TO CATCH A NAZI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201220002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 11, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201220002-6
VILLAGE VOICE
11 February 1986
TO H A NA
. CATC ZI
MM r a 111 lAIR. MOST RCEIALY
e rnmen e-
a a certain high-ra g as: co
o en
Agency allows hnn to enter this country
1949 and later become-a-V.b. citi n.
n
u ject s history 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 completed a M-m- mves-
t!pt
4on the postwar immigra-
Ug&
Nazia and Nazi co ra rs,
of the secret assistance they eg re-
cetyed from U.S. intelligence agencies.
This sensitive federal study was o
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 l',:.
Much of the information about them and
their activities remains classified. In two
saes the assisted individuals were pro-
authorities seeking to enforce immigra-
tion laws that prohibit the entry of war
usecutors.
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
des ite its shortco the report i a
lan mar -an official admission that
Nazis and Nazi collaborators were assit-
e in entering a United Ali tlsa
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 i-
genc~t by _._e. w protected
him from war-crimes prosecution by the
vi
no et , brought him to
der an assumed name and concealed his
true past from the tion and Nat-
urali tion Service. So important was his
case that in Attorney General James
P. McGranery, the director of Central
Intelligence, General Walter Bedell
Smith. And the commissioner of the INlAt
Argyle R. Maciley, seer tly mead to i
mit his residence here. In 1957, he be-
came a U.S. citizen.
His name is Mykola Lebed, and he
lives in Yonkers.
MYKOLA USED IS 75 YEARS OLD, AND OAS
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-
iulting conflisb.witl! both German tend
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.
coo
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Details bf Mykola Lebed's involvement
with the OUN have been pieced to?thej The Ukrainian targets of the OSI have
from Army Counterintelli eo far been minor figures-"policemen"
(I) files, other military archives, and in the service of the Nazi occupiers of the
immigration records: from interviews Ukraine, who don't figure as individuals
with Ukrainians: and from histories of in any of the histories of the period. Most
the period, including an eyewitness ac-
count in the files of the ocaust docu-
mentation center at Ya Vashem in Isra-
el a pons of pages fro_ m_t_h_e CIC
file on Lebed, obtained under the Free-
and thus safe from the varieties of justice
meted out in U.S., Soviet, Polish, or Is-
raeli courts. Mykola Lebed is an excep-
tion. For years he was the OUN's third-
dom of ormation Act, were "sanitized" in-conun nd, and he ran the Sluzhba
5 -at is obliterated) the Army ore Bezpeky, its reputedly murderous securi-
being re to the once. lus a h' force.
withhold rut o certain a e Justice Department policy, which cited ap-
FOIA exemptions pertaining to pro- plies to the OSI, strictly prohibits any
tection of ?intelligence sources" an3"na- comment about pending cases. But the
tional security." One cl__ _was_Rp- Voice has learned that the OSI maintain.
parent y withheld -at the regue.st-9f
"another government agency," and an-
other document had -been removed from
the National Archives b t~LIA -
1Tour dea3a after the terrib a events
of the war, the h>mdsrT *fascism in East-
ern Europe is no academic matter. In
recent years, the U.S. government has
finally begun to prosecute individual war
criminals among the Nazi collaborators
who found refuge on ou' shore.. 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 communi-
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 Polish 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.
an open file on Lebed, making him a
potential defendant in denaturalization
proceedings. Materials pertaining. to his
case from-the GAOprobe
gleaned f
,
rom
the files of military- intellige a and tJe_
CIA, were turned _over to the _OSI- last
sum_mer.
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 history remains murTry- ,--con-
cea7e3in still-clammed goverment vernmentt ar-
chives, there is 'ttle doubt that such a
display would severely embarrass not
only the OUN and its supporters ut e
U.S. government as well --especially the
CIA.
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. Lebed escaped these sanc-
tions because his sponsors mercifully
citedS-ection 8 of the CIA Act of 1949. An
obscure portion of the legislation that es-
tablished-the CIAO Section 8 permits the
agency to bring-100 individuals a year to
the U.S. for reasons of national securi-
ty-regardless 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 used-the 100
numbers provision. to facilitate thee-n-fir-y-
of Nazis."
Patti Volz, a spokeswoman for the CIA,
declined to comment about Lebed or the
GAO report. "We don't get into details,"
sfie-said. "We don't confirm or deny that
someone has worked for us. We wouldn't
have any comment on him."
REPORTS FILED WITH THE ARMY COUNTER
intelligence Corps in the late '40s give
various dates for the birth of Mykola
Lebed, but his naturalization papers say
November 23, 1910. He was born in the
western Ukrainian province of Galicia, an
agricultural area controlled at various
Fsfler for a day: States ltasdera led the
OUN's short-lived astseoooss fasdst state.
times by Poland, the Soviet Union, and
Germany. From his early school days in
L'vov, the provincial capital, Lebed was
involved in the right wing of the Ukraini-
an nationalist movement, which from the
early '30s 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
'209 had been harsh, and the OUN's
younger members included a number,
who, like Lebed, were inclined to terror-
ism. Among them was the OUN's eventu-
al would-be fahrer, 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-
pgrts .say-- hat .-U se. Inge y escaped
from Warsaw but was captured in stet
-
CinSaaiiv returned to Plant by
the German authorities. Convicted in a
mass tri e-b , Banera, 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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"For many years," wrote Armstrong, A former OUN member, now dead, duty of every member of the OUN to
"the OUN had been closely tied to Ger- wrote in 1958 a different and more de- show the Germans that his nerves are
man policy. This alignment was fur- tailed eyewitness version of Lebed's so- just as tough as a German's and that the
thered by the semi-Fascist nature of its journ with the Gestapo. Retrieved from heart of any nationalist is as hard as
ideology, and in turn the dependence on the files of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the steel." Such "practical exercises" contin-
Germany tended to intensify Fascist declaration of Mykyta Kosakivs'kyy por- ued unabated, according to Kosakiv-
trends in the organization." In fact, most trays both Lebed and the OUN as eager s'kyy's testimony, and he fled Zakopane
historians regard the OUN as wholl fas
Y pupils of the Gestapo. in early January 1940. Others equally
cist-and tied to German intelligence- Kosakivs'kyy joined the OUN in 1933, sickened, he learned, left later, but Lebed
from its inception. It was the Nazi inva- and after sojourns in Czechoslovakia and remained until at least March of that
sion of Poland in September 1939 that Germany, returned to the Carpathian year, when the unit moved from Zakopa
allowed Lebed and the o-r a cted Ukraine late in 1939. He was among the
ne to the nearby town of Rabka, where
plotters to escape from Warsaw's Swiety older OUN officers present when the the Gestapo's depredations continued.
Kroyc prison after serving five years. "Ukrainian 'Raining Unit" was estab- When he finished his statement on De-
The xenophobic, antidemocratic, and lished at the Gestapo school in Zakopane cember 14, 1958, in German
g
anti-Semitic nationalism of the OUN that November. According to his declara- y, the former
meshed easily with Nazism. The qompli- tion, the Ukrainian unit was "organized of OUN heart member
disease, according knew he was dying
meat was not always returned, however. by the OUN leadership and by perm's- note according to the intro. ductory Within the Nazi hierarchy, opinions sion of the German Security Service." It Panes noFedenko, a a Ukrainian tthe liberal l and
Panes
d
about the Ukrainians diverged. Powerful included 120 specially selected trainees, implacable critic of the OUN. "I owe it to
Nazi figures considered the Ukrainians under the guidance of a Gestapo officer
an inferior people, unfit to govern them- named Walter Kruger and his assistant, public, to conscience
report t openmakely the this facts I wit-
selves. selves. Lebed and the other OUN leaders Wilhelm Rosenbaum, both Germans. -
? nested o d myself," Kosakivs'kyy concluded.
hoped that they would be able to set up The Ukrainian commandant of the en- ,Mykola Lebid evidently believes that
an autonomous fascist state, as part of tire unit was Lieutenant Viil'nyy," wrote his infamous accomplishments in the
Hitler's "New Europe," under a German Kosakivs'kyy, "whose real name was My- Ukraine and elsewhere are forgotten and
protectorate. kola Lebid [another transliteration of so are the multitudes of his innocent vic-
Such aspirations congealed into a mili- Lebed]." The curriculum included drills, tims, that every witness of his torture
tary, political, and espionage alliance be- intelligence and counterintelligence activities is either murdered or dead.
tween the OUN and the Nazi war ma- train ing, and interrogation techniques, Only Lebid is mistaken right there."
chine. Even after 1940, when the OUN but em hasized "exercises in the harden- Kosakivs'kyy's angry testament must
split into two feuding factions-the more ing of _ earts." be read in context, as the product of one
extremist led by Bandera, Lebed, and "At sundown," recalled Kosakivs'kyy, man's remorseful memory, and of Ukrai-
Yaroslav Stetako-both sought an ac- "Kruger, Rosenbaum, Lebid and a few nian emigre rivalries as well; obviously it
commodation with the German occupi- students would go to Zakopane, enter was published to discredit Lebed and the
cowar, urting Germans alter- some Jewish home on the way, grab a OUN. Yet there is supporting evidence
ers. Later between in the
g and repressing Jew, and bring him to the Unit. One eve- for his story in the historical record. The
the Ukrainians, but many OUN members ning, late in November or early in De- Zakopane school existed, according to Dr.
served continuously in Nazi formations, cember 1939. they returned with a young Aharon Weiss of Yad Vashem, and was
from the Waffen-SS to the local police Jew. In the presence of Ukrainian se- moved to the nearby town of Rabka in
forces, which murdered thousands of niors, including myself, Kruger and Ro- 1940. There was a Captain Kruger, men-
.Jews, Poles, communists, and socialists. senbaum, fortified with alcohol, proceed- tioned above, who commanded a Gestapo
ed with their demonstration of the proper unit in the area, and helped lead a joint
DURING THE MONTHS FOLLOWING THEIR RE- methods of interrogation." Nazi-OUN pogrom when the German
lease from prison, Lebed and the other Seeking to induce the innocent Jew to Army's Brandenburg regiment occupied
OUN leaders chafed under the temporary confess that he had raped an "Aryan" the Galician capital of L'vov in late June
constraints of the 1939 treaty between woman, the German officers beat and 1941.
Hitler and Stalin. According to Arm- tortured him, using their fists, a sword, And there is also no question that a
strong, they eagerly abetted the secret and iron bars. When he was bloody from German officer named Wilhelm Rosen-
Nazi preparations for war against the So- head to toe, they applied salt and flame baum was? a commandant at Zakopane
viets, sending their young adherents for to his wounds. The broken man then con- and Rabka during the training of Ukrai-
German military training in mountain fessed his fictional crimes, but that was nians. In 1964, that same,Rosenbaum was
camps set up as early as 1939. Sources not the end. arrested in West Germ and charged,
Apy
friendly to Lebed-whose slantF -ac- "Thereupon," Kosakivs'kyy continues, among other crimes, with the murder of
counts may be oun m memoran a of "he was taken to the corridor of the 200 Jews at Rabka between May 1942
the Army Counterintelligence Corps be- house and the 'co-eds' (three women and January 1943. According to Simon
tween 1947 and ,1948-understandably members of the unit) were called in. In Wiesenthal's 1967 book The Murderers
pass_over this period; their presence, Rosenbaum beat the Jew Among Us, the unit was a "train'
Only hints of what Lebed was actually ng cen
doing in 1940 and 1941 appear in tCIC again with an iron pipe and Lebid too ter for future cadres of lSS killers ... SS
S
file. A Se940 nr 30, a1948, memo ppear in the h does assisted manually in that `heroic action.' men at Rabka were -being hardened so
mention that For a short time, [Led One of the senior Ukrainians and I with- they would not break after a few weeks of
me
meemoed get r insight into the tan drew from that spectacle to our rooms. duty. They had to become insensitive to
We learned afterwards that the tortured the sight of blood, to the agonized shouts
tics of the German State Police and suc- man was stripped naked, stood-up in of women and children. The job must be
ceeded in joining the GESTAPO school front of the school as 'a sentry' and done with a minimum of fuss and a maxi-
in ZAKOPANE (District of Krakow), doused with water in heavy frost." mum of efficiency. That was a Fahrerbe-
from which he ultimately fled." And a Kosakivs'kyy and his friend protested fehl-the Fuhrer's order." Rosenbaum
card in the CIC file identifies Lebed as "a to Lebed the next day, but the comman- was convicted in Hamburg in 1968 and
graduate of the Zakopane, Poland crimi- dant told them bluntly that "it was the sentenced to hard labor for life.
nal police school."
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Lebed 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."
LEBED'S TRAMN' Q ZAKOPIIIE, HOWEVER
cursory, was soon recognized by his fel-
low leaders in OUN-B, whose acronym
designated its domination by the nation-
alist ft hrer Bandera. When their split
from the old leadership became irrevoca-
ble in 1941, Bandera commissioned the
creation of a "security service," the
Sluzhba 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 Lebed at length, stated the
facts with characteristic discretion: "In
Lebed-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 or?aniration an unen-
viable reputation for ruthlessness." In an
interview last month Armstrong was still
sympathetic to Lobed, 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 [OUN]."
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 L'vov 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-
gall 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 L'vov, after Stetako proclaimed
an independent Ukraine. Loyal to the
Ft firer, who was in their view creating a
glorious new Europe, the Ukrainians still
dreamed of their own state. Bandera, the
Ukrainian ftlhrer, named Stetako prime
minister and Lobed 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 Bandera. Stetako, and other
members of the leadership. Lebed 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 Lebed, 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 Lebed 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.
Lebed, who had meanwhile adopted
the nom de guerre Maxym Ruban, 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 Lebed killed some
Ukrainian partisans who- were fighting
for the same cause."
Other writers, like the Ukrainians
Panes Fedenko and 0. Shuliak, con-
demned Lebed 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-
ers were the Security men under the
orders of Lebed." Massacres and other
acts of terror were also carried out
against civilians, against Soviet prisoners
of war, against entire Polish villages in
the Ukraine, and against Jews fleeing
from Nazi persecution.
In his own booklet on the history of the
UPA, published in 1946, Lebed 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."
war
L disc to trace. By then the 0~
had established a new front-group, the
Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council-
known by its transliterated initials,
UHVR-of which Lebed 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 Lebed'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 Lebed,
who was afraid that the Soviets might
attempt to seize him there. He sought
and apparently recei ed4be. 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 democr tic 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, Lebed 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 poet 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 Bandera as one of his
men.)
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201220002-6
zines on Soviet and u uamian affairs.
Ukrein;wn~ familiar with the workings
of Prop say at~t it could not have sus-
s
tain i o a oin es o eta pu fi=
- cations-many o w c r Iv
n were
sm g ed into t e oviet -ruled
TJ1s sine-and that it probably received
rom a overnmen
agen
mentioned the CIA. 1lnytzkyji said he
d
1
a ew years, it a imwessi le to let i ms t now whether ro og had received
o~, ~ use of "fear for his rsonal any such subsidies. "They keep some
safety and his ' 'tywith ,S. ~t1_ things hidden," he said: But he believes
Lebed "has some connections with the
Ii nce o rations" Once be knew th
e
. 24 &= 'a secrets, viets ou t r- - American authorities. What kind of con-
cT the
to capture -so was
ldt th U S
smugge inoe..
Lebed became a citizen on March 18,
1957. His application listed an address in
Washington Heights as his home, and
"journalist" as his profession. He had two
witnesses: Bohdan Czajkowakyj, 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 Lebed 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 Lebed was "completely absorbed" in
his work at the Ukrainian publishing
company's tiny, cramped offices in mid-
town Manhattan, although he was never
an editor. Aside- from keeping Prolog
afloat, Lebed's vocation until he. retired
in 1980 was to promote the views of the
UHVR,. the faction of the Orpniaatiazif at
Ukranian Nationalists which he headed.
"Because of fear for his personal safety Prolog was, in fact, at least partly a front The confidentiality of the OSI's opera-
and TusIi Rri ] with U.S. m for the former Banderites grouped tions is so strict that if the case is
operations," the section in the GAO re- around the UHVR and Lebed. dropped the public will probably never
port on Subject e: lain "the CIA The sources of its funding are mysteri- know why. Mykola Lebed is, and has
brought him to the United States under ous. Prolog's current officers insist that it been for 29 years, a citizen with constitu-
an assumed name." His na eIization has always been financially self-suffi- tional rights. All we know for now is that
papers, in anuary 1957, show that _ cient, with adequate support "from the the file on Subject D is still open. ^
Lebed arrived in New York harbor on Ukrainian community." Although the
Octo r 4, 1949. The truth about his market for its books and magazines is Research assistance by Ellen McGa- t-
identity and history was concealed from tiny, Prolog is now a for-profit corpora- hen, Leslie Yenkin, and Kevin Coogan.
the s ion and Naturalization r- lion. It has at various times maintained
vice. but two years later, the INS earned offices in Munich, London, and Cairo as
who Lebed was an opened an mveat a- well as New York. During the '70s Prolog
lion t t, the CIA was informed. mjg t published eight to 10 volumes annually,
lead to his dep2rtation. "According to the plus two or three small-circulation maga-
CIA e, says the report "INS learned that the subject's conviction had
been for involvement in an assassination
d that allegation of terrorism exis
against him." 'Ib protect Igbed the agen-
cy invoked Section 8 of the CIA Act.
this because, according to the GAOL
"The su ject was considered extremely
value ebl by U..S-intelligence. after
I Lebed had been employed by the CIA for
nections, or whether they included finan-
cial help, I don't know." None of the
other Ukrainians who discussed Prolog
and its financing would let their name be
used. As one put it, "People simply don't
talk about these things."
VERY LITRE ABOUT SUBJECT D'S PAST 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 significant
acts, tie rrt-su$er
from the same moral obtuseness that
tainted the CIA's re at-onsh with
Lebed. - -
Eli R senbaum, 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 Lebed. "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 Lebed 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
Lebed. But difficult legal and historical
questions must be answered before the
OSI can consider denaturalization pro-
ceedings against Lebed: Did the 1949
CIA Act which permitted hcs en r ow
him toT come a citizen, superseding of -
er immigration laws which wo or
it? Uan the allegations a ut past be
proved in court?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201220002-6