4 (Sc 3) Stolasxnaa Sa!m. On Tlm. Sept. 7
Tho
Red Twists to Rules Are Trap, .
Oatis Finds in Weary Sessions
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Her Is another
K. Oatis, Associated Press corres
pondent, who is telling what hap
pened to htm in Czechoslovakia.
He returned to this country last
Mar two years imprison
ment by tho Communists.)
By WILLIAM N. OATIS
(Copyrttht 153 or
Tho Associated Press)
A slim man with pouched eyes
a man who always reminded me
of a lizard! leaned across a desk
and said, "This is the best prison
in Europe."
He belonged to the Communist
secret police of Czechoslovakia.
They had arrested me six days
before on suspicion that I, the
Associated Press correspondent in
Prague, was also a spy.
THfey had questioned me at the
police station day after day until
finally, weary from 24 hours of
steady grilling, I had balked. Then
they had brought me here, hand
cuffed and blindfolded in the back
of a car.
Now, with the blindfold off, I
found myself in a sparely fur
nished office in the dim light of
dawn the dawn of Sunday, April
29, 1951. Through the window I
saw a courtyard and, beyond, a
sew building going up.
"How many steps are there on
the way up here- the man asked.
"Ninety."
"You're still a spy," he said,
smiling.
Sign Here
I smiled back. It was sup
posed to be a joke..
The men from the police sta
tion went on interrogating me all
that day. We all staved off
hunger with fat slices of bacon
sent from downstairs.
Many questions concerned an
incident of a few weeks earlier:
an . Indian diplomat had heard
thrift apartments i i his neighbor
hood of Prague were being taken
over for army officers. I asked Lt
Col. George L. Atwood, American
military attache, if he had heard
this, too. He said he had, and
more. And he gave me a list of
supposed military sites in and
around the city.
The police already had my
signature on a statement to the
effect that, in thus picking up
"military information," I had
committed espionage. Now they
wrote another statement for me
to sign. I
This would have had me admit
that I gave military information
to Atwood and in so doing com
mitted espionage. I refused to
sign it
"I want to go to bed," I said.
"Just rewrite this for us the
way you want- it, and then you
can go to bed," said the lizard
faced mar.
Sleep at Last
I rewrote it They brought it
back to me, rewritten again, and
asked me to sign it
I had been up i2 hours, and I
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Oatis Story
was desperate for sleep. So I
signed.
Then I was blindfolded and
taken downstairs, and when I
took the blindfold off I was in a
celL
I bad some smelly blankets
and a straw mat I made a bed on
the floor, tied my handkerchief
across my eyes to keep out the
electric light and went to sleep.
I was awakened only once to
get a number: 2091.
The next day, the men from
headquarters questioned me
morning and afternoon in the up
stairs office, and I had vegetarian
noon and evening meals in my
cell.
After supper I was taken back
upstairs. This time all my old
acquaintances were gone except
a pudgy little curly-haired inter
preter. A Rewrite Job
Seated at a desk was a new
man. He was a rangy, brown
haired young man with a sardonic
look squinty yellow eyes, high
cheekbones, hollow cheeks and
a narrow mouth with the corners
turned down.
He might have passed for a
small-town roughneck, but he was
in the red-trimmed olive-drab
uniform of a police lieutenant
He was taking over my interroga
tion. In that prison, every in
mate has a "referent" who ques
tions him and prepares him for
trial. This referent sat bolt up
right looking serious. The inter
preter translated:
"Make no mistake. Your Amer
ican citizenship will not help you
here."
That was how I met Lt Jr-ef
Ledl (I learned his name later,
from his signature on a paper.)
Early next morning, he . called
me from my cell and began put
ting my testimony in writing.
The document wa called a
protocol. From time to time, I
was presented with finished
pages and asked to write on
each, "I have read this. I have
approved it I have signed it
William Nathan Oatis."
I did so readily as long as the
protocol kept near the facts.
Then the referent and Inter
preter began to rewrite my ac
count Ont in 10 Weeks?
"This is not right," I said one
day, pointing to an inaccuracy.
"What difference doe it
make?" The referent showed ex
asperation. Such arguments became more
and more frequent Gradually it
became apparent he wanted not
the facts as I knew them, but as
he would have liked them to be.
Meanwhile, I was trying to
find out what was likely to hap
pen to me. Four people now
were at work on my interrogation
tie referent and three inter
preters in turns. One interpreter,
1
t ft
... My
2 m
EE . 1
a young woman, asked me, "How
would you like to go home on
the Fourth of July?"
Another, a dapper little man
named Vilda, said, "You wont
be here 10 weeks."
"I don't believe you," I told
him.
A Letter Home
He insisted he knew what he
was talking about
The referent said a foreigner
could be punished with "a sen
tence, or expulsion."
I knew that my wife in St
Paul, Minn., must be worried
about me. I asked the lieutenant
to let me write her. He put me
off.
One night Vilda suggested I
try again. The referent asked me
what I wanted to say in the let
ter. I told him, and he left the
room.
Pretty soon he came back with
something written in Czech. The
interpreter put it in English and
handed it to me. The referent
had written my letter for me.
It was fantastic. It made me
say that I had been "caught in
espionage," that I had told all
and that I wanted to live "a
clean, new life."
"Keep your hopes high, it i
wound up, "and trust in the jus- j
tice of the Czechoslovak people,
who are working for peace."
The Captain Takes Over
I said "When my wife reads
this, she'll think I've gone
crazy."
But Vilda reminded me, "Your
wife is clever shell under
stand." The referent insisted the letter
would go out that way or not at
alL So I copied it in my own
handwriting, and he sent it
That was the first statement I
signed that was quite out of char
acter and patently phony. Once
they had got me to sign that one,
it was easier for them.
That talk about high hopes and
a clean, new life was encourag
ing. So was Vilda. He said
"Don't worry about a trial"
a lew mgnu later, about a
month after my arrest, a police
staff captain sat down at the desk
and I sat down in my chair facing
him. He smiled and began to talk.
smoothly and courteously.
He asked me what connections
The AP had with the United
States government I said it had
none. "Oh, Oatis," he said, dubi
ously.
My referent standing by, must
have felt he had muffed the case,
since his commander, the cap
tain, had had to intervene. He
now exploded.
He twitched, frowned and
screeched at me something inter
preted as "You dirty bastard!
He accused me of backtracking
on testimony.
In due course the captain asked
me about a card found in my ef-
mr -t
. jr
i . rr ts i u
f r LSI
? 1
feet. It was aa eff-dnty pus
from the Military Intelligence
Service Japanese language school
at Ft' Spelling. Minn.- :
I had been there briefly in 1944
enroute to a year's study at a
similar school at the University
of Michigan. At Michigan. I con
tinued training in Japanese that I
had begun in the Army Special
ized Training Program at the Uni
versity of Minnesota.
Though Military Intelligence
ran the Michigan schooL I was
never- in that branch. At the
school I was a corporal on the de
tached, enlisted men's list And I
never got into it for after I
finished the course I was dis
charged from the Army.
Sign Again
But the commander told me to
write about the school and the
men I had known there, and put
me back in my cell with a type
writer and cigarettes. I wrote
several pages, sent them to hint
and went to bed.
The next night's questioning
brought out that CoL Atwood had
been in the language school while
I was there but that we had not
met there.
Some 24 hours later, the com
mander laid a long document be
fore me and said, "Sign this and
you don't need to worry."
The first part was a garbled
version of my account about the
language school. The second part
was something new. It introduced
Atwood as an old fellow student
It had me saying that he was a
spy and that I gave him informa
tion because "I knew he was In
terested in espionage reports of
all kinds."
Tt Wl an U)ni.1 T - J
- - " myg TW HI u X B1UI1CU. 1
thought, "This looks as if it were
all aimed at Atwood. If I sign it
they'll expel him but maybe
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they'll expel me, too, without a
trail."
I signed that statement and
hooked myself properlyBecause,
as I saw with chagrin later, they
were not trying to get Atwood out
of the country; they were trying
to keep me in prison-
Resistance Lowered
By now, I had signed so many
papers that it had become a habit
I went on signing them almost au
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as William N. Ootls, afUr 42
sign a "eonftsslon" In Praaua jo.IL
tomatically, seldom questioning
even the wildest departures from
fact
I had come to the conclusion
that many prisoners I daresay
most prisoners come to in that
plaee: You are in the hands of
the secret police. You will never
get away from them until you
give them what they want
Once my will had faded away
in that fashion, the referment had
plain sailing.. He rewrote all my
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protocols from the beginning. In
troducing changes.
Finally I was ushered into an
office of the prison where a
fidgety woman interpreter sat
with a baldheaded, crosseyed man
in shirtsleeves and a bow tie.
"I am Judge Novak, the chair
man of the Senate of the State
Court in Prague," he told me.
"Your behavior here has been
good. If you behave well before
the court also, you don't need to
worry,"
How often had I heard that
line!
The Indictment
The judge read what he said
was the indictment Nowhere was
there any mention of the para
graphs of the law under which I
was indicted. I stood accused
formally of espionage for the
U. S. government Words that the
ref erment had put into my mouth,
by putting them into my protocol,
were used to show that I had
sent news stories on the arrests
of former Foreign Minister Vlado
Clementis and Otto Sling, deposed
Brno Communist leader, with in
tent to advise "the American es
pionage net" which of its strong-
points in Czechoslovakia had fall
en, so that it could regroup.
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Judge Novak said a lawyer had
been assigned ane.
"The function of a lawyer," he
said, "is not to help the defend
ent escape sentence. It is to help
him get a lighter sentence."
(This seemed to mean that 1
stood convicted even before I
went to trail. And it was ths
presiding judge that was giving
me the news.)
Four days later, I met a rab
bity, poker-faced man who his in
terpreter introduced as "your
lawyer, Drf Bartoa."
Dr. Bartos told me, I think
you have a good chance to go
home this year." He advised m
to testify according to the pro
tocol and said his defense would
be that I did not go into espion
age deliberately but "just fell
into it"
That week the ref erment had
me in his office almost daily,
and we rehearsed the protocol:
He asked the questions and 1
gave the answers more or less ai
written. At length, I got it down
pat
And on Monday, July 2. thres
of my employes and I went on
trial before Judge Novak's court
at Pankrac Prison.
(Tomorrow: Prison Like Tomb.)
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