Behind the Headlines a Report That Almost Didn’t Make It

The media and the public were recently innundated by the massive and seemingly comprehensive Justice Department report on “Klaus Barbie and the U.S. Government.”

Allan Ryan, who had headed the Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), had been asked last March to devote his full time to studying all the facts, facets and nuances of any possible American involvement with Barbie, “the butcher of Lyon.” He proceeded to do so and released his report to the media on August 16.

Aside from the fact that Ryan himself indicated almost two weeks earlier that he was ready at that time to release his report, the five month investigation into the U.S.-Barbie connection appeared to have progressed in an orderly fashion and without any problems regarding the contents and release date of the findings.

What was not known at that time, in fact, not until now, was the story of the politically motivated behind-the-scenes maneuverings, false starts, timid beginnings, attempts to block and then water down the report’s 216 pages of text and nearly 600 pages of declassified intelligence documents.

In certain respects, this story is highly significant, particularly in view of the growing number of criticisms from the Jewish community concerning the final report.

NO INITIAL EXCITEMENT OVER BARBIE’S OUSTER

When Barbie, the wanted wartime gestapo chief of Lyon, was expelled from Bolivia to France last February 4, the Attorney General of the United States, William French Smith, a Reagan appointee, was not excited over the event.

While conceding what he called “the general historic interest” in Barbie’s expulsion to stand trial in France for “crimes against humanity, ” Smith had not the slightest inkling of that singular act’s implication. The man who ultimately authored the Justice Department’s report on Barbie, Ryan, by and large initially shared his boss’ point of view.

JOURNALISTS SOUND WARNINGS

A few journalists pointed out to Ryan at the time that the Barbie matter was just beginning; that the clearly persuasive accounts of American intelligence involvement with Barbie would set loose an avalanche of worldwide revulsion.

Less than two weeks after Barbie was returned to France a special three-part series by this writer disclosing the role of the Vatican, the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and the International Red Cross in helping Barbie escape from Europe to South America appeared in the JTA’s Daily News Bulletins of February 16, 17 and 18.

A prominent by-liner of The New York Times suggested that the U.S. government had better check out the JTA series as the Vatican had been cited in them as running “illegal” escape routes after World War II to help more than a few wanted Nazi war criminals, among them Barbie,

The day the JTA series began, Ryan called this writer for copies of them. One of the country’s best-known TV reporters told Ryan, “In a matter of weeks, the Barbie story will be a running story commanding worldwide headlines.”

By March 14, Ryan’s own vigorous advocacy of a full, unbiased investigation of a possible government involvement with Barbie carried the day when he was ordered to make an investigation of allegations that were beginning to surface and spread.

Even at that time, a few critics objected that the government would be investigating itself, that the results were not to be trusted. But the media blitz apparently forced the Administration’s hand and sparked the order for an investigation by Ryan,

ANOTHER FACTOR CITED

Another salient which succeeded in rousing the Reagan Administration to undertake the investigation came from a pro-Reagan “major Jewish organization” executive. According to a Congressional source, the executive told the White House that the Barbie case “could blow up in your face unless you do something. Otherwise American Jews will react negatively and we’re getting too close to the 1984 elections.”

Ryan and his OSI staff conducted a vigorous search for documents and witnesses. They pursued leads into Bolivia, France, Great Britain and throughout the United States. They dug up surviving agents of the CIC which had been the foremost user of Barbie “from early 1946,” according to a CIC “Top Secret” document of May 11, 1950.

The CIC report was signed by Capt. Eugene Kolb who now resides in the U.S. Kolb became a TV personality, as it were, after the Barbie case exploded. His rationalizations “justifying” the use of the gestapo butcher prompted many sharp reactions from the world Jewish community. Yet the Ryan report insists that Barbie was not used by the CIC until late 1947 despite Kolb’s own documented reports based on interrogations of Barbie himself.

Ryan stoutly defended the cooperation he received during the course of his investigation from the State Department and the CIC — both of which organizations the Justice Department fully exonerates of any involvement with Barbie and its ancillary matters.

SKEPTICISM OVER RYAN’S REPORT

Many reporters covering the Barbie story received Ryan’s conclusions with open skepticism, some with ridicule. In the intense hunt for documents and witnesses, the paths of the Justice Department sleuths and investigating journalists often crossed. On occasion there was competition between the two sides. Sometimes documents were exchanged. Often the media beat the government to the punch.

John Martin, ABC-TV’s crack correspondent, tracked down and unearthed much of the basic documentation in Bolivia itself. It was Martin–not the government — who secured the most crucial evidence: Barbie’s 1941 “legal” Bolivian visa.

The visa was secured in Rome through a priest who was in charge of an illegal emigration route whose escape port was in Genoa, Through that escape hatch, scores if not hundreds of wanted Nazi war criminals may well have escaped after the Holocaust. (See JTA series last February as well as the JTA Daily News Bulletin August 2.)

In the Justice Department’s report on Barbie there is a footnote acknowledging that Barbie’s “travel document was obtained by the Justice Department from a source in La Paz, Bolivia in April 1983. ” The source was ABC-TV, In fact, more than a few of the documents were secured from the American news media. Others were obtained through the Bolivian Ministry of Interior (Security).

It was also that Ministry which told ABC-TV in April 1983 that “the CIA had contacts with Barbie as late as 1974, 1975,” The story of how the Justice Department secured through this writer the “Top Secret” 1947 La Vista Report was related in the August 24 JTA Bulletin.

A BASIC FAILURE OF THE RYAN REPORT

That was the truly historic investigation of the State Department into the “illegal” emigration operations by some 22 nationality “Welfare Units” that “operated under the protective benevolence of the Vatican.”

Yet no connection is made in the Justice Department’s report on Barbie between the CIC’s “rat lines” through which “embarrassing” cases (like Barbie) were secreted out of Europe via the “monastery routes” and funneled out of Genoa to South America as were documented in the La Vista Report.

This writer questioned Ryan on precisely this point after the Barbie report had been released. Ryan said: “There was no connection with it (the La Vista Report) and American intelligence.”

On the contrary, the CIC documents on Padre Dragonovich, a foremost operator of the “monastery routes” uncovered by Vincent La Vista, an international lawyer who in 1947 was the military attache to the American Embassy in Rome and a skilled intelligence/diplomatic State Department officer, coupled with proof on how Barbie escaped from Europe by using his Bolivian visa with Dragonovich as his sponsor demonstrated that there was collusion between these “illegal” operations and American intelligence throughout the early 1950’s at the very least.

Ryan’s adamant insistence that Barbie was neither related to the Vatican routes nor, later, to the CIA is curious in the light of the extraordinary documentation he himself unearthed.

“Don’t blame Ryan,” a Washington source told this writer. “He’s just following the company line. Listen, Reagan’s covering the CIA and at the same time he’s as worried about any Catholic reaction to the Barbie thing as he is about the Jews.”

That is why, in a sense, Ryan’s release of some 600 pages of American intelligence documents must be commended. “The rightwingers in the Administration went crazy when they heard about that proposal,” said a Congressional staffer.

OBSTACLES IN RYAN’S PATH

There were more than a few obstacles in Ryan’s path from inside the eminently rightist Administration camp. Attorney General Smith at first balked at the notion of releasing the intelligence documents along with revealing that U.S. intelligence agencies had employed Barbie. Ryan was “moving too fast and too strong, ” a Justice Department source said, for “the Reagan crowd in both Justice and State.”

When Secretary of State George Shultz heard that. Ryan wanted to release the intelligence documents along with his report Shultz “blew his top,” according to the Justice Department source as well as others, Ryan’s suggestion that the U.S. officially apologize to France for having hidden Barbie from French justice after World War II was “derided” at the State Department, these same sources said.

In point of fact, Ryan’s staff had virtually completed its findings by July I, Reporters who talked with Ryan found that he was chafing at the bit to “let fly and let the whole damn thing hang out, ” as Ryan himself was reported to have said. But his superiors balked. It was not until July 21 that the Justice Department’s top brass allowed the hitherto “Top Secret” reports to be declassified.

A top Congressional aide told this writer: “Reagan finally got the message from off-the-record talks with major Jewish organizations biggies in New York. They warned him that Ryan’s route was the way to go. Anything less might hurt him (Reagan) for 1984.”

COURT ACTIONS TO FORCE THE REPORT’S RELEASE

By then, several large news organizations had moved in court to force the Justice Department to release Ryan’s report on Barbie. As late as August 12, the Justice Department was still balking. “National security” might be jeopardized, Justice lawyers claimed.

ABC-TV moved aggressively that very day and went to court to ask that the Ryan report be released. The judge agreed with ABC and told the government to release the report “forthwith.” On Tuesday, August 16, the UPI moved an item over its national wire to all subscribers, few of who ran it. The item stated:

“The report on Barbie and U.S. intelligence was redrafted over the past couple of weeks after high-ranking Justice Department officials found the report had ‘harsh language’ in it critical of U.S. intelligence…

“The State Department refused comment that it had objected to the report’s suggestion that the U.S. apologize to France. U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz objected, according to sources. The Department of State refused comment on this latter report. ” Just hours later, Ryan, at a jammed press conference covered by the world media, released his report.

Questions will remain, therefore, for those who know the background of the report’s origin and evolutions just how much of Ryan’s original report was redrafted, and to what effect? What was toned down and just what documents, if any, were deleted or otherwise “sanitized?”

Furthermore, is the report the full product of Ryan’s investigation? Or is it the extremely well done sleight of-hand of an Administration bent on protecting the CIA while keeping one wary eye on the American Jewish community with the other eye sharply focused in the direction of the Vatican just before the formal beginnings of the 1984 Presidential campaign? These questions need to be answered.