John J. McCloy (1895-1989) was a lawyer, banker, and presidential adviser.

According to Wikipedia, during the 1930s McCloy was a legal counselor to the German chemical firm I.G. Farben. He was a known supporter of Nazi Germany who was photographed with Adolph Hitler at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but as was true of many members of his class, this did not present any impediment to his subsequent government service.

McCloy served as Assistant Secretary of War throughout World War II, during which time he played a crucial role in preventing Allied forces from bombing the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the railroad lines leading to the camp. After the war, he spent two years as president of the World Bank (1947-49) before becoming US High Commissioner for Germany. Between 1949 and 1952, he oversaw that nation’s return to statehood and ordered the wholesale pardoning of many Nazi war criminals.

McCloy’s ability to avoid being held to account for these actions may have been due in part to his relationship with the Rockefeller family, which dated back to his time at Harvard Law School in 1919-21. He was a trustee of the Rockefeller foundation from 1946 to 1949 and again from 1953 to 1958.

McCloy’s later roles included chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank (1953-1960), chairman of the Ford Foundation (1958-1965), and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (1954-70). From the 1960s to the 1980s, he served as an adviser to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan.