John Joseph Loftus (born February 12, 1950), is an American author, former high level U.S. government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer. He is the president of
The Intelligence Summit and of the
Florida Holocaust Museum
The Florida Holocaust Museum is a Holocaust museum located at 55 Fifth Street South in St. Petersburg, Florida. Founded in 1992, it moved to its current location in 1998. Formerly known as the Holocaust Center, the museum officially changed to i ...
in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
.
Loftus is an author of numerous books on a purported
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
-
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
connection including ''The Belarus Secret'' and ''The Secret War Against the Jews'', both of which contain material claiming a
Bush
Bush commonly refers to:
* Shrub, a small or medium woody plant
Bush, Bushes, or the bush may also refer to:
People
* Bush (surname), including any of several people with that name
**Bush family, a prominent American family that includes:
*** ...
-
Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to:
People with the name Rockefeller f ...
-
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
connection.
He currently writes a weekly column called "spyview" for the
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish magazine ''
Ami
AMI or Ami may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
*AMI-tv, a Canadian TV channel
**AMI-télé, the French-language version
* AMI-audio, a Canadian audio broadcast TV service
*''Ami Magazine'', an Orthodox Jewish news magazine
Businesses ...
''.
Early career
Son of a firefighter, Loftus was born in
Boston, Massachusetts and is a graduate of
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
(
BA, 1971) and
Suffolk University
Suffolk University is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. With 7,560 students (includes all campuses, 7,379 at the Boston location alone), it is the eighth-largest university in metropolitan Boston. It was founded as a l ...
(
JD, 1977). He served in the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
from 1971 to 1974, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant. He began working for the
US Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
in 1977 and in 1979 joined their
Office of Special Investigations, which was charged with prosecuting and deporting
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
war criminals in the US. Loftus' now-expired website claimed, "As a young U.S. Army officer, John Loftus helped train Israelis on a covert operation that turned the tide of battle in the
1973 Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egy ...
."
Author
Loftus is the author and co-author of several books on Nazis, espionage, and similar topics including ''The Belarus Secret'' (1982), ''Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets'' (1992), ''The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People'' (1994), ''Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks'' (1998), ''America's Nazi Secret: An Insider's History of How the United States Department of Justice Obstructed Congress by: Blocking Congressional Investigations into Famous American Families Who Funded Hitler, Stalin and Arab Terrorists'' (2010). Although Loftus' first book, ''The Belarus Secret'', is nonfiction, it was adapted into a TV movie, ''
Kojak: The Belarus File'' (1985), with
Telly Savalas
Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas (January 21, 1922 – January 22, 1994) was an American actor and singer whose career spanned four decades. Noted for his bald head and deep, resonant voice, he is perhaps best known for portraying Lt. Theo Kojak on th ...
.
Reception of ''The Belarus Secret''
The
Office of Special Investigations historian
David Marwell
David G. Marwell (born 1951) is an American historian and the former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Marwell received a BA from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in modern European history from Binghamton University.
...
described Loftus' book ''The Belarus Secret'' as "the worst kind of amateur history."
Vital Zayka, a fellow of the ''
Center for Jewish History
The Center for Jewish History is a partnership of five Jewish history, scholarship, and art organizations in New York City: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute New York, Yeshiva University Museum, ...
'' in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, accused Loftus of falsification. The Israeli historian and Nazi hunter
Efraim Zuroff
Efraim Zuroff ( he, אפרים זורוף; born August 5, 1948) is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing indicted Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiese ...
described the book as controversial and referred to Charles R. Allen Jr.'s review in ''
Jewish Currents
''Jewish Currents'' is a progressive, secular Jewish quarterly magazine and news site whose content reflects the politics of the Jewish left. It features independent journalism, breaking news, political commentary, analysis, and a "countercultura ...
'', in which Allen joined the active criticism of Loftus and named him a fraud and a liar.
What Loftus had described as ''the Belarus secret'' is that many of the
Belarus Brigade's leaders, a unit incorporated into a German
SS division, were assisted into the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
– thanks largely to the efforts of
Frank Wisner
Frank Gardiner Wisner (June 23, 1909 – October 29, 1965) was one of the founding officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and played a major role in CIA operations throughout the 1950s.
Wisner began his intelligence career in the Off ...
. In defiance of federal law, Loftus asserted, the
Office of Policy Coordination
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was the covert operation wing of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Created as a department of the CIA in 1948, it actually operated independently until October 1950. OPC existed until 1 A ...
helped obtain
visas
Visa most commonly refers to:
*Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company
** Visa Debit card issued by the above company
** Visa Electron, a debit card
** Visa Plus, an interbank network
*Travel visa, a document that allows ...
for Nazi collaborators from Belarus — who were believed to have facilitated
numerous atrocities by the Nazi Germany. According to Loftus, it was all part of a
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
scheme to wage
guerrilla warfare in Soviet-occupied Europe, in which the Nazi collaborators were to play a key role. When the project collapsed, however, the Belarusians quickly settled in and obtained
US citizenship
Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constituti ...
– and intelligence agencies protected them from exposure for decades.
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote: "there is a question as to whether the author in his zealousness may not have overstated some of his material. He says 300 Byelorussian Nazis and an 'even larger number of
Ukrainian Nazis' were smuggled in. But he fails to draw a distinction between documented war criminals and hangers-on and perhaps other less culpable collaborators. ... Still, ''The Belarus Secret'' is certain to be a valuable source book when Congress reopens hearings ... into allegations of a war criminal cover-up."
Radio talk show host
Loftus previously had a radio show on Talkline Communications Network broadcast live every Monday and Tuesday from 11 pm to midnight EST in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, northern
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, southern
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
, and
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
and
Pompano Beach, Florida
Pompano Beach ( ) is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States. It is located along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, just north of Fort Lauderdale. The nearby Hillsboro Inlet forms part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. As of the 2020 ...
. His co-host was
John Batchelor
John Calvin Batchelor (born April 29, 1948) is an American author and host of ''Eye on the World'' on the CBS Audio Network. His flagship station is New York's 710 WOR. The show is a hard-news-analysis radio program on current events, world his ...
.
Social critic
Loftus serves as a media commentator, appearing regularly on
ABC National Radio and
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
. He also writes weekly for ''
Ami
AMI or Ami may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
*AMI-tv, a Canadian TV channel
**AMI-télé, the French-language version
* AMI-audio, a Canadian audio broadcast TV service
*''Ami Magazine'', an Orthodox Jewish news magazine
Businesses ...
'', an
Orthodox Jewish
Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on M ...
weekly newsmagazine.
On August 7, 2005, he provided the United States address of an alleged terrorist named Iyad K. Hilal on Fox News. Only afterwards was it revealed that Hilal had left the address three years previously and the home was now owned by a family, who was then subjected to threats and vandalism and required police protection as a result of Loftus' words. Fox terminated Loftus's contract to commentate after the event. Loftus said "I thought it might help police in that area now that we have positively identified a terrorist," but he did not say why he did not contact police in a more direct manner. Loftus apologized for the mistake and expressed frustration about "one federal
gency's inaction on an earlier tip he had given them years ago due to the same address.
Selected publications
* Revised and expanded as
*
* Also published as Released in a new and revised edition as
*
*
*
*
See also
*
Dave Emory
David Emory (born 1949) is an American talk radio host and conspiracy theorist, born in New York City, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Self-described "anti-fascist researcher", he is known for his radio show which purports to uncover neo-fas ...
References
External links
Unofficial Audio Archive of The John Batchelor Show and The Loftus Report commenced February 18, 2008''Muslim Brotherhood, (Bana) Nazis And Al Qaeda''* with
Leon Charney
Leon Charney (July 23, 1938 – March 21, 2016) was an American real estate tycoon, attorney, author, philanthropist, political pundit, media personality and Jewish cantor. He lived in Manhattan in New York City, dividing his time between his ...
on The Leon Charney Report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loftus, John
1950 births
Living people
American radio personalities
American male writers
Boston College alumni
Writers from Boston
United States Department of Justice lawyers
United States Army officers
Social critics