Almost Making It
Mayer, Milton
Almost Making It MILTON MAYER The disclosure that American newspapermen in communist countries have been moonlighting for the CIA, and free-lance newspapermen especially, hits me where I live....
...they all were—but he was willing to lead with his nose...
...There was a bit of a dustup, nothing much, when they came over, because the seminary was state property and was off limits to American diplomats...
...We cottoned to each other right away, Jonathan Dean and I, and the Deans invited us over, and we invited them over...
...But I'm sure he wished me well in the years ahead, and if I'd got an offer, and accepted it, and gone back to Prague, and betrayed my friends there and got them in trouble, and betrayed my sort-of-Quakerism and my mother's injunction never to tell a lie, not even in the interest of national security— if, in a word, I'd have sold out for thirty, sixty, ninety pieces of silver, I'd have had some revelations to peddle in the years ahead and I'd be clipping coupons from bonds instead of from newspapers now...
...Baby Mayer and I had a wonderful time and got to love the Czechs and Czechoslovakia...
...embassy—we never do—but I skedaddled over there from time to time on the trolley to take a look at the U.S...
...We never signed in at the U.S...
...newspapers, which were not to be had on the open (i.e., closed) market...
...Government wanted to hear me talk about Prague...
...After an hour or so's palaver I was thanked and dismissed...
...I heard later that he was in the Congo—Elizabethville, where the anti-Lumumbists were flourishing while the anti-Communists cheered...
...One of the many reasons I cottoned to Jonathan Dean Milton Mayer is the Roving Editor of The Progressive...
...was his argumentativeness...
...And then I lost track of Jonathan Dean...
...And I can imagine, since I had got to love the Czechs and Czechoslovakia, that I was found unacceptably soft-nosed...
...I liked Jonathan Dean a lot...
...I could not imagine why the U.S...
...We wrangled about the refusal of the embassy to lower its flag on a national day of mourning for a Czech hero who was a Communist...
...I can imagine that I almost made it, but not quite...
...He said that my status there was unique and he was sure the Department would like to hear my views...
...I can now...
...Then he said that any expenses I might incur would be covered, and I replied manfully that I'd be in Washington anyway, so there wouldn't be any expenses...
...A few days later he asked me if I would be willing to brief the Central European Desk of the State Department on my experience in Prague...
...He said that there would be no fee and my face fell right down to the ancient cobblestones of Prague, but I replied manfully that I did not expect one...
...One day I told him I was going home for a couple of weeks and returning to Prague...
...And I'm a free-lance newspaperman...
...He was a hard-nosed man —a proper Cold Warrior...
...I have no hard evidence that he was recruiting me for the CIA, or that anybody was...
...It was the Year of the Wall, a rough year, but Ms...
...But nobody will buy anything from anybody who almost, but not quite, made it...
...Where I live, whenever I get the chance, is Prague...
...I can imagine that I was being interviewed for a little CIA work on the side...
...And then I heard that Lumumba was assassinated while the anti-Communists cheered some more...
...We walked around and wrangled...
...A hard man, Jonathan Dean, but a delightful wrangler...
...I talked about Prague, telling them everything I knew, which was nothing more than that Czechs, including Communist Czechs, appeared on close examination to be human, but that, like Americans, including anti-Communist Americans, they bore close examination...
...All the other embassies lowered theirs, and the American was the highest flag in the city except the Presidential Castle's...
...The Central European Desk was not a Desk but an immense oval Table with ten or fifteen striped-pants characters around it...
...I like him still, though we're out of touch...
...I am also a Quaker of sorts, and my Quakerism of sorts got me enough brownie points in Prague to produce an official invitation to spend six months at the seminary of the Comenius Theological Faculty...
...We wrangled about everything...
...On one such occasion, an American visitor being something to encounter then, I was encountered by a man named Jonathan Dean, the First Secretary...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
