TO CATCH A NAZI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M01152R000100090001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 11, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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VILLAGE VOICE
11 February 1986
! war crt
a
os
ator, an a
oDeration with the Central ence
Agency allowed hhn to enter this country
in 1949 and later become a U.S. citizen.-
Subject a tory was supposed to re-
main hidden; indeed, he felt so secure
that his telephone number is listed under
his real name. Now, after nearly 40 years,
his secret is out.
Last June, the General Accounting Of.
fice-7GAO1'comp e a -year inves-
ttoation of the eg postwar immigra-
tion of Naztaa Nazi co ra rs,~
of the secret assistance they all re-
ceived from U.S. intelligence agencies.
This sends federal study was o e
by the House Judiciary Committee to
supplement a 1978 review of accusations
that federal agencies obstructed the pros-
ecution of alleged Nazi war criminals.
After reviewing voluminous files and
conducting many interviews, the GAO
found "no evidence of any U.S. agency
program to aid Nazis or Axis collabora-
tors to immigrate to the United States."
But among the 114 cases it reviewed-
dealing with a small fraction of the sus-
pected war criminals-the GAO did dis-
cover five cases of Nazis or collaborators
"with undesirable or questionable back-
grounds who received some individual as-
sistance in their U.S. immigrations." Al-
though the 40-page report said that three
of them were already dead, it named no
names, or even nationalities, and referred
to the five only as Subjects A through E.
Much of the information about them and
ed 'in e4e_rins the United States by the
=the assisted individuals* were pro-
b___ tected . their intell gence.contacte from-
authorities seeking to _enforce, immure-
tioh laws that prohibit the entry of war
cniamale aa~ otbeL.Deraecutoii
The authors of the GAO report seem
eager to justify the actions of the govern-
ment, and regardless of bias, their effort
hardly represents a comprehensive ex-
amination of this historic problem. Yet
despite its shortcomings, the report ii -a
lanarrk-an official admission that
Nazis an~Nazi collaboratoce were assist-
The Voice has learned that the collabo-
rator discussed in. the GAO report as
"Subject D" is a prominent Ukrainian
nationalist. In 1934, he was imprisoned
for attempting to assassinate the interior
minister of Poland; he ran the security
force of a Ukrainian fascist organization
and has been accused of ordering the
murders of many of his countrymen; he
attended a Gestapo training school where
Jews were murdered for practice. He was
considered an extremely valuable intelli-
gence asset by the CIA, which protected
him from war-crimes prosecution by the..
$vieta,. roug . t. m to this country un-
der an assumed name and concealed his.-
true past from the.Im_migration and Nat-
uralization Service. So important was his
case tt~a in Attorney General James
P. McGranery, the director of Central
Intelligence, General Walter Bedell
Smith. and the commissioner of the INS,
Argyle R. Manley, secretly ageed to @a"
mit his residence here. In 1957, he be-
came a U.S. citizen.
His name is Mykola Lebed, and he
lives in Yonkers.
MYKOLA LEBED IS 7S YEARS OLD, AND HAS
resided in this country for nearly half his
life. Several years ago he moved from
Washington Heights, a largely Jewish
neighborhood, to a modest two-family
brick house on a pleasant Yonkers hill.
side. Short, wiry, and bald, with alert
blue eyes, the retired Lebed spends most
of his days at home, where he is working
on his memoirs.
His recollections are likely to be cast in
the heroic, patriotic light that illuminates
most histories written by adherents and
defenders of the Organization of Ukraini-
an Nationalists (OUN) that he once
helped lead. All that can be seen in these
accounts is a fiery commitment to an in-
dependent Ukrainian state and the re-
.pulting con9i/ts?witb both German and
Soviet oppressors. Obscured is the more
complex story of OUN collaboration with
Nazi war crimes, and the OUN's own fas-
cist and racist ideology.
TOCATCH A NAZI
M
IRUCT Or 811* LAIS '1 MOST 11E~M1
11-
used by ? e eraf v
ginme todee-
acribe a certain ranking Nazi collaB
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or
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 thtb the ve been tieced
from Army Counterintelligence
( files, -other military archives, and
immirretion records* from interviews
with Ukrainians: and from histories of
the period. including an eyewitness as
count in the files of the Holocaust docu-
mentation center at a hem in Iara-
e ~+ a portions of pa? from the CIC
file on Lobed obtained under the Free-
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dom of Information Act, were "saniti ' in-command, and he ran the Sk shba
-
(at is, obliterated) the X
my before
being released tote Voice. 'lb jus a
withholding o certain
e
cited
exem tiona
to pro.
tection o
inte ence sources
an
Four a eti tern a events
of the war, the hsaoey*fascism in East-
ern Europe is no academic matter. In
recent years, the U.S. government has
finally begun to prosecute individual war
criminal among the Nazi collaborators
who found refuge on oe shores. Most of
the 45 cases brought so far by the Justice
Department's Office of Special Investiga-
tions (OSI), set up in 1979 to find and
deport immigrants who committed war
crimes, involve not German Nazis but
collaborators from other nations.
The East European emigre commum-
ties have reacted with a ferocious cam-
paign to abolish OSI, though very few of
their members are threatened in any way.
(Only in the Polish-American community
has the crusade against OSI failed to gain
significant support, perhaps because so
many Pol ih gentiles were also victims of
Nazism) Each prosecution of a Nazi col-
laborator from Eastern Europe discredits
the version of history upheld by some
emigres: that all the "anticommunists" of
Eastern Europe were noble and free of
any guilt for the crimes of Nazism.
Ukrainian leaders have outspokenly
denounced the OSI, partly because the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
still exists and remains influential in the
Ukrainian communities here and abroad.
The OUN's founders are revered by
Ukrainian publications and groups, while
their collaboration with Hitler is not dis-
cussed. The OSI has made such evasion
far more difficult According to Nazi War
Criminals in America, the authoritative
handbook published last year by Charles
R. Allen Jr., about one-fourth of the 45
OSI deportation or denaturalization
cases have been brought against Ukraini-
ans; in at least two cases, the individuals
accused of participating in Nazi persecu-
tions and murders were proven to be
members of the OUN.
The Ukrainian targets of the OSI have
so far been minor figures-_"policemen"
in the service of the Nazi occupiers of the
Ukraine, who don't figure as individuals
in any of the histories of the period. Most
wartime leaders of the OUN are dead,
and thus safe from the varieties of justice
meted out in U.S., Soviet, Polish, or Is-
raeli courts. Mykola Lobed is_an excep-
BezpekY. its reputedly murderous securi-
tY force.
Justice Department policy, which ap.
li
es to t
h
p
strictly
e Vol
rohibit
p
,
s
com
t
b
men
a
out pending cases, But the
tibia has learned that the OSI maintains
an open file on Lebed, making him a
potential defendant in denaturalization
proceedings. Materials Mining to
ppee
case from the CAO- .robe his
p , glassed from
theof militarx intalligthe
CIA, were turned over to the OSI last
summer.
If the OSI determines that Lebed
ought to be stripped of his citizenship
and deported, the information in those
files may become public. Although much
of Lebed's histo remains iur , oon-
ce in st -c ass overnment ar-
_chivea. __ ere is little oubt that su a
display would severely embarrass not-
on1y the QUN and its supportere-Yu-t-tTle
U.S. government as well-especially the
CI
A
Under long-standing U.S. immigration
laws, strengthened in 1978, those guilty
of persecuting other people on the basis
of race, religion, national origin, or politi-
cal belief are barred from entering this
country and are to be deported if they
gain entry. Lobed escaped these sanc-
tions because his sponsors mercifully
cited-Scectiong of the CIA Act of 1949. An
obscure portion of the legislation that es-
tablisbed t-ee CI_A,~ecfton 8 permits the
agency to bang 100 individuals a year to
the U.-S. for reasons of national securi-
ty=regardress of their past. Brooklyn
District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman.
who issued a scathing critique of the
GAO report, found this revelation about
Subject D's immigration "extremely dis-
turbing." As _a member of Congress in
1978, said Holtzman, "the CIA ... as-
sured me in a meeting and in a Congres-
sional hearing, that it never tined-the 100
numbers provision to fresh-fate -
tEe entry
Patti Volz, a spokeswoman for the CIA,
declined to comment about Lebed or the
GAO report. "We don't get into details,"
she said. "We don't confirm or deny that .
someone has worked for us. We wouldn't
have any comment on him."
REPOt1S F1LED WIM THE ARM COUNTER
intelligence Corps in the late '40s give
various dates for the birth of Mykola
Lobed, but his naturalization papers say
November 23, 1910. He was born in the
western Ukrainian province of Galicia, an
agricultural area controlled at various
Fairer for a dalr. Stabs eaaders led His
ON's sheet-Geed antsussors fascist state.
times by Poland, the Soviet Union, and
Germany. From his early school days in
L'vov, the provincial capital, Lobed was
involved in the right wing of the Ukraini-
an nationalist movement, which from the
early '309 to the present has been domi-
nated by the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists. The secretive, authoritarian
OUN has constantly overshadowed
Ukrainian politics, despite incessant fac.
tional strife in its ranks, both in the
Ukraine and abroad.
Polish rule in the Ukraine during the
'20s had been harsh, and the OUN's
younger members included a number,
who, like Lobed, were inclined to terror-
ism. Among them was the OUN's eventu-
al would-be filhrer, Stefan Bandera, who
in 1934 joined with Lebed and several
others in plotting the assassination of
Polish interior minister Bronislaw Pier-
acki. U.S. Arm Counterinte ' ence re-
pQrtik sa'y t- e snits y escaped
from Warsaw but was captured inStet-
tin.rIDAD.Y d returned to~&And by
the German authorities. Convicted in a
mass tri a ems, B-aniera, and several
others were condemned to death, but
their sentences were commuted to life
imprisonment.
The most sympathetic, scholarly ac-
count of the Ukrainian nationalist period
is by John A. Armstrong, a strongly anti-
Soviet and pro-Ukrainian historian who
now teaches at the University of Wiscon-
sin. His Ukrainian Nationalism 1939-
1945 notes that during the period Lebed
and Bandera were imprisoned, the Ukrai-
nian nationalist movement was solidify-
ing its ties. to the Nazi regime in Germa-
ny.
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tional secure One ocum
parently withheld at the reguet",f
"ate r
government agency" and an.
ofii docvea haaTieen=removed from
thee Asti alGc ves
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release
"For many years," wrote Armstrong,
"the OUN had been closely tied to Ger-
man policy. This alignment was fur-
thered by the semi-Fascist nature of its
ideology, and in turn the dependence on
Germany tended to intensify' Fascist
trends in the organization." In fact most
historians regard the OUN as who y faa-
cist-ann tied to' German intelligence-'
firm its inception. It was the Nazi inva-
sion of Poland to September 1939 that
allowed Lobed and the 0+. picted
plotters to escape from Warsaw's Swiety
Kroyc prison after serving five years.
The xenophobic, antidemocratic, and
anti-Semitic nationalism of the OUN
meshed easily with Nazism The gompli-
ment was not always returned, however.
Within the Nazi hierarchy, opinions
about the Ukrainians diverged. Powerful
Nazi figures considered the Ukrainians
an inferior people, unfit to govern them-
selves. Lebed and the other OUN leaders
hoped that they would be able to set up
an autonomous fascist state, as part of
Hitler's "New Europe," under a German
protectorate.
Such aspirations congealed into a mili-
tary, political, and espionage alliance be-
tween the OUN and the Nazi war ma-
chine. Even after 1940, when the OUN
split into two feuding factions-the more
extremist led by Bandera, Lebed, and
Yaroslav Stetako-both sought an ac-
commodation with the German occupi-
ers. Later in the war, the Germans alter-
nated between courting and repressing
the Ukrainians, but many OUN members
served continuously in Nazi formations,
from the Waffen-SS to the local police
forces, which murdered thousands of
Jews, Poles, communists, and socialists.
DU N6 THE MONThS FOtLO III 1REftt Re-
lease from prison, Lebed and the other
OUN leaders chafed under the temporary
constraints of the 1939 treaty between
Hitler and Stalin. According to Arm-
strong, they eagerly abetted the secret
Nazi preparations for war against the So-
viets, sending their young adherents for
German military training in mountain
camps set up as early as 1939. Sources
friendly to Lebed-whose alanfi ac-
counts may found in memoranda of
the Army Counterintelligence Corps be-
tween- 1947 and .1948-understandably
pass over this period.
Only hints of what Lebed was actually
doing in 1940 and 1941 appear in the CIC
file. A September 30, 1948, memo does
mention that "For a short time, [Lebed)
attempted to get an insight into the tac-
tics of the German State Police and suc-
ceeded in joining the GESTAPO school
in ZAKOPANE (District of Krakow),
from which he ultimately fled." And a
card in the CIC file identifies Lebed as "a
graduate of the Zakopane, Poland crimi-
nal police school"
A former OUN member, now dead,
wrote in 1958 a different and more de-
tailed eyewitness version of Lebed's so-
journ with the Gestapo. Retrieved from
the files of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the
declaration of Mykyta Kosakivs'kyy por.
trays both Lebed and the OUN as eager
pupils of the Gestapo.
Kosakivs'kyy joined the OUN in 1933,
and after sojourns in Czechoslovakia and
Germany, returned to the Carpathian
Ukraine late in 1939. He was among the
older OUN officers present when the
"Ukrainian 'Training Unit" was estab-
lished at the Gestapo school in Zakopane
that November. According to his declara-
tion, the Ukrainian unit was "organized
by the OUN leadership and by permis-
sion of the German Security Service." It
included 120 specially selected trainees,
under the guidance of a Gestapo officer
named Walter Kruger and his assistant,
Wilhelm Rosenbaum, both Germans.
"The Ukrainian commandant of the en-
tire unit was Lieutenant Vil'nyy," wrote
Kosakivs'kyy, "whose real name was My-
kola Lebid [another transliteration of
Lebed]." The curriculum included drills,
intelligence and counterintelligence
trainu and interrogation techniques,
but emphasized "exercises in the harden-
in of hearts.` -
At sundown," recalled Kosakivs'kyy,
"Kruger, Rosenbaum, Lebid and a few
students would go to Zakopane, enter
some Jewish home on the way, grab a
Jew, and bring him to the Unit. One eve-
ning, late in November or early in De-
cember 1939. they returned with a young
Jew. In the presence of Ukrainian se-
niors, including myself, Kruger and Ro-
senbaum, fortified with alcohol, proceed-
ed with their demonstration of the proper
methods of interrogation."
Seeking to induce the innocent Jew to
confess that he had raped an "Aryan'-
woman, the German officers beat and
tortured him, using their fists, a sword,
and iron bars. When he was bloody from
head to toe, they applied salt and dame
to his wounds. The broken man then con-
fessed his fictional crimes, but that was
not the end.
"Thereupon," Kosakivs'kyy continues,
"he was taken to the corridor of the
house and the 'co-eds' (three women
members of the unit) were called in. In
their presence, Rosenbaum beat the Jew
again with an iron pipe and Lebid too
assisted manually in that 'heroic action.'
One of the senior Ukrainians and I with-
drew from that spectacle to our rooms.
We learned afterwards that the tortured
man was stripped naked, stood-up in
front of the school as 'a sentry' and
doused with water in heavy frost."
Kosakivs'kyy and his friend protested
to Lebed the next day, but the comman-
dant told them bluntly that "it was the
duty of every member of the OUN to
show the Germans that his nerves are
just as tough as a German's and that the
been of any nationalist is as hard as
steel" Such "practical exercises" contin-
ued unabated, according to Kosakiv-
s'kyy's testimony, and he fled Zakopane
in early January 1940. Others equally
sickened, he learned, left later, but Lebed
remained until at least March of that
year, when the unit moved from Zakopa-
ne to the nearby town of Rabka, where
the Gestapo's depredations continued.
When he finished his statement on De-
cember 14, 1958, in Germany, the former
OUN member already knew he was dying
of heart disease, according to the intro-
ductory note written by the late Dr.
Panay Fedenko, a Ukrainian liberal and
implacable critic of the OUN. "I owe it to
my conscience to make this declaration
public, to report openly the facts I wit-
nessed myself," Kosakivs'kyy concluded.
"Mykola Lebid evidently believes that
his infamous accomplishments in the
Ukraine and elsewhere are forgotten and
so are the multitudes of his innocent vic-
tims, that every witness of his torture
activities is either murdered or dead.
Only Lebid is mistaken right there."
Kosakivs'kyy's angry testament must
be read in context, as the product of one
man's remorseful memory, and of Ukrai-
nian emigre rivalries as well; obviously it
was published to discredit Lebed and the
OUN. Yet there is supporting evidence
for his story in the historical record. The
Zakopane school existed, according to Dr.
Aharon Weiss of Yad Vashem. and was
moved to the nearby town of Rabka .n
1940. There was a Captain Kruger, men-
tioned above, who commanded a Gestapo
unit in the area, and helped lead a joint
Nazi-OUN pogrom when the German
Army's Brandenburg regiment occupied
the Galician capital of Lvov in late June
1941.
And there is also no question that 3
German officer named Wilhelm Rt,,en-
baum was a commandant at Zakopane
and Rabka during the training of Ukrai-
nians. In 1964, that same,Rosenbaum wee
arrested in West Comer p ty and charged.
among other crimes, with the murder of
200 Jews at Rabka between May 1942
and January 1943. According to Simon
Wiesenthal's 1967 book The Murderers
Among Us, the unit was a "training cen-
ter for future cadres of 6S killers ... SS
men at Rabka were -being hardened so
they would not break after a few weeks of
duty. They had to become insensitive to
the sight of blood, to the agonized shouts
of women and children. The job must be
done with a minimum of fuss and a maxi-
mum of efficiency. That was a Fflhrerbe-
fehl-the Fuhrer's order." Rosenbaum
was convicted in Hamburg in 1968 and
sentenced to hard labor for life.
~ .1121"1
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Lobed declined to be interviewed by
the Voice about Zakopane or any of his
wartime activities. But in a brief conver-
sation on the doorstep of his Yonkers
home last month, he conceded that he
had been at the Gestapo school, although
he believed it had been during the winter
of 1940-41, not 1939-40 as Koeakivs'kyy
stated. "Oh yes," he said. "I left after five
weeks. I have exactly the dates. I quit."
LER~S TRANIO R ZLWAR IE, MOMIEva
cursory, was soon recognized by his fel-
low leaders in OUN-B, whose acronym
designated its domination by the nation-
alist fuhrer Benders. When their split
from the old leadership became irrevoca-
ble in 1941, Benders commissioned the
creation of a "security service," the
Siuzhba Bezpeky, under Lebed's com-
mand. Historians of the OUN-B agree
that he ran the SB not only during the
war, but long afterward. Armstrong, who
interviewed Lobed at length, stated the
facts with characteristic discretion: "In
Lobed-small in stature, quiet, yet deter-
mined, hard-the SB found a well-quali-
fied leader, but one who was to acquire
for himself and his organization an unen-
viable reputation for ruthlessness." In an
interview last month Armstrong was still
sympathetic to Lebed, but more candid.
"He grew up fighting against the Poles,"
explained the historian, "and he devel-
oped a terrible terrorist complex. He
killed other Ukrainians, rivals in the or-
ganization [OUNI."
Yet Lebed told the Voice that he had
never commanded the SB. He claimed
that the SB had instead been run by
someone named "Artanych ... He's dead
now."
Such reluctance to assume the SB's
legacy is understandable. Even those
Ukrainians who ignore the fascist brutal-
ities against Jews and Poles are still trou-
bled, and in some cases outraged, by the
SB's infamous assaults on Ukrainians
who dissented from the OUN-B leader.
ship.
Lebed's direct responsibility for crimes
attributed to the OUN-B is difficult to
establish. Perhaps the lowest point of the
Banderites' alliance with Nazism was the
occupation of Lvov in June and July
1941, when Yaroslav Stetako and a large
contingent of OUN-B troops entered that
city along with the Brandenburg regi-
ment and other German detachments.
Several days of mass murder followed.
L'vov's Jewish population was decimat.
ed, but Polish university professors and
anyone who could be tied to the Commu-
nists were also killed. Survivors reported
that the Ukrainians were even more
bloodthirsty than their German patrons.
According to German Rule in Russia, by
historian Alexander Dallin, "Bandera's
followers, including those in the Nachti-
gail regiment (a Ukrainian SS detach-
ment), were displaying considerable ini-
tiative, conducting purges and pogroms."
Ironically, the alliance between the Na-
zis and the OUN-B came apart that same
week in Lvov, after Stetako proclaimed
an independent Ukraine. Loyal to the
Fuhrer, who was in their view creating a
glorious new Europe, the Ukrainians still
dreamed of their own state. Benders, the
Ukrainian fahrw, named Stetako prime
minister and Lebd minister of security.
But the new regime didn't last long.
By July 9 the Nazis would no longer
put up with this "independent" charade,
and arrested Benders, Stetako, and other
niembers of the leadership. Lobed es-
caped; the others were held under "house
arrest" in Berlin but they were not mis-
treated. According to Armstrong, the
OUN leaders "were allowed to carry on
their political activities in Berlin; Stetako
was even able to go to Cracow, where he
consulted with Lobed, whom he had se-
cretly delegated to take command of all
activities in the Ukrainian lands." Even
pro-OUN writers admit that the German
repression of the Ukrainian nationalists
was mild, and cooperation continued on
many levels throughout the war.
There were periods when some of the
nationalist Ukrainians, formed into guer-
rilla groups, fought the Germans as well
as the Soviet partisans, and there is evi.
dence that Lobed took part in those ac-
tions, especially after 1942. But by 1943,
the Banderites were cooperating in the
formation of a new Ukrainian SS divi-
sion, and in 1944 Bandera himself-
though he had been interned at Sachsen-
hausen concentration camp-was still as-
sisting the German war effort against the
Russians.
Lobed, who had meanwhile adopted
the nom de guerre Mazym Ruben, tried
to seize control of all factions in the na-
tionalist movement. Independent nation-
alist bands were carrying out guerrilla
actions in Volhynia and the western
Ukraine under the name of the Ukrainian
Partisan Army (UPA). This was intoler-
able to Lebed, who demanded that all the
Ukrainian guerrillas come under his com-
mand. The result was vicious internecine
warfare among the nationalists, a period
from which Lebed's reputation did not
emerge unscathed. Leading figures of the
non-OUN forces were "liquidated," ac-
cording to a 1948 CIC memo: "As a re-
sult, the Ukrainians now have difficulty
forgetting the fact that booed killed some
Ukrainian partisans who. were fighting
for the same cause."
Other writers, like the Ukrainians
Panes Fedenko and 0. Shuliak, con.
demned Lobed in harsh terms for these
killings after the war. Shuliak wrote in
1947 that Lebed's SB men carried out the
murders of dissenters from the OUN line.
"It is perfectly evident that neither sol-
diers nor officers of the UPA had any-
thing to do with these atrocities. The do-
era were the Security men under the
orders of Lobed." Massacres and other
acts of terror were also carried out
against civilians, against Soviet prisoners
of war, against entire Polish villages in
the Ukraine, kand against Jews fleeing
persecution.
In his own booklet on the history of the
UPA, published in 1946, Lobed says its
aim was "to clear the forests and the
surrounding areas of foreign elements."
According to the late historian Philip
Friedman, this meant not only Poles but
Jews and Russian partisans as well.
Friedman says that postwar OUN efforts
to disclaim responsibility for anti-Jewish
atrocities "cannot be taken seriously."
LEBED'S cum AFTER UE
war is difficult to trace. By then the OUN
had established a new front-group, the
Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council-
known by its transliterated initials,
UHVR-of which Lobed became "For-
eign Secretary." Several CIC documents
report that his wife and daughter were
held in Buchenwald concentration camp
by the Germans for several months as
hostages against Lobed's guerrilla activi.
ties, but they were released in 1944, well
before the war's end.
After 1945 he mainly lived in Rome
and Munich, seeking Allied support for
the remnants of the UPA to fight against
the victorious Soviets. A "political histo-
ry" in the CIC file says that he traveled
illegally around Western Europe, orga-
nizing the foreign offices of the UHVR
By the end of 1947, conditions in Rome
were growing uncomfortable for Lobed,
who was afraid that the Soviets might
attempt to seize him thete. He sought
and apparently received-ille, help of U.S.
intelligence to leave Rome safely.
Lebed's file also shows that around the
same time, he and other OUN leaders
began to proclaim the evolution of their
politics in a more democrptic direction.
The motive behind such declarations is
clear. In the cold war that was already
taking shape, only self-styled democrats
could partake of Uncle Sam's largesse.
But whether Lebed actually converted
to Western liberalism is unclear from the
CIC file. Several reports note that when
the OUN-B split at a Munich conference
in 1947, Lobed gave a speech berating the
"weakening and democratization of the
party line," which other members in turn
denounced as redolent of fascism.
Regardless of his postwar political
views, however, it is clear from the GAO
report that Subject D was used as an
American agent soon after the war's end.
(Bandera, too, obtained a post with a
Western intelligence agency-the West
German BND, run by the former Nazi
Abwehr chief Reinhard Gehlen, who re-
cruited scores of ex-Nazis and collabora-
tors for his network. In his memoirs,
Gehlen identifies Benders as one of his
men.)
flonfi-
NM
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"Because of fear for his personal safety Prolog was, in fact, at least partly a front
and his f y1-wt~ [TB, rata for the former Banderites grouped
operations, t"hee section in the GAD re- around the UI VR and Lobed.
Dort on Sub MOP: explains, "the CIA The sources of its funding are mysteri-
brought him United States under ous. Prolog's current officers insist that it
an assumed His na on has always been financially self-suf-
papers, in January 1957. show that cient, with adequate support "from the
Lebed arrived in New York harbor on Ukrainian community." Although the
October 4, 1949. The truth about his market for its books and magazines is
identity and history was concealed from tiny, Prolog is now a for-profit corpora-
e on and a ur on tion. It has at various times maintained
vice. But two years ter, the INS earn - offices in Munich, London, and Cairo as
wYoTibed was and opened an investiga- well as New York. During the '70s Prolog
tion t. a C I A was informed. might published eight to 10 volumes annually,
lea to his deportation. "According to the plus two or three small-circulation maga-"INS had CDC BE tae sub' rt a conviction had - xina on Soviet and Ukrainian affairs,
bon for involvement in an assaeetnation familiar with the Workings opt ione of terrorism a of Prolog say thacould not have sus-
atainat him, "'1 protect the oxen- ins itself so a om s es o its pu im
invoked Section Act. - cations-many o w c were Ar v
is because, according to the GAD, smuggled into the boviet.ptilarl
"The subject that it probably received
sect was considered extremely from a overnmen
valuabTebyy U.S. intelligence," ter 412-41- I
& Jew years, it Uz~e' impossible to let
didn't know whether Prolog had received
him go, use of "fear for his personal any such subsidies. "They keep some
sty and tv with into - things hidden," he said. But he believes
linee operations." Once he knew the Lebed "has some connections with the
CLA's secrets, the is couldn't p81- American authorities. What kind of con.
utted to capture him Lobed i~_
amu into the Ulu help, I son t know. None or the
be became a citizen on March 18. other Ukrainians who discussed prolog
Washington Heights as his home, and
"journalist" as his profession. He had two
witnesses: Bohdan Czajkowskyj, also a
writer and a longtime friend of Lebed;
and Alexander S. Alexander, who listed
his job as "government employee."
The new citizen was entitled to call
himself a journalist because of his posi-
tion as president of the Prolog Research
and Publishing Association, Inc. Found-
ed as a nonprofit publisher in the early
'50s, it has always specialized in
Ukrainian-language books and maga-
zines, many of them with anti-Commu-
nist political themes. Prolog's certificate
of incorporation filed in New York in
1956 lists Lobed as a director and gives as
its Purposes "investigation of the history,
economics, politics and culture of the
Ukraine," and "exposing to the public
opinion of the world the true nature of
communist dictatorship and the threat of
international communism to freedom
everywhere.".
Roman Ilnytzkyji, a longtime Lebed
associate who worked for Prolog, says
that Lobed was "completely absorbed" in
his work at the Ukrainian publishing
company's tiny, cramped offices in mid-
town M
an editor. Aside- ftin keeping Prolog
Lobed's vocation until he .retired
in 1980 was to promote the views opt the,
UHVR,. the faction of the Orpmitstiap.d
Ukranian Nationalists which he headed.
used. As one put it, "People simply don't
talk about these things."
VERY LITTLE ABOUT SUBJECT D'S FAST AP
pears in the GAO report, although clues
were present in the records available to
government investigators; three years of
research are boiled down to three vague
paragraphs. Because it omits nearly all
the si ificant acts t e re su e
rom the same moral obtuseness that
tainted the A s re atioress_iip with
Le bed.
__
EG-Misenbaum, a former OSI prosecu-
tor and now general counsel to the World
Jewish Congress, recently examined the
declassified CIC files and other docu.
ments on Mykola Lobed. "I'm particular-
ly dismayed," he said, "by the absence of
even the slightest indication that any of
the government agencies cared to ascer-
tain the truth of the damning and very
specific charges against Lobed contained
in these files. It's as though they assumed
the charges to be true, and proceeded to
bring him here anyway."
After 40 years, a government agency-
the Office of Special Investigations-is
finally examining the evidence against
Lobed. But difficult legal and historical
questions must be answered before the
OSI can consider denaturalization pro-
ceedings against Lobed: Did the 1949
CIA Act which permitted ifi a ems'- affow
him to me a citizen, sups o _
er immi anon ova w c w or t
it. Can the egatons about past ~e
proved in court?
The confidentiality of the OSI's opera-
tions is so strict that if the case is
dropped the public will probably never
know why. Mykola Lobed is, and has
been for 29 years, a citizen with constitu-
tional rights. All we know for now is that
the file on Subject D is still open. ^
Research assistance by Ellen McGa--i-
han, Leslie Yenkin, and Kevin Coogan.
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