Tit for Tat

While the snow still whipped through Berlin's cracked walls last winter, a pretty blonde German girl moved from the Russian zone into the U.S. sector of Berlin and entered the Military Government stenographic training school for German girls. Kaethe (which was not her name) had a good anti-Nazi record, was quick and bright--and lost no time in setting up a Communist unit in the school.

But Kaethe did what a beautiful spy ought never to do--she fell in love with an American junior officer. Into his understanding ears she spilled a story of frequent meetings with two Red Army officers of the Political Division, to whom she reported information about U.S. Military Government activities. The American introduced her to a U.S. Counterintelligence operative, who persuaded Kaethe to turn her coat.

Rendezvous with Tommy guns. So for two months she gave the Russians false information. She dared not break with them until her father, who lived in the Russian zone, came to Berlin for a visit. When the two Russians, Senior Lieuts. Sedov and Schulkin, dressed in civilian clothes, next came to see her, eight U.S. MPs with Tommy guns turned up at the rendezvous, took the Russians to Wannsee Prison, where they stripped and searched them.

After a fruitless questioning, U.S. Army Intelligence Chief Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert, whose strong-arm raiding squads have manhandled many a German Communist inside the U.S. zone, took over the Russian prisoners. For 34 days they were held near Frankfurt, interrogated twice daily. The Russians later said that they were "accused impudently but without success of espionage." To General Kotikov, the Russian commandant in Berlin, the U.S. commander, Major General Frank A. Keating, denied any knowledge of the missing Russians. Kotikov decided to bring a little pressure.

July 4 he got his chance. Lithuanian-born, 50-year-old Captain Harold Cobin and 23-year-old West Pointer Lieut. George Wyatt, both in their U.S. Army uniforms, decided to visit the Nazis' old concentration camp at Oranienburg in the Russian zone near Berlin. Russian officers picked them up and took them to Potsdam, where they were held and interrogated regularly for 26 days.

Hangover with Friendship. Once the Russians threatened to send Cobin to Russia if he refused to confess that he was a spy. Cobin's reply: "Do you consider it a punishment to be sent to Russia?" His inquisitor smiled. Sometimes Russian officers came into the Americans' solitary cells for a chat.

After 22 days they got their first bath, and, as a special treat, sardines, black bread, sausage and the inevitable vodka. "The first toast," said Cobin, "was for friendship. The second was for victory. I've forgotten what the third one was for, because I was halfway through drinking it when I woke up the next morning back in my original improvised cell." Last week they were released after signing statements that they were not spies and had not been mistreated. Their Russian "opposite numbers" had been released July 17.

The accounts were balanced, for the time being, but the incidents told why the easy camaraderie of Red and U.S. soldiers immediately after their victory had given way to an atmosphere of suspicion. The top Russian and U.S. brass still go boar-hunting at Goering's estate, but the Counterintelligence chiefs are more interested in hunting information inside each other's zones.

Every dispossessed landowner, disgruntled businessman and refugee from the Russian zone, with tales of war plants in full operation, is sure of eager listeners at Sibert's headquarters. And Soviet Counterintelligence Chief General Sidnyev's little army of Communist businessmen and technicians traveling in the U.S. zone looks avidly for the German armies which Russians are sure the democracies are training for war against Russia.

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