Wallenberg Had Clandestine Ties to U.S., CIA Says
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LANGLEY, Va. — Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, was working for a semi-clandestine U.S. agency, possibly arousing Soviet suspicions and leading to his arrest and subsequent disappearance, the CIA said Thursday.
Wallenberg, who was assigned to the Swedish legation in Budapest in 1944 by his own government, received money as well as orders and information useful to his work from the U.S. War Refugee Board, the CIA said in a newly declassified report.
The board’s “clandestine character . . . could have aroused Soviet suspicions and led to his disappearance,” said the 1981 study by an author whose name was withheld by the spy agency.
Wallenberg is widely credited with saving the lives of more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews while posted by Sweden to Budapest beginning in 1944.
He was arrested by the Soviets in 1945 and never seen again.
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