en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Flegel
1 correction found
The interview was released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1981 after it was found in the US National Archives by Miriam Kleiman and then obtained by James Kahn who returned the documents to Helms.
This sentence conflates the document’s rediscovery and its declassification. Reporting says the transcript resurfaced in 1981 when a private historian found it in an Army archive and sent it to Richard Helms, while the CIA copy now online is marked as approved for release in 2014.
Full reasoning
Contemporary reporting does not describe a CIA release in 1981. The Guardian reported that the Flegel transcript "finally surfaced in 1981" when "a Connecticut doctor and amateur historian" found it in an Army archive and sent it to Richard Helms; the same article adds that it then "disappear[ed] again into the CIA's archives" until a later mass declassification.
That directly conflicts with the claim that the CIA itself released the interview in 1981. The official CIA-hosted PDF is also stamped "Approved for Release: 2014/07/29", which is inconsistent with saying the CIA released it in 1981.
So the article is collapsing several different events into one: a 1981 rediscovery by a private individual, later archival/declassification work, and a much later CIA public release. The attribution to Miriam Kleiman as the person who found the document in 1981 is also inconsistent with the Guardian's description of the 1981 rediscovery.
2 sources
- Interview with Erna Flegel - CIA Reading Room PDF
The CIA-hosted document bears the stamp: "Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 C00617219."
- The lost secrets of Hitler's final hours | The Guardian
"The Flegel transcript finally surfaced in 1981 ... only to disappear again into the CIA's archives"; later: "a Connecticut doctor and amateur historian stumbled on them in an army archive and sent them straight to Richard Helms."