139
Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).
140
The Doolittle Committee’s “Anti-Communist Manifesto” is in Select Committee Report, op. cit., pp. 52-53 n.
141
The Harvard Russian Research Center’s program for interviewing exiles is discussed in an interview with Dr. Robert A. Bauer in the
New York Times
, September 5, 1951, p. 11.
142
FBI files (citation deleted).
143
Interview with Security Office, Radio Liberty, 1980.
144
Stankievich was issued Certificate of Naturalization No. 9198868.
145
Interview with former Security Officer, Radio Liberty, 1980.
146
Interviews with DDP officers, Langley, Virginia, 1980-81.
147
A copy of FBI File NY97-1251 containing the June 5, 1954, interview with Kushel was never placed in his immigration folder. Rather, a copy was sent to the central office of the Immigration Service under the title “““Byelorussian Democratic Republic, Central Council, USA.” The reason for the omission was significant. Within a year after his FBI interview, Kushel gave contradictory information on his application for citizenship. For example, in his FBI interview he admitted that he had become a colonel in the Byelorussian Land Defense for Police organized by the Germans. Kushel also admitted that by the time the Byelorussians fled to Germany in 1944, he was in command of several battalions of Byelorussians and he retreated with the German army.
148
INS Memo for record, February 8, 1963 (Kushel).
149
Immigration and Naturalization Service, File No. C75 14221 (Kushel).
150
FBI files on Emanuel Jasiuk, quoted by INS.
151
Immigration files on Emanuel Jasiuk.
152
Ibid.
153
On May 12, 1949, Emanuel Jasiuk was issued Immigration Visa No. 5828/54 by the American vice consul at Stuttgart, Germany. On November 16, 1956, Jasiuk was issued Certificate of Naturalization No. 748 1379 by the Bergen County Court of Bergen County of Hackensack, New Jersey.
154
FBI File No. 105-40098 is a 63-page book entitled
Byelorussian Activities in the New York Division
. The report is a summary of many previous FBI reports on Byelorussian activities dating back to 1951. According to this report, the FBI knew that “the Byelorussian Central Council (BCR) based its claim to leadership upon the fact that it was established at the Second Byelorussian Congress held at Minsk in 1944 under the German occupation” (p. 23). “In July, 1945, when the Soviets were threatening the Minsk area, the Germans evacuated Ostrovsky, Sobolevsky, and many other functionaries to Germany” (p. 24). “Sobolevsky stated that a German S.S. General, Gottenberg, [sic] who was the nominal head of the German forces of occupation, allowed the Byelorussian Central Administration to set up its own government” (pp. 25-26). “Under the German occupation of Western Poland, [Sobolevsky] was appointed Mayor of Baronovichy, and later was responsible for acts of brutality against the people of that city. In 1943, a German S.S. General, Gottsberg, [sic] named Sobolevsky chief of the ‘Zentral Rada’ of Byelorussia” (p. 57). “Sobolevsky in 1942-1943 was chief of the White Ruthenian Self-Aid Committee in the Minsk area” (p. 60). “Sobolesky said that it was true that the organization and he himself cooperated with the German forces in World War II” (p. 62). “The BAA (Byelorussian American Associates) as of May, 1955 had about 1,000 members including the families of members. It had 12 branches throughout the U.S. with the majority of membership residing in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Ninety per cent of the membership were new immigrants” (p. 35). “In September, 1945, Eshersbacken, Germany, there was a meeting of the members of Byelorussian Central Council and a new organization called the Byelorussian National Center was formed with Ostrowsky as its leader. The new organization was so-named so the members could avoid being called war criminals during the time of crisis in Germany” (p. 28). A copy of this book was also found in the classified file section of the Central Office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Washington, D.C.
155
Letter of November 30, 1956, from Charles G. Dunn, Colonel, GS Chief Collection Division, ACSIKDOO. In their request for CIA information, the Army reported that:
Under the auspices of the German Wehrmacht, Kushel was placed in command of Belorussian brigade which subsequently was expanded into a division. Kushel was made division commander (two-star general) and fought until the end of the war. He surrendered to the Germans in what became the French zone of Germany. From there, he immigrated to the United States and is presently residing in the New York area.
156
Interviews with Marc Masurovsky, 1980-81.
Chapter Nine
157
The text of NSC 5412/1 is in Select Committee Report, Book 1, p. 51.
158
OPC had previously floated several trial balloons in the American press. See for example the article of June 4,1953, in the
New York Times
:
A group of refugee East European politicians have proposed to their western colleagues the recruitment of a volunteer “liberation army” of half a million Russian refugees to form part of a unified American-West European force, according to an Austrian editor who acted during the war as a German army expert on Russia.
The editor, Dr. H. A. Kraus, has outlined the plan in [the] Salzburg organ of the Austrian Institute for Economic and Political Research. After pointing out that the United States is faced by the dilemma whether to try to defend Western Europe or let it go and trust air attacks to defeat Russia in the long run, Dr. Kraus observes that in the present stage of public opinion it would be impossible for Washington to send enough troops to Europe to match the Soviet army. But with the aid of refugees from Communism, who must be supported in any case as displaced persons, this could be accomplished, it is argued.
“The chief task of this ‘national liberation army,’ ” Dr. Kraus writes, “would be to strike the Soviet Union at its weakest point – that is, to mobilize resistance to Soviet domination of the Russian hinterland, to transform the eventual war from an imperialistic war to a fight for freedom ….”
159
Confidential source, Pentagon interview, 1981.
160
Harry Rositzke,
The CIA’s Secret Operations
(Reader’s Digest Press, 1977), p. 190.
161
Peter Collier and David Horowitz,
The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty
(Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976), p. 273 n.
162
Corson, op. cit., pp. 36-37.
163
Quoted in Wise and Ross, op. cit., p. 327.
164
Mosley, op. cit., pp. 419-21; Powers, op. cit., p. 75.
165
Quoted in Charles C. Alexander,
Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1961
(Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 180.
166
Truscott’s role in terminating OPC‘s covert action programs is detailed in ibid., pp. 368-72.
167
Mosley, op. cit., p. 421; Powers, op. cit., pp. 75-77;
Washington Post
, October 30, 1965.
168
Mosley, op. cit., pp. 491-92.
169
Washington Post
, October 30, 1965.
170
Lyman Kirkpatrick,
The Real CIA
(Macmillan, 1968), p. 153, states:
By this time (1952) we knew that there was not only a false network involved, although there were some sources that occasionally did produce some information of value, but we knew further that a large number of their so-called intelligence sources were nothing but “paper mills.” These “paper mills” were organizations of refugees or émigrés producing alleged intelligence reports from interrogating other refugees and emigres or from the “cocktail circuit.” These reports were worthless and unreliable and most frequently dedicated to selling a point of view.
171
Various meetings in America between Communist officials from the BSSR delegation to the UN and the leaders of the Belarus organizations are described in FBI File No. NY 105-35905. During one of these meetings, one of the Soviet delegates requested and received copies of some of the books published by the Belarus.
172
Allegations of war criminals residing in the United States appear several times in the
Morning Freiheit
. For example, April 13, 1962; June 10, 1962; July 6, 1962; March 22, 1964.
173
FBI files: Notes of an Interview with Simon Wiesenthal.
174
FBI file citation has been deleted because the subject is a potential target of investigation.
175
Dossier AC645873, USAIRR, Ft. Meade, Maryland. It should be noted that the Central Registry of the CIA was not privy to the more comprehensive data on Kushel available to the OPC. Consequently, their background information on Kushel was sketchy, to say the least.
176
Over the years, some of the intelligence agencies noted that the 29th was not an SS division. Upon further research it was discovered that the source of this interesting bit of disinformation was General Kushel himself.
177
INS reopened the Kushel investigation in 1973 in response to allegations of war crimes received from Dorothy Rabinowitz, a reporter, and from the World Jewish Congress. Again the investigations were terminated.
178
Senate Resolution 21 adopted by the Senate on January 27,1975, established the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) to determine whether “illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in by any agency of the Federal Government” (emphasis added).
179
The final conclusions of the Church Committee are in Select Committee Report, op. cit., pp. 424-26.
180
Romanouski,
Vasily Pilipavich, Saudzel’niki u Zlachynstvakh
(Collaborators in Crime) (Minsk: “Belarus” Publishing House, 1964). This is possibly the best unclassified Soviet account of Byelorussian war criminals and their subsequent escape to the U.S.
181
A photograph of Kushel in Nazi uniform is contained on p. 81 of Collaborators in Crime, White Ruthenian History Section, Library of Congress.
182
See
Minsker Zeitung
, February 23, 1944, for an article in German, “With Deutschland for a Free White Ruthenia.”
183
An article in the
Morning Freiheit
, “More Names of Jew Murderers Who Live Undisturbed in the Free World,” provides the following account of Jasiuk’s activities:
When the Germans entered Baronovichy, they appointed Jasiuk as head of the town administration of Kletzk. I was working for him for some time. The Germans and Jasiuk ordered me to prepare a deep ditch outside the town, and to bring over 300 arrestees to do the work. Soon thereafter the Jews in Kletzk were rounded up and summarily shot. Jasiuk personally directed the operation (action) and gave all orders to the police squads. Later on he regularly dispatched consignments of victims to the Koldychev Concentration Camp.
The article also briefly denounced Kushel and gave his address as Alabama Avenue, East New York, Brooklyn.
184
Interview with GAO investigator John Tipton, November 1980.