Speaking before television cameras in Vienna's ornate Hofburg Palace, Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschläger was at pains to select his words carefully. His aim: to render a balanced judgment for his 7 million countrymen about accusations that Presidential Candidate Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations Secretary-General, had knowingly falsified his World War II record and was involved in Nazi atrocities.
Kirchschläger, who was once a judge, had closeted himself for ten days with more than 500 pages of documents from the U.N., the Yugoslav government and the World Jewish Congress that detailed Waldheim's activities as a lieutenant in the German army from...