When the French ratcheted-up their extradition efforts, the CIC decided it was too risky to continue to use him for intelligence purposes, or turn him over to the French, as they were afraid he knew too much about the operations of the CIC. In 1951, they helped Barbie, and his family escape to South America via the U.S.A.'s "ratline."
Under the name Klaus Altmann, Barbie settled his family in La Paz, Bolivia. For the next 20 years, he got close to the ruling party of Bolivia, was a successful shipping trade businessman, and arms dealer. He secured Bolivian citizenship, and a diplomatic passport that allowed him to travel to Europe and the United States unimpeded. In 1971, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld identified Altmann as Barbie, and located him, then living in Peru, and began a massive public outcry about bringing him to justice. Barbie then returned to Bolivia because his government ties kept him safe, until Bolivia's government fell in 1980, and in 1983, the new government arrested him, and sent him to France.
This is only one example of the nefarious activities that the then CIC, and now CIA have been involved in since its inception in WWII. They have never been held accountable for anything they have done that has harmed this country, and the American people. They coddled war criminals, assassinated foreign leaders and an American President, and have deliberately started wars. It needs to be completely dismantled, and thorough investigations conducted of the activities they have been involved in since the organization first came on the scene.
Reinhard Gehlen, a general in Hitler’s military intelligence, kept all the files he’d accumulated in the war, and used them to cut a deal with American intelligence, and eventually vaulted his way into heading the German intelligence agency. Many of his agents and informants had been in the SS or other Nazi organizations and escaped prosecution. It was said that Gehlen had created a “state within the state.” There’s a documentary about him on TubiTV.
As it was, many in the French Resistance were Communists and there was a major Soviet spy ring at the time known to the Nazis as the Red Orchestra. Barbie knew their identities and key parts of those organizational structures and methods of operation. Similarly, Barbie knew who had been in the Nazi SS, secret police, and intelligence service. In the post-war era, they too were security threats because they could be recruited as potential Soviet spies and operatives or could do harm as recalcitrant Nazis.
For those reasons, Barbie was hired, used, and protected by the US as an intelligence asset. Was that wrong? Not in the spy game. And it was by such expedients that the US and the allies managed to keep Europe from falling to the Soviets or Germany from reverting to Nazism. Similarly, as a routine matter and with the approval of courts, dangerous criminals who cooperate are protected from prosecution or given lenient sentences. In a fallen world, it often happens that the only choices are between different degrees of evil.