News Brief

Klaus Barbie, the gestapo “butcher of Lyon,” recently extradited from Bolivia to France on charges of conducting mass murders and deportations of French Jews and members of the resistance movement during the Holocaust was aided in his escape from Europe in late 1949 and early 1950 by the Vatican, the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and the International Red Cross.

This correspondent has pieced together from various documents, including the State Department’s Barbie’s movements since his first utilization by the CIC in 1947 until his expulsion from Bolivia 36 years later.

Barbie took the so-called “monastery route,” an underground railroad, so to speak, for scores of wanted Nazi war criminals. The route was known to the U.S. embassy in Rome which did nothing to stem the flow of wanted war criminals from Europe, most of them originating in the American-occupied zone of Germany.

The northern starting point of the “monastery route” was in Bavaria and the Austrian frontier, then dipped south to the Italian Alps, dropping further south to way-stations leading to exits from the ports of Genoa or Naples.

SECRETED FROM MONASTERY TO MONASTERY

My information shows that Barbie, disguised as a monk, was secreted from monastery to monastery along the route. He went to Milan and then to Genoa and from there to Franco Spain, then to Portugal which was ruled by fascist Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, and then by ship to Latin America where his first country of call was Peru, not Bolivia. There is some evidence indicating that Barbie went first to Argentina.

Corroboration of my findings came dramatically a week ago from Dr. Erhard Dabringhaus, a 65-year-old faculty member of Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich. Dabringhaus served as Barbie’s case officer in the CIC in Germany in 1948. He exclusively told NBC-TV News and the Detroit Free Press last week that Barbie had been secretly employed as an informer by the CIC in 1948 for the then astounding sum of $1,700 a month.

Barbie provided information about other fugitive Nazis then in Europe, Dabringhaus said, confirming in detail what the Paris-based Nazi-hunters, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld had revealed as long ago as 1972 about Barbie’s utilization “by the American secret service agencies.”

The Klarsfelds also cited a 1969 “secret” West German government report that said: “… the Barbie family arrived in Bolivia in May 1951 … rumour(ed) … with foreign (Vatican) passports.” On Wednesday, February 9, Italy’s largest daily newspaper, Paese Sera, interviewed Dabringhaus and asked whether Barbie had escaped by the “monastery route” of the Vatican.

Dabringhaus said for attribution: “That’s right. How did you know that? He was passed along (by the American CIC) to the ‘monastery route,’ probably disguised as a priest, went down along the Austrian and Italian Alps, down to Genoa and from there through Franco Spain and on to safety to Peru.”

STATE DEPARTMENT’S ‘TOP SECRET’ DOCUMENT

Further confirmation of the knowing role of the Vatican in the escape of Barbie — as well as scores if not hundreds of other SS genocides — came in a hitherto “Top Secret” 35-page set of State Department documents which have come into my possession, largely by way of my Freedom of Information requests over the past five years.

It is an internal memorandum, classified “Top Secret” and dated May 14, 1947. Copies are shown to have been sent to the head of the “American Legation in Vienna” and to the then U.S. Secretary of State, five-star General George Catlett Marshall. The State Department has refused to discuss this report.

The title of the “Top Secret” report is “illegal Emigration Movements in and Through Italy.” Its author was Vincent La Vista, an international lawyer then (1947) military attache to the American embassy in Rome and already a skilled intelligence/diplomatic State Department officer.

The “La Vista Report” as it became known in American intelligence circles, broke down into precise detail more than 22 permutations of SS, Nazi Party, ethnic collaborators who were knowingly guided safely through the Vatican’s “monastery route.”

The La Vista Report also noted in detail the names and political backgrounds of the high-ranking members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy who masterminded the war criminals’ escape routes along which Barbie successfully fled.

THE ROLE OF MSGR. HUDAL

One of the termination points before exiting Italy to the sunnier climes of Latin America was the notorious pro-fascist cleric, Msgr. Alois Hudal, Bishop of Elia, resident of Collegio Teutonica de Santa Maria dell’ Anima in Vatican City.

Hudal personally had welcomed many SS escapees. Hudal defied public criticism of a high cleric’s intercession in behalf of wanted Nazi mass murderers:

“I am neither police nor carabinieri,” he said in 1947. “My Christian duty is to save whoever can be saved.”

Hudal’s background, address and telephone numbers — along with the fact of his “directing” the escapees from the Munich /Augsberg/Austrian region — are carefully recorded in the documented pages of the “Top Secret” La Vista Report.

VATICAN’S ROLE EXPLAINED BY U.S. DOCUMENT

The State Department report stated: “The Vatican of course is the largest single organization involved in the illegal movement … the Vatican’s justification for this illegal traffic is simply the propagation of the Faith. The Vatican(‘s) desire to infiltrate not only European countries but Latin American countries as well … with people of all political beliefs as long as they are anti-Communist and pro-Catholic Church.”

Referring to yet another, earlier report (dated December 16, 1946), this “Top Secret” document went on to state that “the Vatican at various times and under certain conditions utilize the international Red Cross” in order to obtain “Red Cross Documents” (or passports) for Nazi escapees.

“The Free Committee of Austria,” the State Department’s “Communication to the U.S. Secretary of State” said, was “a staunchly anti-Communist” group “operating under the protection of the Vatican” and “knowingly” used Red Cross passports “sometimes with and sometimes without” the International Red Cross’s knowledge.

BARBIE USED IRC PASSPORT FOR HIS ESCAPE

Barbie, charged with 4,000 murders and 8,000 deportations of French Jewish men, women and children, used an International Red Cross Document (passport) to effectuate his escape from Europe to Latin America, according to investigators.

The State Department’s “Top Secret” report referenced an unnamed source in the “Welfare Units” of the Vatican’s “Refugee Bureau” who is quoted as having admitted to the U.S. State Department: “There is a definite fear of increasing Communistic activities in South America and for this reason(,) persons possessing a Fascist background are favorably considered (for illegal emigration) rather than (those) … with tainted Communistic ideas.”

(Tomorrow: Part Two)