Bill Could Hamper Investigation into U.S. Knowledge of Japanese Atrocities

A committee created to unearth what U.S. espionage agencies knew but never revealed about Nazi atrocities is poised to pursue the same probe of Japan’s wartime deeds, which include using American POWs as slave laborers and even as guinea pigs in scientific experiments. But a recently approved bill may damage the task force’s power to pry secrets from the furtive hands of the CIA.

Congress this week is expected to send President Clinton the 2001 U.S. intelligence budget. Among other things, it would expand the Interagency Working Group--adding at least one additional expert on Japanese war crimes--and would extend the committee’s existence by more than a year, until 2003.

Clinton created the commission last year to speed and oversee the declassification of files about World War II atrocities and the whereabouts of Axis loot.

Though the task force would get more time to do its work, the new legislation could strip some of its power. Some key language in the committee’s original mandate was deleted by the time a combined version of Senate and House bills was tacked on to next year’s intelligence budget.

Most significant is the disappearance of a clause that gave the war crimes committee the power to override the 1947 National Security Act. That law lets the intelligence community withhold information--including reports that American spies smuggled war criminals into the United States--regardless of its significance.

“At best this will just turn out to be mischief that will have no impact at all,” said former U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the Interagency Working Group and a New York lawyer. “At worse, it will create a double standard, making it harder to get information on Japanese war crimes than on crimes committed under the Nazis. Worst of all, it could undermine efforts to find out the whole truth about the Holocaust.”

Feinstein Looks For Clarification

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sponsored the Senate bill, is trying to get Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and House Intelligence Committee head Porter J. Goss of Florida to “clarify” the language in the bill, which was changed during meetings of the two intelligence committees.

That isn’t likely to happen. The intelligence community has long opposed any law that weakens or sets a precedent for bypassing the National Security Act, which gives the CIA director broad powers to keep confidential any information he feels would reveal aspects of intelligence operations. Shelby and Goss also have been mentioned as candidates to head the CIA if George W. Bush is elected president.

“We want it to be clear what the intent of the legislation is. Anything that introduces a double standard . . . would not be acceptable,” Feinstein aide Michael Schiffer said.

Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), however, said the new rules would indeed give U.S. intelligence officials more authority to withhold records of Japanese war crimes than of Nazi atrocities.

Plan Is to Continue Original Mandate

Interagency Working Group members have always believed they have had the mandate to investigate Japanese war crimes as aggressively as Nazi war crimes, but they needed Congress to give them more time to do so. Feinstein, however, introduced legislation to create a new task force to focus solely on getting access to intelligence files about how Allied prisoners and civilians in Japanese-occupied territories were tortured, malnourished and forced to build roads, bridges and factory goods for the war effort.

The end result was the language written into the intelligence budget by the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. The legislation quietly passed both houses of Congress by a voice vote.

The National Archives’ historians, who must negotiate with the intelligence community over each set of documents released, were scratching their heads over the latest mandate. Michael Kurtz, the National Archives’ assistant archivist and chairman of the Interagency Working Group, said he would have preferred stronger and more specific language. But he said the group plans to proceed as it always has and address any new obstacles only if they arise.

The Interagency Working Group has obtained the declassification of about 2.5 million intelligence documents since it was created by Clinton’s executive order last year.

Though the effect of that information has yet to be fully gauged, it has provided fresh evidence about when the United States and its Allies knew about the planned massacre of Jews. There also have been hints that the U.S. government brought to the United States Nazi war criminals or used them as spies during the Cold War.

“We’re uncovering documents that show that the Allies had prior knowledge about terrible things about to happen,” said Greg Bradsher, a historian at the National Archives.

U.S. intelligence agencies have greeted the commission’s information requests with varying degrees of assistance. The FBI is treating the requests like actual investigations, tracking names that appear in one file to other records. Other agencies are following only the exact letter of the request and leaving it to historians to connect the dots.

“It’s a real mixed bag for an infinite variety of reasons,” Bradsher said, ticking off details of a new records release that includes a report of a 1989 plan by the Israeli secret service to kidnap and prosecute a Nazi officer living in Argentina.

“There are a lot of forces at play in the give and take about what the public wants to know and what intelligence agencies worldwide are willing to divulge. It usually takes Congress or the president to make this information available.”

A Closer Look at Japanese Atrocities

Japan poses particular challenges. In the 1950s, the United States returned intelligence files it had seized when Japan surrendered, copying only a fraction of them. Japanese officials have been reluctant to let anybody look at them since.

Linda Goetz-Holmes, a member of the Interagency Working Group’s historian advisory committee, said some of the worst beatings and mistreatment of Allied POWs were carried out by civilians at big Japanese companies that used slave labor, such as Nippon Steel, Mitsui textiles and Kawasaki, the conglomerate that makes motorcycles, Jet Skis and subway cars for the New York City system.

As the film “Bridge on the River Kwai” depicted, Allied POWs also were used to build railroads and bridges, and POW camps were frequently located near what were heavily bombed Japanese industrial targets. With defeat nearing, one Japanese commander used the ruse of an air raid to herd 158 Marine POWs into a tunnel, which was then set on fire, said Goetz-Holmes, the author of two books on Japanese war crimes.

Japan held 36,000 American POWs, and evidence shows that some were the subjects of biological experimentation, she said. Unit 731, an army unit that supposedly specialized in water purification, in fact conducted vivisections on Chinese nationals who were brought in by the truckload, wrapped in burlap and stacked like logs. She said several American soldiers complained that doctors drew blood or gave them injections of mysterious liquids that sickened them, in some cases causing long-term damage to internal organs.

A group of POWs has attempted to sue Japanese industries for back wages or damages they claim they were due, but they say they have been discouraged by the U.S. State Department.

“They want the world to know what they went through. They were beaten and starved and worked like animals,” said Otto Schwartz, a POW from New Jersey and veterans’ activist who worked on the Burma-Thailand railroad, which included the infamous bridge on the River Kwai.