Why I had so little trouble where others had so much is impossible to say. Tad Szulc, a Washington-based journalist noted for his coverage of Eastern Europe, was denied a visa the previous summer and three months prior to my application. Paul Hoffman of the New York Times Vienna Bureau waited six weeks for a seven day journalist's visa. The following factors may have been helpful: the application was made in Washington rather than a European city, by a magazine correspondent unknown to Czechoslovak authorities rather than a newspaper reporter with a reputation for writing unflattering things about the regime; and there was the Helsinki agreement guaranteeing foreign correspondents the right of access. Nonethless, considering the tense situation in Prague where the regime was steadily repressing the human rignts movement called "Charter 77" I marveled that I had encountered no obstacles.
I arrived in Prague not knowing what to expect and fearing the worst. Hoffman's daily dispatches from Prague to the Times had sketched a grim picture of repression by the Secret Police and as he left Czechoslovakia he was detained at the border and his notes were confiscated. Two French journalists were held for three days as they left the country and two others were tear gassed when they came to see Charter 77 spokesman, Jiri Hajek, who was under house arrest. I reported to the Press Center for Foreign Journalists where I was accredited and issued a press card. The Director assured me full cooperation in filling my requests for interviews with officials "in the cultural sphere", including the First Secretary of the Writers' Union and a representative from the Ministry of Culture. No mention was made of Charter 77 though I declared my intention to ask some political questions during my interviews.
Very quickly after my arrival I formed a picture of dissident activities and the measures used by the regime to surpress them. Two hundred forty Czechs had signed the Manifesto of Charter 77 accusing the government of violating Czech laws guaranteeing human rights. The regime reacted with a press campaign villifying the best known signatories; four people were imprisoned, three others placed under house arrest; virtually all who signed the Manifesto were interrogated, many had their driver's licenses revoked and many were sacked from their jobs for "anti-State activities." Despite these harsh reprisals, another 350 people added their signatures in the weeks following the crackdown. The Chief Prosecutor declared the Manifesto to be an anti-State document and signing it to be a criminal offense. His ruling is a paradigm of Orwellian double-think: Czech citizens are guaranteed the right to petition their government, but are prohibited by law from defaming the reputation of the country. Czechoslovak officials cited the publication of the Manifesto in the Western press as grounds for the defamation charge.
For several days I took every precaution not to draw the attention of the Secret Police, avoiding contact with prominent dissidents who might be under surveillance. In my hotel room I set to examining my amateur sleuthing devices intended to determine if my belongings had been disturbed. With a needle I had run a piece of fine thread through a stack of clothing in my luggage; if my clothes had been rifled, the thread would have slipped out of the pile, or so I thought. I discovered to my secret chagrin that I had succeeded only to put my clothes in a hopeless tangle of thread. Inspector Clousseau wouldn't be more hopeless.
Not until I paid a courtesy call at the American Embassy did I notice any signs that the Secret Police were watching me. When I left the Embassy, I went to the apartment of a Pitr Pithart who had been sacked from his job as legal consultant to a construction firm after signing the Charter Manifesto. As I entered the building, a man fell in behind me and followed me up the stairs. On the landing at the door of the apartment where I intended to enter, I dawdled to let him pass, but he, too, slowed his pace. I turned to look at him; he stood on the stairs fumbling with his briefcase. I made a mental note of his general appearance, then rang the bell.
When I left the building three hours later, I spotted the man from the stairway standing with two other men in the street; one, facing my direction, was chubby, balding and wore a brown leather jacket. I started across Charles Bridge, the medieval foot bridge that spans the Vltava. The river below was peaceful but the tall black statues every twenty paces lining the bridge gave the scene a foreboding air even at mid-day. On the west bank, I headed along Karolva toward the Old Town Square. Just beyond a short dogleg, I ducked into a shop, glancing over my shoulder. Nothing. As I stepped back on the street a few minutes later I thought I glimpsed the chubby one turning his back. At the Old Town Square, I stalled and noticed a man with a camera and a very long telephoto lens pointing in my general direction. So what, I asked myself? I meandered back to my hotel.
After two hours I was convinced my imagination had played a nasty trick on me and I went out to find a phone booth. Passing out the revolving door onto the street, I saw the chubby one standing immediately across from the hotel door. There was no mistake. My heart began beating so hard I thought it would break my sturnum. Never before had I had this experience of being pursued and it filled me with a primordial fear. I thought of nothing besides loosing the man who followed me. Emerging from an arcade I came upon a welcome invitation: the open doors of a trolley car. I hopped on and the door closed behind me. As the trolley pulled away I turned and looked back toward the arcade where I saw the chubby one hanging back, just in sight. Three stops later I left the trolley and began strolling down a side street feeling smug and a little giddy. By the accident of the waiting trolley I had been transformed from Inspector Clousseau to James Bond. Suddenly I was overtaken by a panting, uniformed policeman who demanded to see my documents. For five minutes he stood, hands trembling, silently making notes from my passport and press card. Then he saluted and disappeared.
Near the beginning of my second week in Prague, I was obliged to change hotels. Concerned that messages left for me at the first hotel should reach me at my new hotel, I inquired with the reception desk. "I have recently changed hotels and I wonder if there are any messages left for me," I asked the clerk " I know... Be careful, " the clerk said, with a smile and walked away to attend to other business. Good advice, I thougnt to myself when I had regained my composure.
Ten days' leg work began producing results when intermediaries arranged a meeting with dissident friends of a jailed poet whose imprisonment last summer had been an important factor in establishing a coalition of unprecedented breadth around the single non-political issue of cultural freedom. This coalition was the basis of Charter 77. The meeting was to take place in a Prague apartment near Old Town Square. Early on the day of the scheduled rendezvous, I began noticing tell tale signs that I was shadowed. I walked even more circuitous routes through the labyrinth of narrow Prague streets without managing to shake my pursuers. I returned to my hotel and studied a map to choose the most devious route to my final destination. The hotel had two exits and I hoped the police might not cover them both, but when I stepped into the flow of human traffic passing the doorway, a lone man leaning against the opposite wall began following me. Three times I thought I had lost him only to discover him again a few paces behind me. At last I telephoned ahead to my destination, explaining the problem in oblique language. I was told in equally oblique language that my destination was under surveillance too. We cancelled the meeting.
The following morning, I came to the Press Center with a letter protesting that as an accredited journalist I should not be subject to police surveillance. The Director invited me to join him in his office for coffee. At first he suggested was overly suspicious but when I described my experiences he agreed that probably I was followed.
"You have your American colleagues to thank for that," he said, matter of factly. "They have come here recently pretending to be real journalists when their actual purpose was to meet with certain domestic enemies and take materials from them to the West." He cited the correspondent for the New York Times as an example.
My reply was equally matter of fact.
"As an outsider, it is difficult for me to know who might be a domestic enemy," I said. "Can you give me any guidelines, or perhaps even a list of names so that I might know when I am talking to a domestic enemy."
"These are people who are under investigation for certain criminal activities. Some of them have also signed the so-called Charter 77."
This was the first mention of the Charter in any of my conversations with Czechoslovak officials.
"Is the criminal activity under investigation specifically the signing of the Charter?" I asked.
"No. Anyone can sign anything in Czechoslovakia, it is perfectly legal to sign. The investigation may reveal, if there is any connection between these criminal activities and the Charter itself. "
By placing under house arrest three former leading officials of the Dubcek era from among the wide diversity of politicians professionals and literati who signed the Manifesto, the regime of Czechoslovak President Gustav Husak showed its jittery insecurity that a new Prague Spring was in the making, that 1968 might repeat itself. The three men sequestered from contact with foreigners were: Jiri Hajek, Foreign Minister in the Dubcek government, Frantisek Kriegel, one of a handful of top officials including Dubcek kidnapped by the Soviets and flown out of the country in the first days of the occupation of 1968, and Zdenek Mlynar, a Moscow-trained lawyer who took over leadership of the Communist Party while Dubcek and his men were in custody in Moscow. All three were free to move around Prague but everywhere they were accompanied by at least two fizls (plainclothes agents of the Secret Police). Hajek, an enthusiastic jogger despite his advanced age, was prevented from taking his daily exercise until he gave his solemn word that he would not jog down any one-way streets the wrong way. Now once again he could be seen jogging through his suburban neighborhood, a black Tatra 603 sedan slowly cruising along behind.
Of these three, the one I most wanted to meet was Kriegel, a citizen of the world who had witnessed some geo-politics first hand in the course of his long career. A physician by training, he was in the Medical Corps of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, served with Chiang Kai Sheck in World War II (with tne approval of the Commintern), was Deputy Minister of Health in the first communist regime in Czechoslovakia, was forced out of political life in the purge of the early 1950's, and returned to politics in the early 1960's as medical advisor to the new Cuban government. In August 1968 when the Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia, he was a member of the Praesidium under Dubcek, and went with him to Moscow, where Dubcek and his colleagues agreed to accept narrow guidelines for their policies if they were allowed to remain in office. Kriegel, however, refused to sign the Moscow Protocols and the Soviets attempted to keep him in custody on the pretext that his birthplace in Polish Galicia had been annexed to the Soviet Union and hence he was really a Soviet citizen. Dubcek refused to leave without Kriegel, the Soviets relented, and Kriegel returned to Prague with his ,fellow countrynten/hostages.
I made inquiries and was told that if anyone could arrange a meeting with Kriegel, it would be V., who quickly offered his help. On the weekends, Kriegel regularly visits an old political croney thirty minutes by train from Prague. The fizls accompany him and remain on the pavement at the croney's gate while the two visit. If I were already inside when Kriegel arrived and left after his departure, the fizls would be none the wiser, barring hidden microphones.
During one meeting with V. at a Prague cafe, we were joined by Irina Duska, wife of Zdenek Mlynar, one of the two others under house arrest.
"You want to meet Kriegel, eh?" she said in a sceptical tone. "Well it is very dangerous. A Spanish journalist came to see my husband last weekend. Somehow he got past the guard at the street and made it to my door. We were talking over the threshold when the fizls came to stop us. As they took him away he said 'Don't worry about me. I was years in Franco's jails. Yours can't be any worse.' They expelled him from the country after holding him for 10 hours. Very risky what you are planning.
"Don't let her alarm you," V. said reassuringly. "The longest they've held a foreign journalist in recent years here is three weeks. He was an Italian journalist who was a material witness in a case against Milan Huebal, former Rector of the Communist Party School. Huebal used the journalist as a courier to take a letter out to a leading emigre in Rome. Huebal got five years in prison."
Alas, Kriegel was willing but unable, for strictly practical reasons, to cooperate in the time remaining before my visa expired. Meanwhile others had inquired with Hajek if he would meet with me. Hajek suggested that I come to his house between 10:00 and 11:00 when he would be working in his garden. We could talk across the fence until the police would interfere.
Walking the three blocks from the end of the trolley line to Hayek's suburban cottage, I thought about the two French journalists who had been maced by the police six weeks before for trying exactly what I was doing. I set my attitude in advance and resolved to keep it. I would be polite, even friendly and would offer no resistance. If the police were determined not to let me talk to Hayek, no determination on my part would overcome theirs; rather it would only get me into trouble. So I would be a gentleman, come what may.
As I turned into Kosatcova Street, I remembered a familiar sight from my childhood, the sight of the admiring baseball 1-1 fan who leaps onto the field at Fenway Park and charges onto the outfield toward Ted Williams; the crowd watches, amused and indulgent, knowing that the cops will come and take him away but not before he has met the star face to face and shaken hands with him. The fan pays for his thrill with expulsion from the park and maybe a night in the slammer. I watched myself with tne same amused and indulgent eye. What does one say to the star in the brief moment before the police hurry him off the field?
Down the street, I saw a uniformed policeman beside a black Tatra. At Hayek's gate, I paused and seeing him nowhere in sight, I rang the bell. Hayek and the policeman converged at the gate.
"As you must know, I'm not allowed to speak with foreigners, said the Charter 77 spokesman. "You must go with this man but don't be afraid. You're not obliged to answer any questions. And insist on your right to contact your Embassy."
In the Tatra sedan sat two men in civilian clothes looking more like garage mechanics than agents of the Secret Police. They were jolly and I smiled at them. One-raised a camera at me and I showed him the biggest grin I could manage and gave a hand gesture like a circus performer does after completing a stunt. He clicked my photo and I took my Leica from my pocket making ready to take his photo. "No, no," he gestured and I put my camera away. The uniformed policeman, after conferring by radio, put me into another sedan and I was driven to a regional police station. It was no medieval dungeon but rather three or four clean, anticeptic, well-lit rooms of tile and steel nestled among some shops in a modern shopping center. Still, I was under and key.
The officer in charge took my passport and press card, offered me a seat and disappeared. It is Good Friday, I thought, and Monday is a national holiday; it will be Tuesday afternoon before anyone, will be available to authorize my release. I glanced at the photograph of President Gustav Husak on the wall. I remberred that during the Stalinist years, he himself was in a Czechoslovak prison for five years, that his name means "gander" in Slovak and that his prison job was-stuffing pillows with goose down. I took out Humboldt's Gift and plunged into Saul Bellow's Chicago, hoping I wouldn't finish before Tuesday. But after forty minutes, my documents were returned and I was shown to the door. I was relieved and also, I confess, a trifle disappointed.
This final episode reflects as much on journalism as it does on Czech politics. It convinced me again that journalists play a large hand in shaping the events they report on. If I had adopted a different attitude from the gentlemanly one I chose, I believe I, too, could have been maced. Either way the objective situation would be the same: a former Czech Cabinet Minister, now spokesman for a human rights movement, is prevented from speaking with foreign journalists by a frightened, insecure political regime that remains in power only because Moscow approves. It also occured to me that mild as was my clash with secret police, if the wire services had the item, they would almost certainly publish it.
"Today in Prague agents of the State Security Police took an American journalist into custody. The journalist, a correspondent for Harper's Magazine, was taken by the police when he tried to visit Jiri Hayek, former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister in the government of Alexander Dubcek, the leader of the movement for autonomy which was put down by Soviet troops in 1968 . Hayek is a spokesman for the Charter 77 Human Rights Movement and has been under house arrest since mid-March. The journalist was released later in the day."
Sequel (2001) In July, 2000, I returned to Prague for the first time since 1978. Except for the appearance of gambling parlors, the city was unchanged. Yet, emotionally it was a completely different landscape for me. I revisited a few of the settings of my intrigues. They were completely alien and utterly mundane.
Gone, too, were my old ties. Chief among them was my friendship with Petr Pithart. In 1978 Petr was a junior figure among the dissidents but a man of enormous good will and extremely well-connected. We took the measure of each other and he decided to back me to the full. Most of my clandestine meetings were in his apartment within sight of Charles Bridge. By the time I left Prague I felt like a brother to him.
Petr payed a rather high price for his alliance with me. Before I was even across the border he had been arrested by the secret police and interogated in a rather rough manner, I learned later.
I wrote to Petr many times, mostly chatty letters of a personal sort, but never got an answer. I was puzzled, but decided not to pay it too much mind. There was a bond between us, I told myself, and eventually we would toast our escapades in some tavern after the harsh politics of Czechoslovakia mellowed.
In 1989, the Velvet Revolution swept the old regime away, Vaclav Havel became president, and Petr's name began showing up in the news. His star was on the rise in the political firmament. I wrote to him when he visited the U.S., but got no answer. Perhaps the letter didn't reach him, I told myself. He was elected to the Czech Senate, then elected its president. I found his web site and email address and wrote to him on the internet. No answer. I befriended a Czech univeristy student in Prague who learned where he lived in Prague. At my request my young friend went to Petr's dwelling an hand-delivered my message to his mailbox. No answer. Finally, I was satisfied that my messages had reached him, and that he really did not intend to renew contact with me.
For East Europeans of my generation or older my failure to get a response from my old friend may not need an explanation. But to an American it is puzzling. I wondered if I had misjudged him in thinking he was a man who, once declared to be a friend, would not waiver. I wondered if the bond I felt with him was my illusion, if he was just using me for his political ends. Perhaps he believed the secret police when they told him I was a CIA spy and hence felt betrayed.
The best explanation I have as to why this seemingly stalwart
man should not reply to any of my overtures is that Petr Pithart was and is
a man of great political ambition and that this
obliges him to be very careful in his friendships and
associations. When the Czech Parliament
adopted a resolution
to join NATO a few years ago the New York Times ran a photo
showing the Senate of the Czech Republic casting its votes.
There on his perch in the President's chair was Petr Pithart
with his hand raised to cast his vote. He has been mentioned
recently as a serious candidate to succeed Havel in the presidency.
For such a man any connection with someone once labeled a
spy of the CIA carries a risk not worth taking in pursuit of some
personal sentiment.
I became aware of this public index when a Czech friend of more recent
acquaintance, Jiri Hokes, emailed me that the index showed that my
name was referenced and cited file numbers.
Here's the website, which is all in Czech, of course:
http://www.abscr.cz/cs/vyhledavani-archivni-pomucky. It seems that
my code name was "savoy" (or "savoj").
Of course, I had to discover what these files contained, and so I wrote a
power of attorney for Jiri to be my representative in retrieving this
information. Thus empowered Jirka, as he is called, made an
appointment to view the files in question.
The files revealed that the STB did not consider me an out-and-out CIA
spy, but rather a journalist likely to defame the government and
incite unrest among dissidents (likely to commit defamation
and incitement), which is an accurate appraisal of my
intentions from their point of view. I was given a name for purposes
of these files, Savoj, or "Savoy" in English.
According to the files the STB detail assigned to shadow my movements
consisted of seven men on the street. Of particular interest was my
meeting with "V" described above. "V" was the name I gave in my
article for Jiri Dienstbier, a prominent dissident who, eventually,
became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first Havel government. The
file contained a photograph of Dienstbier taken at the meeting with a
hidden camera in a public cafe. Dienstbier died on January 8, 2011.
NY Times Obit
Also from the files of the STB:
In the years of the transition
from one-party rule to true democracy, often labeled the velvet
revolution, Czechoslavakia and its successor states the Czech
and Slovak Republics, endured a painful process called lustration
in which the archives of the State Security Police (STB) were made public.
On request from individuals the government would review all the files
of the Secret Police and determine the individual's degree of complicity
in the reign of the police state. Some public figures paid a high price
for their lustration. Along with this program of transparency came
a website that provided access to the index of the STB files.
