ABC NIGHTLINE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605690003-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: August 16, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605690003-4
ABC NIGHTLINE
16 August 1983
DOWNS: Good evening. I'm Hugh Downs, and this is Ni
htline
g
...
Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. U.S. Army officers helped him o prosecution,
but why? We'll talk with the man who headed a Justice Department investigation,
with an intelligence officer who dealt with Barbie and the man who tracked him
down in South America and ....
DOWNS: Thank you very much, Dr. Frank. We're going to turn next to the case of Klaus
Barbie, the former Gestapo officer now on trial now in France for crimes against
humanity during World War II. The United States today apologized to French
authorities for concealing Barbie's whereabouts for decades. We'll talk with a U.S.
official about the case. And later tonight, we'll look at a controversial plan to
capture 100 killer whales in the Pacific for research and display.
DOWNS: When Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was found in Bolivia and-extradited to
France last January, some very unpleasant stories began to surface.. 'According to some
reports, U.S. Army officers had recruited Barbie for intelligence work after World War
II and had shielded him from prosecution for war crimes. The Justice Department began
an investigation in March, and today the results of that investigation were released
along with word that the United States has sent an apology to the government of
France. Here is correspondent John Martin with a report on Klaus Barbie and his.
relationship with the United States.
MARTIN: Klaus Barbie, a bright young man in Hitler's Germany before the war. Klaus
Barbie, a police intelligence officer for the Gestapo during the war, winner of the
Iron Cross and other medals, arrested as a neo-Nazi in 1946. Klaus Barbie, a family
man traveling to Bolivia in 1951, under the name 'Altmann.' Klaus Barbie, for three
decades as Altmann, living the life of lumber merchant, quinine exporter and shipping
executive in a South American country hungry for skilled immigrants. Klaus Barbie,
accused Nazi war criminal, under arrest seven months ago and on his way to France,
where he is expected to stand trial sometime next spring.. ALLAN RYAN, JR. (Special
U.S. Prosecutor): Barbie was recruited by counter-intelligence agents of the United
States Army in April, 1947, in Munich, Germany. He was employed and paid by the Army
continuously until February, 1981.
MARTIN: Today, after six months of investigation, the American Justice Department
released a report that describes still another Klaus Barbie, American spy recruiter in
Germany in the early Cold War between 1947 and 1951, a cunning informant who boasted
of penetrating French intelligence and Soviet operations in West Germany and a man for
whom at least seven or more U.S. Army officers lied to the State Department to protect
him from extradition to France for trial on alleged war crimes. The report, compiled
by a team of special investigators inside the Justice Department says the Army
officers obstructed justice to protect U.S. spy operations, shielding Barbie from the
French and then spiriting him away to Bolivia through a top secret operation called
*Rap Lines. The report concludes that at first Army counter-intelligence innocently
recruited Barbie in 1947, unaware of his alleged role in Lyon, France, in the deaths
of more than 4,000 French Jews and Resistance fighters. The report also says
investigators found no evidence Barbie ever again worked for American intelligence in
the 32 years he spent in South America. When special prosecutor Allan Ryan visited
Bolivia in April, he found Interior Ministry records missing but was told by officials
of two regimes that in 1975 Barbie had passed information to the CIA through
intermediaries in the ministry. GUSTAVO SANCHEZ (Bolivian Interior Ministry) (Voice
of Translator): That he visited the U.S. Embassy, that he had contact with people at
the embassy, that he had relationships with people at the embassy, that is true. It
was obvious that the contacts at the embassy were to transmit information.
COZVTLVITED
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605690003-4