The Tricky Gooch Syndrome

In Korea John Cassity, an Army officer from Grantsville, Utah, once ran across "a real stupid-looking fellow"--a Korean civilian whom the Americans called Mortimer Gooch. Gooch "cleaned up around a tent in headquarters and seemed so dull that it was difficult even to give him orders. When he was finally fired, he pretended to be so stupid that he didn't know he was fired, and kept coming back." Later, Cassity came to believe that the dull Korean was really a Communist spy in disguise. Eventually, Cassity went back to civilian life and became chief security officer at the Agriculture Department in Washington, but he never forgot his impression of tricky Mortimer Gooch.

Last week Security Chief Cassity explained why he blackballed Wolf Ladejinsky, famed U.S. agricultural attache in Tokyo (TIME, Jan. 3). Ladejinsky, who fled Russia after the Bolshevik revolution (leaving three sisters there), vigorously opposed the Reds. His anti-Communist record, including articles in such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, stretches back over 20 years. It turned out that Cassity suspected Ladejinsky of being another Mortimer Gooch. "You can't tell anything about a security problem by appearances," he said.

Cassity suspected Ladejinsky not merely in spite of the latter's anti-Communist record and writings but particularly because of them. "Would you write articles critical of the Communist government if close members of your family were living in Russia and you knew the tactics the Communists used?" he asked. Then he added darkly, "It is doubtful anyone would do it, unless he had reason to believe his family was safe."

A newsman pointed out that Ladejinsky's articles were scholarly studies exposing Soviet failures, not violent anti-Communist tirades. "They were anti-Communist enough for Tass [the Soviet news agency] to attack them," snapped Cassity quickly. "Those anti-Communist articles alone would have been enough to bother me."

Next day another kind of nonsense cropped up. To support the security action against Ladejinsky. another Agriculture Department official showed reporters a letter from a White Russian refugee named George Vitt, noting that "a goodly share of [Russian] revolutionaries were found among the Russian Jews." Senator Hubert Humphrey promptly called for action "at the White House level" to reinstate Ladejinsky; other Democrats talked of a congressional investigation. The Agriculture Department quickly denied that "antiSemitism played any part in the Ladejinsky case." Refugee Vitt said that some of his best friends were Jews, and that the DOA had violated its promise by publishing the letter Vitt meant to be used "circumspectly." It looked as if some people in Agriculture would be well cast in the role of Mortimer Gooch, the man who was so dumb it must have been premeditated.

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