*************************************************************************** Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.023 = Kuropas: OSI Scam Grinds On; 1995-12-2? *************************************************************************** From: The Ukrainian Weekly Date: November 26, 1995 Title: OSI scam grinds on By: Dr. Myron Kuropas At a time when our federal government is locked in bitter debate on how and when to balance a budget that appears out of control, we, the American taxpayers, are shelling out millions and millions of dollars to fund a federal scam that boggles the mind. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI), notorious for its mendacity and duplicity, is being kept afloat within the U.S. Department of Justice by a small group of miscreants daring to call themselves "Nazi-hunters." The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court ruled that OSI fraudulently prosecuted Ivan Demjanjuk. Why? To save their jobs. "This was confirmed by Alan Ryan, who headed the OSI from its establishment until 1981," writes Yoram Sheftel in his book "The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial." "In an interview in an Alabama newspaper in 1991, he said in reference to the Demjanjuk trial: 'It was one of the first cases we tried, and we were very much on the line. If we had lost that case, we probably would have had a very short lifespan.' "Thus," concludes Mr. Sheftel, "the OSI conspired to shorten Demjanjuk's life in order to lengthen its own." The OSI knew Mr. Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible," continues Mr. Sheftel; "since 1978 the American authorities had been concealing evidence that could have demonstrated Demjanjuk's absolute innocence of the crime that condemned him to the gallows...three countries had taken part in framing Demjanjuk--the Soviet Union, Poland and the United States." What has happened to the perpetrators of this heinous miscarriage by a group of men sworn to uphold justice? The first OSI head, Alan Ryan, has a comfortable career at Harvard University and claims no knowledge of concealment of evidence. He appears safe from prosecution. Mr. Ryan's successor, Neal Sher, has been rewarded with the chairmanship of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Given the fear that AIPAC generates in Congress, he's also untouchable. Eli M. Rosenbaum, the present head of the OSI, is known to us for his Ukrainophobic diatribes in The Ukrainian Weekly during the 1980s. Mr. Rosenbaum all but accused Ukrainians of defending, even harboring Nazi war criminals because we believed John Demjanjuk was innocent. I was reminded of all this when I opened the November 19 issue of the Sunday Chicago Sun-Times and saw an angry looking Mr. Rosenbaum standing in front of a map of Europe dotted with Stars of David. I saw a similar map in the Vienna office of Simon Wiesenthal in 1977. The Stars of David, which varied in size according to the number of Jews murdered in various parts of Europe, was a reminder, Mr. Wiesenthal told me, of the work that he still had to do. These days, Mr. Rosenbaum is working very hard to keep his job. "much to our surprise, we find ourselves busier now than we have ever been," he told Michael Briggs of the Sun-Times Washington bureau. "We have a greater number of really promising investigations than ever before. The cases we filed last year matched our highest total in over a decade." The reason is "that the archives for the former Warsaw Pact nations suddenly opened to us." The Soviet Union's collapse, he wants us to believe, has increased the workload of the OSI. What a con. The Warsaw Pact archives were always open to the OSI and the Soviet Union was more than willing to oblige in defaming Ukrainians. "It is a race against the clock," Mr. Ronsenbaum concluded, "because the suspects are getting older and the witnesses are getting older...How many are actually out there is impossible to say. There are estimates all over the lot. I've seen 3,000. I've seen 10,000. The real answer no one knows." Where did we hear such ridiculous numbers before? From none other than Simon Wiesenthal. Remember when he was claiming that there were 6,000 Nazi war criminals living in Canada? The Deschenes Committee investigated his charges thorughly and discovered that in the case of Ukrainians at least, Mr. Wiesenthal could only come up with 217 names. Of this number, Jules Deschenes later reported, "187 never set foot in Canada, two have left for another country, no prima facie case has been established against 16, and the last one could not be located." It was obvious that the information furnished by Mr. Wiesenthal, Mr. Deschenes concluded, "was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government, through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this commission to a connsiderable amount of purposeless work." All at Canadian taxpayers' expense, of course. The Deschenes Commission spent years investigating allegations of "hidden" Nazi war criminals and issued its report in 1986. This painstaking effort notwithstanding, Jay Bushinsky, another Chicago Sun-Times correspondent and known Ukrainophobe, wrote as late as Septtember 22, that Canada had done too little too late "to ferret out suspected Nazi war criminals who used Canada as a convenient post-war sanctuary..." Despite the evidence pointing to OSI complicity in framing an innocent man, some Jews still believe he is guilty of war crimes. "Demjanjuk's presence in this country is obscene," wrote Jeff Jacoby a Boston Globe columnist on September 28. "He was an accessory to the most awful evil of the 20th century; the blood of unnumbered victims stains his hands...Like many other Ukrainians, Demjanjuk was glad to help the Nazis massacre Jews...Between March 1942 and October 1943, some 2.5 million human beings were gassed to death...Most of the killing was committed by non-German collaborators, especially Lithuanians, Latvians -- and Ukrainians like Demjanjuk." For Mr. Jacoby, the final Demjanjuk verdict in Israel was "justice miscarried." Messrs. Rosenbaum and Jacoby are not alone in their antipathy towards Ukrainians. Other Jews are fanning the flames of hatred as well. Eric Breindel, the editorial page editor of the New York Post, also believes that justice was not served in the Demjanjuk affair. His article appeared in The Jewish Press Magazine on June 17, 1994, condemning the Sixth District Court's finding of "prosecutorial misconduct" by OSI attorneys. Despite the fact that in February 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno admitted that "there was grave concern expressed in some prior [OSI] cases," Mr. Breindel demanded that Mr. Demjanjuk be deported immediately. And so Mr. Rosenbaum, the great OSI pretender, goes his merry way, spreading calumny and obloquy in his wake, knowing full well that come what may, his high-paying federal job is a safeguarded sinecure. *************************************************************************** Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.023 = Kuropas: OSI Scam Grinds On; 1995-12-2? Posted on the Internet by Stefan Lemieszewski ***************************************************************************