THE NAZIS AMONG US

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300065-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 65
• Publication Date: January 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

1/ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300065-0
Jy p WALL STREET JOURNAL
z 10 January 1985
The Nazis Among Us
By JOSEPH FOGEL
It is well known that after World War
II many Nazi war criminals found refuge
in Latin America. Former Gestapo chief
Klaus Barbie lived in Bolivia from 1951 un-
til his extradition in 1983 to France, where
he awaits trial; Dr. Josef Mengele, who
performed experimental operations on
Auschwitz inmates and selected many for
the gas chambers, is believed to be in
..Paraguay.
But it may come. as a surprise to some
that.just after the war perhaps thousands
of war criminals and collaborators entered
the U.S. as well. How? "We invited them
in," writes Allan A. Ryan Jr, in "Quiet
Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War. Crimi-
nals in America" (Harcourt Brace Jovano-
vich, 386 pages, $15.95).
Mr. Ryan's numerous case histories and
extensive documentation show that U.S.
immigration policy actually favored war
Bookshelf
"Quiet Neighbors:
Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals
in America"
By Allan A. Ryan Jr.
television. Joshua Eilberg and Elizabeth
Holtzman, members of. Congress at the
time, pressured the government to act.
The result was the Office of Special Inves-
tigation, a Justice Department unit formed
in 1979 -to investigate and. prosecute Nazis
in America.
As director of the OSI until March 1983,
Mr. Ryan helped reverse U.S. inaction and
indifference toward known Nazi-criminals
living here illegally. The OSI's methods of
investigation are painstaking, and its
work continues today. The 50 lawyers, his-
torians, investigators and support staff use
a list of 50,000 SS.officers and concentra-
tion-camp guards compiled by the SS and
captured by.the Allies. They interview the
actual suspects, who, surprisingly, often
provide damaging evidence against them-
selves. The lawyers sometimes receive
help from famous Nazi-hunter Simon Wie-
senthal and others.
In"the book's most absorbing chapter,
Mr. Ryan describes his attempt to gain vi-
tal cooperation from the Soviet Union,
which in 1944 had captured the records of
many Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrain-
ians who later came to America under the
DP Act. The testimony of witnesses and
colleagues living in Russia also was cru-
cial. The Soviets, who "viewed those who
collaborated with the Nazis as traitors,"
cooperated fully. Original documents were
sent to the U.S'. and, in a unique arrange-
ment, depositions were videotaped in the
U.S.S.R. with direct and cross examina-
tions (defense counsel often flew in).
Even with help from the Russians, pros-
ecuting Nazis is difficult, due partly to the
many rights of U.S. citizens. Criminals
cannot be tried here for crimes committed
elsewhere, and -they can be deported only
if it can be proved that they lied in order to
enter the country. "The process,"'prosecu-
tor Ryan explains, "is an exceptionally
slow one . . . a naturalized citizen deter-'
mined to exhaust all his appeals can go
before seven separate forums before he
can actually be deported." The Supreme
Court in 1966 also prohibited deportation
without "clear and convincing" evidence,
a burden heavier than other civil cases.
Even when deportation is ordered, a coun-
a guard at the Treblinka death camp, has
been deported to the Soviet Union; Andrija
Artukovic, interior minister of Croatia and
one of the highest Nazi collaborators ever;
to enter the U.S., has been arrested and his'
extradition has been requested by Yugosla-
via; and Arthur- Rudolph, who developed
the Saturn V moon rocket, and who was
accused of working slave laborers to death
at a rocket factory in the Dora concentra- i.
tion camp, has left voluntarily for West
Germany.
More important than these individual
cases, though, there has been a turnaround
in the U.S. government's attitude toward
former Nazis resident here. As Mr. Ryan
points out, it is a late date to be calling
these people to justice, but "It can be
done. That is why it-must be done."
Mr. Fogel is a-news assistant on the
Journal's editorial-page staff.
criminals. He also tells how we finally em-
barked on the long legal road to prosecut-
ing some of the Nazis in our midst.
Many war criminals 'took the same
route to the U.S. as did legitimate refu-
gees. They fled occupied Europe, settled in
refugee camps, and then entered the U.S.
under the. Displaced Persons Act of 1948.
This "brazenly discriminatory piece of leg-
islation," as Mr. Ryan calls it, imposed
quotas that favored ethnic groups littered
with war criminals and set cutoff. dates
that excluded great numbers of Jews.
Once they were here, the former crimi-
nals "became model citizens and quiet
neighbors." The U.S. in the '50s was preoc-
cupied by the communist threat. The Nazi
immigrants, anti-communist themselves,
were left alone. Indeed, some anti-commu-
nist Byelorussian and other Nazi collabora-
tors who came to the U.S. were recruited
in Eastern Europe because of their value
in intelligence work, something Mr. Ryan
sidesteps (for a full account of this matter,
see "The Belarus Secret" by John Loftus,
Knopf, 1982).
By the '70s, however, the anti-commun-
ist fever in the U.S. had subsided and a
new generation curious about the Holo-
caust had emerged. The subject flourished
in schools, in publishing, on prime-time
try willing to accept the deportee must be.
found. ' -
Despite the obstacles, the OSI has tried'
more than 50 denaturalization or deporta-
tion cases, and won more than 20. Some
defendants have died or committed sui-
cide, some cases are on appeal, some have
been withdrawn by the OSI; few have been
lost outright. Since Neal Sher took over
the OSI two years ago, Feodor Fedorenko,
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300065-0