I
106TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. R. 5065
To amend the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act to extend the authority
of the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group for 2
years, to express the sense of Congress regarding the cooperation of
foreign nations with such Group in carrying out its duties under such
Act, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
JULY 27, 2000
Mrs. MALONEY of New York (for herself, Mr. HORN, and Mr. WAXMAN) intro-
duced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Govern-
ment Reform
A BILL
To amend the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act to extend
the authority of the Nazi War Criminal Records Inter-
agency Working Group for 2 years, to express the sense
of Congress regarding the cooperation of foreign nations
with such Group in carrying out its duties under such
Act, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Nazi and Japanese
War Crimes Disclosure Act’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) In 1999, Congress adopted the Nazi War
Crimes Disclosure Act (Public Law 105–246) re-
quiring the executive branch to identify any still-
classified records in its custody relating to Nazi war
crimes, war criminals, persecution, and looted assets
and to declassify and release these records to the
American public. Under terms of that legislation, the
President established the Nazi War Criminal
Records Interagency Working Group to carry out
the functions required in the legislation.
(2) In its first year, the Interagency Working
Group screened more than 600,000,000 pages of
material relating to Nazi war crimes and has declas-
sified 1,500,000 pages and opened them to the pub-
lic at the National Archives.
(3) While the Interagency Working Group has
worked diligently to screen materials and declassify
millions of pages of material, the limited resources
in both staff and funding available to the Inter-
agency Working Group threatens their ability to
complete the functions required by the Nazi War
Crimes Disclosure Act.
(4) Already, significant new information about
the Holocaust has been revealed in the more than
400,000 Office of Strategic Services records released
by the Interagency Working Group at the National
Archives on June 26, 2000. However, further revela-
tions depend on adequate staff support and funding
for the Interagency Working Group.
(5) The remarkable progress that has been
made by the Interagency Working Group has been
achieved even though the Congress has not appro-
priated funds for the support of the Interagency
Working Group or for the activities carried out by
the various agencies which hold the records. Without
the resources to review the materials being released,
it will be years before we truly understand the sig-
nificance of what is contained in the declassified ma-
terials.
(6) The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
charged the Interagency Working Group with re-
viewing all records that pertain to World War II,
under the direction of, or in association with the
Nazi Government of Germany, any government occu-
pied by the military of the Nazi Government, and
any government that was an ally of the Nazi Gov-
ernment, which includes the Japanese Government’s
records.
(7) After the end of World War II, the United
States returned more than 18,000,000 pages of cap-
tured Japanese records to the Japanese Government
at their request.
(8) In order to complete the Congressional di-
rectives of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, the
Interagency Working Group should review the mate-
rials that were returned to Japan. Therefore, the
full cooperation of the Japanese Government to as-
sist the Interagency Working Group in reviewing all
of the World War II records is desired to insure that
these historic records can be reviewed, released, or
otherwise made available to the public in a timely
and efficient manner.
(9) The Interagency Working Group has been
working diligently to expedite their charge under the
Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, but the original
authorization for three years will not allow for the
completion of the momentous tasks outlined in the
legislation, specifically in terms of completing the re-
view of the records pertaining to the Japanese gov-
ernment.