U.S. LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION OF THE MENGELE CASE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807320006-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: February 7, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807320006-9
ARTICLE APPIEARED
D4. PAGE 1`1 -
NEW YORK TIMES
7 February 1985
.U,;S..Launches Investigation 1o
By LESLIE MAITLAND WERNER
spew to n. NOW Y.et nmee
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - Attorney
General William French ; Smith an-
bounced today that the Justice Depart-
4 anent would open an investigation into
the whereabouts of Josef.Mengele and
into reports that the Nazi war criminal
had been held and freed in the Amer-
Ican occupation zone of Vienna after
World War II.
"There have been enough allegations
to warrant our undertaking this investi-
gation," Mr. Smith said. He declined to
speculate on what actign the United
States could take on whatever it might
learn about Dr. Mengele, the doctor at
the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Mr. Smith ? said the allegations.
prompting the investigation stemmed'
from newly declassified documents,
suggesting that Dr. Mengele "was in a
United States-occupied area after the
war and was known to United States'
authorities. i
Other allegations to be examined; he
said, concerned the possibility that Dr.
Mengele had been in Canada and vis-
ited "even the United States itself."
The last reported sightings of Dr. Men-
gele, who would now be 73, were in
Paraguay in the 1970's. -
'Dr. Mengele, a major in the Nazi SS,
was a physician at the Auschwitz-
Birkenau camp from May 1943 to Janu-
ary 1945.' Four million prisoners, most
of theca Jews, were gassed aid cre-
mated there. According to West Ger-
man arrest papers, he was accused of
conducting grotesque medical experi-
ments on prisoners; torturing them and
killing them. ' :.
' The investigation will seek to com-
pile all credible evidence on the current
whereabouts of Mengele as well as in-,
fotmation concerning his movements
in occupied Germany and his suspected
flight to South America," Mr. Smith
said. "The investigation will also seek
to determine the credibility of reports
that Mengele has visited ? the United
States in the past.-
"We intend to be thorough - about it
and also to have a speedy investiga-
tion,'! he added.
Mr. Smith said'the inquiry would be
conducted by the Justice Department's
Office of Special Investigations, which
was formed to prosecute war criminals
who entered the United States illegally..
He said the Pentagon and the Central.
Inteill~ence Agency were also offering
assistance.
"The Israelis are intensely interest.
e?," Mr. Smith'said in ? response to, questions at a hastily Galled news con-:
ference. ."They'll be" working veryclosely with us."
The newly released American intelli-
gence documents regarding Dr. Men-
gele were obtained under the Freedom
of Information Act by the Simon Wies-
enthaf Center, a 1.os Angeles-based in-
stitute for the documentation of Nazi
crimes.
One ' of the documents was ' a letter l
dated April 26, 1947; from ? Ben J. M.
Gorby, a. special agent of the United
States , Counter-Intelligence Corps in
Germany, to the commanding officer
of the 430th C.I.C. detachment in Vien-
na. It said that information had been
received that Dr. Mengele was ar-
rested in Vienna.-
No response to
the letter was found
and. tho Wiesenthal Center said at-
tempts to locate Mr. Gorby through the
Army'failed..
Another, document recently made '
public is a 1962 letter from an Amer-
ican Army official to a Canadian visa
control officer in Cologne, West Ger-
many,"The letter responded to a query
oncerning a "Joseph Menke" who evi-
dently had applied for a Canadian visa
in Buenos Aires. The American officer
attached an Army intelligence report
Identifying Joseph Menke as Josef
Mengele of Auschwitz.
The Army withheld some Canadian
records on the ground of foreign-gov_
ernment confidentiality. But according
to an official familiar with the can,
they suggest that a man calling himself
Mr. Menke entered Canada.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wies-
enthal Center, reached in Paris, said
today that he filed suit in Federal Disk
trict Court in Washington last week to
compel release of the remaining
records. He said Senator Alphonse M.
D'Amato, Republican of New York,
had joined in the lawsuit.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807320006-9