For University Attorney Allan A. Ryan Jr. and many of his former Justice Department colleagues, now is a time to wait anxiously.

On Friday in Los Angeles, Tennessee judge Thomas A. Wiseman completed hearings on charges that Ryan and others suppressed evidence in the prosecution of Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk as Nazi death camp guard Ivan the Terrible.

Over the next few months, Wisemah will prepare a report for the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Until then, however, a number of questions remain about the future of both the case and Ryan.

Ryan, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) from 1980 to 1983, is being investigated by Wiseman for his conduct during the denaturalization and extradition trials of Demjanjuk, who now sits on death row in Israel.

Wiseman is also inquiring into the conduct of five other Justice lawyers. He heard testimony from Bruce Einhorn, a California immigration judge, on Friday.

Einhorn, OSI prosecutor during Demjanjuk's deportation trial, denied suppressing any evidence. He said he knew nothing of Soviet records released in 1991 that indicate another man, Ivan Marchenko, was in fact Ivan the Terrible.

Demjanjuk's attorneys have been using the Soviet records, which contain statements of Nazi guards from the Treblinka death camp, in an effort to prove misconduct by OSI and reverse Demjanjuk's denaturalization and extradition. Wiseman will hear closing arguments from the attorneys for Demjanjuk and the government in Nashville in April.

The judge will then make a report to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio. But what action the circuit will take--and has the authority to take--is open to question.

Many observers have speculated the Sixth Circuit will reopen Demjanjuk's denaturalization and extradition proceedings. However, Justice Department officials last summer contended the federal appeals court lacked authority to reconsider Demjanjuk's 1986 extradition.

And last June, Robert Mueller, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was reviewing the Justice Department's handling of the Demjanjuk case. But an official from that office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in an interview last month that his office could not discipline people who no longer work for the government.

It could take years before this and other matters of jurisdiction are worked out in court. But in the near future, Ryan, who joined Harvard's Office of the General Counsel in 1985, is more worried about what Wiseman and the federal appeals court could do to his professional reputation.

Some lawyers who have followed the case see the Sixth Circuit inquiry as a political attempt by Pat Buchanan and others to get Nazi hunters like Ryan.

"These are not civil libertarians who try to criticize the government for its over zealousness, but people who consider Demjanjuk a hero," says Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz. "To single out Allan Ryan, who is one of the most decent, honorable men I've worked with, is just outrageous."

Experts in legal ethics believe the federal appeals court would have to find that Ryan personally withheld evidence in the Demjanjuk case before the Harvard attorney could be disciplined. And Ryan denied suppressing evidence under oath in a hearing before Wiseman last month in Boston.

Any finding for or against Ryan would rest largely on the court's interpretation of a murky issue--what constitutes suppression of evidence.

Matter of Definitions