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source document: http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/publicdocs/11-1prior/crm15.pdf electronic history: 03-Feb-2003 OCR (rfleming) 05-Feb-2003 HTML (rfleming) Document processing courtesy of Soylent Communications. Soylent Communications assumes no liability for the content of this file, nor any errors or inaccuracies in the transcription. When in doubt, refer to the source document. A reasonable attempt has been made to preserve basic formatting and pagination, but no efforts have been taken to produce a strict duplicate of the source document. There are differences, including minor spelling, grammar, and punctuation corrections, in an effort to facilitate text searches. Also, the images from the original document have been omitted. U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division Klaus Barbie and the United States GovernmentA Report to the Attorney General of the United StatesAugust 1983Submitted by: Allan A. Ryan, Jr. Klaus Barbie and the United States GovernmentA Report to the Attorney General of the United StatesSubmitted by: Allan A. Ryan, Jr. For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Washington, D.C. 20530 August 2, 1983 Memorandum to the Attorney General As the investigation of Klaus Barbie has shown, officers of the United States government were directly responsible for protecting a person wanted by the government of France on criminal charges and in arranging his escape from the law. As a direct result of that action, Klaus Barbie did not stand trial in France in 1950; he spent 33 years as a free man and a fugitive from justice, and the fact that he is awaiting trial today in France is due entirely to the persistence of the government of France and the cooperation of the present government of Bolivia. It is true that the obstruction of efforts to apprehend and extradite Barbie were not condoned in any official sense by the United States government. But neither can this episode be considered as merely the unfortunate action of renegade officers. They were acting within the scope of their official duties. Their actions were taken not for personal gain, or to shield them personally from liability or discipline, but to protect what they believed to be the interests of the United States Army and the United States government. Under these circumstances, whatever may be their personal culpability, the United States government cannot disclaim responsibility for their actions. Whether Barbie is guilty or innocent of the crimes with which he is charged will be decided by a French court. But whatever the verdict, his appointment with justice is long overdue. It is a principle of democracy and the rule of law that justice delayed is justice denied. If we are to be faithful to that principle -- and we should be faithful to it -- we cannot pretend that it applies only within our borders and nowhere else. We have delayed justice in Lyon. I therefore believe it appropriate, and I so recommend, that the United States government express to the government of France its regret for its responsibility in delaying the due process of law in the case of Klaus Barbie. We should also pledge to cooperate in any appropriate manner in the further investigation of the crimes for which Barbie will be tried in France. This is a matter of decency, and of honorable conduct. It should be, I believe, the final chapter by the United States in this case. Allan A. Ryan, Jr. Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice Washington, D.C. 20530 August 2, 1983 Honorable William French Smith Dear Mr. Attorney General: On March 14, 1983 you directed that I conduct an investigation of the relationship between Klaus Barbie and the United States government from the end of World War II to the present. That investigation has been completed, and I submit herewith my report, including my conclusions and recommendations. I would like to bring to your attention the dedicated and professional assistance in this investigation of my colleagues in the office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division. Richard D. Sullivan was my chief attorney advisor. David G. Marwell was my chief historian and archival researcher. Edward G. Bourguignon and Bertram S. Falbaum were the investigators. In addition, George Garand, Diane Kelly and Nancy Whisenhunt provided valuable support services. Susan Adams, assisted by Anita Washington, Janine Scoville and Linda Faulk, typed this report and the several drafts that preceded it. The contributions of those who assisted me far exceed this brief description of their duties, and they share the credit for the accuracy and completeness of this report. For whatever inaccuracies or omissions may exist, the responsibility is mine. Respectfully submitted, Allan A. Ryan, Jr. Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION A. The Reason for This Report On February 4, 1983, Klaus Barbie was expelled from Bolivia, where he had been living for 32 years, to France, where he was under indictment for crimes he allegedly committed during World War II as chief of the Gestapo in Lyon. Within a few days of his arrival in France, charges were raised both in the United States and France that Barbie had been employed by United States intelligence in Germany after the war, and that the United States had arranged Barbie's escape to South America in 1951 after France had requested his extradition. In view of the seriousness of these charges, on February 11 Assistant Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen directed the Office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division, to conduct a preliminary inquiry to determine whether there was any substance to the allegations and, if so, to recommend whether further action by the Department of Justice would be appropriate. As Director of the Office of Special Investigations, I reviewed records of the United States Army and the Department of State and reported to Assistant Attorney General Jensen that the charges appeared to have merit. In light of the preliminary determination, and the considerable public interest in the allegations, I recommended that a full investigation be conducted. On March 14, the Attorney General authorized an investigation to determine the relationship between Klaus Barbie and the United States government from the end of World War II until the present. I was appointed Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General to conduct this investigation, to report the findings and conclusions to the Attorney General, and to make whatever recommendations might be appropriate. The report that follows is the result of that investigation. It was delivered to the Attorney General on August 2, 1983. I was ably assisted in this investigation by several members of the Office of Special Investigations, who are identified in the transmittal letter to the Attorney General. B. The Scope of the Investigation The goal of the investigation was to determine the truth and report it. To that end, all available records that would shed any light on Barbie and the events in which he was involved were located and reviewed. These records were found primarily in the archives of the United States Army, the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and in the National Archives. In addition, several other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Air Force were asked to search their records, and did so with generally negative results. Investigators traveled to Bolivia and to France to review whatever records or other information might be available in the archives of those countries. While Bolivian officials cooperated fully with the investigation and provided copies of judicial records pertaining to Barbie's naturalization, they reported that other records could not be located and expressed their belief that such records had been lost or destroyed some time ago. The Government of France provided full access to records in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, including those records gathered in Lyon in preparation for the prosecution of Barbie on charges of crimes against humanity. These records proved very helpful in reconstructing the events described in this report, particularly in Sections I and III. The Justice Ministry declined a request to interrogate Barbie himself, on grounds that the absence of any judicial proceeding in the United States precluded the invocation of the judicial assistance agreement between the United States and France that allows one government to interrogate persons in the custody of the other. The inability to question Barbie himself, however, did not materially affect the findings of the investigation, given the extensive and reliable documentation available from the sources named above. In addition, some 40 persons who were directly involved in the events covered in this report were interviewed, several of them more than once. */ As a general matter, witnesses were cooperative and candid, and many of the interviews provided useful information on background events, working relationships, and attitudes towards the issues of the day. The interviews were distinctly less helpful in reconstructing the events surrounding particular decisions or actions. This is to be expected in investigating matters that happened so long ago; as a result, the description of specific events in this report is based almost entirely on contemporaneous documents. These documents are cited in this report by number, and are contained in a separate appendix to the report. */ In the 38 years since the end of World War II, many persons who were involved in these events have died; and deaths are noted at various places in the report.This investigation received, as it ought to have, the full cooperation of the other agencies involved, particularly the United States Army, the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency. The staffs of those agencies, and of the National Archives and Records Service, were particularly helpful in assisting the Department of Justice in locating records, many of which, of course, were not filed under the name of Klaus Barbie but under broader subjects. In addition, a great number of files having nothing to do with Barbie were reviewed in order to ascertain the organization, policies, responsibilities and administrative procedures of various government offices during the time in question. C. Declassification and Sanitization of Documents The great majority of the documents reviewed in this investigation had been classified when they were executed and had remained classified in the intervening years. The agencies involved, particularly the United States Army, declassified extensive amounts of material so that this report could be released to the public in a complete and accurate form. As a result, every document that I believe relevant to Barbie's relationship with the United States government is contained in the appendix. These documents have either been declassified or, where necessary, sanitized by the United States Army to protect intelligence sources and methods under Executive Order 12356. This process was undertaken in full consultation with me, and I am satisfied that the sanitizations finally arrived at are justified under that Order. More importantly, I am satisfied that the specific information that remains classified, and thus deleted in the appendix, does not in any way detract from completeness of this report. For example, the names of foreign nationals who provided intelligence information to Barbie from 1947 to 1950 have been deleted, but those names are of little consequence to this report. In addition, specific targets of intelligence operations in which Barbie was involved are also deleted, but they are identified generically in this report by the phrase "French intelligence activities in the French zone," or similar descriptions. That is what is important; to identify the particular activity or individual who was targeted is not necessary to the account of Barbie's relationship with the U.S. government. As this report establishes, the relationship between Barbie and the United States government ended in 1951, and in no case has the identity or action of any United States official, or of Barbie himself, during those years been sanitized. D. Conclusion When this investigation began, there was no assurance that the story of the relationship between Klaus Barbie and the United States government could ever be fully determined, because there was a legitimate apprehension that the records might not have survived or, if they had, that they could not all be located. Fortunately, that apprehension proved largely unjustified. As a result, the report that follows, in my opinion, describes Barbie's relationship with the United States government definitively and completely. While questions may always exist as to why people acted as they did, or what motivated them, or how they perceived events as they were happening, the events themselves are fully documented in this report. In the first five sections of this report, I have taken care to report as fact only those events that are plainly demonstrated by the evidence and are not subject to serious question. I have drawn no inferences and made no assumptions except where clearly identified as such, and in those cases I have set forth the evidence supporting them and, where it exists, the evidence that might fairly justify some other inference. I have used the word "apparently," or its equivalent, to identify events that very likely happened but cannot be directly documented. The final section of this report contains my conclusions and recommendations, as directed by the Attorney General. Allan A. Ryan, Jr. Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General A. Introduction This report describes the relationship between Klaus Barbie and the United States government. That relationship began in April 1947, but this report cannot begin there. To draw intelligent and informed judgments on the history of Barbie's use by American authorities, one must have answers to two lines of questions. First, who was Klaus Barbie, and what did he do during the war? Second, what did the Americans who recruited and used Barbie after the war know about him and his record? What could they have known from the resources that were available to them? The answers to these questions are important because the controversy that has developed over public allegations of U.S. involvement with Barbie has been based on the assumption that Barbie was "the butcher of Lyon," a man responsible for crimes against humanity: the deaths and deportations of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jews and other innocent victims of Nazi persecution. This controversy has also assumed that those who dealt with Barbie after the war must have known that he was a butcher. */ Barbie himself has */ The derivation of "butcher of Lyon" is unclear. It does not appear in any of the materials examined in this investigation.maintained that he was the head of the SS counter-resistance operation in Lyon, attempting to ferret out and neutralize sabotage directed against the German occupation. As this section demonstrates, Barbie was the head of the Gestapo in Lyon; considering the responsibilities of the SS detachment in Lyon in 1942-1944, this role could be consistent with persecution, counter-resistance operations, or both. This investigation has not attempted to establish Barbie's guilt or innocence of crimes against humanity, which are the subject of criminal charges in France. It has endeavored to establish, as far as possible, what American officers who recruited and used Barbie over a period of time knew or should have known about him at the time he was recruited, and also as time went by. The answers to these questions are important because the actions of American officers, to be judged fairly, must be judged according to what they knew or ought to have known about the man they were dealing with. In this respect, as in others, this investigation has not relied on assumptions but has sought evidence. This section discusses Klaus Barbie's wartime career and what could have been known about it in the period of his use after the war. B. Early Career Klaus Barbie was born on October 25, 1913 in Godesberg in the Rhineland. In 1933, Hitler became chancellor of Germany and Barbie joined the Hitler Youth, the beginning of an unbroken involvement with the Nazi movement. Beginning in February 1935, Barbie served as personal adjutant to the head of the local Nazi party office in Trier. It was at this time, according to his handwritten autobiography in his SS personnel file, that Barbie began to work with the Sicherheitsdienst (literally, security service), the Nazi Party intelligence and espionage agency. */ The Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, was established in 1931 with Reinhard Heydrich at its head. It was an arm of the SS [Schutzstaffel] an organization that began as the personal cadre of Adolf Hitler and grew into a complex and powerful network of death camps, armed divisions, intelligence services and mobile slaughter commandos. The SD's general responsibility was combattirig enemies of the State, but was best described in a */ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Lebenslauf, 14.II.40.speech given by the leader of the SS, Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler in January 1937: The primary SD fields of activity are communism, political activity by religious persuasions, and reaction. The SD is not, however, concerned with detailed executive problems * * *. The SD is concerned only with major ideological questions * * *. As a Security Service we are interested in this sort of thing: what major plans has the Comintern in the years to come, in which country does it propose to make an effort, what Bolshevist influences can be detected in Freemason circles abroad, which way do the threads run and whither are the major emissaries going? * * * Then again we are interested in the economic influence which the Jews are acquiring (again only in the overall plan in general) in order to strangle us, sabotage us or manipulate the currency. All these questions the SD studies scientifically * * *. */ Barbie officially joined the SS and SD on September 26, 1935 and was assigned to the SD Hauptamt (Main Office) until October 1936, when he was transferred to the SD Oberabschnitt (Region) West in Duesseldorf as a Referent (specialist). **/ His specific duties during this period are not known, but he performed them to the expressed satisfaction of his */ Quoted in Krausnick, Helmut, et. al., The Anatomy of the SS State (London, 1968).**/ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Lebenslauf.superiors. */ On Barbie's marriage petition, filed in March 1939, his commander described him as "one of the best Referents in the organization. **/ By April 20, 1939, Barbie had achieved the non-commissioned rank of Oberscharfuehrer. In October 1939, as the result of a reorganization, he was assigned to the SD Abschnitt (district) Dortmund, still as a Referent and in this assignment, Barbie officially remained for the rest of his career, although he was detailed to other authorities. ***/ On April 20, 1940, Klaus Barbie was promoted to Untersturmfuehrer (SS 2nd Lieutenant). According to his promotion papers, ****/ he was serving at this time as Referent for Section II/122 and Section II/123 in the SD Abschnitt Dortmund; these sections dealt with "Liberalism and Pacifism" and "Rightist Movements" respectively. Barbie's duties in this position would have been to gather intelligence on the individuals and */ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Lebenslauf.**/ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Marriage Petition.***/ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Lebenslauf.****/ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Promotion Recommendation, 9.III.40.organizations in these categories by, among other things, organizing and maintaining a network of agents and informants. On May 10, 1940, the Germans launched a massive, coordinated land and air assault on the west. By May 15, Holland fell; Klaus Barbie was assigned there May 29. Barbie's personnel file gives no explicit indication of his activity in Holland; but his official assignment as of October was an assistant Referent (Hilfsreferent) in Subsection III C ("Culture"), whose responsibility was to report any anti-Nazi tendency in the area of science, education, religion, sports, entertainment, and propaganda to the appropriate executive agency. */ He performed well and was promoted in November 1940 to the rank of Obersturmfuehrer (SS 1st Lieutenant). His commander stated that Barbie was "especially hardworking and responsible"; that he had dedicated himself in Holland "completely and intensively to SD work"; that his performance was "excellent"; and that his "SS bearing on duty and off was irreproachable." */ For organization of Section III, see NARS, T175/275/277318ff.Barbie's section was part of a new office that resulted from a reorganization of the police and intelligence apparatus in September 1939. The Security Police, comprising the Gestapo (secret police) and the criminal police, was joined with the SD into one centralized organization designated the Reichsicher-heitshauptamt (RSHA) (Reich Security Main office), headed by Reinhard Heydrich. The organization of the RSHA and the constantly shifting relationships between the Gestapo, the criminal police and the SD were almost incomprehensible in their complexity, */ but for present purposes one can focus on Roman numerals: in the RSHA, sections III (domestic intelligence) and VI (foreign intelligence) made up the operational elements of the SD, and sections IV (Gestapo) and V (criminal police) made up the Security Police. Section IV (Gestapo) of the RSHA, together with its many subordinate offices in the field, was an executive agency: it exercised its duty in actions. Section VI (foreign intelligence, SD), on the other hand, was involved in gathering information: it was the eyes and */ For a full discussion, see Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York, 1961); Hohne, Heinz, The Order of the Death's Head (London, 1972); Sydnor, Charles W., Jr., Soldiers of Destruction (Princeton, 1977).ears to Section IV's hands and teeth. The question of whether Barbie was in Section IV or Section VI, or both, would be the subject of conflicting information in the post-war years. Barbie's personnel file does not specify how long he remained in Holland, although a letter in the file indicates that he was still there in July 1941. */ Nor does it describe what happened to Barbie after he left Holland, but a promotion recommendation from November 1944 reviews Barbie's career and indicates an assignment in Belgium, **/ which probably took place sometime between July 1941 and May 1942, the date that Barbie appears to have been assigned to France. C. Barbie in France The German strike that crushed Holland in less than a week continued westward and in less than six weeks defeated the French army and drove the British expeditionary force off the continent at Dunkirk. On June 20, */ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Barbie to SS Personnel Office, dated Amsterdam, 4.VII.41.**/ "Since May 1940, Barbie has been deployed abroad (Holland, Belgium, France)." BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Promotion Recommendation, September 1944.1940 the Germans captured Lyon, and two days later the defeated French signed an armistice that divided the country into two zones: the north, occupied by the Germans, and the south (including Lyon), administered by a French collaborationist government at Vichy. In November 1942, however, the southern zone was occupied by the Germans after the successful Allied invasion of North Africa. With the occupation of the south, the Security Police and the SD formed a comprehensive network of offices to solidify German authority throughout France. These detachments were organized along the same lines, and their sections carried the same numerical designation, as other Security Police and SD offices, including the headquarters in Paris and the RSHA in Berlin. According to his personnel file, and consistent with his career to that point, Barbie was assigned to Lyon as chief of Section VI, Intelligence. Yet, even before the end of the war, the French were gathering evidence that Barbie was chief of Section Iv, the Gestapo. D. Sources of Information To understand this dichotomy, it is necessary to appreciate the sources of information that were (and are) available to post-war investigators. Apart from answering the question concerning Barbie's position, the sources are important because, from them, we can learn what information was available at any given time concerning that position. Three main sources of evidence can be used to analyze Barbie's career: his SS personnel file, captured wartime operational records, and evidence developed immediately after the war by the French. 1. The Personnel File Barbie's personnel file, which was obtained from the Berlin Document Center (BDC), */ is significant not only for what it tells us about Barbie's career, but also for the fact that it was available after the war to those who decided to employ Barbie. What it tells us, it could have told them. It has, of course, the limitations of any personnel file: it is all bones and no flesh, and perhaps not all of the bones at that. */ The Berlin Document Center -- which since 1953 has been part of the United States Mission, Berlin -- is a repository for all personnel and related records of the Nazi party, the SS, and affiliated organizations. Many of these records were hastily consigned to pulp mills by the Germans in the last days of the war, but were salvaged by advancing Allied forces.For SS officers, in particular, a large number of personnel files survived. These range from a few stray scraps of paper to massive dossiers numbering several hundred pages. Barbie's file is more than one hundred pages, covering his career in the SS beginning in 1935 and ending in 1944. It includes a genealogy, notices of his promotions and awards, performance appraisals, pay records, and other routine personnel documents. 2. Operational Records The fate of documents created and maintained by German authorities during World War II varied. Many were captured but the remainder, a number impossible to estimate, were destroyed by the Germans, or by acts of war. The files of the SS and police authorities in Lyon were almost entirely destroyed in the allied bombings of Lyon in May 1944, or in a systematic destruction by the Germans that summer. Exhaustive searches in archives and repositories throughout the world by private scholars, professional investigators, and government researchers have yielded only a handful of Lyon SS documents. Thus, the best potential source on Klaus Barbie's wartime activities -- the files of his office with their reports, orders, organizational charts, and duty rosters -- has been completely lost to post-war investigators. 3. Postwar Evidence No sooner had the Germans left Lyon in August 1944 than the French began to investigate the crimes that were committed there. That same month, the French submitted a statement of charges to the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) against "Barbier" and his subordinates in the Gestapo: */ "murder and massacres, systematic terrorism, and execution of hostages," among others. The initial charges were followed by others through January 1948. In addition to filing charges with the UNWCC, France created permanent Military Tribunals in major cities, including Lyon, to investigate war crimes and to locate and prosecute war criminals. Through these tribunals, significant evidence was gathered on the history, operation, and personnel of the Gestapo and SD in Lyon. As early as February 1945, a lengthy report to the Lyon Tribunal on the "German Special Services in the Lyon Region" gave a history of the Security Police and SD in Lyon and a breakdown of its personnel. Barbie figures prominently as chief of Section IV and deputy to */ U.N. Archives: UNWCC Charge Files 192/FR/G/40 and 184/Fr/G/42.the commander of the Lyon SS. Based on the report and other investigations, the tribunal issued arrest warrants for "Barbier" and others in September 1945. */ A number of former Lyon Security Police and SD personnel were arrested, in some cases extradited, and brought to Lyon to stand trial. The interrogations of those tried by the French offer a valuable source on the history and organization of the SS in Lyon, and have served to clarify Barbie's position there. Another investigation, conducted by the Military Tribunal in Paris, has also shed light on Lyon and Klaus Barbie. In 1947 and again in 1950, Rene Hardy, a former French Resistance leader, was tried for treason, charged with betraying his organization and helping the Germans arrest several key Resistance figures, including Jean Moulin, a Resistance hero and personal representative of De Gaulle in France. The man who arrested Moulin and the man with whom Hardy allegedly collaborated was Klaus Barbie. In the investigation into the Hardy affair, Barbie's position and activity received a great deal of attention, and figure prominently in the events described in this report. */ Lyon: Ordre D'informer, 2 Aug 45, Requisitoire Introductif, 3 Aug 45, and Mandat D'Arret, 12 Sep 45.In the following discussion, piecing together what is known on Barbie's activities in Lyon, the sources described above each play a distinct part. E. Barbie in Lyon, 1942-1943 Barbie's arrival in Lyon in November 1942 coincided with a dramatic increase in the ranks of the Resistance. The imposition of the Service du Travail Obligatoire (Forced Labor Service) in the fall of 1942 presented a challenge to Frenchmen, offering a choice between being forced to work for the German war effort and joining the increasing number of resisters to disrupt it. In January 1943, the union of the three principal noncommunist resistance groups in the south was announced, under the leadership of Jean Moulin. Combat, Liberation, and Franc-Tireur joined to form the "Mouvements Unis de la Resistance" (MUR) and agreed to unite their paramilitary forces in the Armee Secrete (Secret Army -- AS). It was the responsibility of the combined Security Police and SD elements in Lyon to combat this burgeoning resistance movement. These elements were formed into an "Einsatzkommando" (EK) in late 1942. The EK's first commander served for a very short period before being transferred to Marseille in January 1943. His replacement was Hauptsturmfuehrer (SS Captain) Heinz Hollert. Klaus Barbie, in turn, became Hollert's deputy, while heading a section at the same time. This is established not through any formal record, but rather by the way Barbie signed one of the few documents bearing his signature that have survived. Several letters and one telegram reporting an action taken against a committee to assist emigrant and dispossessed Jews were signed by Barbie "in Vertretung" or "i.V" -- a formal indication that he was signing for the commander as his deputy. */ In the summer of 1943, Hollert was replaced as commander by Werner Knab, who had been transferred to Lyon from the Gestapo in Kiev. Hollert became Knab's deputy, and Barbie moved down to third in command. But Hollert was killed in the May 1944 bombing of SS Headquarters, and Barbie returned to the deputy slot under Knab. At some point Barbie became the head of Section IV, Gestapo, in Lyon. This transfer is not reflected in his BDC file; we cannot date it and the written documents */ See "Organization of the Office of the Commander of the SIPO and SD in Marseille, 3.VII.44, NARS: T175/483/ 9342680-683 for regulations governing signature authority: "The permanent deputy signs with the addition, 'in Vertretung.that survive are ambiguous. For example, there are copies of documents signed by Barbie that deal with Section 1V matters but these he signed in his capacity as deputy of the entire EK, and not necessarily as Section IV chief. And when Hollert took over as deputy, Barbie could no longer sign for the commander as deputy. German regulations allowed another category of signature -- one executed "im Auftrag." A document signed "im Auftrag" or "i.A." is signed by order of the commander by someone -- other than the deputy -- who has signature authority. Normally, signature authority is granted to the ranking official responsible for the subject matter of the document to be signed. We have a document, dated December 28, 1943, addressed to Section IVB (which handled "Jewish Affairs") of the Commander of the Security Police and SD (BdS) Paris, signed "im Auftrag" by Barbie. Under normal circumstances, Barbie's signature on this document could be interpreted to mean that he was head of Section IV -- the appropriate official with signature authority for a document concerned with Section IV matters. There are other explanations for his signing this document, however; for example, he could have been the only ranking person on duty at head quarters when the letter went out. */ But whatever ambiguities exist in interpreting the arcane signature regulations are made moot by the postwar evidence collected by the French from witnesses who certainly knew the Lyon hierarchy. The former Security Police and SD commander in Paris, Helmut Knochen, identified Barbie as being in Section IV in Lyon. **/ Harry Stengritt, former member of Section VI in Lyon identified Barbie as head of Section IV. ***/ Alfred Luetjens, a member of Section IV, identified Barbie as his boss, Section IV chief. ****/ Ernst Floreck, who was also a member of Section IV, identified Barbie as Section IV chief and also offered a piece of indirect evidence that Barbie was not head of Section VI */ Another document signed "im Auftrag" by Barbie is the famous April 6, 1944 telegram reporting the deportation of 41 children from a children's home in Iszieu. The telegram, like the December letter, was directed to Section IVB in Paris. This document was submitted by the French as exhibit RF-1235 at Nuremburg.**/ Lyon: Hardy: PV Knochen 1 Apr 48.***/ Lyon: Hardy: PV Stengritt, 28 Jul 48.****/ Lyon: Hardy, PV Luetjens, 26 Apr 48.-- SD foreign intelligence -- throughout his service in Lyon. According to Floreck, Section VI was headquartered on the Boulevard des Belges in Lyon, separate from the rest of the EK. */ Barbie's office was at the EK headquarters. Beyond this kind of indirect evidence, Barbie admitted in 1948 to having been the head of the Gestapo in Lyon and may even have supplied the answer to when he was assigned to that section. In his interrogations by the French in July 1948 (see Section lIE of this report), he dates his arrival in France as May 1942, and claims to have been assigned to Section VI in Gex on the Swiss border and later to Section 1V in Lyon. **/ In an earlier interrogation in May, he claims to have joined the Stapostelle (State Police Office, i.e., Gestapo) in Lyon in 1943. ***/ It is possible, therefore, that he arrived in Lyon in November as head of Section VI and transferred after a short period, perhaps early 1943 to Section IV, the Gestapo. */ Lyon: Hardy: PV Floreck, 23 Nov 48.**/ Lyon: Hardy: PV Barbie, 16 Jul 48.***/ Lyon: Hardy: PV Barbie, 14 May 48.It is unlikely that anyone would make such an admission unless it were true. The question of Barbie's position in Lyon appears, then, to have been answered conclusively by possibly the best witness -- Barbie himself. This admission, moreover, has been supported by the testimony of his wartime superiors, subordinates, and victims in statements taken by the French in war crimes investigations after the war. F. Barbie in Lyon, 1943-1944 The difficulty of combatting the resistance in Lyon cannot be overestimated. As the German military began to lose ground, the ranks of the resistance grew. Despite this, Barbie could boast of considerable success. In a short period in the summer of 1943, he was responsible, in part, for the arrest of General Delestraint, the commander of the Armee Secrete, and of Jean Moulin, the head of the Resistance, as well as of several key resistance leaders. So effective were the actions in Lyon in the summer of 1943 that the MUR decided to move to Paris, which it considered safer than Lyon. Barbie's effectiveness was also noted and recognized by his superiors; he received a number of decorations and acknowledgements during his service in Lyon, including a letter from the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, praising Barbie's "special achievements in the field of criminology and untiring efforts in combatting a resistance organization." */ Barbie's promotion to Hauptsturmfuehrer (SS Captain) came in November 1944. The recommendation for it noted his "exceptional talent for intelligence and criminology" and gave him credit for eliminating numerous enemy organizations. **/ By that time, however, the Allies were driving through France and the Germans were pushed out of Lyon. Little is known about Barbie's assignments between the time he left Lyon and the end of the war ten months later. G. Conclusion As far as the first question posed in this section -- who was Barbie and what did he do -- the following facts may be stated with reasonable certainty: */ This letter is noted in a September 1943 issue of the SS Befehlsblatt, an official publication that reported, among other things, personnel changes and the award of decorations within the SIPO and SD.**/ BDC: Barbie's Personnel File: Promotion Recommendation, 9.IX.44.1. After a series of assignments in the intelligence field for the SD, Barbie was assigned to Lyon as head of Section VI, the intelligence branch of the Einsatzkommando, an amalgam of elements from the Security Police (Gestapo and criminal police) and the SD. 2. At some point, and for some period of time between November 1942 and the summer of 1944, Barbie served both as deputy and number three man of the EK. 3. At some point, and for some period of time, Barbie also was the head of Section IV, the Gestapo. 4. Barbie's responsibilities with the EK as a whole included counter-resistance operations: infiltrating the French Resistance, headquartered in Lyon; gathering information on its members and operations; and disrupting those operations and neutralizing (turning or arresting) its members to the maximum extent possible. As to the second question -- what could post-war vestigators have known or be expected to know -- the llowing points must be kept in mind: 1. Barbie's personnel file contains no mention of assignments to Section IV (Gestapo); taken by itself it outlines the career of an intelligence officer in Section VI, the foreign intelligence section of the SD. 2. The evidence regarding Barbie's activities in Section IV, the actions of the EK in Lyon, and the role of the EK in anti-resistance actions and persecution, was gathered by French authorities from late 1944 through 1948. This evidence is largely in the form of affidavits from Lyon residents and resistance fighters gathered in preparation for war crimes trials to be held by permanent military tribunals in Lyon and Paris. H. The Listing of Barbie in CROWCASS As the war drew to a close in the spring of 1945, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) composed a central register of war criminal suspects wanted by the allied nations. This Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects -universally known as "CROWCASS" -- grew quickly. The first list, published in July 1945, contained 70,000 names, including that of "Barbier" (no first name was listed) whom the French had listed under two numerical codes as wanted for "murder (of civilians)" and "torture (of military personnel)." The list was distributed to all major echelons of the Allied occupation forces in Germany, including the United States Army Counter Intelligence Corps. SECTION II BARBIE'S RECRUITMENT AND USE BY THE U.S. ARMY, 1947-1949 INTRODUCTION: THE UNITED STATES ARMY COUNTER INTELLIGENCE CORPS Following its defeat in May 1945, Germany was divided into four zones, occupied by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and France. See Appendix 1. Within each zone, the occupying power was responsible for all military and civil affairs. In the U.S. zone, which included southern and eastern Germany to the Czech and Austrian borders, the military authority was the multi-service European Command (EUCOM). See Appendix 2. One of EUCOM's components was the 66th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment, which had as its basic mission the protection of the U.S. Zone against espionage, sabotage and subversion. */ Thus, the 66th CIC's operations extended throughout the American Zone (including the American sector of Berlin) but did not extend into Austria or the zones of the other allies. EUCOM (headquartered in Heidelberg) exercised its supervision over the 66th CIC through its Intelligence Division, the director of which was a brigadier general. See Appendix 3. */ Annual Narrative Report, 66th CIC Detachment, 31 Dec 49.The 66th CIC */ was commanded by a colonel, and had a headquarters staff stationed in Frankfurt until September 1949, when it moved to Stuttgart. The CIC headquarters exercised its supervision over field operations primarily through a series of regions (see Appendix 4). Each region had a headquarters and several field offices in various cities or towns in its region. In a conventional military sense, therefore, the chain of command in CIC ran from the commanding officer to the region commanders to the field offices. In understanding the events of this report, however, it is necessary to focus on the operations personnel. At CIC Headquarters, the S-2/S-3 was the chief operations officer, responsible to the commanding officer for the conduct of intelligence activities. Under him, at headquarters, were the case officers, analysts, technical specialists and other personnel who dealt directly with the day-to--day business of intelligence gathering and analysis. In general terms, the headquarters S-3 staff received and analyzed information from the regions, set policies and procedures for */ The Counter Intelligence Corps detachment in Germany was named the 970th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment when it was formed in November 1945; this designation was changed to the 7970th Counter Intelligence Corps Group in June 1948 and the 66th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment in November 1949. For simplicity's sake, the term "CIC" or "CIC HO" will be used in this report to refer to this detachment and its headquarters, respectively.intelligence operations, gave specific orders in specific cases to a region where needed, and exercised whatever supervision was necessary to see that the regions operated efficiently, effectively and in accordance with regulations and headquarters' wishes. See Appendix 5. Each region likewise had an S-2/S-3, who was responsible for the day-to-day intelligence operations within his region and who, like his counterpart at headquarters, saw to it that the operations within the region ran smoothly and in accordance with policies and regulations set by CIC headquarters. See Appendix 6. Beginning in the summer of 1947, both CIC headquarters and the regions included "technical specialists" as part of the S-2/S-3 section. The function of the technical specialists was to keep track of informants (usually German citizens who provided information of intelligence interest to the CIC agents). Headquarters had four or five technical specialists at any given time, the regions each had one or two. One of the most important responsibilities of the technical specialists -- or "tech specs" as they were commonly known -- was to know who each informant was, to approve his use before he was "carded" (enrolled and paid) by the region, and to ensure that he was providing information to only one agent. Prior to the establishment of the technical specialist function, it was relatively easy for shrewd informants to create "paper mills" -- providing the same information (which often was false) to several agents, none of whom knew about the others, creating the impression of independent sources, and thus, reliable information. Because of their specialized functions, the operations personnel in the regions often communicated directly with operations personnel at headquarters. There was nothing intrinsically wrong about this, and indeed it was usually the most efficient means of exchanging information quickly and accurately. But it tended to leave the region commanders somewhat isolated from the routine activities of their regions -- a fact that was corroborated by many of the witnesses (both region commanders and operations personnel) interviewed in this investigation. There also appears to have been, among CIC personnel, a commonly recognized demarcation between the "intelligence pros" and the administrative officers. This distinction arose because most of the agents, regional operations officers and technical specialists (whether at headquarters or in the regions) were considered professional intelligence experts, while many (but by no means all) of the region commanders and headquarters staff were infantry, artillery or civil affairs officers serving a tour with the CIC. The latter group tended to be less knowledgeable about intelligence gathering and to take less interest in it than the "intelligence pros." There is some irony in this distinction because, in the immediate post-war years, there were few experienced counter-intelligence officers at any level of CIC -- most of the "intelligence pros" had had no counterintelligence experience during the war (few OSS officers joined CIC at war's end) and most took up their CIC careers after only a post-war training course at Ft. Holabird, Maryland. In any event, many of the actions and decisions involving Klaus Barbie were taken by operations personnel at both CIC Headquarters and at the regions (particularly Region IV in Munich and, later, Region XII in Augsburg). This is not to suggest that commanding officers were intentionally bypassed or that they did not bear the responsibility for the actions of those under their command. The purpose of mentioning it here is simply to point out that, because of the factors mentioned above, decisions made at the operations level were not unusual in the day-today activities of the 66th CIC during this period. A. Operation Selection Board 1. Barbie is Targeted for Arrest Beginning in late 1945 or early 1946, a group of former SS officers still at large formed a clandestine "resistance" organization in occupied Germany. Rather than resorting to violence or terrorism, however, the leaders of this organization planned to approach occupation authorities with a proposal: to give to these men the responsibility of German administration in the British and American zones, thus ensuring a strong, experienced corps of post-war leaders, loyal to Germany and opposed to Communism. Tab 1. CIC learned of this organization in May, 1946, and infiltrated a CIC agent, posing as a Swiss Nazi, to report on the organization's activities. Tab 1. As more information came to CIC, it became apparent that one of the leading figures in this organization, a man based in Marburg who called himself "Becker," was in fact Klaus Barbie -- a name that CIC Headquarters in Frankfurt could readily identify. On January 31, 1947, CIC HQ sent its Region III office, which covered the Marburg area, a copy of its "Central Personalities Index Card," which identified Barbie as "Leiter, Abt[eilung] IV, SD Kds Lyon" (Leader, Section IV, Sicherheitsdienst Kommando Lyon) -- the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. Barbie was listed as "[l]ong a member of the SD * * * [a] dangerous conspirator" who was "last heard of in November and December 1944 in a hospital in Baden-Baden" Germany, near the French Border. */ Tab 2. Based on reports from its undercover agent, CIC assembled a profile of the organization, its several dozen members and three or four leaders. One of the leaders was thought to be Barbie, whose group was believed responsible for "the procurement of supplies for the organization and the establishment of an intelligence network throughout the British arid American Zones." Tab 3. Specifically, members of Barbie's group were believed to be "people who have been connected in the past with one or more of the German Intelligence organizations, such as the Amts [Sections] III, VI and VII, RSHA." CIC believed that the "group led by SS Hauptsturmfuehrer [captain] Barbie has concentrated on the establishment of an intelligence network throughout the United States and British Zones, and possibly farther. [Barbie's] group takes care of the procurement of money, radio equipment, printing presses, etc. */ This information on Barbie apparently came from SHAEF, which had compiled brief descriptions, known as "SHAEF cards," on Nazi leaders during the war.Centers of this group are in Marburg, Munich and Hamburg." Tab 4. */ Barbie himself was believed living at 35 Barfusserstrasse (or Barfuesslerstrasse) in Marburg, a city about 40 miles north of Frankfurt. **/ Tab 4. CIC, working closely with British military intelligence, decided early in February 1947 to stage a "swoop" to break up the organization, arrest its members, and interrogate them on their activities. Coining the name "Operation Selection Board," CIC HQ notified its regions on February 9, 1947 to execute the swoop at 2:00 a.m. on February 23. It provided a target list of some 57 members or suspected members of the SS organization, including Barbie, and their addresses. Tab 3. As the day of the raid approached, some confusion arose over whether Barbie was actually at the address listed in Marburg. On February 17, CIC agents reported */ Independent corroboration of this information in 1983 is difficult; but whether the information is correct or not, these reports at least establish what CIC believed about Barbie in 1947.**/ Barbie had been arrested by the Americans on August 28 or 30, 1946 in Marburg. He jumped out of the jeep taking him to be interrogated and made good his escape. Tab 5, 16, 28. Barbie apparently claimed at one point that he had been a CIC informant briefly in 1946 in the Marburg area, but this is unlikely. Tab 58.that there was no listing at the Marburg address for Barbie under his own name or his known aliases "Becker" or "Mertens," and that the "[t]arget is negative." Tab 5. */ On February 20, CIC HQ directed Region III, perhaps in light of the report that Barbie was not at that address, that the Marburg address "will not be raided in order to protect a source of information" (emphasis in original). **/ But HQ added: "This does not imply any lack of interest in capturing any of the supposed inhabitants. Target 3, Claus [sic] Barbie, is especially desired." Tab 5. In a memo on February 20, the Marburg office of Region III notified its agents of the names and addresses of the people to be arrested in the February 23 raids. "[The] purpose of [the] swoop operation," the memo said, "is to apprehend certain */ HQ had advised Region III in a supplemental memo on February 13 that Barbie was believed living at that address, perhaps under the name of "Speer," Tab 5, but it is not clear whether Region III had checked under that name.**/ This "source of information" was apparently the wife of a German who had died under somewhat uncertain circumstances while in British custody in Hamburg. Just why she was to be protected is not clear, except that the case was considered extremely sensitive at the time, and CIC did not wish to complicate matters.persons who have been known to have had connections in the past with one SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Barbie, Klaus." Tab 5. */ The swoop took place as planned in the early morning hours of February 23, and some 70 persons, including several people thought to have been in Barbie's group, were arrested and detained for interrogation, but Barbie himself was not found. **/ Region */ Barbie himself was not listed as a target in this memo. This omission may simply reflect Region III's inability to confirm that he was in Marburg.On the other hand, it is conceivable that Region III was ordered not to arrest Barbie. Such support as may exist for this theory is found in two cryptic documents in the Selection Board file. One is an undated teletyped conversation apparently between HQ and Region III, wherein an agent at HQ (Dreifuss) stated "We are still not allowed to do anything overtly about target nr [number] three," who was Barbie. The other is a scrawled, unsigned note in the file that states, "The person to be left off is our No. 3 on [the target] list." Tab 6. There is no indication as to why Barbie would not be arrested, or who might have made such a decision. Indeed, as indicated in the text, CIC HQ was ordering Region III to arrest Barbie even though his apparent residence would not be raided to protect a source. And the "final report" from Region III on the swoop listed Target 3 simply as "not located." Tab 6. The significance of a decision not to arrest Barbie -- if that is what indeed it was -- is limited, however, for by April 16 Barbie was ordered arrested, as discussed in the text that follows.**/ Barbie later stated that, on the night of the raid, he had been visiting a man named Becker in Kassel, 50 miles northeast of Marburg. Becker was also a target of Selection Board, and his home was raided by CIC. Barbie said he had slipped out of the house through the bathroom and escaped. Tab 9; Tab 29.III reported to Headquarters that, as ordered, it had not raided the Marburg address, but it "strongly recommended" that the house there be "kept under surveillance so that the activities of Barbie, Klaus and associates which have not been apprehended be ascertained." Tab 7. Despite the failure to capture Barbie in the Selection Board swoop, CIC remained hopeful that Barbie would eventually be found. On March 8, some two weeks after the swoop, a memo to the CIC HQ Operations Officer from Capt. Robert Frazier, the case officer in charge of Operation Selection Board, noted that "Barbie (not yet arrested) still has a large number of contacts at large who are believed to be active in procurement of false papers, in sheltering of fugitives and in giving aid to politically active persons * * *" Tab 8. 2. Barbie Evades the Selection Board Dragnet Barbie had in fact left Marburg a week or more before the Selection Board raid, and had been meeting in Munich (some 220 miles southeast of Marburg) with another member of the underground organization, a former SS officer named Wenzel. Wenzel had brought into his confidence a German named Walter who, unbeknownst to Wenzel, was in fact an informant for Region I of the CIC in Stuttgart. */ Tab 9. In the middle of February, Walter, Wenzel and Barbie had met, first in Munich and later near Stuttgart, and Barbie had confided to Walter (the covert CIC informant) that he, Barbie, had been in SS intelligence in Lyon and was wanted by the British. Tab 9. By the time the Region I agent who was handling Walter learned of these meetings with Barbie, the February 23 Selection Board raid had already taken place. The CIC agent reported the events to the officer in charge of Region I on March 20, and recommended that "since Barbie is a high priority on the target list of Selection Board, his possible return to visit [Walter */ Walter was penetrating an "underground organization" under the Region I cryptonym of "Operation Flowerbox." It is not clear whether this organization is the same as that targeted in Operation Selection Board, although some of the Flowerbox targets, including Wenzel himself, were also targets of Selection Board. While Flowerbox and Selection Board were separate CIC operations, it is conceivable that they were both targeting the same group, not knowing it was the same group.should] be closely watched * * * so that he will be available for arrest if deemed necessary." Tab 9. The same agent, however, also suggested that Barbie should perhaps not be arrested. Barbie "may well be a good source of information on personalities connected with Selection Board who have not yet been apprehended. * * * In addition, due to his background and experience with the GIS, */ it is very possible that Barbie might be useful in penetrating" a supposed Soviet intelligence net in a small town in the U.S. zone about which very little was known at that time. The agent continued: "It is recommended that Barbie not be interned as yet, but that he be used in an attempt to penetrate the supposed Soviet net. It is at present believed that a tight enough control over him can be maintained so that his arrest could easily be effected should such action become desirable. Using him for the purpose outlined here would be an excuse to keep him under surveillance." Tab 9. The plan was not approved by CIC HQ, which ordered Region I to arrest Barbie "as quickly as feasible, */ "German Intelligence Services," a blanket term sometimes used by Allied authorities.bearing in mind the security of Region I informants," presumably meaning Walter. Tab 10. */ That order came on April 16, 1947. By that time, however, Barbie, whether sensing danger or simply lucky, had left Walter, Wenzel and Stuttgart behind and had made his way to Memmingen, a small city in CIC's Region IV, some 65 miles west of Munich. At least for the time being, he had eluded the Selection Board dragnet. There were two further attempts to arrest Barbie as part of Operation Selection Board, both of them unsuccessful. The first attempt was made at the Barfusserstrasse address in Marburg by agents of Region III on April 17. Barbie was not there; he had almost certainly reached Memmingen, 200 miles to the south, on April 17. The Marburg address was kept under surveillance, but to no avail. Tab 13. */ Within a day or two of this order, however, Walter mentioned that "Barbie is presently working on an intelligence matter directed at" the presumed Soviet net mentioned above. So it is possible that Region I did employ Barbie pending HQ action. But that operation could not have lasted more than a few weeks, if indeed it did take place, because Barbie had left the Stuttgart area by mid-April. See text.The second attempt came in May. Region I in Stuttgart reported that its informant Walter had set out from Stuttgart on May 1 for Kaufbeuren (Region IV) to track Barbie down and Region I notified Region 1V to arrest Barbie if Walter located him. Tab 11. Unbeknownst to Region I, however, Region IV had already recruited Barbie by that time. B. Recruitment and Use of Barbie by CIC: April-October, 1947 While Regions I and III pressed the search for Barbie in Stuttgart and Marburg, CIC agent Robert S. Taylor, stationed in the Memmingen office of CIC's Region IV, had located Barbie through a far different procedure. Since April 1946, one of agent Taylor's carded informants (paid sources) in Memmingen had been Kurt Merk, a former Abwehr (military intelligence) specialist who had served in Dijon, France during the war -- "one of the best Counter Intelligence men in France during the German occupation," according to Taylor. Tab 12. On April 10, 1947, Merk told Taylor he had "met, quite by accident, an old friend of his from France" by the name of Barbie, who had "excellent connections to sources of CIC information." Taylor recognized Barbie's name immediately as one of the "chief personalities" wanted in Operation Selection Board. But Taylor did not notify Headquarters of his find. He checked with his superior, Lt. Col. Dale Garvey, Commanding Officer of Region IV, on April 14-15 and the decision was made (apparently by Taylor and Garvey) to use Barbie as an informant, provided that he "break off any connections he may have with illegal SS elements and Selection Board personalities." Tab 14. Taylor met with Barbie in Memmingen on or about April 18, 1947 and the deal was agreed to. Barbie was willing to break off his former SS ties, because, as Taylor reported, "his connection with SS elements was necessary only to retain his own personal freedom." Tab 14. */ Barbie impressed Taylor at that time as "an honest man, both intellectually and personally, absolutely */ Barbie also agreed to provide Taylor with any information he had concerning alleged attempts by the British to recruit former SS officers as informants. Ibid.without nerves or fear. He is strongly anti-Communist and a Nazi idealist who believes that he and his beliefs were betrayed by the Nazis in power." Tab 14. In April and May, 1947, while Region I continued to look for Barbie in Stuttgart, and Region III continued to look for him in Marburg, Agent Taylor of Region IV used Barbie as a carded source in Memmingen. Barbie reported on French intelligence operations in the U.S. Zone of Germany, on activities of Romanian ethnic Germans, and on Soviet (and anti-Soviet) activities in the U.S. Zone. This use of Barbie was apparently not known to CIC Headquarters until two months after it began. On May 22, 1947, Captain Frazier at CIC HQ, after reading a routine intelligence report from Region IV, asked for clarification of certain matters. */ Taylor for the first time reported to CIC HQ that the source of that information was not Merk, as Taylor had originally reported, but Klaus Barbie. Taylor acknowledged in his report that Barbie was to be arrested in Operation Selection Board, but Taylor requested that Barbie "be allowed to retain his freedom */ The area on which he sought clarification could not be determined. See Tab 14.as long as he works for this Agent." Taylor explained (Tab 14): It is felt that his value as an informant infinitely outweighs any use he may have in prison. Control over Barbie's activities is obvious. It is felt that Barbie will answer more fully and freely any questions concerning SS groups or Selection Board groups desired by higher headquarters, if he be allowed to retain his freedom. This opinion is based on this Agent's personal contact with Barbie and the trust that Barbie has placed in this Agent. Region IV forwarded Taylor's report and request to CIC HQ on June 3, 1947, recommending that Barbie be used as Taylor suggested. "It is emphasized," said the Region IV operations officer to CIC HQ, "that Subject's value as an informant cannot be overlooked." Tab 14. CIC Headquarters did not respond to this request. Despite the fact that Barbie was then being sought by two other CIC regions in the mopping up of Selection Board, no arrest of Barbie was ordered. By all indications, the request was simply ignored. See Tab 57, ¶5. In the face of Headquarters' silence, Taylor placed increasing reliance on both Merk and Barbie in the months that followed. By the summer of 1947, Merk had developed a net of 48 to 52 informants throughout Germany and, indeed, much of Eastern Europe. Tab 24. In this net, code named "Buro Petersen," Barbie was Merk's chief assistant, taking on, as Region IV reported to HQ several months later, "the important position of establishing a long range penetration of French intelligence installations in the French Zone," which by the fall of 1947 was "beginning to show consistently excellent results." Tab 17. CIC agent Camille Hajdu, who replaced Taylor in the summer of 1947 as the handler of Merk's net, found the net far too large and gradually pared it down from 50 to about 14-16 informants, all within the U.S. Zone of Germany. Tabs 24, 25. Nonetheless, Hajdu reported, Barbie "has so far demonstrated exceedingly successful results." Tab 17. Indeed, Region IV was highly dependent on Merk and Barbie and their sub-sources. Their information amounted to as much as 90% of the intelligence received by Hajdu's office in Kaufbeuren. Tabs 24, 58. C. Arrest and Interrogation of Barbie: October 1947-May 1948 1. Arrest On October 17, 1947, however, Hajdu's superior, Lt. Col. Garvey, Commanding Officer of Region IV, in a memorandum to CIC HQ, noted that Barbie had been listed as a target of Operation Selection Board back in February, and Garvey notified CIC Headquarters that Barbie's present whereabouts were known. He requested instructions as to "what disposition should be made" of Barbie. Tab 15. Twelve days later, on October 29, 1947, Major Earl Browning, S-3 (Operations Officer) at CIC Headquarters, directed Region IV to arrest Barbie and send him to the European Command Intelligence Center (ECIC) at Oberursel, near Frankfurt, for "detailed interrogation." Tab 15. */ At the same time, Browning sent interrogation instructions to ECIC describing Barbie's alleged activities in the 1946-47 period, including his travels in Germany, his contacts with various Germans and his alleged involvement in a jewel theft and the black market. Tab 16. Aside from requesting that ECIC "complete [Barbie's] history," however, CIC Headquarters did not appear interested in Barbie's wartime activities or, indeed, anything other than what Barbie might know of former SS officers and other suspected subversives still at large. It is not entirely clear why Garvey notified CIC Headquarters of his valuable source in October, after having utilized him for six months, or why CIC Headquarters, after having ignored the original June 3 */ This order, signed by Major Browning, was apparently instigated by Technical Specialist Joseph Vidal, who was by then conducting a thorough review of CIC's informants. Tab 57.The European Command Intelligence Center (ECIC) was a large detention camp where security suspects, prisoners of war and defectors were held and interrogated.report on Barbie, now ordered him detained for questioning. One explanation may be that in the spring of 1947, CIC Headquarters had expanded its section of technical specialists and had given them responsibility for keeping track of informants. Tab 57. It is possible that this newly upgraded section, in reviewing the files, discovered Region IV's June 3 message and had asked Region IV (orally or by a letter not in the file) to report on Barbie's present status. See Tab 57, ¶5. In any event, CIC HQ's directive to send Barbie to ECIC for questioning was not well received by Region IV. On November 21, 1947, Agent Hajdu noted that Barbie had "extensive connections with high level former German intelligence circles" and had been "exploiting these contacts" to furnish CIC with "extremely good material." Hajdu noted Barbie's role on "French intelligence activities in the French and U.S. zones" and cautioned that, in light of Barbie's "exceedingly successful" work for CIC in the seven months since his recruitment, his arrest "would damage considerably the trust and faith which informants place in this organization." */ */ In contrast to the highly favorable reports on Barbie quoted above, a report compiled in May 1950 by Capt. Eugene Kolb, then the operations officer of the Region, noted "[M]uch of the information supplied by this [Merk] net was highly imaginative, if not completely false * * *" Tab 58. But, according to a 1949 report by Kolb, Barbie himself had cautioned CIC against placing too much reliance on this suspect information. Tab 38.Hajdu strongly recommended that Barbie not be arrested and that any interrogation on his prerecruitment activities "be conducted on a voluntary basis," without incarceration, and preferably by the local CIC agents in Region IV, not by ECIC agents in Oberursel. Hajdu contended that if this were done, Barbie will voluntarily submit to any interrogation and [Barbie's] services to this organization will not be lost. Furthermore the prestige which this organization enjoys with its informants will remain undamaged. [Tab 17] The commanding officer of Region IV, Lt. Col. Ellington Golden (who had replaced Lt. Col. Garvey) passed this report up to CIC HQ on November 25, 1947, noting that he "strongly concur[red]" with Agent Hajdu's comments. Golden suggested that if Barbie must be arrested, he at least receive "some type of preferential treatment" during his interrogation and be "permitted to return to his work in this Region" after his interrogation was completed. "[A]ny treatment other than that outlined above would result in material damage to the informant net," Golden warned HQ. Tab 17. The plea from Hajdu and Golden raised some eyebrows at CIC HQ, not so much because of the requests for voluntary interrogation or preferential treatment, but because of the scope of Region IV's actions in running the Merk-Barbie net. "What authority does Region 1V have," asked Technical Specialist Joseph Vidal of a colleague at HQ, "for operating a net that extends into the French Zone" of occupied Germany? Tab 17. Major Browning, the Operations Officer at CIC HQ and Vidal's superior, responded to Region 1V on December 1. Browning implicitly rejected the Region's requests for special treatment and ordered that Barbie be "immediately transferred" to the ECIC in accordance with his original directive of October 29. In an apparent effort to assuage the Region's concerns, however, Major Browning noted that Barbie's "subversive activity" was "not of the nature to demand his imprisonment" and that he was to be interrogated about his knowledge of the activities of other ex-Nazis. Major Browning promised that Barbie would be returned to Region IV "providing the interrogation provides no information which would demand [Barbie's] imprisonment * * *." Browning also called the Region's attention to the penetration of French activities in the French Zone, and stated that such was in "contravention" of Headquarters directives. Browning asked the Region to provide, within four weeks, further information on the Merk-Barbie net, including where and by what authority it operated and what information it had produced. Tab 17. Region IV duly placed Barbie under arrest on December 11 for transfer to the ECIC and interrogation there. Tab 18. */ */ That same day, Lt. Col. Golden reported back, apparently somewhat nervously, on the questions HQ had raised on Region IV's activities against French intelligence. "[I]t is not the desire of this headquarters," said Lt. Col. Golden, "to violate in any manner whatsoever the spirit or intent" of HQ directives. The previous report on French Zone activities was "somewhat vague," and "in order to clarify any misunderstanding," Golden explained the situation.The key to the net, said Golden, was Merk, a man with "excellent connections to former German intelligence personnel" and who had recruited a net of six main sub-informants, including Barbie. Merk had also been in contact with three "old intelligence acquaintances" who lived in the French Zone and who "have worked their way into intelligence positions in the French Zone." These men, Golden said, "have access to classified information of counterintelligence interest" and had visited Merk and Barbie (in the U.S. Zone) to pass on this information in return for cigarettes or food.As to the possible violation of CIC directives on operations outside the U.S. Zone, Golden emphasized that Merk and Barbie "merely accepted" the information passed on from the informants in the French Zone; the informants were not being directed by Merk or Barbie. Thus, said Golden, Merk and Barbie were simply "accepting," in the U.S. Zone, certain "information which affects US interests in the US Zone * * *." Tab 18.This carefully worded report did not give a full picture of Region IV's operations in the French Zone. A report from the operations officer of Region IV in March 1948 stated that Merk's net "was not concentrating within the American Zone" until Agent Hajdu took it over from Taylor in 1947 and cut it down to size. Tab 25.In reviewing the events surrounding Barbie's arrest by CIC in 1947, certain facts are apparent. First, although CIC's "Central Personalities Index" card had identified Barbie as head of the Gestapo in Lyon, there was no evident concern over Barbie's Gestapo background or any of his wartime activities. Nothing in Browning's arrest order or his detailed interrogation instructions to ECIC showed any interest in any Gestapo connection; indeed, there was no reference to it. CIC Headquarters' interest in Barbie, at least at the time of his arrest, focused almost exclusively on his knowledge of activities involving the post-war activities of ex-SS officers. Second, it appears to have been Headquarters' intent that Barbie's interrogation at ECIC would be only a temporary interruption in his services to CIC in Region IV. Browning's concern was in gaining information not about Barbie himself, but about Barbie's former associates in the SS network. Thus, Browning could assure Region IV that, when the interrogation at ECIC was finished, Barbie "will be returned to [Region IV's] custody with instructions for future disposition," provided that Barbie did not incriminate himself with "information which would demand his imprisonment." Finally, despite the fact that Barbie was identified on CIC's own "Central Personalities Index" as the leader of the Gestapo in Lyon, and despite the fact that he was listed in the CROWCASS register as wanted for murder in France, */ both Region IV and CIC HQ seemed to treat him simply as a former intelligence officer. Lt. Col. Golden's report, quoted above, to CIC Headquarters at the time of Barbie's arrest and transfer to ECIC in December 1947 (Tab 18) identified Barbie as a "[t]rained intelligence officer" who had worked with Merk "in [an] intelligence capacity in France." More significantly, Golden reported that Barbie had been a Hauptsturmfuehrer [SS Captain] in "Amt VI," the SD (intelligence), rather than Amt IV, the Gestapo. Although someone, perhaps a technical specialist at HQ, circled the "VI" on */ The original CROWCASS list of July 1945, which had listed Barbie as wanted by the French for murder of civilians and torture of military personnel (see Section I.H, above) had been superseded by a new CROWCASS list in March 1947, just prior to Barbie's recruitment. This new list (Tab 19) contained the name of "Klaus Barbie" as wanted by France for "murder." The new list, which directed that "all previous CROWCASS wanted lists should be destroyed," eliminated any reference to torture and did not specify "civilians" as the victims. Furthermore, the CROWCASS list noted, "The information given in this list about each person is all that is contained in the Wanted Reports filed with CROWCASS. The descriptions given are not summaries." (Emphasis in original.)For a discussion of the significance of this list in appraising CIC's actions during this period, see Section VI.B, below.Golden's report and wrote "IV??," suggesting Barbie's Gestapo connection, nothing came of it. Thus, Barbie's background as an SS and Gestapo officer appears to have been distinctly subordinate to Region IV's interest in using him as an informant and HQ's interest in extracting from him information about other SS officers involved in post-war "subversive activities." This apparent disinterest in Barbie's Gestapo background apparently reflected the attitude in CIC that, by 1947, former Gestapo agents were no longer considered the "security threat" that had made them targets for arrest immediately after the war. By the time of Barbie's transfer to ECIC in December 1947, the Allied authorities had thoroughly obliterated any remnants of the Nazi regime. With the passage of time and the assertion of Allied control had come a change in policy in CIC's treatment of former Gestapo members. Although the policy was never formally articulated, interviews of former CIC personnel and review of CIC files suggest the following situation. During the year immediately after the end of the war, Gestapo personnel were arrested as security risks. In the internment camps, however, former members of the Gestapo and Abwehr (military intelligence) were used as informants to double-check information that their fellow arrestees were providing about themselves to U.S. authorities. Such Gestapo informants who were themselves found not to have taken part in war crimes were released from internment and were occasionally used as CIC informants. As increasing numbers of former Gestapo camp informants were released in 1946-1947, their use apparently grew, although to what extent is uncertain. A directive issued in June 1949, apparently the only written guidance on the subject of use of former Gestapo personnel, acknowledged that there was "a certain amount of confusion" in the field on this subject and noted, "It should * * * be very firmly stated that the US authorities have not relaxed for one minute their moral rejection of War Criminals." It continued:
There is no objection to the use of the Gestapo man for purposes of 1 and 2 above provided the amount of time involved is short. A major project involving a long period of time * * * is to be discouraged. All requests for the use of Gestapo personnel to accomplish 3 above will be cleared and approved by this Headquarters. An extremely strong case must be presented and your report must show complete use of your existing facilities and techniques before the request will be approved. Tab 20. As the following sections show, this policy -- which was announced two years after Barbie was recruited -- was obviously not applied to Barbie, since his use was not "short term" nor did it require reliance on his former sources. 2. Interrogation When Barbie arrived at ECIC in mid-December, 1947, he was interrogated only on his 1945-1946 contacts with suspected subversives. In fact, about a week after his arrival, CIC HQ specifically requested ECIC that it not interrogate Barbie "concerning his employment by this [CIC] detachment." Tab 21. Nor had CIC provided ECIC with information on Barbie's activities for CIC. As instructed, ECIC interrogated Barbie about his post-war contacts with former SS personnel; Barbie told them he had rejected overtures by a former SS officer named "Winter" who tried to enlist Barbie in 1946 to sell military intelligence to both the Americans and the Soviets. The ECIC interrogators concluded that Barbie was credible and that he did not appear to be affiliated with "Winter's" double-dealing network. */ Tab 22. As to his wartime activities, ECIC noted briefly -- and incorrectly -- that Barbie had been a captain in the Waffen SS (the military arm of the SS). ECIC also noted -- correctly -- that Barbie had been a "member" of the SD. This information apparently came from Barbie himself. ECIC did not pursue the matter of SS affiliations, however. Although this interrogation was completed by January 28, 1948, Barbie was kept in custody at ECIC. Joseph Vidal, the technical specialist at CIC Headquarters, was apparently growing increasingly concerned over the operation of the Merk-Barbie net. On March 18, 1498, Vidal reversed the earlier instruction and told ECIC to interrogate Barbie about his recruitment, assignments and reporting responsibilities as a CIC informant, and whether "after he is released," he wished to "continue work for CIC." "An inducement to make subject talk," said Vidal, "can be given him by */ It is not clear from these materials whether "Winter" ever actually formed such a net.informing him that his release depends on completeness of his answers to the above questions." Vidal also advised ECIC to suggest, but not actually dictate, that Barbie not contact British intelligence. */ Tab 26. Again, ECIC interrogated Barbie. Tab 27. For the first time, Barbie gave ECIC a detailed summary of his career. He joined the SD in 1935, he said, and from 1937 to 1945 spent his entire time with Section VI, the foreign intelligence branch. He became an officer in 1939 and served in Brussels, Paris, Italy and "SE France." There was no mention of Section IV or the Gestapo. Barbie told ECIC that in 1946 he had been approached by a man named Emil Hoffman, who told Barbie that he was a former member of the German Diplomatic Corps then working for the British. According to Barbie, Hoffman attempted to enlist Barbie in early 1947 as a subinformant but Barbie, who had been arrested briefly by the British in November 1946 and escaped, thought the British might still be after him. He */ CIC believed that Barbie had been approached by British intelligence in 1946 to work for them and that he considered doing so. Tab 57.declined Hoffman's offer, and Hoffman eventually went away. */ Tab 27. Barbie told ECIC that he had been looking for an opportunity to work for the Allies against the Soviets when he heard that his "good friend" Merk was working for the Americans. Barbie detailed how he had contacted Merk, who had put him in touch with agent Taylor in Memmingen. Merk's net, said Barbie, was responsible for information on Soviet intelligence in both the Soviet and U.S. Zones of Germany and its ties with French intelligence, including identification of Soviet agents in those areas. In addition, Merk and Barbie were to attempt to penetrate Soviet intelligence by */ Barbie stated that he had been arrested by the British after he was betrayed by a German who knew his whereabouts. He was jailed briefly in a house in Hamburg used by British intelligence but escaped after two days by sneaking past a guard. Tab 28. Barbie also provided ECIC with information on Germans whom Barbie believed were working for the British. Tab 28. Just why ECIC went into these matters in such detail is not clear; the most likely hypothesis is that CIC was interested in Germans, particularly former SS officers, who might have been British informants.doubling its agents, and to secure Soviet military intelligence. */ Tab 29. According to Barbie, the members of the net reported to Merk or Barbie, who evaluated their information and passed it on to CIC agents Taylor and, later, Hajdu. **/ The net had a payroll of about 7,000 to 15,000 Reichsmarks (RM) monthly, approximately $700-1500, which was paid to Merk for distribution to the other members of the net, as well as cigarettes and food. Barbie himself received RM 500 ($50), he said. Tab 29. The ECIC officer who had interviewed Barbie noted, "Barbie is ready to return to Memmingen to continue with his work. He prefers to do so if at all possible, but he is also willing to transfer to another location or to any other department of CIC." Tab 29. The agent observed: Although Barbie claims to be anti-Communist, it is felt that the main reason for his great efforts and endeavors to work for the Western Allies is based */ Verification of the scope of Barbie's operations is difficult in 1983 because the reports filed by him, Merk and the other informants could not be located and may have been destroyed long ago, perhaps shortly after they were submitted and analyzed. The most reliable presentday guide to his operations are the contemporaneous accounts of CIC's agents handling Barbie and the Merk net, which are quoted in this report. The possibility that even these accounts may be somewhat inflated cannot be overlooked, however, since they were primarily written to justify continued employment of the net.**/ Barbie knew Hajdu as "Stevens," a variant of Hajdu's cover name "Stevenson."on a desire to obtain his personal freedom. Barbie falls under the automatic arrest category, and his present employment [with CIC] offers him personal freedom, the liberty to be with his family, a decent wage, an apartment, and security. Tab 27. ECIC concluded: "Because of Barbie's activities with CIC Region IV during 1947, it is not deemed advisable to intern him for his affiliation with the Waffen SS. His knowledge as to the mission of CIC, its agents, subagents, funds, etc. is too great." If interned, ECIC concluded, Barbie might escape and turn to French or British intelligence with his extensive knowledge of CIC operations. Tab 29. What Barbie had told ECIC about his wartime service was not fully correct -- he omitted any reference to the Gestapo and concocted an affiliation with the Waffen SS, the military branch -- but ECIC took Barbie's representations at face value. */ Furthermore, even by the spring of 1948 when ECIC concluded its interrogation, it was clear that Barbie's eight months of service to Region IV from April to December, 1947 had placed him in an unusually advantageous position. His knowledge of */ ECIC had available to it the SHAEF cards, which referred to Barbie's affiliation with the Gestapo in France. Why ECIC interrogators did not pursue this point is not at all clear.CIC operations and personnel was "too great" to justify any internment. On May 10, 1948, its task complete, ECIC noted that Barbie was "[o]f no further CI [counterintelligence] interest" and returned him to CIC. Tab 29. D. Barbie's Renewed Use: 1948-1949 1. Reconstruction of the Merk Net While Barbie was being held at ECIC from December 1947 to May 1948, Merk's net had been undergoing some turmoil. In February 1948, CIC Headquarters had learned from EUCOM that the French wanted Merk for "war crimes" allegedly committed in Stuttgart. */ Agent Hajdu interviewed Merk, who denied ever having been in Stuttgart. Tab 23. But that was not the only problem. Hajdu, who had taken over the net from Taylor in 1947, had by the spring of 1948 pared down its size from 50 to 16 and had restricted its activities to the U.S. Zone. Merk, who had been close to Taylor, was unhappy with the new arrangement; Hajdu for his part was growing frustrated with what he saw as Merk's deteriorating */ The French charge was not in the files located. It is not clear if the French knew that Merk was working for CIC or if they ever made any request of American authorities for his surrender.performance. Hajdu proposed that Merk be fired and his informants split up into three smaller nets. Tab 24. Hajdu's superiors in Region IV were likewise unhappy with Merk's performance. Capt. Max Etkin, the Region's operations officer, told CIC Headquarters on March 8, 1948 that, until Hajdu had taken over in the fall of 1947, the net had operated beyond the American Zone. And Merk had apparently sent one of the net members on a mission to Berlin, without Hajdu's knowledge, much to the irritation of CIC's Berlin office. Etkin told CIC Headquarters that some of Merk's sub-informants should be retained, but that Merk himself should be discharged. Etkin raised the possibility that Merk could be turned over to the French, but he suspected that the French wanted to use Merk themselves, not try him as a "war criminal." Speaking for Region IV, Etkin was not enthusiastic about releasing such a valuable asset to the French; he suggested Merk might be a good candidate for the CIA instead. */ Tab 25. CIC Headquarters took no immediate action on these proposals from Region IV, but on May 28, shortly after Barbie was released from ECIC, Major Browning, the */ The CIA in Europe used the cover name of "Department of the Army Detachment" (DAD). Etkin refers to the "War Department Detachment" but apparently meant DAD.operations officer at CIC Headquarters, directed Region Iv to submit a "plan for approval by this headquarters" describing how Merk and Barbie would be used in the future, including the scope of their activity, their targets, the CIC agents to whom they would be responsible, the salaries to be paid, and so forth. Tab 30. Browning noted that Headquarters approval would be required for "any future employment of [Barbie and Merk] and their net." This caution was apparently based not on Barbie's background or on anything ECIC had reported, but on Headquarters' concerns -and perhaps the region's concerns -- over the size and scope of the Merk net. */ Given both Agent Hajdu's and region operations officer Etkin's pronounced misgivings about Merk, it is somewhat curious that Browning at CIC Headquarters asked for a detailed plan for use of Merk and Barbie and made clear that "future employment" would depend on a satisfactory answer. But as HQ technical specialist Vidal recalled in 1950: [W]hen Barbie was released from ECIC in early 1948, it was deemed advisable to continue using him as an informant in Region 1V because of his */ Indeed, Browning issued this directive before CIC HQ had received ECIC's final report on Barbie, which did not come until June 16, some two weeks later. Tab 29.detailed knowledge of CIC modus operandi and because of the apprehension of [CIC] headquarters that Barbie, if not employed, would continue his overtures to the British to work for them as an informant. If Barbie had been allowed to make these overtures the British would have found out that the reason CIC had not turned Barbie in or reported him in connection with Selection Board was based on the fact that he was employed by CIC as an informant. At that time the revelation of [Barbie's] connection to CIC as an informant would have been a serious blow to CIC's prestige in the eyes of the British. His continued employment then with CIC was based on his utility and the desire of CIC to obviate an embarrassing situation. Tab 57. Region IV's response, perhaps with HQ's knowledge, was to reorganize the Merk net first and submit a request for approval afterwards. In June and July 1948, the net was moved to Augsburg, operating from a municipal swimming pool building where Americans and Germans could come and go without arousing suspicion. Agent Hajdu, who had reduced and restricted the net, had been reassigned, and the operation now came under the "overall direction" of technical specialist Richard K. Lavoie at Region IV's office in Munich and the "specific direction" of CIC agent Erhard Dabringhaus, who took over the net in Augsburg on June 15, 1948. Tabs 31, 32. Dabringhaus was mindful of "the French situation in which [Merk] is involved" -- apparently a reference to the fact that Merk was being sought by the French -- but concluded, "[Merk] can be easily controlled by offering him protection of the US Army." Tab 31. But if Lavoie and Dabringhaus were aware of the earlier uneasiness at HQ over operations in the French Zone, they apparently did not share it. According to their plan, Barbie was to be used for "penetration of illegal Soviet organizations in the US Zone and for overall direction of French activities," including "French intelligence activities in the French Zone and their agents operating in the US Zone." Tab 32. Four of the net members lived in the French Zone and had "a very close connection" with French intelligence, which they reportedly penetrated on behalf of CIC. Tab 57. Dabringhaus reported to Lavoie that Merk would submit the names and addresses of the other net members "as soon as the undersigned has agreed to keep them under [Merk's] direction." Tab 31. Dabringhaus apparently complied, and Merk gave him the names. Tab 32. Lavoie estimated the "overall [monthly] operational cost of the network" as "approximately equivalent in supplies to 3,500 DM," then about $900. The "supplies" were customarily cigarettes, coffee, and food that were given to informants in addition to small amounts of currency. Dabringhaus reported that Merk wanted DM 8,000 to 10,000 ($2,000 to $2,500) to operate his net "efficiently." Dabringhaus gave him DM 500 ($125). Tab 31. On August 23, 1948, Lavoie, responding to Browning's May 28 memo, requested approval of the reorganized net, noting that it "has proven to be one of the most fruitful sources of information for Region IV," an "exceptionally well qualified intelligence net whose missions and targets can be changed at a moment's notice." Tab 32. While Lavoie awaited a response from Headquarters, the net went into -- or continued -operation. In the five-week period from August 26 to October 1, 1948, when he was transferred, Agent Dabringhaus paid Merk DM 800 ($200), 80 packages of cigarettes, and 6 ration cards. On October 1, the Merk net was given to Agent Herbert Bechtold. Tab 31. 2. Dissolution of the Merk Net CIC HQ was cool to Lavoie's plan, however; Major Browning told Region IV on October 25, 1948 that "[a]fter due consideration by all concerned at this headquarters," it was the "consensus" that Merk's net "should be dropped as such by this organization." Tab 33. Browning cited a variety of administrative problems in maintaining the net -- its huge size in the past with the likelihood that those since dropped might be working for foreign intelligence and still in touch with the remaining 12 members; the difficulty of direct control of sub-sources; interference with other CIC regions; the financial burden; and so forth. Browning also observed that "to continue employing subject net, we must protect an individual who is wanted by an Allied country for war crimes" -- an apparent reference to Merk. Browning suggested that the Department of the Army Detachment -- a pseudonym for the Central Intelligence Agency -- "should be contacted for possible employment of subject net by [that] agency." Headquarters agreed that individual net members could be retained as informants if they worked individually, had "specific potentialities" and had backgrounds that would not cause "undue embarrassment" to CIC. Tab 33. But Browning's memo was not quite an order; he solicited Region IV's comments on the "proposals" to disband the Merk-Barbie net. Region IV did not like the idea. On November 16, 1948 -- by which time the net had been operating for three to four months -- Capt. Etkin, the region's operations officer, responded, pointing out that the net was being reduced again, to six persons, and was thus both secure and administratively workable. But the six remaining (including Merk and Barbie) insisted on working together, not individually. Moreover, warned Etkin, "[t]he three (3) key personnel of the net [Merk, Barbie, and a third man */] will discontinue to trust or maintain contact with their former colleagues [apparently a reference to the dropped informants] because of fear of being left out in the cold, and they are firmly convinced that the U.S. authorities are going to help them in the event of trouble as they have in the past." **/ Tab 33. An informal report compiled by a Region IV agent in preparation for Etkin's reply to HQ stated "Merk and Barbie have both agreed and are currently working on a local basis by turning former Gestapo and SS informants known to them in former times." But the agent noted: "Barbie is concerned about the French and realize [sic] that if the French were ever to get control of him he would be executed." Tab 33. CIC HQ and Region IV worked out a compromise, approved by Browning: a 3-month extension of the net, */ The third man, who operated in the French zone, was later dropped because his information was too expensive and too hard to verify. Tab 36.**/ No indication was given as to what this "trouble" might be, but it may have been a reference to the fact that both Merk and Barbie were not eager to be turned over to French authorities.following which the matter of its "continued employment" would be decided. Tab 33. Merk and Barbie spent that time "seeking out as many old Gestapo and SS informants as possible, and especially those whose mission was KPD [German Communist Party] penetration under the Nazi regime." Tab 36. On February 19, 1949, three months later, the officer in charge of Region IV's Augsburg office reported to Region 1V that Merk and Barbie had "slowly but satisfactorily" progressed in this endeavor, penetrating KPD activities in Augsburg and gathering "not * * * sensational, but very informative" intelligence. Region IV passed the report to CIC Headquarters, stating that the net "if properly directed, is and can be a valuable source of [counterintelligence] information * * *." Tab 36. But on April 11, 1949, some nine months after the net began in Augsburg, and nearly six months after CIC HQ's tentative disapproval, Headquarters formally notified Region IV that the request for a further extension of the net itself was disapproved, without further explanation. As to the individuals themselves, Browning ordered that Merk be "dropped" but that Barbie remain employed "primarily for the purpose of recruiting infor- mants." Other informants would either be dropped or employed individually. Tab 36. This marked the end of Merk's active service to CIC, */ and it marked the end of a network of informants that at its peak had extended throughout Germany and much of Eastern Europe, at least as far as any American could figure it out. But it was not -- nor was it intended to be -the end of Barbie's services as a full time employee of the Army. He stayed in Augsburg with his family -- his wife, a daughter born just after the war started and a son born just after it ended -- and concentrated on gathering information on Communist party activities for Region IV. Tabs 37, 58. **/ */ Quite apart from HQ's decision, Merk was apparently getting restless in Augsburg. He had some medical problems, he felt constrained by the reduced scope of his net, and tension with Barbie was growing. Merk was inactive during the summer of 1949 because of his medical problems, and he was severed from the CIC in October 1949. He died in Germany in 1951. Tab 37.**/ In late December 1948 or early January 1949, Lavoie became aware that British intelligence was looking for information on Barbie, because they were concerned that Barbie might be organizing an effort to "eliminate" Germans who spied for the British. Lavoie knew of Barbie's hatred for the British because of his alleged mistreatment by them during his brief arrest and imprisonment in 1946, but Lavoie had satisfied himself that Barbie was not actually trying to eliminate British informants. [footnote continued]E. Interrogation of Barbie by French Intelligence Meanwhile, in 1948, the French had entered the picture. In Paris, the French government was preparing a treason prosecution against Rene Hardy, a French resistance leader who had allegedly betrayed his organization to Barbie and the Gestapo. On May 14 and 18, 1948 -- a few days after Barbie was released from ECIC -- he was interrogated in Frankfurt by representatives of the Surete; a third interrogation was held on July 16 in Munich. These sessions were undoubtedly arranged through U.S. military authorities, although there is no reference in any U.S. materials to them. */ The transcripts of these interrogations make clear that the French officials questioned Barbie only on the matter of his actions involving the French resistance and did not raise the [footnote continued] He passed his information to Vidal, asking what, if anything, he should tell the British about Barbie. Vidal decided that, since British intelligence had not asked CIC directly for information on Barbie, there would be no reply "until [we are] asked specifically." Tab 35.*/ Information on these interrogations comes from the archives of the French Ministry of Justice, reviewed in this investigation.question of Barbie's own involvement in alleged war crimes. Later in 1948, the French returned. Lt. John Whiteway, a Canadian citizen serving as the French liaison to EUCOM, approached CIC and the Intelligence Division (ID) of EUCOM, and stated that the French government might serve a summons on Barbie to appear in Paris as a witness in the Hardy trial. Shortly thereafter, CIC received from the French (precisely from whom is uncertain) a "verbal request" for Barbie. But CIC was most reluctant to release Barbie to the French. Vidal, who represented CIC in the negotiations with Whiteway, reported his concern that Barbie would have been interrogated "in the usual French manner and forced to not only to reveal information pertaining to the Hardy case but also to reveal information pertaining to his activities [with] CIC and his connections in the French zone" -- the "connections" being Barbie's penetration, through his sources, of French intelligence activities in the French and U.S. zones. So Whiteway and Vidal struck a deal. Barbie would not go to Paris; French officials would come into the U.S. Zone and take Barbie's testimony there. On January 21, 1949, French officers interrogated Barbie in Munich in the presence of U.S. officers, about the Hardy case -- and nothing else. Tabs 57, 34. They returned twice more in early 1949 for further questioning of Barbie. According to Vidal, the French representatives procured "sufficient information to satisfy their needs." */ Vidal, who monitored the French interrogation efforts for HQ CIC, maintained in May 1950 that "no mention was ever made by [French officials] that Barbie was wanted as a war criminal. All requests up to that time on the part of the French Surete and BDOC had been centered on Barbie as a material witness in the Hardy case (emphasis original). Vidal's assertions in this respect are corroborated by a July 1949 report by Capt. Eugene Kolb, Operations Officer for the Region, who */ During this time, CIC was also concerned and annoyed by the quite separate efforts of the Surete, the French national police, who were sending "various and sundry individuals" into the U.S. Zone to seek information, from German police and CIC agents in the field, on Barbie's whereabouts. CIC Headquarters was convinced that the Surete at that time had been "thoroughly penetrated by communist elements" who wanted to kidnap Barbie, reveal his CIC connections, and thus embarrass the United States. According to Vidal, CIC was by now "even more desirous of protecting Barbie," and Vidal complained to Lt. Whiteway that the Surete should "follow channels," by routing any requests through Whiteway. Lt. Whiteway apparently agreed with the CIC's characterization of the Surete's motives and tactics and he reportedly agreed to correct these "irregular approaches." Tab 57.stated that French had given no "indication that [Barbie] was involved in war crimes." Tab 38. */ In retrospect, it is clear that by allowing French officials to have access to Barbie, CIC was taking a very great risk that its employment of Barbie would sooner or later become public, or at least widely known in the French government. But this risk did not appear to concern anyone; CIC's apprehension was only that Barbie's use might become known to the British, and embarrass CIC in British eyes. The most reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that Vidal and Kolb were correct -- that the French had given CIC no indication that Barbie himself was wanted, and thus there was no reason to hide him from French eyes. The conclusion that CIC had no indication at this point that Barbie was a suspected war criminal is supported by CIC's response to the events that were to follow -when the consequences of CIC's risk became very public indeed. */ Transcripts of these interrogations were not located in either U.S. or French archives.SECTION III FRANCE REQUESTS EXTRADITION A. Public Accusations of Torture Against Barbie and CIC's Response On May 14, 1949 -- the date CIC officials were later to maintain was their first inkling that Barbie may have been a war criminal -- a news item appeared in a Paris newspaper headlined "'Arrest Barbie Our Torturer!' The Jurassians */ demand of the Americans." The text of the story was as follows:
*/ Jura is one of the 95 departements or regional administrative divisions, of France, located on the Swiss border, south of Dijon.The General Council of Jura has made a similar oath. [Tab 38.] */ A few days later, on May 24, Vidal drafted an order signed by Capt. William Lamed, Maj. Browning's assistant operations officer, directing Region XII (the former Region IV) **/ to interrogate Barbie "to determine the truth of the allegations." Larned continued:
*/ Precisely how the resistance organizations learned of Barbie's presence in the U.S. zone is not clear, but the most likely hypothesis is that they were informed, directly or indirectly, by French agents who had recently completed their interrogation of Barbie in preparation for the Hardy trial.**/ In April 1949, CIC regions in Germany were reorganized. A new Region XII, headquartered in Augsburg, was carved out of Region IV's territory.State Department and/or Department of the Army. [Tab 38.] Region XII did not reply officially until July 20, 1949, nearly two months after HQ's inquiry. It was not happy with HQ's position, and its report -- prepared by Capt. Eugene Kolb, Region XII's operations officer (S-3) -- makes clear that the allegations of torture did not bring an end to Barbie's services. The complete text of Kolb's reply: */
*/ The reply was signed by Major George B. Riggin, Region XII's commanding officer.
It is important at this point to recognize again the distinction implicit in the foregoing messages: just because Barbie had been in the Gestapo did not make him a "war criminal" in CIC's eyes. The accusations reported in the French newspaper drew CIC HQ's attention because, if the accusations were true, Barbie's methods -- use of an acetylene torch in interrogation -would have been contrary to "the rules of land warfare." This focus on the rules of land warfare, and the apparent absence of any great concern over whether Barbie had been a member of the Gestapo, reinforces the impression that Gestapo membership or duties per se were not of overwhelming concern to CIC, and is consistent with the relatively sparse discussion in the 1947-1949 period of Barbie's possible Gestapo connections. As the foregoing correspondence indicates, CIC HQ directed that Barbie "be dropped administratively as an informant" but that "relations * * * be maintained as in the past" until the State Department or the Department of the Army could decide what to do with him. This was apparently intended to mean -- at least officially -- that Region XII headquarters in Augsburg should keep itself informed of Barbie's whereabouts so that he could be arrested and turned over to the French for trial if so directed by higher United States authorities. Tab BB. And Region XII answered, although with palpable reluctance, that Barbie had been (or would be) "drop[ped] * * * as an informant." In fact, there is no indication that anyone at CIC Headquarters -- or anywhere else in CIC -- notified either the State Department or the Department of the Army of Barbie's situation. And it is quite clear that Barbie was not dropped as an informant. As discussed later in t |