U.S. USED EX-NAZIS AGAINST SOVIETS, HILL TOLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710027-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: June 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710027-1
AD71 F ME!1RED
29 June 1985
U.S. Used Ex-Nazis Against Soviets,
Hill Told
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Pat Staff Writer
U.S. intelligence agencies active-
ly recruited Nazis and European
collaborators as anti-Soviet infor-
mants after World War If and later
helped at least five of them enter
the United States, a special report
to Congress said yesterday.
The report, summing up a three-
year investigation by the General
Accounting Office, said the five in-
cluded two alleged war criminals, a
former Nazi SS officer, a convicted
conspirator in an assassination and
a traitor.
There have been previous re-
ports that U.S. officials had helped
or harbored former Nazis, but the
GAO report provided new details
and the first formal confirmation of
numerous incidents. House Judicia-
ry Committee Chairman Peter W.
Rodino (D-Nj.), who commissioned
the inquiry, called the findings "ex-
tremely distressing."
"The laws and policies of our gov-
ernment specifically excluded from
admission to the United States
those wanted for these unspeakable
crimes during the war," Rodino said
in releasing the report. "It is uncon-
scionable that we had any involve-
ment in allowing anyone responsible
for the Holocaust to find safe haven
within our shores."
The GAO said it uncovered "no
specific program to aid the irhmi-
gration of undesirable aliens." It
said the five received assistance
individually. Two of them, the re-
port said, "were protected from in-
vestigation."
In one of these cases, the GAO
investigation found, the Central In-
telligence Agency "invoked national
security reasons to legalize an
alien's immigration status " In the
other case the report indicated the
intelligence agency in Question sim-
ply took no action "once it learned
f dero ato i ormation about one
alien's wartime background."
The GAO sai it revs wed U.S.
intelligence Personnel files an of -
e,r recor s on 114 se ecte a iens
and found that 12 who had "unde-
sirab a or c uestiona le bkc -
grounds" had immigrate to the
United States. Of the five who were
given assistance, one was brought
here under an assumed name, the
report said, and another "was ac-
companied to the consular office by
an intelligence o icer w ose agency
followed W oq t e immigration.
The other seven the GAO found,
mane ed to reach here "without
immigration assistance but all of
them had also been "associated with
U.S. or allied intelligence."
The report for Rodino's commit-
tee described some activities of the
12 individuals but named none,
partly because much of the infor-
mation identifying the U.S. agen-
cies with the aliens and the location
of their activities is still classified.
The GAO study also confirmed a
special Justice Department inqui-
ry's 1983 conclusion that the U.S.
government had employed Klaus
Barbie, the former Gestapo chief of
Lyons, as a paid informer in 1947
and later protected him from extra-
dition to France and organized his
escape to South America.
At a news conference in Rock-
land, Mass., former Justice Depart-
ment Prosecutor John Loftus, who
contended several years ago that
the government recruited war
criminals in the wake of World War
II, said one of the anonymous five
cited in the GAO study was Stanis-
law Stankevich, the so-called
'Butcher of Borrisow" in White
Russia, who died in 1980. Loftus
Said the State Department's Mice
of Policy Coordination, a postwar
rival of the CIA. played a ma' r role
in protecting Stankevich.
The isaAOG d most U.S.-employ-
led .,Nazis and collaborators re-
mained in Europe subsequent to
their work. The report said the con-
troversial recruitments took lace
under the increasin Cold War
pressures of rivaLrv wit the oviet
Union and !!rent demands for "the
hi hest ossible quality o intelli-
gence on t e . . in t e s ort-
Describing the prevailing a titude
of the time, one former intelli ence
officer told GAO investi ators that
"any SOB who was against the Rus-
sians was our SOB " Another ex-
officer, the report said, declared
that "we would have slept with the
Devil to obtain information on com-
munists."
The GAO emphasized that it
could not tell how many Nazis and
European collaborators received
official assistance in coming to the
United States, but the issue has
received growing attention since a
special Justice Department office
was set up in 1979 to find and de-
port those living in this country il-
legally. The former head of that
office, Allan Ryan, says "Nazi war
criminals came here by the thou-
sands."
The GAO report said t h o s e !
h
were even U.S. inte igence agency
he,P u,ciuaed " ub ct A " who
listed as a wanted war criminal b
the U.N. War Crimes commission
on charges that he ordere the ex-
ecutions of sus acted communist
sym athizers. ow ea , e came
ere in tie mid-1950s.
Subject B, who Loftus said was
Stankevich, "occupied many posi-
tions of trust as part of a Nazi-ap-
pointed government in Eastern Eu-
rope" and was "alleged to have been
involved in massacres of several
thousand civilians, predominantly
Jews." He was said to have helped a
U.S. agency apprehend and convict
a Soviet agent in the U.S. zone of
Germany in 1951 and, for that, was
helped in emigrating here several
years later. The agency, the GAO
said, "was aware of the subject's
background and had established a
file on him in 1949."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710027-1