Schreiber insisted he had “never taken part in any such research work.… The knowledge [I] gained about it, [I] either gained through documents [I] ran across in [my] position or in medical conventions, where intellectuals could see that something like that was being conducted in the background.”
Every aspect of Schreiber’s escape story seemed unreasonable, which made it difficult for the reporters to take seriously almost anything else he said. Yet the press conference went on for more than thirty minutes, with Schreiber standing his ground.
As it turned out, Schreiber’s press conference was not impromptu but rehearsed. He had been discussing his testimony with officers from the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps for two weeks—since October 18, 1948, the day he had walked into the CIC’s Berlin office. CIC special agent Severin F. Wallach was Schreiber’s handler. Wallach had heard a much longer version of what had allegedly been going on with Schreiber since his capture by the Red Army during the fall of Berlin.
According to the thirteen-page report by Wallach in Schreiber’s intelligence dossier, “On the 5th of May Dr. Schreiber was sent, together with other captured German Generals, back to Berlin. The Generals were put in a cellar of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin and received orders to emerge from this cellar under strong Soviet guard. This whole scene was photographed by the Soviets, who were engaged in putting together an ‘authentic’ documentary film of the capture of Berlin.” On May 9, with the Reich’s surrender complete, Dr. Schreiber was sent with other officers to a much larger prisoner of war camp, in Posen, where he stayed until August 12, 1945. A transport of generals to Moscow had been organized; Schreiber said he arrived there on August 29. “The transport was very badly organized,” Schreiber said, according to the dossier report. “There was a food shortage because the cooks on the transport sold the food on the black market or kept it for themselves.” Schreiber’s testimony was resplendent with details. “All generals were sent to the PW camp No. 7027 in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow,” he recalled. Here, the food tasted wonderful because it came from the United States, in cans. Schreiber repeatedly told Wallach how much he loved everything about the United States.
On March 12, 1946, Schreiber said he was transferred to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. “Treatment not bad.” On March 20 he claimed to have been interrogated by the Russians for the first time: “Subject was The German Preparation for Biological Warfare.” Wallach had to have known that this was highly improbable. Schreiber was one of the Third Reich’s highest-ranking medical doctors, and he was a major general in the army. On March 20, 1946, he would have been in Soviet custody for ten months. That this was his first interrogation was absurd. Schreiber told Wallach he was questioned by a lieutenant general named Kabulow for three days. Kabulow didn’t believe his testimony, Schreiber said, and so he was told, “Soviet interrogators are going to use now physical violence to break [you] and get the whole truth out of [you].” The next interrogation, recalled Schreiber, took place at three o’clock that same morning. “[I was] beaten by a Soviet officer who me knows as Lt. Smirnow [Smirnov]. Together with a Col. Walter Stern, who speaks German without the slightest accent and who [was] an excellent interrogator.”
Schreiber said he withstood three weeks of rough interrogation, at which point he finally broke down and “wrote the statement which later on was submitted by the Soviet Government to the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg.” He was flown from Moscow to Berlin, then down to Nuremberg to testify at the war crimes trial. During one of the flights Schreiber said his German-speaking Soviet interrogator, Colonel Stern, leaned over and whispered a warning to him. If Schreiber were to go off-book and say “anything detrimental to the interests of the Soviet Union, he would be hanged on his return to Russia.”