A Formidable Farrago of Farago

THE jokes started long before the newspaper series ended. That's not Martin Bormann they think they found in South America. It's Howard Hughes. Or . . . Ladislas Farago is just a fancy new pen name for Clifford Irving. The allusions were inevitable. Farago himself expected them. Indeed, when Clifford Irving's hoax autobiography of the recluse billionaire was exposed ten months ago, Farago decided to delay his research on Bormann until the din died down. "I said to myself," he recalled last week, "no matter what I'm going to do, this is going to be regarded in the same category. Even if I bring Martin Bormann back with me personally and exhibit him in the Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden, people will still say it's just another hoax."

Authenticity of their most recent writings aside, there are some striking similarities between the two authors. Like Irving, Hungarian-born Farago (who came to the U.S. in 1937 after a journalistic career in Europe and Ethiopia) is noted for his expansiveness and charm. Says one close acquaintance: "He is flamboyant, talks a lot, drops the names of important people he has just met as though they are his friends, and is renowned as a raconteur."

At 66, courtly, goateed Farago (pronounced Far-ago) has a shelf of books to his credit, including Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, on which the movie Patton was partially based, and The Broken Seal, which was one basis for the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! He has also contracted, for an advance of more than $150,000, to write two books for Doubleday, one of them on J. Edgar Hoover. But first, he proposes to expand his Bormann material into a book for Simon & Schuster, with whom he contracted last week for an advance of more than $100,000 (on top of the $100,000 that the newspaper series will probably earn him). The book's working title is The Aftermath, and said Farago in a self-promotional aside: "It will be much more convincing than the Daily Express articles."

Last week, pale and weary from meeting unfamiliar daily deadlines, he sat in his London hotel room in soft-blue pajamas and struck back at the skeptics. At the same time, he struck out at the London Daily Express. He insisted that he had conclusive proof of Bormann's whereabouts and could have had more if the Express had not "blown the whole damn thing." Farago complained that the Express, afraid it was about to be scooped by a Bormann story in the London Daily Mail, had rushed into print before he was ready. (Express Editor Ian McColl replied that he had not heard of any other Bormann story, and that Farago had never protested that he was not ready.)

"I was on the verge of establishing personal contact with Martin Bormann," Farago told TIME Correspondent William McWhirter. "Actually, if the story hadn't broken, by now I would have met him. There were certain conditions, very light conditions. I was supposed to go blindfolded to the spot--very ridiculous. But when I was at the spot, I could take off the blindfold. He would submit one print of his thumb as his identification and then he would sit down with his representatives to discuss the writing of his memoirs. The reason--it's not necessarily valid--is that he is thoroughly angry at the present moment because several German books have come out which represent him as a very mean person."

Farago added that Bormann was in fact "a much more efficient and much more decent person than has generally been represented. The trial brief against him said he was a beast. It's true, he was a beast. Nevertheless, he was a smart man and he was almost like a Puritan, I would say. I have his complete FBI file. I have his complete German file too. I have it right in this room. Right in this room."

Farago offered an incredible explanation for Bormann being free. "I can tell you categorically that in 1968 Israel made a deal with every Latin American country. It was no longer going to chase Nazis, nor was it any longer seeking extradition of Nazis. The Nazi issue would be closed in exchange for Latin American votes in the United Nations. In these circumstances, to whom does anyone betray Bormann?" To the London Daily Express.

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