In The Kremlin Method, Practiced in Vilnius, I described a Lithuanian state institution that behaves less like a research body than an information-war unit: the conclusion is protected, unwelcome evidence is treated as hostile material, and the person carrying it is designated instead of answered.

The first charge in that institutional indictment concerned the claim by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania that the United States Congress and the Immigration and Naturalization Service had “completely exonerated” Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, acting prime minister of Lithuania’s 1941 Provisional Government.

He was not exonerated.

The full documentary record is now published in The Ally That Forged America’s Verdict. It contains the American correspondence, four legal opinions, Lithuanian complaints and replies, three interventions by Congressman Brad Sherman, and the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry’s eventual concession.

The first article described the machine. This one opens one of its files.

For eight years, Lithuanian institutions told their own citizens and foreign audiences that America had delivered a verdict of innocence. In May 2026, after every defensible route of evasion had been exhausted, the Foreign Ministry admitted that the phrase was “legally imprecise.”

Two words were surrendered. The historical benefit those words created was not.

What America actually did

The American record concerns an immigration inquiry, not a criminal proceeding and not a congressional investigation. The INS examined allegations that Brazaitis and Interior Minister Jonas Šlepetys had issued or enforced repressive measures against Jews during the six weeks in which the Provisional Government sat.

The inquiry did not produce enough evidence, on the record then available, to carry the matter further. Šlepetys denied the allegations under oath. Brazaitis was never interviewed. He had suffered a fourth heart attack, was hospitalized, and died on October 24, 1974. Their names were removed from an active list, while the agency reserved the ability to reactivate the matter if significant evidence appeared.

There was no trial. No hearing. No judge. No cross-examination. No finding of any kind about what Brazaitis had done during the summer of 1941. Congress did not investigate him and did not acquit him.

Congressman Joshua Eilberg later transmitted the administrative correspondence to a representative of the Lithuanian-American community, under a covering letter dated January 13, 1975. Lithuania converted that forwarding letter into a congressional verdict and the discontinued INS inquiry into........

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