Cia Helped Man It Knew Was a War Criminal to Enter the U.S.

A 75-year-old Westchester County man accused of war crimes and collaborating with the Nazis during World War 11 was provided entry into the United States nearly 30 years ago by the Central Intelligence Agency, despite agency knowledge of his past activities, it was disclosed here this week.

According to The Village Voice, which made the disclosure, Mykola Lebed of Yonkers, New York, was brought into the country in 1948 under an assumed name and was subsequently given permanent residence under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949 which allows the CIA to bring 100 individuals a year to the U.S. for national security reasons regardless of their past. The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations is reportedly looking into the allegations. The CIA, maintaining agency policy, declined to comment on the reports. Several calls by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to Lebed’s listed telephone number went unanswered. He declined to discuss his past activities with The Village Voice staff writers, the weekly newspaper said.

The Voice disclosed that Lebed is the same individual identified only as “Subject D” in a 40-page report issued last June by the United States General Accounting Office. The report focused on the government’s use of Nazi and Axis collaborators for post-war anti-Communist intelligence work.

The GAO report on former Nazis and collaborators “with undesirable or questionable backgrounds” whom the office found had been assisted into the country by intelligence agencies for anti-Communist operations were not identified by name, but only as “Subjects A-E.”

BACKGROUND OF THE WAR CRIMINAL

The GAO report, which devoted nearly two full pages to “Subject D, ” and The Village Voice article, written by Joe Conason, said Lebed was convicted in Poland in 1934 for plotting to assassinate an East European official. This official was identified as Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

According to documentation obtained by The Village Voice, including heavily censored intelligence reports, Lebed was a leader in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), described as a rightwing nationalist group. Lebed reportedly ran the Sluzhba Bezpeky, “its reputedly murderous security force,” the Voice said.

Lebed also attended for a brief time the Gestapo school in Zakopane, a district of Cracow, Poland, according to Counter Intelligence Corps files obtained by the Voice. Complicity between the Nazis and the OUN is confirmed by documentation provided by Yad Vashem in Israel.

The GAO report, though general in detail, said that “Subject D” “was considered extremely valuable by U.S. Intelligence. Because of fear for his personal safety and his familiarity with U.S. intelligence operations, the CIA brought him to the United States under an assumed name.”

The report continued that after he was slipped into the country, the Immigration and Naturalization Service learned of Lebed’s true identity and past activities and opened an investigation. The CIA is reported to have then acknowledged details of his past background and secured his residency in this country in 1952 under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949. Lebed became a U.S. citizen in 1957.

It was unclear whether Lebed could be deported from the country if the OSI chose to take legal action. Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman, a former House Representative, thinks Lebed could be deported. She said that a 1978 Amendment to the immigration law that she sponsored would bar Lebed or anyone else who had participated in Nazi persecution.