PRISONER IN PRAGUE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27148, 18 September 1953, Page 6

PRISONER IN PRAGUE

[TMs 4s the fourth and last in a series of four articles by William N. Oatis. an Associated Press correspondent who is telling what happened to him in Czechoslovakia. He returned to the United States last May after two years’ imprisonment by the Communists} [By WILLIAM N. OATIS} (Copyright 1953 by the Associated Press) IV On Monday, July 2, 1951, I stood up in Court in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and said I had spied for the United States Embassy. I was not a spy. I was an Associated Press foreign correspondent, and the three men accused with me were my Czech employees, and I was not .testifying as I should have testified in a Court in my own country—out of my own heart aiming to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

I was testifying as the Communist secret police wanted me to testify. I was following in substance, and sometimes word for word, a script they had written for me, and rehearsed. This script, prepared during my 70 days’ interrogation and completed perhaps 10 days before I took the witness stand, was called a protocol. It consisted of questions for the Court and prosecutor to ask me, and answers for me to give them. That morning we four went on trial before the Senate of the State Court at Pankrac Prison, in south-east Prague. We were brought there after breakfast from the prison where we had been interrogated. (I did not find out till after the trial where that prison was.) We made the trip in a green van, each locked in a blind compartment with the guards crowding the aisle. We passed through a subterranean corridor, and upstairs to a row of separate cells. I waited in my cell, smoking nervously, and guarded by a tall, uniformed policeman with a big pistol. Then we crossed a hall and entered the high-ceilinged courtroom by a side

We must have looked quite decent for supposed criminals. Before our journey we had been shaved, and had changed from prison uniform into street clothes (I wore the dark blue suit and brown bow tie I had on when arrested on April 23), but each of us had his guard. “No Familiar Faces” I scanned the courtroom for familiar faces. I saw none of my friends (only after my release this year did I learn that the Vice-Consul, Mr Richard G. Johnson, and the Private Secretary, Miss Mary Horak, of the United States Embassy, were in the back of the room).

I recognised two Czechoslovak press officers—Dr. Rudolf Popper, of the Ministry- of Information, and Bedrich Runge, of the Ministry, of Foreign Affairs. They sat stolidly in the press section. I noticed there also two Communist correspondents I had seen in my 10 months of freedom in Prague—an effeminate Irishman from the partyline Telepress Agency, and a negro girl, whose affiliation I did not know. They were grinning broadly. Upstairs and downstairs the house was packed. Specially chosen factory workers, co-operative farmers, and Government clerks got passes to such trials Earphones Provided We four sat down, separated by our guards, on a bench facing the Bar. I had earphones to catch simultaneous English interpretation of all Czech testimony. The interpreters were in booths near the Bar, and near me sat another interpreter to serve as intermediary between me and the Court when I should testify. Now the Judges entered —four men and one woman in black robes—and the trial began. The State Prosecutor (Josef Urvalek), also in black, read the indictment. It called the Associated Press a spy agency serving the United States in a “war against the Soviet camp of peace.” It said all A.P. bureau chiefs m Prague since 1948 had been spies. It charged my employees and myself specifically with espionage. The presiding Judge (Jaroslav Novak) then called me to -tand in the horseshoe-shaped witness stall. He referred to the indictment and asked, •‘Do you feel guilty?” “Yes, I do,” I said. Seventy days of questioning had taught me that was the right answer.

The Judge had a bulky document before him. It was my protocol, and now I got the first question in it. The prosecutor asked me to identify a small card introduced into evidence. I said it was my 1944 off-duty pass from the Japanese language school of the Army Military Intelligence Service at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. After a few questions on my birthplace and such, I explained, in answer to protocol questions, that I had gone from Fort Snelling to a similar school at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, and after a year’s study there had gone out of the army. (I studied language, not espionage, and I was not in the military intelligence service, but on the detached enlisted men’s list) I said that Lieutenant-Colonel George L. Atwood, U.S. Military Attache in Prague, had been in the'Ann Arbor School while I was there, but that we had not met. I testified that I got acquainted with him in Prague and had "espionage meetings” with him. (Actually, I was speaking of occasions when I had gone to him for news or background information on military matters in Czechoslovakia.) “Confession” I confessed I had gathered “espionage news” from my employees, other Czechs, and diplomats, and gave details. (I was talking about reports on military, economic and political subjects not published in Czechoslovakia. The police had sold me the idea that all this was espionage material.) I said that the barman at the Alcron Hotel in Prague once had interpreted for me the Czech conversation of two Government chauffeurs talking at the other end of the bar, and that it had to dp with the arrest of a public official. This was a fiction built up around a kernel of fact, and transferred from the barman’s protocol to mine. In reality, one chauffeur had told him about the official. The chauffeur had )eft the bar before I came, and heard the report from the barman. . I testified that I got reports from a man using the name of Antonin Kratochvil, and claiming to work in the Prime - Minister’s office. (I knew be was an gggnt qf .the secret police, but said nothing about.this. I was playing their game in the hope of a short sentence.) That afternooß my three employees related fhey-liad - helped me get unofficial reports, . They also said they \ knew a Czech refugee, Vladimir Komarek, who sometimes returned illegally to his homeland. It was testified that he was a spy, and that an accomplice of his had shot and killed a policeman. (I had never met Komarek, and I insisted on this throughout the trial.)

Next day 11 witnesses testified. One said he had killed a policeman with a pistol Komarek gave him. Letter for U.P. Man Another, Jan Stransky, told how he had given me a letter for his former employer, Russell Jones, of the United Press, noting his suspicions that a Czech in that office was a police spy. (I carried this letter to Jones not knowing what was in It.) Nearly all the other witnesses testified they had given unofficial information to me, or my employees. Their testimony was both fact and tablelike mine and my. employees. The prosecutor and defence counsel spoke. (My lawyer said I was guilty, but there were alleviating circumstances), and the next morning we four whre all convicted. I got 10 years, Cvoboda 20, Woydinek 18, and Muntz A big black sedan took me to Ruzyne Prison, five miles west of Prague; on the way I noted a big car just ahead with a man and boy in it— Colonel Atwood and his young son. 'Concluded.)