Rep. Holtzman Demands Paul Henze Resign Over Suspected War Criminal

By Constance Bell · August 13, 2026

Victims of a 1941 Jewish pogrom were ignored as an NSC staffer dismissed a suspected fascist bishop's broadcast as "silly," sparking a congressional demand to oust him from the White House.

On December 5, 1979, Representative Elizabeth Holtzman of New York wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter demanding the resignation of Paul Henze, a member of the National Security Council staff. The catalyst was not a policy failure in the field, but a series of comments made during an August 15 meeting of the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) regarding the future of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

According to an editorial note in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) archives, Holtzman’s grievance centered on Henze’s reaction to an interview broadcast on May 1 by the Romanian service of Radio Free Europe. The subject was Valerian Trifa, a Bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the United States and Canada. Trifa was not merely a religious figure; he was under investigation by the Justice Department for alleged membership in the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist party during World War II, and for his purported role in instigating the 1941 Jewish pogrom in Bucharest.

The Bucharest Pogrom and a "Silly" Concern

Holtzman alleged that Henze had dismissed the controversy surrounding Trifa’s broadcast. The Representative asserted that Henze characterized the concerns as "silly" and claimed the matter "certainly isn’t serious from the point of view of the White House." For Holtzman, the dismissal of a suspected war criminal’s platform was an affront that warranted both a resignation and a formal investigation by her Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law.

Paul Henze was no stranger to the high-stakes environment of the Cold War information struggle. The public record identifies him as a former CIA station chief for Ethiopia and Turkey and a writer for Radio Free Europe. He understood the utility of the radios as tools of psychological warfare, and his internal correspondence suggests he viewed the administrative friction of the BIB as a hindrance to that mission.

Moving Gronouski

While Holtzman was preparing her public attack, Henze was privately attempting to reorganize the management of the stations. In a report to National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski dated August 17—just two days after the fateful BIB meeting—Henze made no mention of the Trifa incident. Instead, he focused on what he perceived as a bloated and obstructive administrative layer.

Henze viewed the relocation of RFE/RL as a non-issue that had been "blown out of all proportion to its real importance by the BIB Staff in conjunction with a few congressional staffers." His solution was a surgical strike against the personnel he found obstructive. Henze proposed merging the BIB and the RFE/RL Corporate Board into a single public corporation, split evenly between Presidential appointees and public members. The explicit goal of this restructuring, according to his memo, was the removal of "bothersome BIB Staff."

Henze’s strategy included a plan for the removal of the BIB Chairman, Gronouski. While noting that Gronouski might be "ready to go along" with the plan, Henze suggested to Brzezinski that the Chairman be shifted to a different administration post entirely. The suggested landing spots varied: the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, or, as suggested in a follow-up memo on October 2, the head of the Voice of America following the resignation of Peter Strauss.

Polish Diversions

By December, the internal skirmishes over budgetary cuts and "Zero Base Budget" environments had been eclipsed by Holtzman’s investigation. On December 7, Henze wrote to Brzezinski to defend himself. He did not apologize for the "silly" comment; instead, he framed the attack as a political operation.

Henze argued that the charges were orchestrated by "elements in the BIB Staff and their collaborators among congressional staffers." He claimed these individuals were "frustrated" that their efforts to cripple the radios by moving them from Europe to the United States—under the guise of economy—had failed. He dismissed the evidence presented by Holtzman as a "selective citation" that ignored the spirit of his remarks.

In a telling choice of words, Henze described the internal conflict as a "dywersja"—the Polish word for diversion. He argued that this internal warfare served only to undermine the basic purpose of the stations. For Henze, the priority was not the sensibilities of a congressional subcommittee, but the maintenance of the "professional independence and integrity of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty."

He concluded his defense by reminding Brzezinski that the stations remained a vital "asset to U.S. foreign policy and an important service to the peoples who live under Communist domination." Whether the "dywersja" succeeded in removing Henze or the "bothersome" staff remains a matter for the files of the Carter Library.