The Press: Frame-Up in Prague

Why did Associated Press Correspondent Bill Oatis confess? Newsmen all over the free world expected a ringing answer to the question when Oatis was released by the Czechs three months ago, after serving two years of a ten-year sentence on a charge of spying (TIME, May 25). But they were disappointed. Frail (123 Ibs.), tuberculous and bewildered by his unexpected reprieve, Oatis begged off answering until he could rest and get medical treatment. This week, in newspapers all over the U.S. and in the pages of LIFE, Bill Oatis, 39, explained not only why he confessed but how the Czech Communists first framed him in preparation for convicting him of “espionage.”

The Boss. “Prisoners make fantastic confessions,” wrote Oatis, “because they feel that [their] only chance to save something out of the wreckage … is to do what the police want them to do.” In his case, a Czech secret police agent, posing as an official Czech information officer, made friends with Oatis and at dinner gave him background information which painstaking Bill Oatis dutifully recorded in his notebook. The agent even suggested that Oatis try to smuggle the stories out via the U.S. diplomatic pouch (Oatis refused). Not long after, a Czech, who had once applied for a job in the A.P. office as a translator, came to the A.P. office to try to sell Oatis a story about the whereabouts of former Czech Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis, who had mysteriously disappeared. Oatis turned down the story, was surprised when the tipster hastily handed him a photo showing the room where Clementis had supposedly been held, then darted out of the office. Within seconds, six secret police agents entered the office, and one immediately made for the desk drawer where Oatis had dropped the picture. Triumphantly, he picked it up and shouted: “Espionage!”

Jailed and cut off from the world outside, Oatis was told that the U.S. embassy “is doing nothing for you.” His captors gave him a swift course in Communist Czech law. The activities of correspondents, they said, are divided into two categories: 1) “official reporting,” i.e., government handouts, 2) “unofficial reporting,” i.e., stories from any other source. The second, he was told, was espionage in Communist Czechoslovakia, even though it would be considered routine reporting in any country of the free world. His chief interrogator, a man with a “hideous smile” who said simply, “Just call me ‘The Boss,’ ” confronted Oatis with examples of his “unofficial” reporting from Oatis’ own notebook, including notes on the stories from the secret police agent.

Other interrogators worked on Oatis in relays. Had not Oatis gone to U.S. embassy Military Attache Lieut. Colonel George Atwood and told him about plans to convert Prague apartments into army quarters? Oatis admitted he had gone to Atwood with such a rumor, which he had heard at the Indian embassy, but only to check it with him, as any reporter would. The Communists seized on his talk with Atwood as additional proof of his espionage, hammered away at him for days with other questions, thrusting written confessions in front of him all the time. But “much of the answer” as to why he confessed, writes Oatis, “lies in a 42-hour interrogation that began at 4 a.m. on the sixth day of my imprisonment.”

A Way Out? Oatis knew what to expect, since the secret police had already warned him “if anyone opposes us, we ruin him. You’ll talk; everybody talks here.” For hour upon unbearable hour, questioners brought statements before him to sign. At first, Oatis objected to the “confession,” redrafted it and made corrections; each time it came back written in even stronger language. “I had been awake for something like 42 hours . . . They would not let me sleep till I had signed, and so I signed [because] of my absolute helplessness, convinced that my only hope lay in playing their game.”

Reporter Oatis became so accustomed to signing documents that even when he was handed the draft of a letter to be sent to his wife (“Keep your hopes high and trust in the justice of the Czechoslovak people, who are working for peace”), he copied it in his own handwriting just so his wife would know he was still alive. When Oatis later stood up in court, a guard at each elbow, he simply parroted almost “word for word a script they had written for me.” “Do you feel guilty?” asked the judge when he had finished. “Yes, I do,” answered Oatis dejectedly. “Seventy days of questioning had taught me that was the right answer.”

What is the secret of the Communists’ success at wringing confessions from their victims? Writes Oatis: “Sometimes it was the overwhelming pressure of fatigue. Sometimes it was the compulsion of an undeniable fact, sometimes the ambiguity of a deceptive fiction. But most of all it was my knowledge of their power and my helplessness, and my conviction that to confess, and to confess what they wanted me to confess, was my only way out. It was not a way out. of course. There wasn’t any. But I didn’t know that until the judge said: ‘Deset let [ten years]!’ and the doors of Ruzyne prison closed behind me.”