The Road to Freedom

In his cell in Prague's grim Pankrac prison one day last week, one of the world's most celebrated political prisoners got unexpected visitors. Two U.S. Embassy officials called on Associated Press Correspondent William Oatis, 39, who had been in prison two years on a spying charge. They left two oddly matched articles--a pair of Argyle socks knitted by his wife, and his passport. The Embassy was acting on the suspicion that Oatis might need both for traveling. Fourteen hours later he did. Oatis was taken before a Czech Communist official and told that he had been freed. He was no more astounded than everyone else. The U.S. had apparently been making little progress in negotiations for his release, and only two weeks ago the Czechs announced that a new amnesty order for Czech prisoners did not apply to Oatis.

From Pankrac, Oatis was taken to the U.S. Embassy in Prague, and after breakfast with Ambassador George Wadsworth, was driven to the U.S. zone of Germany. To newsmen who met him at the border, Oatis, thin and pale, seemed bewildered. On his face was the look of utter confusion that imprisoned men often wear when first confronted with the outside world again. Newsman Oatis had been cut off so completely that he did not know Eisenhower was President, that Stalin was dead, that he himself had become a symbol for the free press of the West. When one reporter greeted him with the words, "You're famous now, Bill," Oatis only replied in a puzzled voice, "I don't see why."

The Letter. Why had he been released? The Czechs, said Oatis, told him that "a letter my wife wrote to the President of Czechoslovakia had a great deal to do with it." From St. Paul, where she is an ad copywriter in a department store, Laurabelle Oatis had indeed written a pleading letter to the late President Gottwald seven months ago: "At the time [he left for Czechoslovakia] we had only been married three months . . . We married because we wanted to spend our lives together. Yet the days go by ... Surely there must be some way in which you . . . can commute his sentence to expulsion from Czechoslovakia. I appeal to you with all my heart for mercy." But no one seriously believed that the letter had been anything more than a convenient excuse for the Communists to free Oatis, probably as part of their "peace offensive."

In an Army hotel in NUernberg, Oatis, nervously chewing gum and chain-smoking, appeared before 100 newsmen for his first press conference. Asked about everything from his imprisonment and trial to his confession and treatment by the Reds, he seemed to find it hard to tell what he had undergone. Said he: "It would be very difficult for me to describe what happened so that I could be understood by anyone not familiar with such proceedings, or with what is done, individually ... If what I was heard to say or was reported to have said during the trial sounded like I was reciting something, why, that's the way it was."

Had he been mistreated or terrorized?

"No, I was not," said Oatis. "The treatment varied from time to time, but in general it was good."

"A Personal Matter." Asked about other Americans whom Oatis had identified as spies at his trial (e.g., the U.S. Ambassador and members of his staff), Oatis answered painfully: "That's a pretty personal matter, and I would rather not answer that." As the questioning went on, Bill Oatis plainly felt that his answers were far short of giving his eager colleagues all the information they wanted. Said he: "I want to apologize to you. I don't want you fellows to think I was just trying to give you a hard time. I hope you understand I had to."

Back in New York two days later, Oatis was greeted at the airport by his wife and more than 200 newsmen. Meanwhile the State Department, which had cut off all trade with Czechoslovakia, banned tourist travel and forbidden Czech planes to fly over the U.S. zone of Germany, made it clear that no "deal" had been made with the Czechs to get Oatis freed.

Actually, many a newsman felt that in freeing Oatis, the Czechs had only rectified one of their worst outrages against the West and its press, and that there was much more they could do. Said the New York Times: "Is [the Czech] government willing to permit truthful reporting from Prague and to grant personal security to foreign newspapermen honestly engaged in such reporting? That is the real test which, even as we welcome Mr. Oatis, cannot be absent from our minds."

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