KLAUS BARBIE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370114-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 31, 2010
• Sequence Number: 114
• Publication Date: February 5, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/31 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370114-6
RADIO N REPORTS,
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM NBC Nightly News
DATE February 5, 1983 6:30 P.M.
STATION W R C- T V
NBC Network
Washington, D.C.
JESSICA SAVITCH: Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal
known as the Butcher of Lyon, is back in France tonight. He was
expelled by Bolivia last night, hustled from his jail cell under
a blanket and flown to France.
At the airport in Lyon; police arrested the daughter of
a concentration camp victim. She was carrying a rifle.
Jim Bittermann reports.
JIM BITTERMANN: Klaus Barbie, the man they call the
Butcher of Lyon, was brought back under wraps tonight to the
French city where he earned his reputation. Tonight, under heavy
security, Barbie was taken to Mauroc (?) prison in Lyon, the same
prison where 40 years ago the ex-Gestapo officer was not a
prisoner, but Hitler's man in charge.
The 69-year-old Barbie had been living in exile in
Bolivia, protected by the government there until yesterday, when
he was expelled to French Guiana, and where French officials have
the authority to arrest and charge him with crimes against
humanity.
During World War II, Barbie was head of the Gestapo in
Lyon, France. He's blamed for the deaths and deportations of
thousands of French Jews and resistance fighters. His most
well-known victim, the head of French resistance, who was
tortured until he.died.
But there are many here still alive who remember well
Barbie's crimes. Lys Leserva was crippled for life by his
torturer. Her husband was deported by Barbie. He never came
Motenol supplied by Rodeo N Reports. Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/31 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370114-6
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/31 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370114-6
back from the death camps.
For the past 11 years, Nazi hunters Serge and Vietta
Clarsveld have been trying to bring Barbie back from Bolivia
for trial.
SERGE CLARSVELD: We were not surprised that -- there is
always a surprise when a long story comes to an end and when it
is a happy end.
VIETTA CLARSVELD: I think this trial will extremely be
important because it will be trial based on documents and showing
the work and the crimes committed by the political police.
BITTERMANN: The preparation for a trial of the ex-Nazi
could take as much as a year. It also could turn into a
considerable political spectacle, since Barbie has always
threatened that if he were ever brought to trial, he would tell
what he knows about Nazi collaboration with French officials,
some of whom are still in public positions today.
For those of his victims still alive, though, the trial
of Klaus Barbie cannot come soon enough.
SAVITCH: There's a professor at Wayne State University
in Detroit who says he was a U.S. counterintelligence officer in
Germany in 1948 and worked with Barbie. Erhard Devringhaus
says Barbie was a paid informant. The U.S. paid him for
informationon Nazis. And he says those payments made possible
Barbie's flight to South America.
Devringhause, at his home near Detroit today, recalled
those postwar years. He talked of Barbie's work for U.S.
intelligence and of Barbie's war crimes.
ERHARD DEVRINGHAUS: This guy was after all the
resistance. He was primarily fighting the underground in France.
He caught hundreds of them. And if they didn't talk or cooperate
with him, he would string them up on their thumbs in the basement
until they were dead. And he said there is a mass grave outside
of his headquarters that must have 200 people in it.
On two occasions, two agents of the French government,
of the Surete Deuxieme Bureau, they called that at that time -- I
don't know whether it's still the same -- came to me and to be
interrogated by them as to the whereabouts of Klaus Barbie. They
had heard that we knew something about him. And I was ordered by
my own headquarters to -- not to say anything that we knew
anything about him.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/31 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370114-6