***************************************************************************
Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.020 = Sheftel Testimony; Sept. 1, 1995; 1995-11-11
***************************************************************************
	On Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, 1995, the Schiller Institute convened
public hearings in Vienna, Virginia to investigate the gross misconduct of
the U.S. Department of Justice in four areas:
1. Harassment of Black Elected Officials
2. Vendetta Against Lyndon LaRouche
3. Attempted Murder of John Demjanjuk
4. Case of Former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim

	The testimony of Yoram Sheftel concerning the case of John
Demjanjuk is reproduced below courtesy of Stefan Lemieszewski:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Reprinted, with permission, from {New Federalist} weekly
newspaper, Oct. 16, 1995.]

III. The Justice Department's Attempted Murder of John Demjanjuk

>From the Testimony of Yoram Sheftel

YORAM SHEFTEL: The Demjanjuk affair started as a Soviet plot in
the very beginning of 1976, through a Soviet crony named Michael
Hanusiak, who used to be an editor of a Ukrainian communist
newspaper published in New York under the name of the {Ukrainian
Daily News.} The affair started by an attempt to implicate
Demjanjuk for being a guard in the notorious death camp of
Sobibor. Sobibor, it is worthwhile to mention, was a death camp,
where between spring of 1942 and autumn of 1943, six hundred
thousand Jews were slaughtered, in front of the Allies, who knew
exactly what was happening, and didn't lift a finger to save
even one Jewish child from the holocaust which took place in
Sobibor....

On the way of the Demjanjuk affair, from being a case of
mistaken identity to a vicious show trial, became one of the
worst cases of coverup in modern history, and this is due to the
enormous, unprecedented misconduct of the Department of Justice,
most specifically, the Office of Special Investigations [OSI],
which is a body within the Justice Department. I will focus in
my presentation on that part of the Demjanjuk affair only,
because I think this is what is in the interest of this panel to
find out.

The lawsuit against Demjanjuk, to revoke his American
citizenship, was produced to the Cleveland federal court, in
September 1977. Although the sole proof against Demjanjuk was
identification from this extremely suggestive photo spread,
still there can be no doubt that the Justice Department did
believe genuinely in September 1977 that Demjanjuk was that
monster from Treblinka known as Ivan the Terrible by the
unfortunate Jews who worked as slaves in that camp.

But less than a year after this indictment of Demjanjuk was
presented to the federal court in Cleveland, the OSI received,
through the American embassy in Moscow, material--to be precise,
on Aug. 12, 1978--this material was a telegram, with a hundred
pages of documents, which were requested by the OSI in
connection with another case altogether to the case of John
Demjanjuk, a case which the OSI conducted and lost in the matter
of Fyodor Fedorenko.

However, that material didn't focus only on Fedorenko, but it
gave broad evidence about the criminal activities of other
guards in Treblinka, most of them, not all of them, of Ukrainian
origin, which were Soviet soldiers that fell into German
captivity, and volunteered to assist the SS in the process of
exterminating the Jews in the death camps. That information that
the OSI received, also contained information about the real
identity of Ivan the Terrible....

That is to say, on Aug. 12, 1978, not only the name is
mentioned, but the OSI also is in the possession of the picture
of the real Ivan the Terrible, a picture which has {no
similarity whatsoever} to Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk is bottom left,
and this is the picture, and everyone can see that there is no
similarity whatsoever between the two faces. Besides the
different name, of course, and many other features.

Now, if you expect the OSI to review its position about the
case, which was filed in, as I said, September 1977, and not yet
started the actual proceedings in court, if you would expect, as
everyone else would expect, that they would review their
position, due to the new material which they had in their
possession, which, of course, proved beyond any doubt that
Demjanjuk cannot be Ivan the Terrible, the OSI didn't do it.
They also didn't terminate the case. They decided to continue
with it, as if nothing had happened, and all this material were
not in their possession, and they decided to continue with the
case, to revoke Demjanjuk's American citizenship for being a man
whom they knew very well, at this stage, he was not: Ivan the
Terrible. They knew very well that there is no way whatsoever
that Demjanjuk could be Ivan the Terrible. Yet they decided to
proceed with the case....

From among the dozens of bureaucrats of the OSI, at this stage,
one George Parker became alert to what was happening, and he
wrote a five-page memorandum explaining why there is no case
whatsoever against Demjanjuk, in any allegation or charges
whatsoever. The Soviet-initiated ones, all those which exploded
in Israel due to the mistaken-identity proceedings through the
suggestive photo spreads. Now, not only did he write a
memorandum and send it to the head of the OSI at the time, Alan
Ryan, but he asked for an interview with Alan Ryan, and tried to
persuade him to drop the case, not to proceed with the case. We
are talking now about October 1980. The proceedings against
Demjanjuk in court had not yet started, the actual hearings of
evidence. Parker was not listened to, and the proceedings
started as if nothing had happened in February 1981.

When George Parker realized what was going to happen, he decided
the quit the OSI. He felt that he could not take part in this
frameup, on the one hand, and coverup on the other hand, and he
quit the OSI. Now, he revealed all those facts in an interview
he gave to NBC television in November 1991, eleven years later,
and in this interview, he showed that memorandum which he had
written 11.5 years before. And also, he noted that as early as
1979, internal documents of the OSI related to Ivan Marchenko
and Nikolai Shelayev as the two individuals who operated the gas
chambers in Treblinka--Ivan Marchenko, known as Ivan the
Terrible. He revealed all this, in this open interview to the
NBC in November 1991.

However, my strong position is that George Parker is {not}
better, and in some aspects is even worse, than the bureaucrats
of the OSI, because he wanted to wash his hands of {physically}
bringing about the execution of Demjanjuk for being what he's
not, but he made it possible for this to happen. Because in
February 1981, when the proceedings took place, {he kept his
mouth shut.} He knew exactly, and he wrote a whole memorandum
telling the reasons why Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible, and
his citizenship was revoked just because he was allegedly Ivan
the Terrible. And he knew also where the evidence was that shows
he's not Ivan the Terrible, where they're lying, where they
exist, and he kept his mouth shut.

Now, on Feb. 28, 1986, Demjanjuk was extradited to the State of
Israel, because the U.S. courts ruled that he was Ivan the
Terrible. Parker knew he was not. Parker knew he was now facing
the death penalty. He kept his mouth shut. On April 25, 1988
Demjanjuk was sentenced to death, for one reason only--for being
Ivan the Terrible. And again, George Parker kept his mouth shut.
He only opened his mouth in November 1991, when everything had
been revealed by the defense. We went in September 1990 to the
Soviet Union and got the documents--80 of them--which prove
unequivocally that Ivan Marchenko is Ivan the Terrible.

Parker only opened his mouth when Congressman James Traficant
revealed publicly the two telegrams I was referring to before.
So, actually, when Parker went on television, he was scared for
his own skin, and he wanted to jump on the carriage, and to say,
``Look, I have also something to tell about that conspiracy.''
But where was he for 11 years? Knowing exactly that there's a
conspiracy, and he wrote a whole memorandum about it, of five
pages. So, being so alert and so aware of what's going on, and
keeping your mouth shut in such dreadful circumstances, in my
opinion, doesn't make George Parker the only righteous man in
the sodomy of the OSI. No way....

The worst atrocity--really, I mean, it's difficult, when I read
this document to you in a second, you will not be able to
believe it--but the worst comes when Demjanjuk was finally
extradited to the State of Israel through proceedings of the OSI
on Feb. 28, 1986. A few weeks later, his son-in-law Ed Nishnic
filed a lawsuit based on FOIA, to get the entire file, the
entire dossier about Demjanjuk, which was in the possession of
the OSI. And we have a memo, written to Martin Sachs, who is one
of the trial attorneys of the OSI, by no other than Bruce
Einhorn, the lead attorney in the proceedings in the Cleveland
case. And this is what he writes:

``This will confirm our discussion regarding your request for
information concerning what the effect would be if we were to
agree to the release of our Demjanjuk files pursuant to several
pending FOIA requests. I am familiar with the facts of the
Demjanjuk case, because I was the lead attorney on it. I'm also
familiar with the fact that we are currently providing judicial
assistance to the State of Israel in their investigation and
prosecution of Demjanjuk who was extradited there this past
February. I can state unequivocally that we should oppose
release of our files for the following reason: concern over the
integrity of the Israeli prosecution. Release of our material
now would in all probability reveal, and could easily undermine
and prejudice, the Israeli prosecution strategy.''

What is this strategy? To execute Demjanjuk for being Ivan the
Terrible, while he knows that he's not! And he doesn't want to
undermine that strategy! To hang someone, while he knows that he
is not that man that he's going to be hanged for! That's what
he's saying--in black and white, in writing....

Judge Thomas Wisemann held extensive hearings in the second half
of 1992 and the first half of 1993, and came out with a
devastating report, on June 29, 1993. Based on this devastating
report of Judge Thomas Wisemann, on Nov. 17, 1993, the federal
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided as follows, after
total disbelief in everything the OSI people told them during
these proceedings. Now of course, I will not read to you the
entire decision, but small, very important, relevant parts....

``The OSI attorneys acted with reckless disregard for their duty
to the court, and their discovery obligations in failing to
disclose at least three sets of documents in their possession,
before the proceedings against Demjanjuk ever reached trial.''

Because they were in their possession from '78, as we saw. And
the trial proceedings started only in '81.

And then the court concludes:

``Thus we hold that the OSI attorneys acted with reckless
disregard for the truth, and for the government obligation to
take no steps that prevent an adversary from presenting his case
fully and fairly. This was fraud on the court in the
circumstances of this case.''

And finally, as a result of all this:

``For the reasons set out herein, we vacate the judgment of the
District Court, and the judgment of this court, in the
extradition proceedings on the grounds that the judgments were
wrongly procured, as the result of the prosecutorial misconduct
that constituted fraud on the court.''

Black and white. The most unequivocal terms possible.

Now, in this case, not only were we able to prove the coverup,
the cold-blooded conspiracy, but we also were able to prove the
motives and the reasons behind it, even this. And in order to
get to this, I would like to refer you to the following
[decision of the federal Court of Appeals]...|:

``Mr. Parker wrote in his 1980 memorandum that the
denaturalization case could not be dismissed because of factors
largely political, and obviously considerable.''

As simple as that.

``Other lawyers in the OSI wrote memos discussing this case as a
political hot potato, that if lost, will raise political
problems for us all, including the Attorney General.''

Then, the decision continues:

``Mr. Ryan, director of the office, wrote to the Assistant
Attorney General of the Criminal Division in 1980, that the OSI
had secured the support in Congress, Jewish community
organizations, the public at large, for the OSI. Press coverage
has been substantially favorable and support from Jewish
organizations is now secure. But he went on to say, that this
support cannot be taken for granted, and must be reinforced at
every opportunity.''

And then it concludes:

``It is obvious from the record, that the Office of Special
Investigations must try to please and maintain a very close
relationship with the various interest groups, because their
continued existence depended upon it.''

So, we have the motive and the reasons. Now, indirectly, Alan
Ryan himself confirmed it. He gave an interview to an Alabama
newspaper, the {Huntsville Times,} on Oct. 30, 1991. And here's
what he has to say:

``It was one of the first cases''--he is referring to the
Demjanjuk case--``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.''

In other words, in order to prolong the lifespan of the OSI,
they chose to shorten the lifespan of Demjanjuk.

***************************************************************************
Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.020 = Sheftel Testimony, Sept. 1, 1995; 1995-11-15
Originally posted by Stefan Lemieszewski
***************************************************************************