The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Barbie Report

[Tease]

ALAN RYAN: It is a principle of democracy and the rule of law that justice delayed is justice denied. If we are to be true to that principle, and we ought to be true to it, we cannot pretend that it applies only within our borders and nowhere else. We have delayed justice in Lyons.

[Titles]

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Thirty-eight years after the end of World War II, the United States formally admitted today that its agents helped alleged Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie escape prosecution. Barbie was the wartime head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyons and was wanted by the French on charges of mass murder and other crimes. In a report of more than 200 pages released today, the Justice Department said officers of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps engaged in obstruction of justice by concealing Barbie from U.S. civilian authorities. It called the actions incomprehensible and shameful. The report said the intelligence corps recruited Barbie as a spy against the Soviets, unaware that he was wanted as a war criminal, but later helped him to escape to South America. The Reagan administration confirmed late today that it has apologized to the French government. Tonight, the Barbie case with the man who conducted the Justice Department investigation, the man who ran a counterintelligence unit in Germany when Barbie was in U.S. control, and an American Jewish leader unsatisfied by the government's investigation. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, there are both general and specific charges against Klaus Barbie, the so-called "Butcher of Lyons." The sweeping one is that he had a direct hand in the deaths of more than 4,000 French Jews and members of the French Resistance, and that as head of the Gestapo in Lyons, France, from 1942 to '44 he sent 7,000 more persons -- mostly Jews -- to concentration camps. The specifics include locking 100 teenagers in their school and then burning and dynamiting it; personally torturing prisoners, some to death, with kicks, beatings and ice water, ordering hundreds of Jews onto trains and then refusing them food or water, thus intentionally killing them all. In the confusion after the war, Barbie escaped France to Germany where, according to today's Justice Department report, he worked for American intelligence, providing information on the Soviet Union and on communists in Germany. In 1951, with the heat on from France to find Barbie and prosecute him for his Lyons crimes, U.S. agents helped him escape through Austria to Genoa, Italy, then on a ship to South America. For the next 31 years he lived, mostly in Bolivia, as Klaus Altman, a businessman. He was found and identified by the French and others 12 years ago, but it wasn't until last year that a new democratic government in Bolivia arrested him and expelled him to France where now, 69 years old, he awaits trial for what he is accused of doing in Lyons 40 years ago. The Justice Department investigation of U.S. involvement in the Barbie affair began last March under the direction of Allan Ryan, Jr., director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, who issued today's report. Mr. Ryan, let's go through your basic conclusions first. And, you believe that the use of Barbie by U.S. intelligence officers as an agent right after the war was justified or at least defensible and understandable, correct?

Mr. RYAN: I think it was defensible, and I want to correct something that Robin said a few minutes ago. I did not call that "incomprehensible and shameful." I said some people would find it incomprehensible and shameful; others would find it a very necessary response to the forces that were at work in Germany after the war. My own conclusion is that Army officers in 1947, when Barbie was recruited, were not aware that he was wanted by the French on war crimes charges. They were not aware of the charges that were listed a moment ago, and I found that, based on that, that their decision to employ him and rely on him was at least defensible, even if it was not the only defensible choice that was available.

LEHRER: All right, let's move to the second stage. When there was information about -- when information did come to light from the French as to what the charges were against Barbie, and your investigation revealed that U.S. officers did know that and did shield him from the French, correct?

Mr. RYAN: Yes.

LEHRER: Now, what is your conclusion about that?

Mr. RYAN: Well, my conclusion was that when the State Department in Germany, the High Commissioner for Germany -- HICOG -- received the request from the French government for the extradition of Klaus Barbie, it asked the army forces in Europe if --

LEHRER: This is, what? about 19 --

Mr. RYAN: This is 1950 at this point.

LEHRER: 1950.

Mr. RYAN: The State Department did not know the name Klaus Barbie. They asked the Army. The Army said, "We used to employ him, but we don't anymore and we don't know where he is." And at the time that information was simply false, because the Army was employing him and continued to employ him until February of 1951.

LEHRER: Now, what would be your conclusion there?

Mr. RYAN: My conclusion there is that the officers who represented that to HICOG, knowing it to be false and knowing that HICOG was seeking to rule on the extradition request, committed an obstruction of justice under United States Law.

LEHRER: All right, now we move to the third stage, and that was helping Barbie get out of Europe and into South America. What's your conclusion there?

Mr. RYAN: Well, my conclusion there is that that is a continuation of the obstruction of justice. It's the culmination of the process that was begun when the Army shielded him. By removing him to South America, they insured that the French would not be able to apprehend him and put him on trial. And so it's certainly a more dramatic episode, but it's really the culmination of the obstruction of justice in this case.

LEHRER: You talked, of course, to many of the people who were involved in that. What reasons did they give for having done this?

Mr. RYAN: Well, I want to say, first of all, in fairness to the other guest tonight, Mr. Kolb, who was in the Army at that time, he would not be implicated in the obstruction of justice because he was down in Augsburg working with Barbie, and the representations to the State Department were made by the headquarters staff in Stuttgart. And those people -- I think the feeling was really more of insensitivity than anything else. Their feeling was that to turn Barbie over to the State Department and thus to the French would compromise intelligence operations in Germany, would turn over a very sensitive resource -- namely, Klaus Barbie -- to the French, and that they felt that that would jeopardize what they were doing in Germany. And I don't think there was really any thought given to the fact that by misrepresenting the truth to the State Department they were in fact committing an obstruction of justice.

LEHRER: Did you find any evidence that any of the officers in the Army Intelligence Corps who were involved in this series of things from 1950 on did so specifically to protect a Nazi war criminal from being found and prosecuted?

Mr. RYAN: No, they were seeking to protect an American intelligence informant. When Barbie was recruited in 1947, the Army had no knowledge of the French charges, and when those charges were made known to them in 1950 their response was to protect this very valuable asset, if you will, and protect their own operations. There was certainly no sympathy for Nazi war crimes or Nazism.

LEHRER: Do you feel that any of the people involved in any of this chain of events should now be publicly prosecuted, condemned, otherwise censured?

Mr. RYAN: Prosecution is not possible because the statute of limitations has expired. The decision, as I said in the report, to recruit and use Barbie in 1947 I think is a defensible one. I don't think it was cynical. I don't think it was corrupt. I think there is a very strong argument that can be made on the other side that we ought to have had nothing to do with the Gestapo in any way, shape of form. But there's a strong argument that we were facing a new adversary and that we needed the resources that were available, and I think that it would be unfair now to villify those officers for that decision, even though you or I or anyone else might have made the opposite decision has we been there. We were not there. I do not think one can defend the action that amounted to obstructing justice. I think that the Army had an obligation to be truthful to the State Department. I think that although their concerns were strong ones, it does not excuse the fact that they lied to the State Department and interfered with the administration of the law.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Now to an officer who was directly involved in the Barbie matter. Eugene Kolb was chief of operations for the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps in the Augsburg region of Germany from early 1949 to late 1950. Mr. Kolb is now retired and lives in Maine. He joins us tonight from public station WNEG in Portland, and the picture -- so you don't need to adjust your set -- is in black and white. Mr. Kolb, what was exactly your connection with Barbie?

EUGENE KOLB: Well, as chief of operations in the Augsburg region, I supervised, directed and controlled those American agents who in turn controlled people such as Barbie, German agents as well as non-American -- other non-American personnel.

MacNEIL: Did you meet him yourself?

Mr. KOLB: I met him myself, oh, on several occasions.

MacNEIL: Why was he valuable to U.S. intelligence?

Mr. KOLB: Again, I think Mr. Ryan pointed out some of this, that this was the height of the Cold War, and around 1947, 1948 we were assigned brand new and very difficult targets to penetrate, operations to pursue, and the kind of American personnel that we had at that time were, for the most part, with some exceptions, not very well qualified for this kind of operation. You desperately needed a non-American personnel with some experience, with background, with the skills required, and who appeared at the time to us to be relatively clean, shall we say, in terms of their political background.

MacNEIL: Were you involved in Barbie's escape to South America?

Mr. KOLB: No, I was not. That was after my time.

MacNEIL: That was after your time. You knew of it and approved of it, did you?

Mr. KOLB: I knew of it and, oh, looking back, well, as Mr. Ryan put it neatly, I think legally it was probably indefensible. From our standpoint, I think it was necessary, and that's for the -- not so much to protect an asset, but far more that Barbie, during his tenure, had done a very effective job of recruiting some informants for us from within the German Communist Party as well as some other neo-Nazi, right-wing groups. And we were fairly certain, in knowing the character of the French intelligence and security services at that time -- and let me stress at that time -- that French intelligence had been fairly well penetrated by Communist Party members and Soviet officials, and we were very, very fearful that their first priority as far as the interrogation of Barbie was concerned would be to interrogate him about our operations, about the sources he had recruited, and that would have blown these operations, blown these sources, and indeed, in the context of the late '40s, probably the life of these sources, because it was notorious that some people simply disappeared to the other side of the IronCurtain, so to speak. That was our real concern and that, I'm sure, was the real concern of those people who effected his, shall we say, escape to South America.

MacNEIL: How high up did that go, that kind of decision-making? Are you aware?

Mr. KOLB: At the -- as far as the escape is concerned, I am quite certain it must have gone higher than our own headquarters -- certainly our headquarters in Stuttgart at the time, but I'm certain, the way things were run at that time, it must have gone higher. At the very least I would think the European command, the military command, and I would not be surprised if it had gone even to civilian officials over there.

MacNEIL: Looking back on it -- it's more than 30 years now -- how do you feel about it now?

Mr. KOLB: A sense of -- that it's difficult to understand it in the context of 1983. The bind that we were in in terms of the intelligence missions that we were assigned, the difficulty of covering those intelligence missions, the fact -- the hard fact that at that time there were no charges of war crimes or anything of the sort levied against Barbie, and the fact that what we knew about French intelligence -- all of that -- makes me feel, well, certainly not very confident that we made the right decision, but a little uneasy, certainly, today at the very least. But still, in the context of the time, that was the decision.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. We'll come back. The Justice Department report does not satisfy a number of American Jewish leaders. One of them is Julius Berman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of major American Jewish organizations. Mr. Berman is also an attorney in a New York law firm. Mr. Berman, what's your overall reaction to the report?

JULIUS BERMAN: Well, my reaction essentially is that I'm pleased with the fact that there is a report. By that I mean that the United States has the gumption to sit down in light of these charges and investigate and disclose to the world what the facts were. However, I do have substantial problems with the conclusions in the report.

MacNEIL: What are your problems?

Mr. BERMAN: Well, basically, as I see it, I think -- and I think you touched on it, Robin, in one of your questions to Mr. Kolb, the decision-marking process. You have the impression from everything I've heard that within the Counterintelligence Corps, which essentially at that point in time was one-issue oriented, to get counterintelligence, they were making decisions that involved a panoply of issues: how important is the intelligence operation that they're looking for? How sure are they that Mr. Barbie will get it? Are there any alternatives? What happens, if disclosed, to our relationship with our allies, such as France? And, of course, in the fight for the hearts and minds of the people throughout the world, what happens when it's disclosed, as is now evident? And therefore, I do believe that the decision-making process was clearly at fault, and someone who has such issues on their desk should be the one that ultimately makes that kind of decision. After all is said and done, I still haven't heard how terribly important it was to get the information we are talking about and, more important, whether Klaus Barbie was the only one they could get it from.

MacNEIL: But you're talking about decisions made in the past. What is your problem with the report about those decisions?

Mr. BERMAN: Well, the suggestion in the conclusion was that, you know, that it's 30 years ago, it's maybe a little hindsight. You can say that about what happened 40 years ago also. I believe that the report, while it reflects and discloses that defect, does not suggest in its conclusion that there is such a defect. And the ultimate irony is the factual conclusion that our people did not know who Barbie was. There's -- you know, you mention I'm a lawyer. We know there's knowledge and there's reckless disregard of the truth. To suggest --

MacNEIL: You're saying they did know or somebody did.

Mr. BERMAN: I'm saying that if they didn't know, they didn't want to know, and that's virtually as bad.

MacNEIL: Do you think the inquiry should stop here or there are further steps should be taken?

Mr. BERMAN: I believe that, of course, we've overlooked what to me is a very, very moral issue, is that whether we can use such people for whatever purposes. And then, of course, you get involved with alternatives. And in that context, the suggestion, including by Mr. Ryan this evening, that if they had to do it over again he could just as well see that it might be doable, I think reflects a problem we have in our own analysis of the right and wrong. With respect to the report itself, I don't think it should be put to bed. I think the conclusions have to be developed, discussed, debated, and the government eventually has to make an ultimate decision as to what types of policies they will use in the future, and just like with Watergate, I believe, despita the fact there's no criminal charges involved, as Mr. Ryan says, that we still have to flush out the facts to disclose so that we will learn for the future.

MacNEIL: You don't think enough of the facts have come out yet, is that it?

Mr. BERMAN: Yes.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Are there more facts to come out, Mr. Ryan?

Mr. RYAN: There are no more facts to come out about Klaus Barbie. Now, there is much that can be said, and I think Mr. Berman is right, that these issues ought to be debated and discussed and so forth, but there are no more facts about Klaus Barbie in the United States government. I made sure to that in my report.

LEHRER: Were you given unlimited access to --

Mr. RYAN: Yes.

LEHRER: -- everything in the government --

Mr. RYAN: Yes. Yes.

LEHRER: -- everything the government had?

Mr. RYAN: We made it quite clear that this was a Department of Justice investigation; it was not Allan Ryan investigating; it was the Department of Justice. We expected to received cooperation; we did receive it.

LEHRER: So when you sat down to draw your conclusions you felt you had all the information there was able to get?

Mr. RYAN: Yes, yes.

LEHRER: All right. What about Mr. Berman's basic point about who made this decision and the decision-making process? Can you take us through -- can you answer that question on who ultimately decided it was all right to help Barbie get out of the country and the decision before that to obstruct justice, to use your term?

Mr. RYAN: Well, there so many decisions made along the way, the decision -- the first decision in 1947 to recruit him and to use him as an informant -- with all respect to Mr. Berman, he's simply not correct that this amounted to a reckless disregard of what was known. These facts were not known beyond the French government. The French had not -- the French had investigated Lyon after the war, but their files, their charges and so forth were not made available to the Americans. The personnel files and the information that was available to the Americans indicated that Barbie was a counterintelligence officer. Now, that situation later changed, but in 1947 that was the state of knowledge. And, as I say, those decisions were --

LEHRER: Sure. Well, let's get into the serious ones about when, once the United States agents or the U.S. agents did know about what the French charges were and then the decision to obstruct justice and then the decision to help the man go to South -- who actually made that decision?

Mr. RYAN: They were made at what I would call normal operating levels of the Counter-intelligence Corps in Germany. That is, the commanding officer of the Counterintelligence Corps and his staff, the liaison with the higher command, which was the European command that Mr. Kolb mentioned, and similar units in Austria.

LEHRER: It didn't come back to Washington; it didn't come to high civilian authority?

Mr. RYAN: Not as far as we know. No. There are -- the records on that particular episode are not quite complete, but I am fairly confident in saying that it was done at a normal operating level. It was considered a disposal of an intelligence resource, and it was handled as any other disposal would be, and I think that is part of the problem, that there was an insensitivity and the fact that an American agency was looking for this man was simply not considered as I think it should have been. So the fact that it was made at normal operating levels is perhaps part of the problem, as Mr. Berman points out.

LEHRER: Mr. Kolb, would you agree with that, that that was not the place -- that the operating level was not the place where this decision should have been made?

Mr. KOLB: If that is really the case. I'm still not convinced of it, and as Mr. Ryan has indicated, the files are rather incomplete at that point. I don't really know what went on between our headquarters and higher levels because I only dealt with headquarters. But the impression I got was that there was a good deal of hanky-panky at higher levels, and I doubt --

LEHRER: What do you mean by -- excuse me, what do you mean by that, sir?

Mr. KOLB: Covering up. That some people today are not willing to admit to the role that they played in the Barbie case, and that's even true of our own CIC people, regrettably. I --

LEHRER: Well, wait a minute, let's ask Mr. Ryan. You talked to them.Did you have the feeling that the folks just weren't -- was there anybody who either would not talk to you or, when they did talk to you, you had either a feeling, either in your bones or based on the record, that they weren't leveling with you?

Mr. RYAN: There was nobody who refused to talk to us. Many of the people involved, of course, are dead. Everyone agreed to talk to us. I think by and large most of them were fairly candid, but we are talking about events that happened 35 or more years ago, and I think memories are not our best indicator here.

LEHRER: Is there a paper trail? Was this thing --

Mr. RYAN: Yes, there's a very, very strong paper trail, and the report relies almost entirely on the paper trail as opposed to the memories and the recollection of witnesses after 35 years.

LEHRER: Mr. Kolb?

Mr. KOLB: Yes.

LEHRER: You heard what Mr. Ryan says; there's a paper trail and he followed it as far as he could go.

Mr. KOLB: Yes, but let me put it this way, I know that a good deal of the discussions that took place between myself at the Augsburg level and headquarters, and a good deal of the discussions that took place between headquarters and some higher level, which I don't know about, were not always committed to paper. A lot of it was telephone conversations.

LEHRER: Mr. Berman, what do you sayin response to Mr. Ryan's answer to your concern about what the U.S. agents knew about Klaus Barbie when they first hired him on in 1947?

Mr. BERMAN: I think Mr. Kolb hit it on the head. First of all, the paper trail is the easiest thing to detect and it's the easiest thing to use as a coverup, and Mr. Kolb suggested that there may be much more to it that really was not put on paper, and intentionally. But what is critical -- when I say a reckless disregard of the truth, I do not mean they knew and they looked the other way. I mean it's difficult for me to believe that the United States Army intelligence, even in the 1940s, if they're going to hire somebody or retain somebody, make an employee of somebody, can't push the appropriate buttons and ascertain the information. Go to the French, go to the Germans, find out, rather than finding out later that they're dealing with somebody such as Barbie and then two years later being stuck with him because they're going to be embarrassed to the world and therefore spirit him out to Bolivia.

LEHRER: I see. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Ryan, let's come closer to the present time. Does your report not also indicate that as late as the middle '60s the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps wanted to use Barbie again, knowing he was in South America, but was talked out of it by the CIA?

Mr. RYAN: Yes. The Army considered the possibility. They discussed it with the CIA. The CIA said it would not be a very good step, and the Army simply withdrew its consideration. I don't think it ever got to the point where they formally requested him; certainly they never contacted him, but that thought did surface in the '60s.

MacNEIL: But the thought surfaced long after it was known what the charges against Barbie were and who he was?

Mr. RYAN: Yes.

MacNEIL: Yes. What is your reaction to that, Mr. Berman?

Mr. BERMAN: I think, Robin, I think you touched on something, because with all the discussion, both in the report and this evening, I am not really clear whether there would have been any difference had they known everything that they know now. From everything I've heard as to the rationale why they used him, why they needed, him, this that and the other thing, I haven't heard anything to suggest that if they knew it they wouldn't have done it and it would have been wrong if they did do it.

MacNEIL: What is your comment on that, Mr. Kolb?

Mr. KOLB: Again, Mr. Berman forgets the context of the late 1940s. I believe that the French authorities themselves did not know about these so-called atrocities, war crimes, etc. What the French wanted him for, to my understanding, was interrogation for the purpose of identifying and possibly serving as a witness against French collaborators and French traitors. Nothing to do whatsoever with war crimes. And he asks us to investigate -- we should have investigated these people. Well, we certainly did to the best of our ability, but ot do that and to go across borders in 1947, '48, '49, '50 was an utterly impossible task.

MacNEIL: Mr. Ryan, the point Mr. Berman raised a little earlier, that what this shows is that some studies should be done or something should be looked into in the decision-making process in U.S. intelligence and the kinds of things it feels permitted to do. Does your study of this case suggest to you that there should be more rigorous inquiry in that direction if, as late as the middle '60s, this sort of thing was being considered again?

Mr. RYAN: Well, I think you have to remember, too, that our notions about the intelligence community and the proper role of intelligence gathering in American government have undergone tremendous change in the last 10 years, and I think generally change for the better. There's much more recognition of the fact that intelligence agencies ought to be accountable for their actions, that it is not possible to justify everything imaginable under the cloak of intelligence. I think what we're looking at here in the Barbie situation is a perhaps a moment in time, if you will. I'm not at all sure that the same course would have been followed, at least in 1983.

MacNEIL: Our time is up. Thank you, Mr. Kolb, for joining us in Portland, Maine; Mr. Ryan, in Washington; Mr. Berman, in New York. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.