THE KLAUS BARBIE AFFAIR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370026-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: August 18, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370026-4
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BALTIMORE SUN
18 August 1983
The Klaus Barbie Affair
It's a classic theme of spy fiction and perhaps
for ,real-life spies, too: the amorality of the espio-
nage world, a gutter ethic in which all sides are
-ready to employ any means, no matter how cor-
- rupf. That is the theme that emerges from the offi-
--cia.l admission that U.S. military intelligence offi
cers used the former Gestapo official Klaus
Barbie as a paid informant for four years after
World War II, shielded him from prosecution for
tear crimes committed during the Nazi occupation
?_of France, and - after lying to their own govern-
ment about his whereabouts - helped him assume
a false identity and escape to South America.
When U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps officers
first hired Barbie, though they knew of his Gestapo
affiliation, they had "no reliable indication" that
- be was wanted for war crimes. Therefore their de-
cision was "defensible," a Justice Department re-
port on the case concluded. But after the charges
-against him began to emerge in 1949, Barbie's
American employers reached what the report
calls a 'calculated and indefensible decision to
? conceal C.I.C.'s own actions and to actively impede
'the lawful search for Barbie." Blame does not fall
directly on the U.S. government itself, which was
deceived by its own officers who spirited Barbie
out of Europe. Still, as a "matter of decency and of
honorable conduct," in the words of the Justice De-
partment's investigators, the U.S. has formally
apologized to France for frustrating its prosecu-
tion of Barbie.
With that apology, in a sense, America's role in
the Barbie case comes finally to an end. The stat-
ute of limitations has long since run out on any
possible obstruction-of-justice charges against the
handful of U.S. officers involved. It's worth
remembering, though, that there is no statute of
limitations on the ethical issues raised by the case.
In the chilly world of intelligence operations and
in other foreign-policy matters, too, indefensible
actions are still rationalized on the grounds that
the U.S. cannot be bound by ethical standards that
are not observed by its adversaries, and that the
ends of national security justify any means em-
ployed to defend it. The lesson to be derived from
the Barbie affair is that means can compromise
ends, and that our enemies have won if we let their
values become ours.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370026-4