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Neal Sher
Letter 05
08-Sep-1998
Suppression of exculpatory evidence
"As suggested in my previous four letters to you, and as reinforced in the present letter, your gifts as a Nazi hunter appear to lie mainly in your lack of respect for truth, in your willingness to tamper with evidence, in your readiness to cast aside due process in order to achieve a preconceived outcome, and in your lack of qualms about sending an innocent man to the gallows in order to advance your career." � Lubomyr Prytulak
Neal M. Sher
Schmeltzer, Aptaker & Shepard, P.C.
Suite 1000
The Watergate
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
USA 20037-1905
Dear Mr. Sher:
I attach to the present letter several documents with which you are already familiar. First, there is the 24 Dec 1988 John Broadley letter to US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh protesting the suppression of exculpatory evidence by the OSI; and second your own 17 Jan 1989 reply to John Broadley. Concerning these two letters I ask the following four questions:
(1) Why do you ignore Suchomel and Franz?
Whereas John Broadley repeatedly requests production of interview reports for three witnesses � Richard Glazar, Franz Suchomel, and Kurt Franz � your reply addresses only Richard Glazar, ignoring the requests concerning Suchomel and Franz, and thus inviting the suspicion that the OSI had interviewed the latter two, but as these interviews had proven exculpatory to John Demjanjuk, the OSI preferred to suppress them.
This suspicion is in fact borne out by the evidence � for example, in the Report of the Special Master (United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, No. 85-3435), Special Master Thomas A. Wiseman. Jr. states "On September 4, 1979, Messrs. Moscowitz, Parker, and Charig met with Suchomel at the American Consulate. ... Apparently, the attorneys showed Suchomel a photospread containing a photograph of Mr. Demjanjuk, but he was unable to identify him" (p. 57); "[T]he attorneys interviewed Kurt Franz a few days later...." (p. 59); "The attorneys presented to Franz a photospread containing a photograph of Mr. Demjanjuk. Although George Parker recalled that Franz 'pondered very long and very hard' over the photograph of Mr. Demjanjuk, he did not identify any of the pictures" (p. 62).
Would you be able to state now if it is indeed the case that your reply to John Broadly neglected to address questions concerning Suchomel and Franz because you were aware that they had been interviewed by the OSI and that their testimony had proven to be exculpatory to John Demjanjuk?
(2) Was any Glazar interview report ever prepared?
Concerning Richard Glazar of Bern, Switzerland, you affirm merely that Glazar interview reports could not be found in the Demjanjuk file. However, your reply is unsatisfactory because it is compatible with Glazar having been interviewed, with interview reports having been prepared, and with these interview reports having been removed from the Demjanjuk file because they were exculpatory. I wonder if you would now be able to clarify your position by advising either that Glazar had never been interviewed and thus no interview reports had ever been written, or else that Glazar had been interviewed and his interview reports had been removed from the Demjanjuk file?
(3) How do you refute evidence that Glazar had been interviewed?
In suppressing the Glazar testimony, the OSI under your direction has deleted apparently Glazar's name from FOIA versions of numerous telegrams and letters, thus promoting the impression that it was not Glazar but some other Bern, Switzerland witness who had been the focus of OSI scrutiny. However, overwhelming evidence continues to exist that the mysterious Swiss witness was indeed Glazar � John Broadley discusses some of this evidence in his letter, and I attach five documents to the present letter which point to the same conclusion: (i) a 22 Dec 78 US State Department telegram indicating that a search had been mounted to discover the whereabouts of Richard Glazar in Switzerland; (ii) the Nov 1979 Martin Mendelsohn Supplemental Answers confirming that the OSI was aware that Glazar was able to provide testimony relevant to the Demjanjuk case, and demonstrating that the OSI had discovered Glazar's address in Switzerland; (iii) an 8 Dec 1979 letter from apparently Richard Glazar to Norman Moscowitz discussing the upcoming OSI interview of Glazar in Washington, DC; (iv) a 25 Sep 1979 reply from Norman Moscowitz to apparently Richard Glazar, finalizing preparations for the taking of the Glazar testimony; and (v) attorney William Wolf's tape recording of Richard Glazar in which Glazar affirmed that he had had several contacts with Demjanjuk prosecutors, and that he had promised these prosecutors non-cooperation with the Demjanjuk defense.
In your reply to the Broadley letter, you had the opportunity to demonstrate how all such evidence which seemed to point to Richard Glazar as the mysterious Bern, Switzerland witness was misleading, and in fact failed to prove that Richard Glazar had in fact provided statements to the OSI. However, you did not take this opportunity, preferring to ignore such evidence. I wonder if you would be able to demonstrate now that such evidence was indeed misleading, and that John Broadley's conclusions were in error? You could do this most convincingly by simply disclosing the true identity of the Bern, Switzerland witness.
(4) Why conceal the identities of any witnesses?
In your reply to the Broadley letter, you offer no justification for concealing the identities of witnesses, as for example the identity of the Bern, Switzerland witness whose name was methodically deleted from FOIA documents. Surely, however, any witness must fall into one of two categories � either his testimony will tend to be inculpatory, or it it will tend to be exculpatory, and in either case, the law either necessitates or demands that the witness be brought to the attention of the defense. Would you be able at this time either to explain how the mysterious Bern, Switzerland witness, which the OSI has never acknowledged was Richard Glazar, falls into some third category which necessitates concealing his identity; or else to finally acknowledge that the mysterious Swiss witness was indeed Richard Glazar, and that the only motive of the OSI for concealing the identity of that Swiss witness was to suppress the exculpatory testimony that he had provided?
As suggested in my previous four letters to you, and as reinforced in the present letter, your gifts as a Nazi hunter appear to lie mainly in your lack of respect for truth, in your willingness to tamper with evidence, in your readiness to cast aside due process in order to achieve a preconceived outcome, and in your lack of qualms about sending an innocent man to the gallows in order to advance your career.
Yours truly,
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Anne McLellan
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