Since news of the guard statements broke. Ryan has offered other possible explanations. He told the Harvard Gazette in January 1992 that Demjanjuk might have been known by his mother's maiden name, Marchenko, at Treblinka. Ryan also said it was possible that both Ivan Marchenko and Ivan Demjanjuk were present at the death camp.

"I don't know what to make of evidence from people who are dead and can't be cross examined," Ryan said in this week's interview. "You don't know what motivations they might have. These are statements that don't get you anywhere like a live witness would."

On ABC's "Nightline" in December 1991, something changed. Ryan softened his stance on the question of whether John Demjanjuk was indeed Ivan the Terrible. "I think it is far too early to reach any responsible answers to that very important question," Ryan told interviewer Jeff Greenfield.

Now, the cloud over the Demjanjuk case has darkened over Ryan's conduct while at OSI.

Last year, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard the Demjanjuk case when it was in the U.S., opened a probe into the conduct of Justice Department lawyers. Now Ryan is being investigated. He testified last Friday, and Judge Thomas A. Wiseman will issue a report in a few weeks to the Sixth Circuit.

There is no mistaking that Ryan's integrity is on the line in this proceeding, and integrity for a lawyer, Ryan says, "is everything." Infact, legal ethicists generally agree that if Ryan or other Justice Department lawyers intentionally suppressed evidence, they should be disbarred.

Ryan today has the look of a man who does not understand where he went wrong. He has said at different times in the past that he regrets some of the phrases in Quiet Neighbors, and he says now the book only represents his thoughts at the time. But now, Ryan says he has no regrets whatsoever, that he has done nothing wrong.

To prepare for his testimony, Ryan had to go back and think through the trial of Demjanjuk. It led him to an intense amount of introspection, but no contrition.

"Now that it is all brought to light," Ryan says, "I don't see anything that I did that I would have done differently."