INTERVIEW WITH ALLAN RYAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120061-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 25, 2011
• Sequence Number: 61
• Publication Date: October 18, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
ABC NIGHTLINE
18 October 1984
KOPPEL: With us now live in our Washington bureau is Allan Ryan, former
director of the Justice Department office which investigates and prosecutes
Nazi
war criminals in America. In our New York studios, Charles Allen, journalist
and author, whose soon-to-be-published book is entitled, 'From Hitler to Uncle
Sam: How American Intelligence Used Nazi War Criminals.' And also joining us
here in Washington, Ray Cline, former deputy director of the CIA, who served
during World War II with the Office of Strategic Services. Mr. Cline, let me
begin with you, and let's begin specifically with the Arthur Rudolph case.
Should he have been forced to go back to Germany, or should he have been left
alone? RAY CLINE (former deputy director CIA): I am inclined to think he
should have been, ah, recognized as having paid whatever debt to society his,
ah, World War II, ah, activities, ah, deserved because of his very deliberate
effort to contribute his science and technology, which was of great genius, to
the United States and to the strategic, ah, defenses of this country in the
troubled period after World War II.
KOPPEL: So you can,. in effect,-set .up.a moral-equation. that says whether or
not
he was.. guilty, directly or. indirectly,,for_.the deaths of 5,000,-10,000, 20,000
people, whatever it was he did once he came to this country more than made up
for it?-" CLINE: I feel that it was an exceptional contribution, ah, to our
security interests. And I feel that, ah, the, the moral issue of his
particular
behavior in the circumstances at the end of the-`kar should not, ah, ah, be
allowed to offset this, ah, enormous benefit, which we deliberately sought and
got from him. I feel a little sad to see him now, ah, deprived of his American
citizenship and, ah, and made to feel a criminal-as an old man after all- these
years of trying to redeem a record which many Germans have tried to redeem.
KOPPEL: Ah, Mr. Ryan, you, you, ah, actually had to deal with this question
in,
in determining whether or not to go after him. Did you have a great deal of
moral wrestling to, ah, to do on this? ALLAN RYAN (former Justice Department
official): Well, it was an unusual case, Ted. But, I, I have to disagree
with,
with Ray, because I think the question you have to look at here is he came here
illegally. He came here by deception. Had he told the truth, he would have
been put on trial, as many others were. Ah, the Justice Department, for the
last five years, has been, ah, ah, vigorously investigating and prosecuting
people who did just what he did, although their contributions were not, ah,
nearly comparable. The question is does the law apply to everyone. And if the
answer to that question is yes, then it applies to Arthur Rudolph too. No one
denies his contributions in this country. No one denies the value of, of what
he has done here. But the Justice Department cannot be in the, in the business
of making, ah, moral judgments. The law applies to him as it applies to
everyone.
KOPPEL: Well, let's try and make a, a bit more of a moral judgment, though.
I'm, I'm a little bit confused when you say he came in here illegally. He was
CCnt need
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brought in by U.S. officials, was he not? RYAN: Well, yes, he was. But the,
the, ah, program, 'Project Paperclip,' ah, that was authorized by President
Truman, said specifically 'No Nazi war criminals are eligible,' in, in so many
words. Ah, he was, ah, investigated, not terribly thoroughly, but he was
investigated, and he was asked about his background. And he said, 'I had
nothing to do with the slave labor camps at, ah, Dora.' And now, we know that
that was quite, ah, ah, false. He had everything to do with them. So...
KOPPEL: Would I, would I be assuming too much if I assumed that the people who
asked him those questions might, with a wink and a nod, have said, You weren't
a war criminal, were you, ah, Mr. Rudolph?' RYAN: I don't know. I don't know
whether, whether it was done that way or not. Ah, I think, had the
investigation been pushed, ah, further, particularly in 1947, after he was
already here but when the evidence of the concentration camps was well before
us, I think certainly they, they, ah, could have found out.
KOPPEL: Well, I guess what confuses me is how was it possible 30, 40 years
after the fact to re-create what apparently was so difficult to re-create
immediately after the fact? RYAN: Because immediately after the fact there
was
a, there was a great confusion. There was a lack of knowledge. What we have
been able to do, what the Justice Department has been able to do, what Eli
Rosenbaum did when he worked for me, which was-a superb. job, was to gather
evidence in bits and pieces and assemble it into a mosaic and confront Arthur
Rudolph with that and say, 'Now, what do you say?' And when he was confronted
with that, when we sat down with him in San Jose two years ago, his, his
defense, such as it was, was, 'Yes, I was then, but I had no control over the
working conditions. of the inmates.' And. we. know that that's not true because
he
was in charge of that.. ALLEN: Mr. Koppel?
KOPPEL: Yes? ALLEN:- May I address myself to this point?
KOPPEL: Please. ALLEN: In the first place, the comments by Mr. Cline, who's
formerly of the CIA, are classic, uh, a classic statement of CIA utilization
not
only of, uh, such war criminals as Arthur Rudolph, but others, which have been
proven in instances, uh, quite a few instances. Secondly, uh, in terms of his
illegality, that is Rudolph's illegality in entering the country, he came in
under a government program that was fully given legality. As a matter of fact,'
in 1941, the law stated that those who supported the enemy were not unable to
come here seeking citizenship. This was under the, uh, uh, Project Paperclip,
uh, charter, which, uh, originated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was
changed specifically so that they, those who were associated with the
participation in the World War II on the side of the Fascists were able to come
here. The use of him was known quite early. The fact that the Office of
Special Investigations, I mean quite early, soon after World War II, that the
OSI has recently put together this case which was put, done brilliantly by Eli
Rosenbaum and the OSI, whose work is of a high level. Nonetheless, it is in no
wise a real solution of the moral question of the employment of Nazi war
criminals for whatever reasons, including space programs.
6untinued
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KOPPEL: All right. Let me stop you right there, Mr. Allen, because, I, I, I
think we're getting to the point that we really need to discuss right now, and
that is, and I'd like to raise it first with Mr. Cline, the question of the
moral culpability of the U.S. government in something like this. Does the U.S.
government, when it weighs on the one hand the practicality of allowing these
admittedly brilliant German scientists to go over to the Soviet Union or to
close one eye and not press too hard to find out whether they were or were not
war criminals... You have no trouble making that distinction. Would you
explain why? CLINE: Well, Ted, you, you, you all three tend to, uh, assume a
degree of culpability in the way you pose the questions. I, I want to
emphasize
what was passed over rather lightly, that the period at the exact end of World
War II was a period of some confusion about what had gone on in Germany and who
was responsible for it. Hitler was dead. The SS ran the slave labor camps.
We
only gradually found the revolting circumstances in the extermination camps.
It
was a horrible situation, but I recall from those days a great effort to try to
discover the dimensions of the'activities and the precise responsibilty of
individuals for it, and it wasn't easy. People were studying these records a
long time.
KOPPEL: No, I agree with you. I agree with you, Mr. Cline. CLINE: A11
right.
KOPPEL: And we were in a state of high moral dudgeon, which culminated-in the
Nuremberg trials. I'm merely suggesting that-maybe those we tried were-less
useful to us than those we that allowed in the back door. CLINE: Well, what I
think is that a different kind of moral responsibility rests with the leaders
of
governments, particularly in these troubled circumstances, the closing out of a
horrible four-year war, to protect the interests of its own citizens and its
own
future security interests. There was a very clear understanding that the
Soviet
Union.was becoming very brutal in its behavior in central Europe already in
1945, that At was trying to capture these German scientists and technicians and
intelligence officers, and in fact, there was a major anti-Hitler conspiracy
by,
led by an intelligence officer named *Galin on the Eastern Front to get the
scientists, to get the intelligence officers to move to Bavaria and surrender
to
the Americans, because they wanted to make a retribution for whatever crimes
they had committed and contribute to the welfare and security of the United
States. Now that's a legitimate objective by the United States government to
take advantage. ALLEN: Mr. Koppel?
Idnued
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KOPPEL: Yeah. I'll tell you what. If you would do it briefly, please, Mr.
Allen, and then we have to take a break. ALLEN: Yes. Galin, of course, was
not an anti-Nazi. He was an unreconstructed Nazi, and as a matter of fact, it
was his files of operations behind the lines of the Soviet Union that the
Central Intelligence Agency used and employed, incidentally, some of the same
brutalities used by Galin and his forces. CLINE: That's such, that's such
obvious anti-CIA attitude. I really don't want to try to refute it, but it
isn't true. I knew Galin well. I know the facts, and I don't think you do.
ALLEN: I do know the facts, and I don't care how well you knew him personally.
His objective role is very clear in history.
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