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News & Events

08/12/01
Bill Sloat
Plain Dealer Reporter

Cincinnati

Their brief ritual seemed straight out of a James Bond novel. The American, speaking first, would say in Latin, "Vincit qui se vincit." (He conquers who conquers himself.) The European man, code-named Dynamo, would reply, "Verbum pat sapienti." (A word is enough for a wise man.) Then they would match halves of a torn playing card, the nine of diamonds. While this scene may have been common during the Cold War, Dynamo as no common spy.

Documents unsealed in a case settled in Cincinnati federal court last week reveal that the man called Dynamo was paid to spy for the U.S. government even though intelligence reports showed that he was considered a Nazi war criminal in Yugoslavia.

American spymasters also were willing to overlook that Dynamo - a Croatian priest named Krunoslav Dragonovic - had been accused of using loot plundered from Holocaust victims and others to buy new names and new lives for others fleeing Europe, including the notorious Klaus Barbie.

U.S. intelligence agents even arranged, over objections by the State Department, for Dragonovic to visit Cleveland, where newspaper reports show he spoke at St. Paul Croatian Church in 1961 about the plight of Croatian refugees in communist Yugoslavia.

These once-secret documents offer a rare glimpse into a murky, morally quirky era.