Word: czech
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...Bartos." Then, like a ventriloquist's dummy, Oatis went through all the stiff motions of "confessing" to espionage. As in other propaganda trials, the low, hesitant words were broadcast. Oatis admitted taking orders from New York and London A.P. officials to find out what happened to deposed Czech Foreign Minister Vladimir dementis and otherwise trying to get information that the Czech government had not officially released. To Western newsmen, his "spying" was obviously no more than the routine news-gathering of correspondents all over the free world. The only charge against him that was not strictly news-gathering Oatis...
Witnesses testified to such acts by Oatis as checking on the comings & goings of high politicos at Prague airport, and visiting foreign diplomats. Three of Oatis' Czech assistants (the fourth is still missing) admitted that they too "felt guilty...
...final speech. "I am sorry I went in for espionage in this country," he said. "I did it only because I listened to the wrong kind of orders from abroad ... I am sorry for all this. Your security organ caught me and now you know all about me." The Czech court sentenced him to ten years in prison, with a chance of five years off for "good behavior." His three assistants got 16, 18 and 20-year sentences...
Robert A. Vogeler, recuperating from the same kind of Darkness-at-Noon proceeding, put his finger on the probable Czech motive for the Oatis conviction. "They snatch an American citizen," said Vogeler, "and hold him prisoner until our State Department coughs up ransom . . . We are the greatest country and we continue to crawl." To get Vogeler out of jail, the U.S. went along with the Communists' snatch & ransom plot, forked over several million dollars worth of industrial concessions to the Hungarian government. What ransom do the Czechs want? Among the guesses is that they want the U.S. to shut...
There is every reason to believe that the State Department will not pay ransom. But other than stopping all private travel to Czechoslovakia right after Oatis was arrested, it has not yet gone beyond protests and denunciations to help Oatis. The Czech government still has nine embassy officials in Washington, five staffers at the U.N., and it is still selling goods in the U.S. at the rate of $28,000,000 a year...