Word: czechs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Released the text of his letter to Czech President Antonin Zapatocky, asking for the repatriation of Bill Oatis (see PRESS) as one way to ease the tensions between the two countries...
...East German military buildup, and was East Germany's liaison man to the Cominform. Only two German Communists were bigger: Party General Secretary Walter Ulbricht, who toppled him, and Security Boss Wilhelm Zaisser, who arrested him. His crimes: "Political blindness." He was also charged with having supported Czech Communist Leader Rudolf Slansky, executed as a traitor last year. Warned the official announcement: "The investigation is not over yet." The hyena was still hungry...
...prison two years on a spying charge. They left two oddly matched articles-a pair of Argyle socks knitted by his wife, and his passport. The Embassy was acting on the suspicion that Oatis might need both for traveling. Fourteen hours later he did. Oatis was taken before a Czech Communist official and told that he had been freed. He was no more astounded than everyone else. The U.S. had apparently been making little progress in negotiations for his release, and only two weeks ago the Czechs announced that a new amnesty order for Czech prisoners did not apply...
Back in New York two days later, Oatis was greeted at the airport by his wife and more than 200 newsmen. Meanwhile the State Department, which had cut off all trade with Czechoslovakia, banned tourist travel and forbidden Czech planes to fly over the U.S. zone of Germany, made it clear that no "deal" had been made with the Czechs to get Oatis freed...
Actually, many a newsman felt that in freeing Oatis, the Czechs had only rectified one of their worst outrages against the West and its press, and that there was much more they could do. Said the New York Times: "Is [the Czech] government willing to permit truthful reporting from Prague and to grant personal security to foreign newspapermen honestly engaged in such reporting? That is the real test which, even as we welcome Mr. Oatis, cannot be absent from our minds...