State Department Says It Will Cooperate Fully with Probes of War Criminals Living in the U.S.

The State Department declared today that it has always “cooperated fully with law investigations” of Nazi war criminals living in the United States and stressed it will continue to do so in the future.

Department deputy spokesman Alan Romberg, commenting on allegations on the CBS-TV “60 Minutes” program that the State Department had helped bring Nazis into the U.S. after World War II, and then subsequently covered up their presence, said that the Department would “review our files to see whether they contain any relevant information.” He did not know who would be conducting this review.

Romberg stressed that the Department has always condemned Nazi atrocities and is “deeply concerned at the presence of Nazi war criminals illegally in the United States,” He noted that in recent years the Department has cooperated fully with such investigations conducted by the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), a General Accounting Office inquiry in 1978 and a subsequent hearing by then Representative Joshua Eilberg (D. Pa.).

“We continue to cooperate with the efforts of the Office of Special Investigations to secure information from the Soviet Union and other East European countries as well as Israel,” Romberg said.