intelligence service. This book is not an attack on the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Rather, it is an analysis of a tiny group of Vatican officials