Harvard Lawyer Is Under Investigation

Federal officials said yesterday that University Attorney Allan A. Ryan Jr. is under investigation for possibly suppressing evidence during the prosecution of John Demjanjuk, a Cleveland autoworker convicted as the Nazi death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible."

Ryan is scheduled to testify in front of U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Wiseman in Nashville late next month, according to officials in Wiseman's office.

Wiseman is conducting a probe of six former and current government attorneys, including Ryan, who was deputy director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations for four years before coming to Harvard in 1985.

The investigation was prompted by appeals from Demjanjuk's attorneys and new evidence from records of the former Soviet Union indicating Demjanjuk was not the infamous "Ivan the Terrible" guard of the Treblinka death camp. Instead, Soviet lists showed that Demjanjuk was a guard at the Sobibor camp.

Newly-released Justice Department documents and statements by former government prosecutors suggest that Ryan and a superior knew of the possibility that they were prosecuting the wrong person for the wrong crime.

Ryan, who has previously denied suppressing evidence, refused to comment yesterday.

"It has nothing to do with Harvard, and I'd just as soon not comment on that," Ryan said.

Demjanjuk was convicted and extradited to Israel in 1986, where he sits on death row. Demjanjuk's attorneys are challenging the Justice Department's investigation in the hope of strengthening their appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, federal officials said.

"What did he know? When did he know it? Why didn't he show that information to the court?' Those are the questions they'll ask [Ryan]," said a court of appeals official who requested anonymity.

The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asked Wiseman to look into the conduct of the Justice Department last June.

George Parker, a former government prosecutor, testified last week that Ryan and Walter Rockler, who headed the Office of Special Investigations, rebuffed him when he expressed doubts about the government's evidence that Demjanjuk was "Ivan the Terrible."

The Washington Post reported last week that Parker wrote a memo outlining contradictions in the government's evidence and suggesting that changes in the department's strategy would be "simply a ruse" to hide the contradictions.

"A reading of the Canon of Ethics persuades me that I cannot pursue this case simply as a Treblinka matter on the premise that it is tactically shrewd and morally acceptable because we think he was a guard elsewhere," Parker wrote in the memo, according to The Post.

Justice prosecutors did change their strategy, adding the charge that Demjanjuk served as a guard at Sobibor, but without dropping the allegation that he was the "Ivan the Terri- ble" of Treblinka.

Earlier this year, The Cleveland Plain-Dealerobtained a Justice Department memo in which adifferent prosecutor asked Ryan to pressure theSoviet Union for information about Ivan Marczenko,now widely believed to be the real "Ivan theTerrible." It is not known whether Ryan, in aJanuary 1980 trip to Moscow, asked Sovietofficials about Marczenko.

Court officials said Ryan cannot be disciplinedor sanctioned by Wiseman. However, if the courtfinds any wrongdoing by Ryan or other attorneysinvolved, the matter might be taken up by theirbar associations

Earlier this year, The Cleveland Plain-Dealerobtained a Justice Department memo in which adifferent prosecutor asked Ryan to pressure theSoviet Union for information about Ivan Marczenko,now widely believed to be the real "Ivan theTerrible." It is not known whether Ryan, in aJanuary 1980 trip to Moscow, asked Sovietofficials about Marczenko.

Court officials said Ryan cannot be disciplinedor sanctioned by Wiseman. However, if the courtfinds any wrongdoing by Ryan or other attorneysinvolved, the matter might be taken up by theirbar associations