CIA WWII WAR CRIMINALS FILES: UKRAINIAN FASCIST MYKOLA LEBED

[UPDATE: We have come across a pamphlet issued by the National Archives on 10 December 2010 to accompany the release of the cache of declassified CIA documents we present here. The pamphlet, entitled: “Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence and the Cold War” was written by Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda; it is an indispensable explanatory guide to the documents you will read here. You will find the chapter on the CIA’s use of Ukrainian fascists in Chapter 5, page 81 – IWPCHI]

We publish here the 301-page U.S. Office of Strategic Services/Central Intelligence Agency dossier on WWII-era Ukrainian fascist leader and wanted war criminal  Mykola Lebed, released to almost no acclaim at all on 10 December 2010.

Lebed, who was allowed to escape justice for his WWII-era war crimes with the help of the OSS/CIA  “Rat Line” that provided him with a new identity and which enabled him to obtain US citizenship; he died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA in 1998 at the ripe old age of 89.  These documents are extremely valuable as they comprise a station-to-station proof of how the CIA’s “Rat Line” worked.  They may well be unique in that regard.  Even a cursory glance through the first 20 pages of this dossier brings home that fact with a vengeance.

CIA_WWII_Nazi_War_Criminals_Files_LEBED_MYKOLA_CIA_RAT_LINE_DOC_1

Lebed was the man in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) who was responsible for training the assassin and providing the weapons for the 1936 murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki.  The Wikipedia article on Lebed charges that “[a]s leader of OUN-B he is responsible for the “ethnic cleansing” of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.”  [Source: Wikipedia, “Mykola Lebed”]

We have not yet had the opportunity to review these documents which we retrieved from the CIA website’s Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room.  As soon as we get the chance, we’ll post “highlights” from these files in a more easy-to-download format.  Meanwhile:

CIA_WWII_Nazi_War_Criminals_Files_LEBED_MYKOLA complete 301 pages

Highlights:

CIA_WWII_Nazi_War_Criminals_Files_LEBED_MYKOLA_CIA_RAT_LINE_DOC_1

CIA_WWII_Nazi_War_Criminals_Files_LEBED_MYKOLA_CIA_RAT_LINE_DOC_2

CIA_WWII_Nazi_War_Criminals_Files_LEBED_MYKOLA_CIA_RAT_LINE_DOC_3