U.S. PROTECTED NAZI HUNTED BY THE FRENCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707240002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 13, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/13: CIA-RDP90-00552R000707240002-1
ARTICLE APFZA .
ON PAGE______
12 FEBRUARY 1983
_ ]]~~~ a Barbie, known as the "Butcher of
U.S. rotcted Lyon," was extradited from Bolivia last
H r . ' "'. week and returned to France to stand
Name Fl unte( " trial for "crimes against humanity."
i.._ - TT O .-a-1
-1__..
Th
_?-~?? __
flect
e
m
ligence relationship with Barbie have
By the,: French- . been collected from French and German
archives by Serge Klarsfeld, a French
By Patrick E: Tyler lawyer. He and his wife, Beate, tracked
down Barbie in 1972 in South America,
-jr~.[T.S, intelligence -,services pro- where' he was' living under the name
tected Nazi war criminal Klaus Bar- Klaus Altmann, and exposed his true
'.bier for at least five years after the' identity:
end .of World War H : in Germany .. Meanwhile,- o officer Army coun-
before he slipped out of "Europe to terintelligence officer in postwar Ger-
South America in 1951, according to : many. Erhard Dabringhaus, said in an
documents obtained 'by a French interview that he deliberately lied to
lawyer and the personal accounts of French secret service officials when they
former U.S counterintelligence., of- , twice interviewed - him in 1948 while
fivers. searching for Barbie.
Yet. ~ ,. ..
>!iccording to' correspondence be- Dabringhaus, 65,. a -professor of Ger:.
tween the French Ministry of Justice ' man. history at Wayne State University
and French army officers in. Ger-' in Detroit, said, that on two occasions in
many. U.S. authorities blocked at mid to late 1948, officers from France's
least.. three French requests for the secret counterintelligence agency, - the
return of the former Gestapo chief Deuxieme Bureau, interviewed him in
for the Lyon region to face charges Augsberg and Munich seeking informs-
that he had sent thousands of Jews .Lion on the whereabouts of Barbie. -
and French resistance fighters to Both times, Dabringhaus. said, he'
their death. "played dumb" under orders from supe-,
The documents, reviewed by riors, -even though he knew Barbie was.
Washington Post correspondent Mi- hiding in a U.S Army-requisitioned'
chael Dobbs in Paris? show that in house.. .
.1950 a?French court received infor- "I. felt very ,nauseated," said. Dabring-
. oration obtained from- American haus. 'They =had' found several -mass
counterintelligence officials in Ger graves that they thought Barbie was re-
many about Barbie's relationship sponsible for. Since -he was a killer of
with a colonel in the French resis- ,Henchmen
I saw the urgency these neO-
,
tance on trial for collaboration. plehad in trying-to:get him. But orders from a career in U.S. intelligence, told
The French documents also show _are ..orders ....`.:They had to :go- home---. the Associated Press that he escorted
that in February, 1950, the French empty-handed." .. ~ .. Barbie to three days of interrogations in,
military police in West Germany 'Dabringhaus' __ account seems to nesh which the French "were ready to tear him '
relayed an American offer to make - with.:Klarsfeld's documentation. indicat-' [Barbie]. apart." But, he said, they were
Barbie available in the trial of the ing that French :intelligence agents meld, not allowed to take custody of Barbie,
French resistance colonel, Rene Han- meetings with US: 'officials on Barbie.. who was under US. Army-protection.
dy, only if Barbie would be returned whereabouts on May 14 and -18, .1948,1 .. Dabringhaus ended World War 11 as a
to U.S. officials. The French refused . and again on July 16, 1948, in Augsberg. major in Army intelligence, but returned
that offer, saying it was "impossible A letter obtained by Klarsfeld, written to the Army in 1948 as a civilian intel-
to meet" on July 28, 1949, by the French com-, ligence officer based initially in Augsberg
mander in Germany to the Justice Min- with the Army's 970th Counterintelli- ,
istry in Paris, expresses French frustra- gence Corps. .
tion with the lack of American cooper- Dabringhaus said he obtained false
ation. It concluded that Barbie "enjoys identity papers for Barbie during 1948 at
the protection of the American occupa- a time when Barbie was plotting his es
tion authorities' cape from Europe to South America=
The emerging account of the U.S. in. While 'Barbie lined up his escape route,
telligence relationship with Barbie ap- :he was drawing .$1,700 a month from
pears to answer several lingering ques- Army intelligence for running a network
tiuns about U.S. involvement in the flight of spies under Dabringhaus. ..
of one of France's nor?t notorious Nazi
It is certain to fuel already strong em
tions in France. ':here the return of Bar-
bie has resurrected old suspicions that
postwar U.S. intelligence services- pro-
tected some accused Nazi war criminals
because they were providing intelli_ence
about. Soviet activities and objectives in
partitioned Germany and eastern Eu-
rope.
We cut the French out of everything,"
said retired Army Col. Earl Lerette, an
intelligence officer who operated a vari-
ety of spy operations out of Berlin after
the war. "My unit had absolutely nothing
to do with the French because we found
that anything we gave to the French
would get to the Russians before it got to
the Deuxieme Bureau."
Interviews with Dabringhaus and other
U.S. officials of the era depict various
intelligence units in the military, CIA
and State Department competing fiercely
for "assets," or spies; to report on the
threat of the 'Soviet standing army in
Europe and the formation of the commu-
nist alliance.
The Barbie case also is bringing back
painful memories of the schism in post-
war France between those who collabo-
rated with the German occupation au-
thorities and those who aided the resis-
tance forces of Charles de Gaulle.
. Another former Army counterintelli-
gence official surfaced yesterday in Pitts-
burg, Calif., claiming 'that he protected
Barbie from French interrogators in -the:
spring of 1946.
John Willms, 'who recently retired
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/13: CIA-RDP90-00552R000707240002-1