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168 THE DAILY TIMES-GAZETTE, Thursday, September 17,1953 THE OATIS STORY "Hours Talk" With Police Lasted 3 Long Years (Editor's Note: William N. Oatis, | "X" MARKS THE WINDOW the Associated Press correspondent. He had come to my office about who spent more than two years in a month before, asking for work. a Communist prison in Czecho- | There was some question' about slovakia, has written a series of |Hustak. I was not going to hire articles about his exp riences. n'lhim, though I needed another the one below he tells of his arrest translator badly and his English and the start of 'his long question- was good. But he had kept com- ing.) ing to see me. By WILLIAM N. OATIS Though it was chilly that April (Copyright 1953 By the Associated day; Hustak, a husky young man " with a low forehead and eycbrows $ADVANCE( Mouday, April 25. that joined above his nose, was in bad og Po pr ) , | shirt 'sleeves and hatless. In one month, the Czech stage | He told me he had a story for of The Associated Press bureau | Fe. and he showed me a photo- in Prague, Czechoslovakia, had |8raph. : beén cut in half as three men! It was a picture of the front of had been arrested, one by one, [an old castle, fenced off by iron 1 had to run the bureau with only | bars and guarded by police dogs. two translators to help me cover |Hustak said this was Kolodej the news through the 18 hours | Castle, northeast of Prague. On one every day that it was made avail. 'barred window was an "X" in able by the official Czechoslovak |green ink. : radio. | Pasted on the back of 'the print I had to look for new help, keep | Was a typewritten note in Czech, books, write letters. I had to get | Which Hustak translated for me. It a tire fixed. And I had promised |Stated that Dr. Vlado Clementis, to go see Tyler Thompson, coun- former Czechoslovak foreign min- selor of the United States Em. ister, had been held until recently bassy, to talk to him about my |in the chamber marked. The note personal safety. | said this information came from All'morning 1 was involved with | 'a militiaman named Jan. office detail, and it was 2 p.m.' Hustak told me he had got the before I was ready to go to the picture from an acquaintance who embassy. {knew about the interrogation of Just at that moment, a caller [Clementis, arrested the previous walked in. It was Miroslav (Mike) | January on spy charges. He said Hustak, a Czech who had lost his the man wanted to sell me the job as an operations officer for story. I told him I did not buy Pan -American *Airways when the | stories. line had stopped flights to Prague THEY DIDN'T KNOCK the previous fall. | He promised to try to pry it out for nothing. Then he started for the door. "Hey," 1 called after him, "you left your picture." "Oh, you can keep it," he said hastily, and dashed on out. i I laid the picture in a desk drawer and put on my hat and coat to go to the embassy. Before I got to the door, it opened suddenly and some men in trench coats walked in. There were six of them, as I remember. They surrounded me. A short, blond man in glasses, with a freckled pokerface, flashed a blue card from his pocket. He looked like the kind of little boy that breaks windows and writes bad words on fences. "SPIONAZ!" But the card told me that he belonged to the Statni Bezpecnost (State Security), the most widely feared group in Czechoslovakia-- the Communist secret police. The little man, apparently the only one that spoke English, had me throw everything from my pockets onto a table. Another plainsclothesman, who seemed to be directing things, picked up a little black notebook. "Pavel! Ha-ha!" he shouted, reading from the notebook. "Vesely!Ha-ha Pokorny! ha!" Those were the names of high security officers reported arrested in a purge that' had begun in Oc- tober with the imprisonment of a Brno Communist leader named Ot- to Sling. A third man went to my desk, Ha- opened the drawer and took out the photograph I had got from Husiak. He examined it, pushed it in front of my nose and cried, "'Spionaz!" ("Shpee-oh-nahzh") "BE BACK IN AN HOUR" That was one Czeck word un- derstood. It meant "espionage." I headed for a teletype machine. If I could punch a message out on that, it would go right inte The AP's Frankfurt bureau. But a de- tective headed me off. Finally, the interpreter told me I must come to the police station. "We just want to talk to you," he said. "You will be back here in an hour." I did not believe it for one min- ute. But there was nothing I could do. Three of the men escorted me downstairs and to a car parked in the street. It was a big, black, streamNped Tatraplan -- a Czech car knowm as almost a trademark of the secret police. A bareheaded chauffeur was at the wheel. One of the detectives got in beside him. The other two sat in back, with me between them. "THE BOSS" AGAIN I had been taking things as they came, not thinking much about them. And I idly watched the street scenes as we rolled down Wences- las Square and then by narrow back streets into the gateway of a gingerbready old building on Barth- olomew Street. We left the car there, and, in the midst of my three guards I walked down the street and across to a modern building of perhaps six stories. The place had a slick white stone front and looked like a hospital. We entered and, passing uniform- ed policemen, government propa- ganda posters and huge photo- graphs of cabinet ministers, went up one flight of stairs to a com- fortably furnished office overlook- ing the street. There we sat down and waited. It was almost dark enough to turn the lights on in there when - NBT LOOK 4 THESE Radio Values A MANTEL RADIO IN BEAUTIFUL COLOURS | TELEVISION - with the exclusive new | Magic Monitor" REG. 389.00 THE Wighland: : | 349.00 $35.00 Down -- Many Months to Pay the Balance NOW ONLY Use Our Thrifty Budget Plan Demonstrate in your New! 1954 BRANDON 2/1" with Super-Sensitive "Magic Monitor' ONLY 399.50 $40.00 Down -- 24 Months to Pay Come in Today and See Our Complete Line of . . . Radios ® Record Players ® Refrigerators and Household Appliances F. Goodrich TIRES at a Price You Can Afford ! Lifetime Guarantee Available in All Popular Passenger Sizes Budget Terms as Low as $1.00 Weekly ® Rugged, Proven Tread other plainclothesmen began drift- ing in. Last of all, with a quick, swaggering stride, came a lean, spectacled man in a tan trench coat. He was blond, with a long, pale face and pale fanatical blue eyes, pouched like a lizard's. He frowned at me and, talking through an interpreter, said, "We have met before, on a happier oc- casion." I remembered him. This man, who called himself "the Boss," had talked to me the previous November at a Prague permit of- fice about whether I should be al- lowed to stay in Czechoslovakia. ployes are here? Murder. - foul murder! They protected an enemy agent. An accomplice of that agent took a human life. He killed one of our men in cold blood, a man with a wife and children." I said I had nothing to do with any murder. I insisted I had never even met the agent he spoke of. He replied. '"We will prove to you that you did." The Boss hunched forward, shot a bony finger at me and yelled, "Spy!" "If I'm a spy," I said, smiling, "I'm not a real spy -- just a nev spy -- I didn't spy for "WE RUIN THEM!" He had let me stay and work, even though I had been deprived of official accreditation as a for- eign correspondent in Czechoslo- vakia and did not get the accred- itation back till three months later. "You promised me then," he said, "that you would not do 'un- official reporting." You broke that promise." I remmbered making no overt promise to confine my reporting to official news sources. I told him so. He cited instances of '"'un- official" newsgathering that he could have got only from my mis- sing employes. He said something about "nase strana," two Czech words I knew to mean 'our party." The inter- preter skipped that, but I got the next sentence in plain, ungram- matical English. "i anyone opposes us, we ruin t! ! "TALK! TALK!" "You are here," the man went on, "in two roles: As a witness against your employees, and as a defendant yourself. "Do you know why your em- anybody, but The Associated Press. "The penalty for esponage," he continued, 'is from 10 years te ...death. Tt will be better for you if you talk." "What: do you want me to talk about? I don't have anything talk about." "AND IF I TALK?" "Your colleague, Samuel Meryn, was sarcastic, too, at first," the man came back. '"'Later he chang- ed his mind. Today he has on' kind words for us." Meryn -- incidentally no col- league of mine, -- had clerked in the U.S. Embassy. He had been arrested in 1949 and accused of handing out radio transmitters to a secret anti-state group. H was expelled from the country with propaganda blast. "If 1 'talk," " I asked, "will yon let me go the way you did Meryn?"' A bystander spoke 'cup, evidently willing to agree; words were cheap But the reptilian blond stopped him. "Don't promise him anything," he said. '"'Self-criticism must be free and natural. There must be no ulterior motive." "WE HAVE OTHER METHODS" More questions and answers fol- lowed. I asked some questions myself: Could I see the U.S. consul? (No.) Would I be all d a good English- speaking lawyer if I went to trial? (Yes.) "If you do not talk," the Boss said, "we will have to use other methods." He walked out. Two interpreters took over -- tiny men, like court dwarfs. There followed question after question, hour after hour. I had been under interrogation 24 hours. I was dead tired, fighting sleep, swaying on my feet, and they would not let me sit down. "YOUR'LL BE SORRY" I said, "I'm not going to answer any more questions." "Why not?" 'I'm s.. ,. I'm not going to answer any more questions tonight. I want to go to bed." "You'll be sorry you said that." They whisked me downstairs, handcuffed my wrists together in front of me and led me out toa small Skoda sedan. Two policemen were in front. Two others were in back," and I sat bettveen them, blindfolded and bent forward with my head between my knees. I thought, 'Here 1 go to Pankrae Prison." "NUREMBERG EGGS" First watch was invented by Peter Henle about 1500. 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