Oatis

(Political trial of the Head of the Prague branch of the Associated Press agency in 1951)

The phenomenon of big political trials within Communist parties, as well as trials of foreign nationals, was significant in the post-war period for many people’s democratic states in Central and Eastern Europe. The source and inspiration for such trials are to be found in the Soviet Union, which, after the liberation of much of Europe by its army in 1944–1945 and also on the basis of a number of bilateral diplomatic agreements, gained considerable political and eventually economic influence in these countries. The political trials in the USSR of 1935–1938, carried out by the OGPU (NKVD) secret police, were to become a model for similar trials in the new European people’s democracies after a long-running dispute broke out in 1948 between Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1922–1953) and Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) in Yugoslavia on the further development of socialism, the form of mutual relations and the functioning of the Yugoslav federation. Some of the contemporary failures of Soviet foreign policy, especially the unsuccessful political infiltration into the internal affairs of the newly formed Israel in the Middle East, which strictly rejected Soviet supremacy at last, were also reflected in the USSR’s intention to fasten new post-war people’s democratic vassals. Political trials in European people’s democratic countries were now to be conducted in the spirit of anti-Zionism (anti-Semitism), which was indeed reflected in a number of such trials. The Yugoslav crisis was again reflected in the “national” component of some show trials. Needless to emphasize the well-known fact that most of these trials of 1950s in the Czechoslovak Republic were, basically, fabricated or deliberately exaggerated and dramatized regarding the facts of the cases. They were prepared according to pre-developed scripts, including subsequent sentences to the defendants, who had to memorize their testimony for the main trial before the State Court during the preparatory proceedings.

Foreign nationals (especially from Western countries), who were generally considered to be the main enemies and saboteurs of the newly established people’s democratic conditions in the Soviet post-war zone and possible spies of Western liberal democracies, were often used in large trials. As it was not always easy for the security authorities and the judiciary to prosecute and subsequently try them (especially citizens of the world powers), the efforts of these authorities and state courts were at least aimed at denunciating them, conventional accusations of espionage, the imposition of at least lower custodial sentences, and, in some cases, at using the defendants in other political trials, often with high-ranking officials of Communist parties, to “help” to convict alleged party traitors in particular people’s democracies.

The charges in our trial, worked out by the Czechoslovak State Prosecutor’s Office already during the preparatory proceedings, concerning William N. Oatis and his three domestic agency employees were based on several basic offenses against Czechoslovak people’s democratic law, which were to be proved during the main trial before the State Court. The Prosecutor’s Office blamed both the Prague branch of the AP news agency itself for espionage, as the actions of Oatis’s agency predecessors were supposed to prove, as well as it blamed W. N. Oatis for consciously obtaining intelligence reports. Furthermore, the employees of the AP agency were supposedly indirectly involved in the murder of a member of the National Security Corps by knowingly cooperating with foreign agents, especially with the people smuggler Vladimír Komárek and with the alleged murderer of the police officer Josef Pavelka. At the same time, they were supposed to cover up Komárek from the Czechoslovak security authorities. W. N. Oatis was also to establish and maintain intelligence contact with some persons from the US Embassy in Prague. He was also accused of forcing his agency staff to gather information of an espionage nature, which he then sorted, verified and sent abroad by telex.

The problem was already in what kind of role and position the then domestic communist regime assigned to journalism and how much this idea differed from the daily work of a journalist in the countries of Western liberal democracies. As the Slovak historian Slavomír Michálek wrote, “the general idea of the Czechoslovak communist regime about a journalist in the early 1950s was different. As the only legitimate and publishable information, he could use only that which came from official sources. Everything else was espionage. In the eyes of this regime, the journalist did not have the right to look for information that its representatives did not want to publish” (Prípad Oatis. Československý komunistický režim verzus dopisovateľ Associated Press, p. 55).

As W. N. Oatis was an American citizen, the main trial before the State Court in Prague was conducted bilingually, i.e. in Czech and English. The main trial took place from 2 to 4 July 1951 in Prague-Pankrác. On 4 July 1951, all four defendants were found guilty by the State Court verdict and subsequently sentenced to custodial sentences, in accordance with the provisions of Act No. 86/1950 Coll. (Criminal Law).

Until March 1952, W. N. Oatis was not allowed to meet with any representative of the American side in prison. At that time, the bilateral negotiations of the Czechoslovak Republic with the United States of America, yet under strong economic pressure from the other party, resulted in release of Oatis, which, however, could only take place after the death of J. V. Stalin and the Czechoslovak President K. Gottwald. In April 1953, the leadership of the Czechoslovak government finally proposed the specific features and conditions of Oatis’s release from prison, after numerous American initiatives and threats of economic sanctions against the Czechoslovak Republic.

The new President of the Republic Antonín Zápotocký (1953–1957) used the traditional institute of inaugural amnesty and pardoned Oatis, which was preceded by long and secret negotiations with the American party on setting up a new mutual trade exchange and future political perception of newly discussed Oatis’s case. At the additional written request of US President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961) of March 1953 and the letter of intercession of Oatis’s wife Laurabelle of 15 November 1952, W. N. Oatis was officially released from prison on 16 May 1953 and immediately expelled from Czechoslovakia. The other fellow convicts of this political trial had to continue to serve the larger part of their sentences in correctional facilities. While W. N. Oatis was surprisingly released after less than a fifth of the sentence, the co-defendants were not so lucky. Nevertheless, even the significantly shortened imprisonment of W. N. Oatis for a long time marked and to some extent predetermined his later work on the international stage, at the United Nations.