Libuse (Lela) Cloud and "Project Sliver Lining": The Iron Curtain could not stop Love ©

Libuse Hrdonkova was born on September 14, 1922, in Stod, Czechoslovakia. She met Leonard Cloud, an American soldier in a small town near Pilzen, following the end of World War Two, when he was stationed there. He then returned to the United States only to return to Czechoslovakia in 1949, when they married at the 13th century Cathedral in Pilzen on November 26th.

His visa expired, and he was forced to leave Czechoslovakia without her in January 1950. She tried six times to get a passport, but each application was refused. She was later quoted as saying; “We often were despondent over the refusals, but the hope that I would get across persisted.”

Freedom Tank

She was also quoted as saying she had two previously unsuccessful attempts to escape by foot. The full story of how she and others broke through the Iron Curtain in a home-made "Tank" built by Vaclav Uhlik was the subject of a previous blog post and can be read here. 

As an "escapee", she described at a news conference (broadcast by Radio Free Europe and Voice of America) her joy as the “tank” crossed the Iron Curtain on July 24, 1953: "I saw the barbed wires approaching and all at once we slipped down and went under the tracks. It was beautiful. We made it. Beautiful like a dream. Too beautiful to be true."  She is also quoted as saying, “I knew the bad life was behind me. I was free. I was no longer a slave. I was a human being again.” She added, “I want to get to the United States as fast as possible for a reunion with my husband.” 

A Paramount Pictures newsreel shown in movie theaters throughout the United States shows the tank in motion and the escapees, including Libuse Cloud next to the tank and also at the news conference:

She departed Germany in September 1953 to be re-united with her husband in Iowa. She was reported as saying, “I still can’t believe it’s real … I’ve often dreamed of this:” She flew from Germany, to New York but bad weather delayed her arrival in New York and she had to overnight there on Thursday, September 17, 1953. Dr. Jan Papanek, founder and president of the American Fund for Czechoslovakian Refugees (AFCR) met her at New York's Idlewild Airport. He was accompanied by Roger Williams of the U.S. State Department, who would also fly to Iowa with her. 

She gave a television interview and made a recording for the Voice of America, to be broadcast to Czechoslovakia. Libuse Cloud also went to the United Nations building and met the U.S. delegate Henry Cabot Lodge.

In Chicago

She then flew to Chicago the next day, where she was photographed at the airport driving a small cart and explaining to the airline's “First Officer Guy Douglas” how she escaped from Czechoslovakia. 

Libuse then flew on to Sioux City, Iowa for the reunion with Leonard Cloud.

Her arrival in Iowa on Friday, September 18, 1953, was a “red carpet” affair, named “Project Silver Lining,“ with welcoming speeches and a welcoming telegram from the Governor, a marching band, motorcade and parade through Sioux City, Iowa. One newspaper article began with, “A Silver Lining for the Clouds: Courageous Czech to Arrive in Iowa.” Another read, “Czech War Bride arrives in Iowa.” She reportedly ran down the stairs from the plane into her husband’s arms.”  She later said, “I am so happy to be in a free country. It’s wonderful”

The Sioux City Junior Chamber of Commerce sponsored her flight and festivities. Iowa Governor William S. Beardsley” sent her a telegram, which read: “All Iowa is happy to welcome you to our state.”

For years, she spoke at various civic functions throughout the United States about the virtues of freedom. For example, at the September meeting of the Women's Federated Club in Lake View, Iowa, she gave a talk on "Escape to Freedom." 

In November 1953, she explained to an enraptured audience in Hawarden, Iowa, that there were two previous attempts to escape: the first one failed when the height of the Iron Curtain "fence" was increased; the second failed because the tank engine proved not powerful enough. The local newspaper reported that it was "one of the most interesting and unusual programs held in this community for some time..."  

At a “kickoff” banquet for the Crusade for Freedom in Des Moines, Iowa, in January 1954, Libuse Cloud said that her mother and family did not know of her escape plans and only “learned immediately of her escape over Radio Free Europe…I was able to send greetings to my parents.”  She told her parents that she had to leave home to help Mrs. Ulrich, who was ill.  She added, “Radio Free Europe seems like a voice from heaven … is giving our people hope and courage at a time, when life is very hard and difficult for them.”

In August 1969, she was quoted in the Des Moines Register on the theme of "moment of heroism" as saying, "If we had been caught we would have been happy to get only prison because we expected to be put to death. It's so good to breathe the air of freedom."

She became a U.S. citizen in 1957 and eventually gave birth to three children: Dennis, Leola, and Stuart.

        

Leonard Cloud died in 1983, and was buried on his 60th birthday. Libuse (Lela) Cloud died on December 1, 2012; she was 90 years old.

Slums Attack: Rapping with "Radio Wolna Europa" (Radio Free Europe) ©

Below is a look at the nine-minute song / video by the Polish rap group Slums Attack that juxtaposes a 1964 film, “This is Radio Free Europe” and rap music and text. According to historian Yulia Komska's analysis:

‘Radio Wolna Europa,’ performed in as many as eight languages: Polish, Czech, German, Russian, Italian (including Neapolitan), French, Swedish, and English. Each rapper gets a near-minute-long part, recited against his native urban backdrop 

Known for its focus on current issues, rap and hip-hop may come across as unlikely conduits for nostalgia. Indeed, Slums Attack, one of Poland’s oldest and best-known rap collectives, is famous precisely for spotlighting the bread and butter of European and Eastern European rap: life in the projects, unemployment, corruption, neoliberal delusions, and youth without a future 

Within its framework, RFE is not just a community-building agent, a sensorial pastime, or an aggregation of quaint broadcasting technologies. Instead, the station’s prominent role in the song is a symptom of nostalgia for the beginnings – and the unfulfilled promise – of rap itself. 

Participants in ‘Radio Wolna Europa’ interpret RFE precisely as a recognisable icon of freedom and protest to script a hip-hop manifesto of sorts. From this vantage point, it makes sense that the performers’ native city names flash on the radio set’s station scale to indicate that hip-hop, too, can and should broadcast. 

With the camera lingering on Poznań’s memorial to the ‘black Thursday’ (June 28, 1956), when the town’s populace took to the streets to demand better working condition, ‘Radio Wolna Europa’ affirms this young, ‘rogue,’ uncontrolled RFE, coming to its audiences ‘always uncensored, live, directly,’ as Azyl announces. Just like rap ought to do. 

Here is a short outtake from the video:

The full video can be viewed on youtube here:

For the full text of the song review and of two films about Radio Free Europe ("Cold Waves" in Romania and "Listen" in Bulgaria), see Yuliya Komska essay, “The Blurred Object of Communist Nostalgia: Radio Free Europe”, Twentieth Century Communism: A Journal of International History, Issue 11, Autumn 2016

NCFE's "Document on Terror" -- Fake News? ©

Newspaper Illustration for Document on Terror

 

 

The National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), the parent organization of Radio Free Europe (RFE), began publishing the monthly journal News from Behind the Iron Curtain in January 1952. The description of the journal read:

 

News from Behind the Iron Curtain, published monthly by the Research and Publication Service of the National Committee for a Free Europe, is distributed in a limited mailing list of those who have expressed in the events and developments in Communist-dominated Europe. This bulletin is a compilation of material collected by the Committee for the use of Radio Free Europe and its other divisions. It is being made available to representatives of the press and other media, universities, churches, libraries, research centers, and other groups who want to know more about "Communism in practice." The publication is not an organ of editorial policy; wherever possible direct questions have been used with a minimum of connective commentary. However, the Committee believes that accurate information contributes to an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Communist system and, hence, to the ability of the free nations to combat this system.

 

A “Document on Terror” was published in the March 1952 issue of the News from Behind the Iron Curtain. For the next two months, this “document” was excerpted in nationwide newspapers in an article by Associated Press journalist Sigrid Arne. One headline read, “Document Reveals: How Wily Reds Set Foe on Foe.” Another read, “Paper Found on NKVD Man Tells Red Fear Tricks.”

 

Here are some excerpts from the News from Behind the Iron Curtain Introduction:

 

The Origin of the Document


 

The Document on Terror reproduced on the following pages came to the National Committee for a Free Europe from a former Baltic cabinet minister, favorably known to us. This man received the document in 1948 from a Ukrainian refugee in Germany. According to the Ukrainian, the document, printed in Polish, had been found on the body of a dead NKVD officer in Poland in 1948. It was smuggled into Germany, where it was lent to the Ukrainians for 24 hours. During this period, Ukrainians made a shorthand copy of the document, which was later translated into German. The man who lent the document to the Ukrainian has disappeared. All subsequent efforts to find him have failed. The Baltic minister describes the Ukrainian (with whom he had spent several years in a Nazi concentration camp) as “wholly reliable."

 

The Question of Authenticity


 

No means of conclusively establishing the authenticity of the Document on Terror is known to us. The NKVD officer is dead, and no irrefutable link between him and the document can "be proved. Specific facts, however, support the belief that the document is a genuine product of Communist theory. First, the trend of thought and method of presentation are typical samples of dialectic materialism. Second, the application of a pattern of terror methods similar to or identical to those described in the monograph did, in fact, occur in widely separated countries in Eastern Europe as well as in China. The theory has been put into practice by the Communists. Third, the integrity of the man who gave it to us is of the highest order.

 

Translation

 

The German translation given to the former Baltic minister is all that now remains. Unfortunately, it is incomplete, lacking a title page and ending so abruptly that it seems almost sure that several pages are missing. In addition, the German translation itself is poor. However, it does have the advantage of being a literal translation, even to the extent of following the Polish syntax. The English translation has retained the style of the German except where this would promote misunderstanding. A few apparent inaccuracies have been corrected.

 

The Reason for Printing

 

It is not without misgivings that this manuscript is being made available to our readers, since the question of authenticity is by no means resolved. It is our feeling, however, that the document is of such interest and potential importance that it warrants publication. Therefore, we proceed in the hope that the professional scholars and journalists whom this magazine reaches will give it their thoughtful evaluation and draw their own conclusions.

 

There was a significant problem with this document as some scholars and journalists point to the CIA as the possible originator of the document. For example, Christopher Simpson wrote in his 1998 book Blowback:

 

The NCFE often distributed the highly publicized-but fraudulent-"Document on Terror," for example, as a means of crystallizing public anger in the West against communism during Radio Free Europe fund-raising campaigns. The "Document" purported to be a translation of a captured Soviet secret police directive encouraging the use of terror against civilian populations. The CIA aggressively promoted the text of the "Document" both directly through RFE and indirectly through coverage planted in a wide variety of sympathetic newspapers, magazines, and television broadcasts to audiences around the world.

 

The "Document" became a staple of anti-Communist propaganda and continues to show up occasionally in extreme-right-wing publications to this day. Recycled extensively through congressional hearings, Reader's Digest articles, and newspaper accounts, this "captured report" emerged as one of the frequently cited sources of "documentary evidence" of Communist terror during the cold war. It was not until 1956, with the publication of Khrushchev's extraordinary report detailing Stalin's crimes that the "Document" began to fade from view.

 

Journalist Evan Thomas wrote in The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA:

 

In the early days, the radios were blunt instruments. RFE repeatedly broadcast the "Document on Terror" … There were sections on "general terror"(murders, hangings, etc.), "enlightened terror" (use of agents provocateurs), and "creating the psychosis of white fear." The "captured document" was widely distributed (to the Congressional Record and Reader's Digest, among other places) as proof of what the West was up against. The charges rang true, but the document itself later turned out to be a forgery

 

Thomas was referring to psychological warfare specialist Paul W. Blackstock’s conclusion in his 1966 book Agents of Deceit: Frauds, forgeries and political intrigue among nations:

 

Indeed, in addition to the evidence already given, the substantive content of the alleged Document on Terror points to a Western rather than a Soviet or communist origin. Specifically, there are clues to indicate that the author may have been active in one of the Nazi secret police or related terrorist organizations (such as the Sicherheitsdienst or one of the notorious SD or SS "action groups").

 

The kind of rough ‘content analysis illustrated above should be adequate to indicate that the so-called Document on Terror is probably “fraudulent,” i.e., clearly not what it is represented to be, and is presumably German rather than communist in its inspiration and origin.

 

Psychiatrist Joost A. M. Meerloo believed the "Document on Terror" to be authentic when he wrote in his book The Rape of the Mind: The Psychiatry of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing:

 

Indeed, in addition to the evidence already given, the substantive content of the alleged Document on Terror points to a Western rather than a Soviet or communist origin. Specifically, there are clues to indicate that the author may have been active in one of the Nazi secret police or related terrorist organizations (such as the Sicherheitsdienst, or one of the notorious SD or SS “action groups”) … The kind of rough ‘content analysis illustrated above should be adequate to indicate that the so-called Document on Terror is probably “fraudulent,” i.e., clearly not what it is represented to be, and is presumably German rather than communist in its inspiration and origin.

 

Terrorism expert David C. Rapoport wrote in the 1982 book The Morality of Terrorism: Religious and Secular Justifications:

 

The "Document on Terror" is a chilling discussion of two fundamental kinds of terror - "general" and "enlightened" - their organizational bases, particular manifestations, political, psychological, and moral consequences. The author is unknown. Initially, it was described as a manuscript found in 1948 on the body of a dead Soviet official. That account was not entirely persuasive, even to the original publisher, which is probably why the "Document" never attracted much attention.

 

For the purposes of this volume the precise question of its origin (it may have been written by a Western intelligence officer) is not critical, because the text is a theoretical discussion and should be judged by standards normally applied to such works.

 

Chapter 9 of the book reproduces the full text of the “Document on Terror”.

 

Fake News? It needs to be clarified from the record. To repeat the NCFE's reason for printing the document: “We therefore proceed in the hope that the professional scholars and journalists whom this magazine reaches will themselves give it their thoughtful evaluation and draw their own conclusions.” 

 

The illustration above is from the Detroit Free Press newspaper, Sunday, April 20, 1952.

Top Ten Most Viewed Posts

From the beginning of the blog in May 2010 through December 2017, here are the ten most-viewed posts and the "audience" countries.

The top ten have remained in the blog, the rest have been deleted. I plan on putting out
a selection of the top ten and deleted posts since 2010 in a future ebook.

The blog is not dead as I will continue to post new vignettes.

Thank you to all who have taken the time and effort to read the blog posts and leave comments.

Nikita Khrushchev and Radio Free Europe, Part 4 ©

In December 1949, the public relations company John Price Jones compiled a report entitled Analysis and Plan of Fund Raising, in which plans were listed for public relations and publicity for the National Committee for Free Europe in the United States, with the two-fold purpose: ”To further support for a Free Europe and to develop financial and working support.”

The public relations company of Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson and Mather wrote a section to the Jones report that was “specifically designed to meet the need of the fund raising campaign ... based on their extensive study of the needs of the National Committee for Free Europe.”  One of the listed advertising plan aims was: “To capitalize on the public’s anti-communist sentiment, beat the drum of immediate danger, and paint a bold picture of the personal loss that is bound to follow Communism.” 

The advertising structure was to be based on three major appeals to the American public: Emotion, Reason and Action:

Emotion

To create emotion, personalized – dramatic headlines…will be written in terse simple words that speak directly to the average man

Reason

Point-by-point listings of the concrete things NCFE is doing and will do to achieve its goal of halting and destroying World Communism. Once the emotions are aroused, the immediate danger is stated, and tangible “what can you do”…it is felt that the reader will be motivated to the action he is next exhorted to take.

Action

To get action, end copy will emphasize urgency and utilize the “act now before it’s too late” technique.

These three appeals were successful in the 1950s with the Crusade for Freedom and continued in the early 1960s with the Radio Free Europe Fund. Here are two examples:

1. Magazine Advertisement

In the May 1961 issue of Reader's Digest magazine, for example, the advertisement for the Radio Europe Fund, read in part:

“Your grandchildren will grow up under Communism!” – says Nikita Khrushchev. 

Will the Soviet threat come true? Will your grandchildren live under Communism?  Forget God? Salute the Soviet flag?

“Never!” you say.  But are you sure? How can you oppose Communism? One sure way. Help Radio Free Europe! What does it do? It broadcasts the news of freedom to 79 million captive people behind the Iron Curtain.  It helps keep them from turning to Communism.  

They poses a major obstacle to the Russians starting any war.  

But Radio Free Europe depends on individual Americans for its existence.  How about it? Will you give a dollar? Give 5 dollars…or more?  

Surely your heart tells you to give something – so our children – and all children – shall live in freedom throughout the world.

Give now to Radio Free Europe

The American People’s Counter-Voice to Communism.

Mail your contribution to:

Radio Free Europe Fund

P.O. Box 1961,

Mt. Vernon 10, New York.

2. Television

Television was not an option in 1949 as most Americans did not own a television set. But that changed in 1962, with this televised public service announcement:

Nikita Khrushchev has told Americans, ‘We will bury you.’

His timetable for world conquest is on schedule:

1949 -- China; 1958 -- Tibet; 1961 -- Cuba. Now Communism threatens Laos, Iran, South America, Berlin.

Can it be stopped? The answer is, ‘Yes.’  In Eastern Europe, you can help fight Communism through Radio Free Europe, the American people’s Counter-Voice to Communism.  Radio Free Europe broadcasts news, religious services, the truth to 80 million captive people, who live under the shadow of Communism.

Right now, Radio Free Europe is working to push back the Iron Curtain in Russia’s front yard.

But to go on, Radio Free Europe needs your help. Mail your contributions to:

Radio Free Europe Fund

Box 1962

Mt. Vernon, New York.

The Saltshaker Caper: Operation Puppet -- 1959 Poison Plot against Radio Free Europe: Real or Successful CIA Double Agent Operation? ©

On November 18, 1975, Josef Frolik, a seventeen-year veteran of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service (StB) who had defected to the West, testified before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee. In page after page of remarkable testimony, Frolik presented detailed information about the inner most workings of intelligence services, not only that of Czechoslovakia but also of the KGB and other Warsaw Pact services. He gave true names and code names of agents and StB officers. 

For example, he said that Major Jaroslav Nemec, a Czechoslovak intelligence officer, code name NEKOLA, listed officially as the Czechoslovak Vice-consul in Salzburg, had planned a mass poisoning of RFE employees by substituting atropine in the cafeteria's saltshakers in November 1959. The operation was given the code name PANENKA (puppet).

Chairman Senator Thurmond asked Frolik, "What is the significance of the atropine?

Frolik answered, "It can create hallucinations and in large quantities death of people." He added that “Nemec had an agent in Radio Free Europe, who, as it turned out, also was an agent of the CIA ... the double agent gave the plan to the CIA, and therefore it did not happen.”

One of the so-called double agents of the CIA at RFE was code-name "Jachym,” who started working for the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service in 1953. He was sent to West Germany through a "faked escape" across the border the next year. The faked escape was meant to establish his bona fides within the Czech émigré community and then lead to a permanent job with RFE. He had been trained in radio codes, secret writing and other tradecraft. He had at least 59 meetings with the StB in Austria, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany. "Jachym's" intelligence tasks in Germany were: the Czech emigration. American Military Intelligence, and Radio Free Europe.

             

In the early 1990s, when he was confronted by RFE with spying allegations, "Jachym" for the first time admitted he had lied to RFE on his employment application: he did not escape to the Germany but StB sent him on an espionage assignment at RFE. He acknowledged being part of the 1959 StB plot to put atropine in the RFE cafeteria saltshakers, but he said he was under control of the CIA in Munich from the beginning. 

Unbeknownst to “Jachym” the StB also had involved two other agents code named “Alex” and “Kytka”, both of whom were actually double agents of the CIA. Under CIA control, “Jachym” gave StB officer Nemec one saltshaker that he had purchased at a local department store. It had to be a little different from one normally found in the cafeteria, i.e., for easier identification, if atropine were in it. "Jachym" did not actually place a saltshaker in the cafeteria, but one or two other RFE employees ("Alex" or "Kytka") possibly did so--"Jachym" saw "Alex" of them pocket two saltshakers and reported it to the CIA in Munich. One version of the story is that Nemec had given "Alex" the two saltshakers containing atropine at the Kuftstein train station in Salzburg, Austria on or about November 16, 1959.

RFE management learned of the atropine story on November 21, 1959. Taking no chances, on November 23, 1959, Radio Free Europe management closed the cafeteria without an explanation to the staff and to the Works Council (Labor), which had co-determination rights regarding the opening and closing of the cafeteria. The Works Council sued in Munich’ Labor Court to reopen the canteen. RFE’s European Director Erik Hazelhoff had to appear in court but could not give the reasons for the cafeteria’s closure on “security grounds.” RFE's cafeteria was reopened on December 17, 1959.

Radio Free Europe was now in a serious quandary as the covert RFE-CIA connection could not be admitted publicly. Also, a total of five Bavarian government agencies and the U.S. Army Southern Command told the press that they had not heard of the matter, before the court hearing.

Archibald S. Alexander, president of RFE's parent organization the Free Europe Committee, submitted a long report to the Board of Directors in December 1959, in which he wrote,

It was agreed between the Executive Committee and me that the matter should be handled in Munich by having Erik Hazelhoff, the European Director, go to the German authorities. It was understood at the time and still appears to be the case that the plot had been discovered when Jaroslav Nemec had sought to induce at least one employee to insert the substance, which he provided, into the salt shakers It turned out that the employee was and had for some time been working for the U.S. Army intelligence.

It is unfortunate that some of the news versions of this event may have cast doubt in the minds of readers or listeners as to whether there really had been this serious attempt upon the lives or health of RFE employees by Communist agents. There could have been some doubt as to whether the whole thing was not an attempted propaganda stunt by RFE.

An abridged copy of the report was sent to Free Europe Committee members, with information copies to Regional Directors of the Crusade for Freedom.

Although the Army Southern Command had at first publicly denied knowledge of the plot, on December 18, 1959, Headquarters U.S. Army Europe, in Heidelberg, Germany, issued a press statement that continued to distort the truth:

During its normal security operations in Germany, Army counter-intelligence agents discovered a plot to poison workers at RFE in Munich and passed this information immediately to RFE as a matter of urgent concern. The German Ministry of Justice was also informed by the U.S. Army.

The Army counter-intelligence investigation shows that Jaroslav Nemec. a vice consul at the Czech Consulate in Salzburg. Austria on November 16 gave a communist agent salt shakers containing atropine for placement in the RFE cafeteria in Munich.

The agent was told that the shakers contained a 'mild laxative.’ Clinical analysis, however, proved that they contained atropine in sufficient quantities to cause serious illness the degree of which would depend upon the age and physical condition of the individual and the amount of 'salt' consumed.

The New York Times published a special report on December 17, 1969, in which the journalist wrote, “The amount of poison in each salt shaker was said to be 2.36 per cent by weight of the contents. Atropine is a white crystalline alkaloid indistinguishable from salt. (Medical sources in New York doubted the amount cited was enough to kill, but said it probably could cause serious illness.)" 

The United States government directly, or indirectly, contacted the Austrian government, and Major Nemec was declared persona non grata. The Austrian government issued an arrest warrant for Major Jaroslav Nemec. The Chief of the Czech intelligence station in Vienna, General Bohumil Molnar drove to Salzburg to warn Nemec of the arrest warrant. When Molnar finally found Nemec drunk in a ski resort town in the Austrian Alps, he put him into the trunk of his car and secretly drove him across the Austrian border to Czechoslovakia.

Time magazine ran a story in its December 28^, 1959 issued entitled “In the Salt”, which, in part, read: “To counter skepticism, the U.S. State Department stepped in to confirm "a nefarious plot," and U.S. Army Headquarters in Heidelberg reported that its counter-intelligence agents had discovered the guilty Communist, one Jaroslav Nemec, who works in the Czechoslovak consulate at Salzburg, Austria”.

The story also was covered in newspapers in the United States. For example, the press agency UPI distributed an article entitled "Red Diplomat Named As Radio Poison Plotter" and quoted from the U.S. Army reports.

Former CIA officer Ted Shackley has written in his book Spymaster: My Life in the CIA:

It was May 1959, and the Czech intelligence service, popularly referred to in the media as the StB, was doing its best to penetrate and neutralize Radio Free Europe (RFE). Having just become head of the Czech unit, I therefore encouraged the officers working on Czech operations in Munich to dangle one or more RFE employees in areas where StB agents were known to be lurking in the hope that they would take the bait and recruit one of our offerings. 

One of RFE's Czech staffers was selected as the dangle. We briefed him to be outspoken in his dissatisfaction with his working conditions and in his desire to return home at some point in the future. Then, we sent him on holiday to Salzburg, Austria, a city within easy range of RFE's Munich headquarters and one of the StB's happy hunting grounds. He had not been there long when, in one of the Weinschenken, he met a congenial soul who in time introduced him to a new circle of drinking buddies, one of whom turned out to be Jaroslav Nemec, an StB officer stationed in Salzburg under diplomatic cover. Nemec offered our man a chance to earn his passage home. Our man agreed with a show of reluctance, and we had our double agent. 

At one of his Salzburg meetings with our double agent, Nemec gave him a saltshaker that the agent had previously taken from the RFE cafeteria at Nemec's request. Nemec told the agent to take the saltshaker back into the RFE cafeteria. When the agent showed his CIA case officer the shaker, it had a white substance in it that looked like salt. We had the substance analyzed and were told it was atropine. A derivative of belladonna, atropine has legitimate medical uses. Ophthalmologists use it to dilate the pupil of the eye, but when taken internally in a large dose, it is a poison. In the concentration in which the Czechs had prepared it, it was not a deadly poison, only a strong laxative, but it was certainly enough to make people sick.

Ladislav Bittman, another Czechoslovak intelligence officer, who defected and wrote many books and articles afterwards, claims in his book The Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet Political Warfare that the salt-shaker affair was:

• A kind of scatological “practical joke” designed “mainly to amuse themselves,” 
• Create an atmosphere of fear among RFE employees. (pp. 11-12)  

Case Closed

On January 15, 1960, the Public Prosecutor's office in Munich announced that the investigation was discontinued because there was no evidence of a crime: "The atropine found in two saltshakers ... was not enough to cause serious harm to anyone." And, "The salt contained 1.31 percent atropine which meant that a man using it, for instance, to salt his soup would not consume enough atropine to kill him or even seriously hinder his bodily functions. Legally, therefore, the case was only one of investigation to cause high bodily harm, and this offence was not punishable."

Was there was a real attempt to poison RFE's staff, or a provocation on part of the StB to terrorise and intimidate them? Was this a successful CIA double-agent operation against the StB, or a successful CIA campaign against the StB involving Josef Frolik, the U.S. Senate, CIA, RFE, and U.S. Army? The record is not clear to this day; probably the truth is a combination of all the possibilities one can imagine in Munich’s Wilderness of Mirrors.