U.S. Data Shows Possible Waldheim Tie to Atrocities

The Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit has compiled additional information on the wartime activities of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim to bolster a recommendation that Waldheim be barred from the United States, sources said today.

The Office of Special Investigations renewed its recommendation regarding Waldheim with a 200-page memo saying that he may have been involved in World War II atrocities against Yugoslav partisans, said the sources, speaking on condition that they not be identified.

The memo was sent to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who has not acted on last April’s recommendation by OSI that Waldheim be placed on a “watch list” of people to be excluded from the United States.

Meese has told the House Judiciary Committee that he expects to make a decision soon on the Waldheim matter.

Federal law states that people should be barred from entering the United States if they were associated with the Nazi government in Germany.

Any decision on Waldheim would be a largely symbolic gesture. His position as a head of state gives him diplomatic immunity preventing enforcement of the law’s provisions. As Austrian president, Waldheim would visit the United States only at the invitation of President Reagan.

Until a year ago, Waldheim had maintained that he was discharged from the German army after suffering a war wound on the Russian front in 1941.

Actually, Waldheim spent the remainder of the war as a German Army intelligence officer in the Balkans, according to records uncovered in 1986 by the World Jewish Congress.