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Special to the JTA House Judiciary Committee to Hold Hearings July 19 on War Criminals

July 12, 1978
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The Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration in the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to hold public hearings beginning July 19 on the use of Nazi war criminals by American intelligence agencies. This Congressional group headed by Rep. Joshua Eilberg (D.Pa.) has indicated its “dissatisfaction” with a recent report by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, on the hitherto secret employment of these accused mass murderers.

A GAO report issued on May 15 stated that there was no evidence of a “widespread conspiracy” within the U.S. government to cover up the Nazi war criminal cases that have been festering for almost 30 years. Charles R. Allen, Jr., a well-known expert and author on Nazi war criminals, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he has been called as a witness by the subcommittee to assist them in determining “which war criminals have been used by what agencies.”

The GAO report mentions an “unnamed journalist” five times, and says that the CIA, FBI, Defense Department and other agencies had close ties with alleged Nazi war criminals who entered the U.S. after World War II. The “unnamed journalist” is Allen, who says that he challenges the accuracy of the number of Nazi war criminals and collaborators that U.S. intelligence agencies have admitted to the GAO that they “utilized” over the last 30 years, without the knowledge of the American public.

In an exclusive interview, Allen said that “the GAO report indicates that my series of articles, later a small book entitled ‘Nazi War Criminals Among Us,’ first forced this issue publicly onto the State Department and Justice Department in 1963. The report further shows that my evidence of at least 16 Nazi war criminals that I said were used by agencies of the U.S. government has since been borne out. The GAO learned that the Justice Department and State Department deliberately rejected my inquiries at the time, when I asked how many Nazi war criminals were here and what they were being used for.”

REPORT DOES NOT NAME WAR CRIMINALS

The GAO report did not name specific Nazi war criminals. One reference to the “unnamed journalist” take up an entire page of the 32-page text, using Allen’s 1963 charges. “The report serves the purpose of at least having made the agencies admit that they ‘utilized’ Nazi war criminals and collaborators,” Allen said. “How, when, and whom, they don’t say, and the reason they don’t say is that the CIA, FBI and other of the 10 major U.S. intelligence agencies won’t tell them.”

The GAO further found in its report that the same “unnamed journalist” is how using the figure of 254 for the number of Nazi war criminals and collaborators living in the U.S. This is only two more than the official Immigration and Naturalization Services admission of knowledge of 252, in the GAO report.

According to the GAO findings, the CIA admits to having used Nazi war criminals and the FBI admits having “contacted” 44 Nazi war criminals, and further admits to have employed seven of them. These figures are based solely on a total of III “samplings” from the list of 252.

“I can assure you,” Allen said, “that the GAO findings, while helpful, are well short of the mark. I will shortly reveal all of the names of the Nazi war criminals and collaborators that have been used by the 10 major intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, and also detail how they were used.” Allen said that he will make this information available to the Judiciary Subcommittee and then hold a special press conference in Washington, following the hearings. He is currently working on a new book on Nazi war criminals in America.

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