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Secret Files. In one installment of his series, Farago gave former Argentine President Arturo Frondizi credit for helping Israeli agents capture Eichmann on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1960. Frondizi, who protested at the time of the capture that it was a violation of Argentine sovereignty, denied Farago's report and called it libelous. In another installment, Farago quoted a Dr. Horacio A. Perillo, whom he described as the former "chief of Frondizi's Cabinet." Perillo was actually only a low-echelon adviser. But in Buenos Aires last week he was offering newsmen corroboration of Farago's material—for a fee of $1,000.
Farago cited secret files as the source of most of his material. The Express said that he had obtained the files by infiltrating the intelligence services of Latin American countries and then smuggling hundreds of pages of documents back to the U.S. and Europe. Two other authors who are Bormann watchers insisted in New York last week that the bulk of the material has been available at the Paris headquarters of Interpol for years. But Farago was obviously offering fresh information when he quoted a "high-ranking official of the Central Intelligence Agency in Buenos Aires," one José Juan Velasco, as having been face to face with Bormann just last October. That episode created more mystery than it solved.
According to Farago, Velasco had been tracking Bormann for nine years; he was called to Mendoza, near the Chilean border, by an immigration inspector who became suspicious of a man carrying a passport in the name of Ricardo Bauer. When Velasco confronted the man, he had no doubt that he was Bormann. But while Velasco sought instructions from Buenos Aires, the man slipped away. Why did Velasco, supposedly a supersleuth, not act on his own initiative? Newsmen in Buenos Aires tried to find him to ask him. But Argentine security officials said that he did not exist. (Farago told TIME in London that Velasco was in jail, being tortured by the very regime that Farago had extolled in the Express as anti-Nazi.) As for the border officials near Mendoza, they said that there was no record of anybody named Ricardo Bauer who had passed through the Mendoza checkpoint in the past 60 days.
A firm nonbeliever in the Farago series was Nazi Nemesis Simon Wiesenthal. "I'm skeptical about this story from A to Z," he said. Wiesenthal theorized that Farago may have been fed some false information by underground Nazi agents seeking to keep authorities off the trail of other war criminals. Wiesenthal, among others, further speculated that the government of Alejandro Lanusse may have leaked material to Farago to discredit Perón on his return to Argentina.
Intelligence sources in West Germany, Israel and Washington, as well as in Argentina, greeted the Farago series with caution.