Special to the JTA the Verbelen Case

Will the United States Justice Department really get to and reveal the full truth about the most recent case of yet another convicted SS mass murderer who was used by American intelligence after World War II?

An investigation into the matter of Robert Jean Verbelen, 72-year-old resident of Vienna, suggests that there is doubt as to whether the government will come forward with the unvarnished facts. The Verbelen case will take more time, trouble and prove more embarrassing to the United States than Washington foresees at this time. (The media use “Jan” as Verbelen’s middle name. However, all the official documents in the case, except one, use Jean as his middle name.)

When U.S. Attorney General William French Smith (who has just resigned) recently ordered his Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the unit responsible for tracking down and bringing to denaturalization/deportation trials suspected Nazi war criminals living in this country, to investigate the Verbelen matter, there was ambivalence at OSI over the assignment.

‘NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT VERBELEN’

“There’s nothing we can do about Verbelen,” an official told this correspondent after the Justice Department announced it would look into American usage of the wartime SS officer who had also been an SD (Sicherheitsdienst, a security/intelligence) agent in his native Belgium.

“We can get the records and give the results like we did with the (Klaus) Barbie thing,” the Justice Department official said, alluding to the 1983 two-volume “Klaus Barbie and the U.S. Government” authored by Allan Ryan who was director of the OSI, “but we can’t deport him, and so far there’s no indication he came to the country as Barbie did.”

The report by Ryan confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies had used Barbie after the war. During the course of his work with the Central Intelligence Agency, Barbie visited several American cities, travelling freely on his Bolivian passport which he acquired after settling there under the assumed name of Klaus Altmann.

The Justice Department official complained that probes, such as the one of Barbie, “takes time out of our main job here of going after Nazi war criminals that live in this country.” The Barbie undertaking proved “very disruptive to the OSI’s mission,” he added.

At the same time, the official acknowledged that the OSI “was the most likely candidate to do the job” of investigating the new case of Robert Jean Verbelen. The feeling was also expressed that “we ought to be able to get the Verbelen case out of the way pretty quickly.”

CONGRESSIONAL SOURCES DISAGREE

Congressional sources disagreed. Said a staffer on the House Committee that oversees the OSI: “This could get to be a habit. I agree that intrusions like the Barbie and Verbelen things slow them down over there. They are not equipped for such random forays. Perhaps we should do something here from the Hill. Besides, the Executive (branch agencies) can be counted on to cut corners. We need a full hangout, not a modified one on this (war criminal)question.”

Actually, the hard yet very few facts at hand on Verbelen tend to support this Congressional critic. They are thus far contained in the 92 pages of documents declassified –heavily deleted and excised — on October 4, 1983 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Verbelen from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

On December 21 the ADL released a press statement noting that the Verbelen case followed by four months the Justice Department’s confirmation that Barbie, known as the “butcher of Lyon,” was employed by American authorities including the CIC, after being given the death penalty by a French court for sending thousands to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.

BASIC FACTS ABOUT VERBELEN

From the documents obtained under the FOIA, the consistent and basic facts about Verbelen can be summarized quickly.

Verbelen is Flemish, born April 5, 1911 in Belgium. As a youth he was active in the fascist group Dervlag (The Flag). He served with the Germans 1940-1945 as an SS Obersturmfuehrer (1st Lieutenant) and later in the SD. He was a member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in its AO (Ausland Organization) for full-fledged Nazi Party members who were citizens of countries outside of the Third Reich.

He fled with his Nazi masters in 1944 back to Germany. He was “last seen in Berlin” at war’s end. He resurfaced in 1945 at an Austrian Alpine resort, Zell am See, as a “bartender” for a U.S. Officers Club close to then American-occupied Germany.

Army records show that in 1946, Verbelen worked for “U.S.A. Special Services” in Bad Hofgastein, Austria, some 20 miles from his previous employment as a “bartender.”

From 1947 to 1956, under at least nine different aliases — most notably, “Alfried H. Schwab”– the one-time SS officer worked for the U.S. Army’s CIC (Counter intelligence Corps), its 430th Detachment (not the 66th as has erroneously been reported), part of the USFA (United States Forces, Austria).

On December 13, 1956, the FOIA-released documents indicate, after months of dickering with even considerations of rehiring Verbelen in the face of open war crimes accusations and trial, the CIC gave him two months pay (5,000 Shillings) and discharged him.

Even though the CIC offered Verbelen assistance in getting out of Europe, he declined, went to work for the Austrian secret police, and became an Austrian citizen in 1959. In 1965, he was acquitted of war crimes in Vienna. (In 1947, a Belgian tribunal had convicted him of war crimes.)

ARMY RECORDS SOUGHT OUT

These are the bare bones of the Army documents given to the ADL. Moreover, virtually all media sources to date –relying on the ADL report –have carried the Verbelen story to this effect. Sensing a possibly more involved and more-in-depth story; even in the released FOIA documents, the JTA sought out the Army records. This correspondent secured all Verbelen documents released to the ADL by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command in Fort Meade, Md.

(Under law, FOIA materials released publicly become available to other requests for the identical materials particularly when its use is “in the public interest.” In behalf of both the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and himself, this correspondent has petitioned the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command for the full release of all deleted and excised portions of the Verbelen files on which this JTA special was based.)

NOT A SECOND BARBIE CASE

A claim in the media that the Verbelen case is the second of its kind to be uncovered since the Barbie matter is incorrect. Specific CIC protective usage of major war criminals well before the Barbie case broke has been documented on several occasions.

Most notably, CIC’s Region IV involvement with both using and helping in the escape of Hitler’s favorite terrorist, SS Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny, who gained fame as the daring rescuer of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and who created the notorious Die Spinne organization which helped get Nazi war criminals out of Europe until the late 1950’s, and was guilty of numerous war crimes, was documented by this writer and the late Glenn Infield. Skorzeny was also used periodically during the 1950-1970’s period by the CIA.

Dr. Walter Schreiber, proven guilty of directing experiments on Auschwitz and Dachau inmates, and sentenced to death in absentia at Polish war crimes trials, was employed as a Project Paperclip scientist by the U.S. Air Force. He helped direct its B-W (Bacteriological Warfare) program in 1951-52.

This writer pointed out in articles and on network TV that CIC commands in Europe and the United States helped the Air Force “to resettle Schreiber in Argentina” in 1952. (Actually, those plans were changed. Some 500 CIC/Air Force telexes which this writer studied show that the Nazi SS doctor was instead flown to Paraguay by the U.S. Air Force.)

‘THIRD AGENCY’ INVOLVEMENT

The ADL, in its statement on Verbelen, invoked Ryan in quite properly calling for a “democratic accountability” in matters of intelligence usage of Nazi war criminals. However, Ryan has frequently said to the media that the Barbie case was the only instance that intelligence agencies used a Nazi war criminal.

Notwithstanding their paucity nor the sharply limited use of the FOIA documents on Verbelen, they do contain internal evidence which are of extreme importance to the issue of Nazi war iminals in the U.S. The documents reveal a Barbie-Verbelen connection. They also specifically show “third agency” involvement — probably the CIA — with Verbelen before and after his usage by the CIC.