How the Justice Department Uses Historians to Prosecute War Criminals

After getting his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1998, historian Jeff Richter thought he would kick off his career with a brief stint in federal service. After catching the bug for Nazi hunting, however, he decided to make a career of it.

Richter is part of the Justice Department’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions section, which formed in 2010 after spinning off from the Office of Special Investigations -- famous for its tracking down and prosecuting of former Nazi officials living in the United States. He now leads a team of half a dozen historians who assist Justice attorneys in their more modern investigations.

Justice’s human rights office is in the process of hiring six more historians -- three permanent and three for a one-year term. The department is looking for experts in North Africa and the Middle East, Latin America and the Horn of Africa. The historians will be expected to perform “historical research and investigative activities” to identify persons in the United States who may have engaged in human rights violations such as “persecution, torture, genocide, extrajudicial killings and the use or recruitment of child soldiers.”

The atrocities and conflicts Justice investigates generally took place 10 or 20 years ago, Richter says, and the attorneys probing them often feel overwhelmed without support from subject matter experts.

“The context, geography, language and history are all distant from our own,” Richter says. “The role of historians is to do what we can to dig into the history, to find the leads and clues that might help us build a successful case and to identify perpetrators who may be here.”

The so-called Nazi-hunting unit was launched in 1979 as part of what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The Human Rights and Special Prosecutions section is relatively young, however. INS was split into several entities and moved out of the Justice umbrella when the Homeland Security Department was created, and various entities were shifted around and merged until the HRSP section was formed in 2010.

Kathleen O’Connor, the deputy chief for human rights, says she cannot discuss ongoing investigations that might offer insight into why new historians are coming on board. In its brief existence, however, O’Connor says the section has prosecuted perpetrators of “atrocious crimes” around the world, including two individuals who relocated to the United States after massacring 100 villagers in Guatemala in the 1980s, one of whom slaughtered 60 children under the age of 12; people involved in murders and rapes of innocent civilians in the Balkans; and those involved in several incidents in Africa.

“As a prosecutor in these cases,” O’Connor says, “we don’t have the in-depth knowledge of what happened in the Balkans conflict, we don’t have an in-depth knowledge of what happened during the Guatemalan civil war. So having people with that sort of expertise available to us in an office down the hall is incredibly helpful to us.”

Justice finds cases to investigate through a variety of methods. HRSP reaches out to immigrant communities to solicit information on individuals who may have come to the county under false pretenses. The office maintains a tip line and encourages those who are looking to bring justice to their former oppressors to reach out and share their stories. Some cases are initiated after other countries contact the U.S. government through Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties looking for a perpetrator of human rights violations now residing in the United States, or the two sides identify areas of overlap in investigations under way in both nations. Historians also proactively seek out war criminals on other governments’ lists, identified by non-governmental organizations or tipped off to them by academics and advocates.

Once an investigation is under way, the human rights office faces certain restrictions. Prosecutors cannot subpoena witnesses in other countries, and historians cannot go into the field without a law enforcement officer present. They often partner with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the FBI and other federal agencies to assist in those investigations and to collect information for their own cases. A historian cannot interview a witness alone, but can assist in one.

The historians rely on their backgrounds in the areas to which they are dedicated, and can provide a quick rundown to investigators who are asked to wade into unfamiliar territory. They also review records, both at local libraries and at international locations, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The subject matter experts are typically fluent in the languages in which they work, and provide in-house translations to attorneys that help identify which documents are important. That saves both time and money, O’Connor says, who calls the historians a “cost-effective” investment that circumvents the need for expensive outside consultants. 

The crimes HRSP’s historians and its team of 30 attorneys investigate are usually obscured by their age, O’Connor explains, meaning there is typically no crime scene and witnesses are spread throughout the world. Investigations are therefore cumbersome and lengthy, requiring international travel and a significant budgetary commitment. They are “very resource intensive,” as O’Connor puts it.

Still, Justice is committed to “bringing these cases where we can,” O’Connor says, “because it sends a real signal to DoJ’s commitment to fulfill our part of the effort to go after international human rights violators.”

For now, as the five-year old section moves beyond its infancy, progress is slow.

“It’s not like we’ve got lots of trials going at once,” O’Connor says. She adds, however, HRSP is “headed in the right direction.”

Richter says despite the patience and effort his work requires, he is encouraged by the “continuing consensus” around its consequence. Regardless of who controls Congress or the White House, there is agreement the work should go on. And for him, that means the continuance of a career he never thought was possible.

“It’s something most historians could never quite imagine,” Richter says, “that they might participate in the actual making of history by pursuing accountability.”

(Image via Rena Schild / Shutterstock.com)