Congress voted to extend by two years the life of a federal panel declassifying CIA documents that detail the spy agency's ties to former Nazis and war criminals.
The House voted 391 to 0 yesterday to clear the way for release of thousands of documents on former Nazis, including some who assisted in the CIA's Cold War espionage against the former Soviet Union.
 
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The vote, which followed Senate approval on Feb. 16, sends the measure to President Bush for signing.
The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group was established by the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. It had been set to disband by the end of this month.
The bill approved by Congress would extend the group's life through March 31, 2007.
The Nazi war crimes act requires federal agencies to provide the working group with all documents pertaining to Nazi war criminals for possible declassification and release.
The CIA has already turned over an estimated 1.25 million pages of documents but refused to release hundreds of thousands more -- many dealing with its postwar ties to Nazis who have not been accused of war crimes.
But the agency relented this month and agreed in principle to release more documents after Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), a prominent backer of the legislation, demanded that CIA Director Porter J. Goss explain the CIA's position at a public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The working group includes officials from the National Archives, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies.
