America's Nazi Secret: An Insider's History (33 page)

A check of Stankievich’s file at Fort Meade, Maryland, reveals that both the Army and the State Department had knowledge of his history of collaboration with the Nazis prior to his entry into this country. These documents state:

…Subject attempted to apply for immigration to the United States in 1948 and 1949. It was found in 1948 that subject had made false statements on practically all major points in his personal data form in order to hide his past history. Subject’s name appears on the list of persons rejected for immigration to United States under Section 13(movement hostile). During World War II, subject collaborated with the Occupation Forces … and during the German occupation edited a newspaper, Ranitsa, a Nazi propaganda paper. Subject held many positions of trust in the German administration…. Also subject participated in the massacre of Polish officers in a forest near Minsk, and he was guilty of other war crimes. [Emphasis added.]

For many of the late arrivals who emigrated during the 1950s and 1960s, a red flag in their files was not even necessary. The security staff at Radio Liberty in Munich was told by the OPC that certain persons were needed in the United States, and was instructed to take appropriate action. One staff member recalled in recent interviews that he hand-carried paperwork to the American consulate, where he was well known, in order to expedite visas. Later assigned to the New York headquarters of Radio Liberty, the same bewildered officer said that he was ordered in various cases to expedite everything from green cards to citizenship applications by personally escorting individuals through the immigration bureaucracy, relying mostly on his familiarity with local officials. Ironically, one Byelorussian Nazi – the CIC was convinced he was a Communist spy – was escorted through in just this fashion in order to work for Radio Liberty. As the security officer explained, everyone assumed that the CIA had checked his background.
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Yet the Central Registry of the CIA was still denouncing war criminals up to the mid-1950s, apparently unaware that an agency proprietary organization, Radio Liberty, was still bringing such people into the United States. By the middle of the Eisenhower administration, the anti-Nazi faction in CIA had been all but neutered by their new masters in the OPC, with whom the CIA now shared its headquarters building, but little else. Wisner’s agents rarely shared their files with anyone else at the CIA, according to one official, and they conducted themselves as an agency within the agency. To this day the CIA maintains that it is unable to locate all the OPC files.
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A classic example is the case of Mykola Lebed. Part of the CIA thought he was a benign CIA propagandist while OPC knew that he was an ex Nazi who ran an assassination program in the Ukraine.

The Truman administration may have negligently allowed the Byelorussian Nazis into the United States, but it was the Eisenhower government that knowingly gave them citizenship. Between 1953 and 1958 those persons who had entered under the Displaced Persons Act began completing their five-year waiting period. Once they were granted citizenship by the courts they would be virtually immune from deportation. But to attain citizenship the applicant had to undergo a full investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, including checks with the FBI and CIA. Moreover, the members of the Belarus network would have to disclose nearly every organization they had belonged to, every job they had ever held, every address at which they had resided, and swear to the truth of their statements before a federal judge.

At first, the Byelorussians were in a quandary. If they listed their membership in the SS or in the puppet government of Byelorussia, they would be ineligible for citizenship, not only because they had obtained their visas illegally but also because such membership was regarded as proof that the applicant lacked the “good moral character” required for American citizenship. If they omitted any mention of their wartime activities, their citizenship applications would be void for fraud. A very sophisticated compromise was reached. They would disclose the organizations to which they belonged but would omit identifying them as Nazi creations. Thus, their applications showed membership in the “Byelorussian Central Council” instead of the puppet government. Participation in the “White Ruthenian Committee in Warsaw” was listed, but it was not identified as a recruiting organization for the Einsatzgruppen. They claimed their membership in the postwar “Byelorussian Central Committee” or “Central Representation” but failed to mention that the CIC had considered it an “illegal organization” or that the Displaced Persons Commission had declared them “movements hostile” to the United States. For example, Emanuel Jasiuk, in his petition for naturalization, listed his memberships as the “Byelorussian-White Ruthenian Central Council” and the “Byelorussian-White Ruthenian Congress Committee.” Thus, the Byelorussians disclosed memberships in 1955 that would have prevented their emigrating to the United States in 1948.

The Immigration Service noted several such discrepancies – particularly in the naturalization applications of Byelorussian émigrés – and became alarmed when the CIA’s Central Registry – still oblivious to OPC‘s recruitment drive – provided it with a wealth of derogatory information. But Immigration decided that it could not handle the investigations on its own, and turned to the FBI for help. The request created a problem for J. Edgar Hoover. If he disclosed the full extent of FBI knowledge to the Immigration Service, it would make clear the extent to which the bureau had permitted known Nazis to reside in the United States, and would eventually reveal that the FBI had been recruiting these same Nazis to provide information on Wisner’s activities. But if Hoover withheld the information entirely, he could be prosecuted for obstructing the Immigration Service.

Hoover contacted the central office of the Immigration Service in Washington and explained the delicate relationship between the Byelorussian Democratic Republic and the American Committee for Liberation. Moreover, he furnished the central office with a copy of the sanitized field investigation reports that he had submitted to the Justice Department several years earlier during the Foreign Agents Registration investigation. The report was a model of bureaucratic fence-siting; it confirmed the AMCOMLIB connection and the anticommunist nature of the Belarus network, while archly mentioning unconfirmed snippets of information hinting at World War II collaboration with the Germans.

Copies of the FBI interviews with Kushel and Jasiuk were included with the report, but neither they nor the substance of Hoover’s conversation with the INS central office was made known to the Brooklyn immigration office until many years later.
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This “oversight” was fortunate for Kushel, because his lengthy summary of his collaboration with the Nazis flatly contradicted the sworn statements that appeared on his citizenship application filed in 1955. In the FBI interview, he admitted that he had been a colonel in the police force organized by the Germans and commanded several battalions that accompanied the Wehrmacht on its retreat from Byelorussia in 1944. The FBI never mentioned the discrepancy when it cleared Kushel’s citizenship application.

Consequently, the Immigration Service reported to the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn that “Francis” Kushel:

In September, 1939 … was taken as a prisoner of war to Staroblesh, USSR, where he remained until May 1941. He returned to Poland (and resided there) until July 1943 when he went to Germany where he resided in various cities until 1950. He was employed as a teacher in Poland and also as a farm worker. In Germany he was employed as a farm worker and as a factory worker, until 1945, when he became a camp leader of UNRRA camps at Regensburg and Michelsdorf, Germany. In October, 1948 he became a field worker for the YMCA and was so employed until he departed for the United States….
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Thus was Franz Kushel – commander-in-chief of the Belarus Brigade, and Minister of War in a government that had fought against the United States – allowed to become an American citizen.
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It was not possible to arrange a mere “oversight” where Jasiuk was concerned. He had already admitted falsifying his visa data to the FBI, and that alone should have barred his application for citizenship. There was only one thing for the FBI to do: the bureau concealed from the local immigration officer the fact that Jasiuk’s Nazi collaboration had been confirmed by a number of reliable informants, and urged the Immigration Service to approve his citizenship application, simply because Jasiuk had been determined by the FBI to be “trustworthy.”
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The INS duly reported that:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was informed of the apparent false claims made by the subject. The subject, when first interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claimed residence from 1940 until 1945 in a slave labor camp. During a second interview he admitted furnishing false information concerning his residence. Subsequent investigation revealed that the subject was trustworthy and that he had not collaborated with the Germans. The subject testified before an officer of this Service in July 1955 that he had not collaborated with the Germans during World War II and that he had never worked for the German Secret Police…. The subject was naturalized as a citizen of the United States on November 16, 1956.
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Once the FBI had personally certified Jasiuk as “trustworthy,” the INS saw no reason to disagree. After all, they were both branches of the Justice Department which had never raised any objections. Moreover, attached to Jasiuk’s immigration paperwork was a special letter of character reference from the Stuttgart consulate:

To Whom It May Concern:

The bearer of this letter, Mr. Emanuel Jasiuk, has done excellent work for the undersigned in several confidential cases. He may be depended upon for discretion, intelligence, and reliability.

Mr. Jasiuk is eager to be of assistance to the United States in certain work which he will explain, and it is believed that his service would be of great value.

Cleveland E. Collier

Vice Consul of the United States.
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Jasiuk’s file also contained cryptic references to the fact that he had performed “highly confidential work for an American agency.” It should be recalled that the central office of the INS had been informed of the existence of the AMCOMLIB connection two years previously. In spite of all the Counter-Intelligence Corps could do to prevent it, even including personal warnings to Hoover that Jasiuk was a war criminal who had committed atrocities, the man had obtained his citizenship.
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So thoroughly had the FBI vouched for Jasiuk that the Immigration Service recruited him as its own confidential informant.

The Belarus network, experienced in the art of political maneuvering, went out of its way to ensnare as many American public officials as possible. At first it was local politicians who were asked for endorsements, then the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York State, and members of Congress, with whom they had their pictures taken. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon received one Belarus leader in the White House – probably the only time a major war criminal has been so honored.
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Belarus members even testified before a special hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on July 15, 1953, to outline the struggle of the Byelorussian people for liberation from the Communists. A retired military officer working with AMCOMLIB introduced several prominent Byelorussian collaborators to Congress as “freedom fighters.” Among them were SS intelligence officers who had helped recruit advisers for the Einsatzgruppen.

In the face of this deliberately orchestrated propaganda and public relations blitz, the Immigration Service did not challenge the decisions of the American intelligence community. The FBI began sending the INS copies of many of its Byelorussian field reports to make it thoroughly aware of the true wartime role of the Byelorussians. From then on Hoover did not need to persuade the Immigration Service to cooperate in the cover-up; he could blackmail them.

Among the documents provided the INS by the FBI was a sixty-three-page report, Byelorussian Activities in the New York Division.
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Before long the INS central office knew virtually every facet of the Byelorussian collaboration with the Nazis, from the time of the creation of Ostrowsky’s government by the SS to the collapse of the Hitler regime. Immigration officials in the local field offices quickly caught on to the change in policy at the central office. Between 1955 and 1956 several incriminating FBI files were released to local officials who were examining citizenship applications filed by Byelorussian Nazi leaders. Instead of opening up the pro-Nazi leads, the officials noted that the FBI had determined that these applicants were trustworthy anti-communists, and approved the applications. Among them were two of the key advisers and recruiters for the Einsatzgruppen. In view of the bewildering complexity of the Belarus history and the strident anticommunism of the times, it is not difficult to imagine how the Immigration Service bureaucrats rationalized their rule-bending in the interests of national security.

For the first time, the Byelorussians had more than a promise of security in America. If they were ever prosecuted for fraudulently obtaining their citizenship, they would be in a position to threaten to expose high government officials in the Justice Department, FBI, CIA/ OPC, and INS who had made their fraud possible. The threat of blackmail was not limited to those few Byelorussians who actually worked with those intelligence agencies, since knowledge of the activities of the secret army was widespread in the émigré community. At most, only a handful of officials in the Immigration Service and the FBI were involved in the cover-up. Apart from a few isolated cases, like Mykola Lebed, where the Nazi connection was too obvious to be ignored, there is no evidence of any widespread corruption in either agency. The same cannot be said of the Justice Department itself, whose Internal security until monitored the Nazi activities and even approved their immigration under one of the intelligence legislation that gave special power to the Attorney General.