Betrayal Lurked So Very Close to Home

It was a dismal winter day when my husband and I traveled to this town of gingerbread and steeples to read for ourselves what the secret police had documented about our lives during four decades of communism.

It was an exhausting encounter. I couldn’t sleep at all that first night. I kept turning over in my mind what I had read. Seeing things written about you in black and white gets to you in a way I had never imagined--even the things well-known to me for many years.

I saw an order barring my son from attending college. There was a discussion about planting listening devices in our home. I read about an old family friend who betrayed us to the police, landing 10 of us in jail. There were reports of a co-worker who provided the authorities with a key to my office. Another colleague suggested to the police that they put the “squeeze” on me at a financially difficult time for my family.

The former Czechoslovak secret police, known as the StB, had kept files on both my husband and me. Until 1989, when communism was peacefully overthrown, the secret police watched a lot of people, not just outright dissidents. They kept a particular eye on those of us who came into regular contact with foreigners.

Before taking my present job as a stringer for the Los Angeles Times, I had spent 20 years with the Associated Press, starting as an interpreter and translator in 1968, just after the Soviet-led invasion that put an end to the “Prague Spring” reform movement. I eventually worked up to the position of bureau chief, which I left in 1988, mentally and physically exhausted.

It was long debated in the Czech Republic--which split with Slovakia in 1993--whether the StB files should be opened and, if so, to whom. In the former East Germany, where the secret police files were kept on paper, reams of documents were made accessible to both German citizens and foreigners. The revelations in those files caused a lot of heartache as many Germans learned that the enemy was often much closer to home than they thought--sometimes even in their home.

In my country, the files were kept on microfilm, meaning any review of them would be tedious and time-consuming. In the end, the government decided to open the archives to Czech citizens only. Beginning last summer, you could apply to see your file only by appointment here in Pardubice, about 70 miles east of Prague. It is here that the Interior Ministry maintains the archives in a former convent building. (The town also is well-known for its factory that manufactures Semtex, a plastic explosive favored by terrorists.)

The regulations allow you to make one copy of the material at the cost of about $1.50 a page (I spent more than $700). There is no guarantee that sections are not missing or destroyed and the names of other people mentioned in your files have been blackened out, though it is not hard to piece together most of the missing cast of characters.

“No, I am not going to bother to see my secret police file,” I insisted when the possibility of applying was first broached. “I know everybody was reporting on me, that my phone was bugged and my mail searched. So what? I expected it.”

But the stories of reviewing files told by some professional friends whetted my appetite, and my husband--who always wants to get to the bottom of things--hoped to find out more about the 1953 episode that landed us in jail. We set out on our mission in March; my file was so large--1,160 entries--that I returned some weeks later for another two grueling days.

*

The elegantly restored archives building on Zborovska Square is inconspicuous from the outside. Once you walk up the few steps to the entrance, however, you are enveloped by the staff’s kindness, warmth and understanding. After filling out the required paperwork, we were taken to a large room with seven cubicles, each with a microfilm reader and a table with plenty of paper. Staff members are trained to be helpful but unobtrusive; they will assist operating the machine or simply provide a sympathetic ear. Not many can read through their files silently, and more than a few break down in tears. I asked to be left alone.

However much you brace yourself for what you find, I soon discovered, it comes as a shock. It is one thing to assume certain things were true; it is another to read them in print.

I had assumed that everybody I was in contact with might be reporting on me, but I was not prepared for the continuous day-to-day snitching by Associated Press staff. My own assistant gave the police a key to the office, and later, after the lock had been changed, let them in again. I knew my phone was tapped, but I hadn’t known the telex machine was being monitored as well. I knew the office was “visited” from time to time, but here were the official records of the visits, with details of the way things were scrutinized and photographed. The police went through the business cards of 300 of my visitors, finding 60 of them worth pursuing. Even more disturbing were erroneous reports about people who were said to have met with me at the office, which led the police to zero in on people whom I did not even know.

It was generally known at the time--and she made no secret of it--that a valued employee of a major U.S. news magazine was in contact, to put it mildly, with the secret police. But she was great fun and larger than life, and we all enjoyed her company. I was shocked, nonetheless, to find out that she was keeping the authorities posted on our home-building effort and at one juncture told them that we had taken out a construction loan and, since the family was dependent on my income, it would be a good time to “squeeze” me to get my cooperation. The report goes on to mention she was rewarded for her information with a gift basket.

At a certain point, I must confess, my reaction to all of this was amusement. Here I was being described as Jewish (wrong), from a rich family in Olomouc (wrong) and a probable spy for the Americans (wrong). Even funnier, I knew well enough with whom they had confused me in all three instances.

What amused me most was a report in 1971 about President Nixon’s imposition of a 10% tax on Czechoslovak exports to the United States. In response to an all-points message from Associated Press, I went about getting reaction to the new surcharge. My questions to a spokesman at the Foreign Ministry, however, were apparently interpreted as spying; my file said I was likely acting on behalf of the U.S. Embassy. Mention of the episode appears over and over again in my file over the next 20 years.

The StB’s total misunderstanding of journalistic work was boundless. At one point, a Czechoslovak agent in Bonn, the German capital, was dispatched to Frankfurt to check out my communication with a mysterious Hans Wilde. In fact, Wilde was the AP accountant in Frankfurt; I routinely sent him my expense reports for processing. In the early ‘70s, I did a story about Greeks living here. Again and again, references to my interest in Greeks crops up in my file, as do references to my questions about economics, politics and the environment. What else should a reporter be interested in?

My husband’s file, slimmer than mine, had little to laugh about. In the early 1950s, we had been involved in motaky--letters and packages sent undercover to political prisoners. My brother-in-law was in the infamous Jachymov uranium mines, where many political prisoners were sent in the 1950s. My mother-in-law was secretly sending him food through a civilian working in the mine. Gradually, the number of people who were getting assistance this way expanded and, in the end, included a Frenchman married to a Czech. When the scheme was detected, and 10 of us were imprisoned for up to 18 months (I was released after three months), we thought we had been betrayed through a leak at the mine or at the French Embassy. Instead, it turns out, a highly respected friend of the family, who is now dead, was the police informant. We were stunned.

My journalistic file started more or less at the time AP correspondent Gene Kramer was leaving Prague and I was taking over the bureau. I learned that if Kramer had not been leaving anyway, he would have been expelled. I also learned that as early as 1972 the StB demanded that I be dismissed from my job because “I had consciously assisted Kramer in his hostile activities.” And if it weren’t for the Czech Foreign Ministry, the files revealed, I would probably have lost my job and ended up in jail again. The ministry repeatedly stated that I had not overstepped my bounds as a journalist.

In one touching entry amid all the doom and gloom, I learned that Jaromir Zantovsky, then assistant foreign minister and an erstwhile ambassador to the United States, personally intervened on behalf of my son so that he could be admitted to Charles University. My son is now an assistant professor there.

*

At the end of my three days scrolling through the microfilm, I came out of the Interior Ministry building into the sunshine of an early spring day. I was surprised by the onslaught of my emotions.

I thought about the futility of the whole secret police exercise. There was this huge apparatus, reams of “strictly secret” documents, and yet, in the end, they relied mostly on unreliable information from a handful of people.

The police had the bugs, they could listen to my phone conversations, they rifled my belongings, yet surprisingly, they gained little from that. There are records of just three or four phone calls. I attended hundreds of cocktail parties, receptions and dinners hosted by foreign diplomats, yet there are just two reports from Indian national day celebrations, one British event and a few Fourth of July parties. I had lunch countless times with American, British and German press attaches, yet the file makes no mention of those, nor is there any record of my frequent chats with various ambassadors.

As time has passed, I continue to experience changing moods. To my great surprise, I was overpowered for a long while by resentment toward AP as almost 20 years of my life were laid bare before me. Did the company really appreciate the strain that I went through? The constant tension? Living with unending surveillance? Knowing one side is always asking, “Is she working for the CIA?” and the other, “Is she working for the StB?” The sacrifices of my family? The circumspection exercised in meeting friends? And through it all, I had nothing for protection but my own integrity.

I often think back to the 1990 meeting of the AP board at the U Kalicha restaurant in Prague. The place was full of board members and their wives; the general manager was there and all the top AP brass. There was a place for me in the far corner of the room. There were speeches, all and sundry were thanked for their work. But nobody mentioned the family that had borne the brunt for 20 difficult years.

The resentment, however, has given way to the realization that through it all, God’s protection was with us. I did not land in jail again, my son was allowed to study and my husband found work in the building industry. It was probably he who suffered the most, yet he always stood uncomplaining at my side. It was a joy to me when, after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution,” he found a measure of fulfillment in restarting the YMCA, where he had worked as student secretary in 1950 when it was closed by the communist authorities.

The secret police surveillance era, one hopes anyway, is past in this country. But my thoughts go out to all those working in countries where political freedom is unknown. The greatest lesson I learned is that the actions of unscrupulous people around you can not only endanger you but others with whom you have contact--and that you have a responsibility to protect them as well. One of the things that helped me get through it all was that I kept everything out in the open. There were no locked drawers in my office, I never searched for an untapped phone booth (though I did occasionally talk to people in the bathroom with the water running) and my address book was always open on my desk. As much as possible, I kept everything aboveboard.

Through it all, I can now say, I was treated relatively politely--nobody yelled at me or threatened me openly. I retired at 63, and with that, I ceased to be interesting to the professional snoopers and my file was closed. But just a year later, to all of our surprise, the Iron Curtain came down, and I was again chasing through the streets of Prague, but this time with no informants on my heels.