LIVING ABROAD WITH UNCLE SAM

During the time I was in Prague, Czechoslovakia was still completely mired in the Warsaw Pact world, occupied by the Soviet Army and controlled thoroughly by the Communist government, including its secret police and informers. We Americans had to work in an environment in which we were constantly under surveillance, either openly or covertly. We had to assume our phones, apartments, and cars were tapped and bugged. Although I worked in a part of the embassy that in theory was free of taps and bugs, we had to operate as though it were not. There were only a few places where we could speak with freedom. . . .

Everywhere I went in Prague and Czechoslovakia I was followed, or I had to assume I was if I could not actually see it. Generally, I could spot the surveillance cars whenever I drove away from the embassy or my apartment; people sat in the park outside my front door at least until darkness, ready to call up the cars when I went out. (One friend tipped me off to the fact that they generally broke off the surveillance at about 8:00 pm, if I didn’t go out before that; if, in fact, I wanted to call on somebody without my tail I generally waited until then, although of course it was foolish to assume they were not there if I could not see the obvious ones.)

Of course we were often amused by the surveillance, although I usually felt irritated and harassed as well. One time, on Labor Day when the American embassy was on holiday and the Czechs were not, I set off for the center of town to shop for presents to take home on an approaching vacation. Because of center-city parking difficulties, I headed off on foot for the Metro station when I left my building, walking briskly up a small side street. One of the surveillance cars, standing by to pick me up, was parked in the street. As I walked past, the driver ducked down behind a handy newspaper. Just as I boarded the train, I saw one of “my” team jump on to the next car, and when I emerged from the station into Václavské náměstí (Wenceslas Square), a follow-car was standing on the street outside.

First I went into a record store. In Prague shops, the procedure was that as many clients could enter, as shopping baskets were available at the entrance. Any overflow had to wait until a basket was turned in. Since it was a working day, neither my shadow nor I had to wait. I spent the next twenty minutes or so selecting records for my nephews and watching the shadow trying to look absorbed in the racks of recordings.

At my next stop, I ran into an embassy friend who told me of some attractive garnet jewelry at a shop in a labyrinthine building called the Lucerna. She tried to explain exactly where the shop was, but I kept going down dead-end corridors in Lucerna, turning around to find myself face to face with my pursuit. He kept taking off and putting on his jacket and, one time, changing his shirt entirely. I’m certain he thought I was trying to lose him and became ever more frantic. I never did find the jewelry store; perhaps I should have asked my shadow if he knew where it was.

Another time I went to the theater with a Czech friend who had received permission from the authorities to emigrate. Generally I did not go out publicly with any dissident friends. In this case I judged it would be acceptable, since he was about to leave the country in a few weeks anyway. We drove in my car to the theater, which was located on the outskirts of the city. We were early so we went into a neighboring coffee shop while we waited. Surveillance had caught up with us, and one of the followers stood with his hip wedged right up to the corner of the table where we were sitting. I assumed he had some taping device in his pocket, but we had nothing of moment for him to carry back to his lab for analysis. There is nothing like a hostile hip to dampen even the most innocuous conversation. After the performance was over, we left the theater and, driving away, I could see we had at least twice the normal number of surveillance cars on our tail. My friend consequently decided he should disembark at a Metro station, since he was living against regulations in an apartment without registration. When we met some months later in London, he told me he was followed for three days after our outing.

Wherever we were in Prague, we had to assume we were observed, listened to, followed, and photographed. Some of the cameras were ingeniously hidden in pocketbooks (for women) or the old-fashioned, accordion-style briefcases (for men). I became adept at spotting them in crowds out on the streets; the pursuers would turn the cameras at rather awkward angles to shoot me buying souvenirs on the Charles Bridge or walking up the street. Men also carried small, leather purses in which they had two-way radios, with wire antennas, with which they could communicate to a surveillance officer on an adjacent street. What possible use all this was, I cannot tell. Except for my contacts with the dissident community, about which the authorities were well aware, my life in Prague was an open book.