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Clinton signs bill to open war-crime files
MICA SCHNEIDER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - Additional U.S. records regarding Nazi war criminals will see the light of day. On Oct. 8, President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which was passed by Congress in August.
The new law calls for the creation of the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, which will make formerly classified records concerning the Holocaust available to the public. Clinton will appoint the members of the working group, which will locate, inventory and recommend records for declassification. The act requires the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the historian of the State Department and the archivist of the United States to be included.
"Federal agencies have been permitted to keep certain information secret, at the expense of families and researchers who are simply looking for closure and answers to questions that have plagued them," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who sponsored the bill in the House in June. "The U.S. owes it to the survivors to reveal the truth about war criminals who may have entered this country."
Douglas Bloomfield, an independent consultant who serves as the Washington representative of the World Jewish Congress, said, "We hope this will encourage other countries to follow America's lead providing long-overdue public access to the records."
Declassifying additional documents may lead to new interest in those documents already available, Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, said.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, applauded the new law. "We expect to learn more details about the U.S. government's knowledge of the Final Solution," he said, adding that the release of such information could play a role in the recovery of Nazi gold from Swiss banks and the hunt for Nazi war criminals.
Maloney said through her press secretary that she doesn't expect some records to be made available for a couple of years. The law requires records to be disclosed in their entirety, but agency heads will have the option of exempting certain records they deem a threat to national security, U.S. foreign policy or those that compromise a person's privacy.
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