Part Two
At 8 o'clock in the morning on July 2, 1951, Oatis was led from a prison cell in Prague's Pankrac prison to the prison's central courtroom. He was placed on a defendant's stand ringed by six microphones and a semicircular rail, so that the prosecutor was on his left, the defense lawyer on his right, and he faced the five Communist judges occupying a raised dais. Behind him were several hundred "shock workers" who, as a reward for their toil, had been given tickets to the trial, and who filled the spectators' galleries. The arrangement was the same as it had been at the earlier show trials of priests, anti-Communists, and of underground leaders.
Two American Embassy observers, Vice-Consul Richard Johnson and Mary Horak, an American interpreter, were given seats in the last row. They were about one hundred feet from Oatis wearing a blue suit, but they could see that he was pale and even thinner than usual.
No Western correspondents were in the courtroom. The Agence France Presse correspondent, Gaston Fournier, having discovered that his entire Czech staff had been arrested while he was on leave in Paris, had not returned to his post. Russell Jones of the United Press had been transferred to another post, and Bobby Bigio of Reuters, learning that the police were looking for him, had departed in haste only twelve days before the trial.
But luckily, United Press had a Czechoslovak national present, Ivo Berousnsky at the trial and his reports were used by UP for articles in the United States and elsewhere. Berounsky sometimes afterward escaped Czechoslovakia by illegally crossing into the Soviet Zone of Germany and then to Berlin. Ivo Berounsky eventually joined the Czechoslovak Broadcast Service (Voice of Free Czechoslovakia) of Radio Free Europe.
During the trial he was not allowed to wear his glasses while being cross-examined and could not see his questioners.
After the indictment had been read, the president of the court, Jaroslav Novak, asked Oatis, "Did you carry on espionage?” The question was relayed to Oatis through earphones in an English translation provided by a young girl translator.
Oatis answered, "Yes."
Oatis confessed falsely to espionage after four straight days of interrogation by the communist secret police. 'On the first day I admitted that I had done unofficial reporting, which I had,'' he wrote later. ''Within three days I confessed that this was espionage, which by any Western standard it was not; and within seven days I confessed that I had spied for the U.S. Government, which was a lie.''
Then Bill Oatis, broken by months of questioning, made his 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."
In summing up, the prosecutor inadvertently praised Oatis by saying he was "particularly dangerous because of his discretion and his insistence on obtaining only accurate, correct and verified information." The U.S. State Department described the confession as nothing more than "the admission of an American reporter that in the high traditions of his profession was attempting under the most unfavorable conditions to report a true picture of conditions and events in Czechoslovakia as he saw them."
In 2012, two reel-to-reel tape recordings of the trial were unearthed in a plain brown paper package that had lain in the Czech national archives for 60 years The story in English and trial excerpts, including Oatis voice, can be heard here:www.radio.cz/mp3/podcast/en/curraffrs/tapes-of- infamous-communist-show-trial-with-ap-correspondent-william-oatis-unearthed-in-czech-national-archives.mp3
He was sentenced to 10 years, 5 years with good behavior on July 4, 1951—exactly one year after RFE’s first broadcast to Czechoslovakia. His Czech staff received harsher terms: 16, 18 and 20-year sentences. The judge said that Oatis had been spared the death penalty because he had admitted his guilt and had helped in "exposing the espionage activities of Western diplomats and Western news agencies."
President Harry Truman denounced the trial as an attempt to intimidate the Western press. Time magazine, July 16, 1951, carried this comment on the conviction: “What ransom do the Czechs want? Among the guesses is that they want the U.S. to shut up Radio Free Europe, a private organization, which broadcasts the names of Czech spies and government informants and needles the Czech regime unmercifully.”
"We played chess on squares drawn on toilet paper, maneuvering pieces kneaded out of rye bread that had dried to become hard as rock," Bill also recalled. "I was in prison in Czechoslovakia for over two years, and I can tell you this," Oatis reported later. "Living inthat prison is like being buried alive. A cell there is like a tomb. And the inmate is like a man in purgatory. He is waiting, and his problem is to get through time."
There was extensive press coverage of the trial in American newspapers, including thesis cartoons:
On January 2, 1952, Ambassodor Briggs sent a message to Washington, wherein he said: “Recent developments have admittedly been disheartening…Our hopes for early Oatis release have not been realized. Impatience over situation..is not only understandable but is abudantly shared by all of us in Embassy Prague where for past eight months welfare this unfortunate fellow citizen has been our constant worry and distress.”
On June 8,1953, Ambassador Briggs met with President Harry Truman, who told him that, “As long as Oatis remains in prison it will be impossible to have satisfactory relations with Czechoslovakia.
Oatis was finally released May 16, 1953 after his wife, Laurabelle, appealed personally to the Czech Presiden Zapotocky: “In use rights given to me by Constitution, I grant pardon to William Oatis born January 1, 1914 in Marion, Indiana, USA, citizen of USA for the still uncompleted part of his sentence of deprivation of liberty imposed on him by Prague Court 4 July 1951, this decision being taken on basis petition Mrs. Laurabel Oatis November 1952.” At first glance it seemed to be act of compassion, but the Czechs were under heavy economic pressure, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower had held open the possibility of more normal relations if Oatis were freed.
After his release, Oatis was driven across the border to West Germany and gave a press conference in Nüremberg. Ivo Berounsky was there representing Radio Free Europe and reported, ""Bill's manner now is very much as it was during the trial".
He and his wife flew to New York, where he was met with a large group of photographers and journalists. Oatis did not answer many questions from the journalists. Life magazine published this comment on June 1, 1953:
Back in America after his release from a Czech prison, Associated Press Correspondent Willian Oatis puzzled and surprised his countrymen by the answers he did not give to reporters. Obviously puzzled and shaken himself after his two-year imprisonment, he refused to answer most of the questions even though he said he realized that his refusal to answer might create a bad impression. He did admit that under Czech law there was “some justification” for his arrest as a spy but denied that he had been an espionage agent “in the sense that this term is understood in Western countries. Oatis said he needed a long rest and would have to study the written record of his trial before he could repudiate his courtroom confession.
In an exclusive article for Life magazine, September 21, 1953, Oatis explained why he confessed to being a spy even though he was not:
Why did I confess to doing things I had not done? Was I drugged? Hypnotized? I will tell you why, but the reasons are not so simple as many in the West believe. Much of the answer lies in the 42-hours of interrogation that began at 4 a.m. on the sixth day of my imprisonment…The room was whirling. I could not seem to make my eyes – or my brain – focus. I wanted time to think. I knew that his was a great and perhaps fatal step: if I signed, I would be confessing to something I had not done. I wanted to consider what I might be doing to myself by signing this document—and what I might be doing by refusing to sign it. But there was something else I wanted more.
That was sleep. I had been awake 42 hours. Through the time, almost without let up, I had been questioned, browbeaten and berated. I was limp with fatigue. My eyes kept falling shut, my mind kept blanking out. My future might lie in the balance, but the future must take care of itself. Tomorrow was another day. Tonight was what bore me done. I must end it somehow. There seemed only one way to do that, and that was to sign the confession.
So I signed it…I had not chosen to thus abandon the truth—the choice had been made for me. But once abandoned, truth could not be reclaimed.
After recuperating from tuberculosis, apparently contracted while he was in prison, Oatis eventually was reassigned to the UN bureau in New York, where he specialized in reporting about developing countries. He remained in that position until his retirement in 1984.
William N. Otis died after a long illness on September 16, 1997.
