BERLIN, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Germany's foreign intelligence agency destroyed personnel files for former employees of the Secret Service and the Gestapo in 2007, historians said.
The Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, destroyed the files in 2007, historians studying ties between the Third Reich and the foreign intelligence agency told Spiegel Online.
One week before BND head Ernst Uhrlau is to retire, an independent commission he appointed to research the agency's Nazi roots uncovered the destruction of documents relating to 250 agency officials who were "in significant intelligence positions in the SS, the SD (the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party) or the Gestapo," Spiegel reported Wednesday.
Some of those whose files were destroyed were investigated for possible war crimes in the aftermath of World War II.
Commission spokesman and historian Klaus-Dietmar Henke said he was "stunned" by the findings, and the commission has called for a full investigation of the document destruction.
