The Press: Guess Who

The public was let in, in large numbers, but photographers were not. Victor (I Chose Freedom) Kravchenko, onetime Soviet official, was testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee. “Mr. Kravchenko,” Committeeman Karl Mundt explained darkly, “may be in considerable danger” if his picture should appear in the papers. Kravchenko consented to having his picture taken afterwards—on his own terms. He carefully changed his blue coat for an investigator’s grey jacket, pulled a borrowed Panama down over his eyes, put on dark glasses and shielded his face with his hand. It made a good Page One picture, and for readers who wanted to draw a hasty moral, the inference was clear: he didn’t want the Russians to know what he looked like. There was one thing wrong with the act. The Russians, who may or may not be after him, presumably already had passport photos of the man they themselves had sent to the U.S. as an official of the Soviet Purchasing Commission. Even if they hadn’t, Kravchenko’s picture had already appeared in the U.S. press. Chairman J. Parnell Thomas came up with the real explanation: the witness simply had a housing problem. Living under an assumed name, he had already been evicted from several apartments when other tenants found out who he was; they thought that he made the place unsafe. It was his landlord, not the vengeful Communists Kravchenko was hiding his face from.