The U.S. Department of Justice bars Austrian President Kurt Waldheim (and his wife, Elisabeth, who had also been a Nazi) from entering the USA, charging that he had aided in the deportations and executions of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
Kurt Josef Waldheim (German: [kt valtham] (listen); 21 December 1918 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II, raised international controversy.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United States. It is equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries. The department is headed by the U.S. Attorney General, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The current attorney general is Merrick Garland, who was sworn on March 11, 2021.The modern incarnation of the department was formed in 1870 during the Ulysses S. Grant presidency. The department is composed of federal law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The primary actions of the DOJ are investigating instances of white collar crime, representing the U.S. government in legal matters (such as in cases before the Supreme Court), and running the federal prison system. The department is also responsible for reviewing the conduct of local law enforcement as directed by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.