Former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim wants the CIA to make public its files on him, in the wake of new charges that the United States helped cover up his Nazi past.
“I support the publishing” of the CIA files, Waldheim told the Austrian daily Der Standard. “I have nothing against it.”
Waldheim was reacting to recent allegations that he had cooperated with the CIA during the early 1960s and that as a result, the American authorities covered up his service in a German army unit linked to World War II atrocities.
In 1986, while Waldheim ran for president of Austria, the World Jewish Congress launched an inquiry into his wartime activities with the German army, or Wehrmacht, in the Balkans during World War II.
Despite the inquiry’s conclusions, Waldheim was elected president in June of that year.
Waldheim, who had previously held the post of U.N. secretary-general for two terms, served his full six-year term as president but was isolated by the international community. During that period, he remained on the U.S. watch list barring people of questionable background from entering the United States.
Waldheim’s background was again brought into question following a recent report in The New York Times, which disclosed confidential documents from the U.S. Embassy in Vienna between 1961 and 1968.
According to the report, nearly identical wording was found in cables sent to Washington when Waldheim was appointed Austria’s U.N. ambassador in 1966 and again in 1968, when he took up his post as Austrian foreign minister.
In the cables, Waldheim was described as an “outstanding personality in the Austrian Foreign Ministry” and as “highly cooperative and helpful in supporting U.S. interests.”
CIA FOUND NOTHING UNUSUAL
The New York Times questioned why the United States had supported Waldheim’s election for the post of U.N. secretary-general in 1971, even though his name could be found on a list of “suspicious people” dating back to 1948 in connection with his wartime duties in the Balkans.
The CIA carried out a security check on Waldheim in 1972 but found nothing unusual in his background. That fact is being taken as proof of his prior cooperation with the State Department.
Waldheim told Der Standard that the Times story was “a continuation of the defamation campaign” against him in a new guise.
“If I had a friendly attitude toward the USA, it does not mean that I was an agent, or spying,” he said.
The former president added that nothing “more than a friendly attitude toward the USA could be filed about me, because there was no more to be said, as nothing exists of that sort.”
In March, the Justice Department released a formerly secret report documenting previously leveled accusations that Waldheim participated in war crimes under the Nazi command during World War II.
The report, written in 1987, concludes that “Waldheim assisted or otherwise participated in persecution because of race, religion, national origin or political opinion.”
The report also states that in memoranda contesting the attempt to bar him from the United States, Waldheim “offered explanations of historical events which are so completely inconsistent with documented facts as to smack of rank distortion.”
Waldheim failed to rebut the case against him or otherwise demonstrate that he did not engage in activities he is accused of participating in the report says.
It is not known why the Bush administration kept the report from the public eye. The WJC had long sought that the report be made public so that the story of Waldheim would be known.
The report states that, as a lieutenant in the German army between 1942 and 1945, Waldheim was involved in the deportation and deaths of nearly 3,000 Greek Jews.
It also says he played a part in the transfer of civilian prisoners to the SS for use as slave labor, the mass deportation of civilians to concentration and death camps, the utilization of anti-Semitic propaganda and the mistreatment and execution of Allied prisoners.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
