America's Nazi Secret: An Insider's History (49 page)

⁸²
Text of the Byelorussian charges is in UN Record of Debates, October 31, 1947.

⁸³
The first request for the apprehension of Bandera was by letter from General Sidlov, Chief Soviet MVD, Brandenberg, Germany, dated June 29, 1946, to the Assistant Chief of Staff, United States Forces, European Theatre. A reply was sent by the Army in July 1946 entitled “Bandera, Stephen Andrew, war criminal.” Apparently unsatisfied with the reply, Sidlov wrote another letter to General Sibert in August 1946. Sibert, of course, was Gehlen’s supervisor, and Gehlen was Bandera’s employer. Copies of the Army’s subsequent false denial of any knowledge of Bandera’s whereabouts can be found in the Stankievich “blue file.” The Soviet Union continued its denunciations of the United States for failure to cooperate with the return of their nationals from European refugee camps. See
New York Times
, January 5, 1953, p. 3.

⁸⁴
After his confession, the military forwarded the following secret report up the CIC chain of command referencing the UN charges:

Stanislaw Stankevich is probably identical with Stanislas Stankevich who resides in Osterhoffen, D.P. Camp. Allegedly he was the former commander of the White Ruthenian S.S. in Minsk. Later he published a White Ruthenian language paper in Germany during the Nazi regime. Currently he is the leader in the US zone of the BNC White Ruthenian National Center, an illegal organization which apparently serves as a steering committee for the rightist elements of the White Ruthenian immigration…. Many of its members were officials of the Nazi puppet government in Minsk during 1941-43 and continued as a government-in-exile in Berlin in 1944.

The document goes on to indicate that the Army had knowledge of the whereabouts of many other Byelorussian and Ukrainian Nazis who were at that time denounced in the United Nations as war criminals. (Copy in Stankievich’s “blue file,” Ft. Meade, Maryland.)

In 1951 a letter was sent by the Army in response to the January 1948 UN General Assembly charges that the U.S. was harboring persons listed as war criminals. Included on the list was Stankievich, “allegedly in charge of massacres in the Borrissov region and later editor of the fascist newspaper Ranitsa.” The Army, of course, already possessed extensive information on Stankievich, but told Washington that:

A check of files on informants of CIC revealed one Stankiewicz, first name unknown, Deputy President of White Russian Committee, and an anti-communist group existing in the US and French zones of Germany, location unknown.

2. The G-2 record section further contains information quoting to one Stankiewycz, Dr. Stanislav as follows:

Member of the organization “Byelorussian National Center,” a speaker at an Edinburgh Conference of the International Conference of Refugees held under the auspices of the Scottish League for European Freedom,” an anti-communist organization. This was a front group established by Kim Philby of the British Secret Intelligence Service, later known as the Antibolshevic Block of Nations, and later still as the World Anti-Communist League. It is the organization where the eastern European Nazi groups joined forces with their Arab Nazi brethren.

3. All other indicated files checked on 21 November 1951 disclosed no derogatory information.

Prior to submission of the sanitized report, the Army had received corroborating information from other intelligence agencies that the “Stankiewycz” who attended the Edinburgh Conference was the same person who was charged with having committed atrocities in Borissow during the German occupation, and later became editor of Ranitsa.

⁸⁵
For organization of the CIA see Select Committee Report, op. cit., pp. 12-20.

⁸⁶
Leonard Mosley,
Dulles
(Dial Press, 1978), p. 114.

⁸⁷
The CIA and the Italian election is discussed in Powers, op. cit., pp. 29-30.

⁸⁸
The Clay “war scare” cable is discussed in Select Committee Report. op. cit., p. 29.

⁸⁹
Founding of OPC is discussed in ibid., pp. 29-36.

⁹⁰
Corson, op. cit., p. 307.

⁹¹
Top Secret State Department Decimal Files, 194849. National Archives.

⁹²
Powers, op. cit., pp. 55, 73. But until his death Wisner’s name rarely appeared in print. For example,
The Nation
devoted its whole issue of June 24, 1961 to Fred J. Cook‘s 44-page article on the CIA and its operations without mentioning Wisner or the OPC.

⁹³
Stewart Alsop,
The Center
(Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 215-16.

⁹⁴
William Colby,
Honorable Men
(Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 73.

⁹⁵
Quoted in Mosley, op. cit., p. 243.

⁹⁶
General Clay was apparently aware of the connection between the Byelorussians and the Nazi government. FBI File NY97-1251 has a copy of a letter from the Byelorussians to Clay in 1948 which describes the political institutions established in Byelorussia “although under the difficult circumstances of the German occupation.”

⁹⁷
Paragraph 175, Chapter 5, p. 45 of the 1948 CIC names several other Byelorussians who had been denounced as war criminals and whose extradition was sought by the Soviets.

Chapter Six

⁹⁸
The 1948 CIC Consolidated Guidance report, paragraph 167, reported that on the previous December 10, leading White Russian personalities including “Radislau Ostrowsky (former president of the Nazi puppet state), and several other senators who had remained in comparative obscurity after the war, met in a small village near Aalan to rebuild an organization dedicated to the unity of all White Russian people in exile.”

⁹⁹
The military had a very difficult time sorting out the accusations flying back and forth between the factions, as a document in Stankievich’s “blue file,” USAIRR, Ft. Meade, Maryland, shows:

The denunciations are not all logical and consistent. It is noted that some of the leaders are denounced for being Soviet agents and for having collaborated with the Nazis, and Stankievich, mentioned above, was denounced for being a Soviet agent, a Nazi collaborator and as a collaborator with U.S. Occupation Forces.

Apparently, it did not occur to the military that all of the denunciations might have had some basis in fact.

¹⁰⁰
Cookridge, op. cit., pp. 245-52.

¹⁰¹
The United States Army not only recruited the labor service companies but gave them arms as well.
New York Times
, February 4, 1946,p. 1.

The Times
, March 13, 1947, p. 7, said that about 10,000 non-Germans were used for guard duty in the U.S. and British zones of Germany.

¹⁰²
According to the 1948 CIC Consolidated Guidance report, a group known as the “White Russian National Counterintelligence” revealed in February 1948 that it was organizing a group of young White Russians in guerrilla warfare and intelligence and was planning to dispatch them on missions to White Russia. The group indicated that it would be in contact with U.S. authorities as soon as this organization was ready for action. The leaders of the training group were also noted by the CIC as persons whom the Soviets had desired extradited because of their participation in atrocities in Byelorussia.

¹⁰³
The extent of the Soviet attempts to gain information on Wisner’s plans can be readily understood from a review of what Stankievich was requested to obtain by Nina Litwinczyk. Summaries of the Soviet espionage requests are contained in Stankievich’s “blue file,” USAIRR, Ft. Meade, Maryland.

¹⁰⁴
The incident of the partisan mole living in the United States is described in FBI File No. NK105-1478.

¹⁰⁵
In the July 12,1955 issue of
Novoye Russkoye Slovo
, Abramtchik was interviewed concerning the charge that he had been a Communist in his youth. Instead of denying the allegation, Abramtchik said, “I don’t consider it necessary to react with slander. And finally, even if I had been a Bolshevik once, there is nothing criminal in that.” The newspaper went on to report that Abramtchik had lost several votes in the Paris emigré organization because the delegates could not elect a man “who had gone to the Soviet Union several times.”

¹⁰⁶
Kim Philby,
My Silent War
(Grove Press, 1968), p. 193.

¹⁰⁷
Donald Maclean’s penetration of the atomic bomb program is discussed in
The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb
(Brown and MacDonald, eds. Dial Press, 1977).

¹⁰⁸
Operation Paperclip file, OSI.

¹⁰⁹
Top Secret State Department Decimal File, 194849, National Archives.

Chapter Seven

¹¹⁰
The text of Congressman Klein’s discussion is printed in the Congressional Record for August 7, 1948 at page A5155.

¹¹¹
8 U.S.C. 1427a(3) requires that every applicant for American citizenship have “good moral character.” Ironically, during the late 1950s the Immigration Service considered people who were unfaithful to their wives as lacking good moral character, while prior membership in the SS was not a bar.

¹¹²
This legislation was requested by the intelligence community because all too often agents brought in under the 100 Persons Act would simply refuse to work after they had been granted a visa for permanent immigration. The Parole Powers Provisions allow the intelligence community to bring in an unlimited number of illegal entrants for a “temporary” stay. Once the agents are here, their visas can be voided if they refuse to cooperate.

¹¹³
The Hrynkievich file is contained in Blue File No. D95605, USAIRR, Ft. Meade, Maryland.

¹¹⁴
Ostrowsky’s list of delegates at the Minsk convention of 1944 contains the following entry for “Lapitski, Mikalaj”: “Protopresbyter, graduate of the Vilna Theological Seminary, graduate of the Theological Department of the Orthodox Theology at the Warsaw University, member and president of the Theology Student Circle, Superior of various parishes in the region of Hlybokaje and in the City of Minsk, member of the Metropolitan Bureau of the Byelorussian Orthodox Church Administration of the Byelorussian Autocephalic Church, member of the Preparatory Commission to the Byelorussian Autocephalic Sobor of the Byelorussian Orthodox Church in Minsk 1942, member delegate from the clergy to the Second All-Byelorussian Congress.”

¹¹⁵
Copy in Kushel’s Immigration file.

¹¹⁶
According to a letter from the CIC Central Registry to the American consulate general in Stuttgart (copy located in Stankievich’s “blue file,” USAIRR, Ft. Meade, Maryland), Stankievich also attempted to immigrate to the United States during the mid-1950s under the Refugee Relief Act. In this document the Army informed the State Department that Stankievich admitted holding the following positions under the Nazis:

July 1941-February 1944 Town Mayor, Borissow, USSR, German Military Administration, Borissow, USSR

(Left) to take up another job

February 1944-June 1944 Delegate of the White Ruthenian Central Committee, Baronovichy, Poland (Reason for leaving) fled

June 1944-August 1944 Unemployed, en route to Berlin, Ger many

August 1944-March 1945 Editor, White Ruthenian Newspaper Raniza (Morning) German Ministry for the East Address un known, Berlin, Germany

¹¹⁷
State Department files, Foreign Affairs Information Management Center, 1953 Agreement with the CIA.

¹¹⁸
Conversations with former staff members of the US. Consulate in Stuttgart.

¹¹⁹
According to the CIC screening officer who handled Jasiuk‘s application for a DP visa, Jasiuk “has been doing work of a highly confidential nature for an American agency as was proved specifically at interview of subject by the persons in the agency for whom he was working.” Wagenaar was one of those who testified. At that time Jasiuk submitted a false background history concealing his Nazi collaboration. None of the State Department officials present made any objection, even though they must have known that the information was false.