TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST BY FULTON LEWIS, JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00297R000900080111-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 28, 2013
• Sequence Number: 111
• Publication Date: January 29, 1958
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST
By
Fulton Lewis, Jr.
Station WGWS at 7-7:15 P. M.
29 January 1958
Last night, ladies and gentlemen, I told you part of the
story of Fletcher Bartholemew, young meteorologist with the
Free Europe balloon propaganda program in Munich, who was un-
ceremoniously clapped into the mental ward of the army hospital
after he had turned in a farewell report Which suggested that
therewere some homosexuals in the Munich operations, Let me
note here that this is recognized in all government procedure
as a very serious security problem because Of the danger of
blackmail. It was in this direct connection that Fletcher
Bartholemew made this report two weeks before he was to leave
his job and:bring his family back home to Minneapolis.
He made three copies Of that report, one of which he
personally turned over to the US consul general in Munich,
Edward Page, Jr., and the other 'two he sent to the Free Europe
president in New York, Whitney Sheppardson, and the third to
Mr. Allen Dulles? CIA here in Washington.
On Saturday before he was scheduled to depart from Munich
with his family to sail for home from Genoa, he was invited to
lunch by 411army chaplain, Father Peter S. Rush, who suggested
that'somedOCtors at the army hospital. in Munich wanted to talk
to him. The doctor turned out to be a Captain Alfred CAM, who
questioned him and began filling, Out a printed form, and finally
told Bartholemew that he would have to hold Bartholemew at the
hospital for several days,by force if necessary, according to
Bartholemew's story.
He was placed in a solitary room with barred windows
under 24-hour personal guard. His clothes and all other
possessions, were taken from him in favor of a hospital gown
and a GI robe and slippers. Fletcher Bartholemew and his wife
Cynthia, who was waiting for him at home, had an early supper
engagement-with friends at 4:00 p. m, and they were first to
pick up their children at the home of another friend where they
were spending the' day, It was some time after 4:00 p. rn,, how-
ever, when Father Rush appeared at the Bartholemew home and in-
formed Mrs. Bartholemew that her husband, whom she had last seen
in normal condition at noon, had been committed to a mental ward
in the army hospital.
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I think it should be emphasized at this point that Fletcher
Bartholemew was, and is, an American civilian employed in a
civilian capacity by a private civilian organization and was in
?the army hospital as a mental patient nevertheless. Also, I
ought to explain that each of the Bartholemews, together with
other individuals involved along the chain of subsequent events,
fortunately had the presence of mind at the time to make de-
tailed memoranda of everything that happened. Thus, this is
what Mrs. Bartholemew has to say about Father Rush's visit to
her late Saturday afternoon: "He explained that he asked Fletcher
to go the hospital for only a talk and that when they got there
Fletcher was told he would have to stay. Father Rush said I
must think that he had deceived my husband, and I answered that
I most certainly thought he had deceived Fletcher. Father Rush
went on to say that he had been told that Fletcher was very sick
mentally and that he might become violent. He also said that if
he had not been successful in getting Fletcher to the hospital
peacefully, he would have been taken by force and that he could
not bear the throught of Fletcher's being taken by a pair of
strong armed men against his will."
Mrs. Bartholemew says Father Rush drove her to the Dick Smith
home where she had left the children for the night, and had no
idea of what might happen from then on, then drove her to the
? hospital. At the hospital she was informed that her husband was
in the hospital auditorium with an attendant watching a moving
picture. He was brought to a reception room, and Mrs. Bartholemew
and Father Rush talked with him for about in hour. During this
time Mrs. Bartholemew says she found her husband exactly as he
had always been, perfectly normal, perfectly rational, and that
Father Rush toldFletcher that he looked as fit as at any time he
had ever seen him, and that as far as he was concerned, Fletcher
was as sane as he was.
Mrs. Bartholemew then saw Captain Cam without satisfaction.
She said the conclusion was inescapable that Captain Cam had
based his diagnosis on unchecked information from sources un-
known to her. Mrs. Bartholemew on leaving the hospital went to
the Dick Smith home only to find that the Smiths had put the
children to bed, and they urged her to spend the night also,
arguing that "if a force was powerful enough to put Fletcher
Bartholemew in the hospital under the pretext that he was in-
sane, that same force could conceivably do harm to the children
or Mrs. Bartholemew if the people so desired."
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The next afternoon, Sunday, after parking the children
? with the Smiths again after morning mass and luncheon, Mrs.
Bartholemew again went to the hospital where she foUnd her
husband it a heavily drugged condition. He was able to
arouse hiMself, however, to the extent of asking her to go
to the US consul general, Mr. Edward Page, Jr., who after
all was the person *lose responsibility it was to protect
the rights of American citizens abroad, and to get Mr. Page's
help in getting Fletcher Bartholemew free.
In the hospital corridor, the nurse in charge told Mrs.
Bartholemew that the patient, that is Fletcher Bartholemew,
was not allowed to have visitors and that she must leave.
Whereupon Mrs. Bartholemew said that it didn't matter really
because it was all a mistake and that her husband probably
would be out the next day anyway; to which the nurse replied,
"Well, you had better hurry and get him out because the hos-
pital is charging $17.50 a day for his room."
Later, Mr. Page met with Mrs. Bartholemew at her request
at her home, at which time she had Dick Smith and Fletcher
Bartholemew's assistant, Mr. Martin Pederson, present. There
is general agreement among them that Page beat around the bush
for more than an hour saying that he really did not know any-
thing about the case or any of the facts of it but that Fletcher
Bartholemew was a "very sick boy," which phk-S-e he kept repeating
over and over. He would not give, howeverNn what information
0 was used as the basis for committing Bartholemew, although he
said the psychiatrist had a lot of evidence. Mrs. Bartholemew
asked to be allowed to see this so-called evidence, and Mr.
Edward Page, Jr., said that it would be shown to her, but it
never was. Finally, after insistant questioning by Dick Smith,
Martin Pederson, and Mrs. Bartholemew as to what was necessary
for the consul general to get Fletcher Bartholemew released,
the consul general, Mr. Page, admitted that it was he who had
been responsible for sending Fletcher Bartholemew to the hos-
pital and therefore he could not help in getting him out.
Now at this point, ladies and gentlemen, a new figure en-
ters the picture, one whom I know you have all been waiting for
since my broadcast of December the 19th in which I asked you
to help me find him--Lieutenant Colonel Ralph W. Clements, now
resigned and practicing in New York City, who was the chief psy-
chiatrist on the army hospital staff there in Munich. After
the conversation with Edward Page, Jr., at the Bartholemew home,
Dick Smith and Martin Pederson went to see Colonel Clements at his
home and found that Captain Cam who had committed Bartholemew the
day before, was also there. Colonel Clements said that he had not
seen Bartholemew personally, but that on the basis of the informa-
tion that had been provided from outside sources, he was confident
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that the diagnosis already made would stand up when he did
examine him. Colonel Clements has admitted to me personally
that as of the time he talked to Dick Smith and Pederson he
had never heard of Fletcher Bartholemew.
On Monday morning for the first time, Colonel Clements saw
Fletcher Bartholemew at the hospital. That afternoon Mrs.
Bartholemew saw Colonel Clements but could get no satisfaction.
He said only that she should have confidence in his professional
competence and was to close to her husband to see his symptoms.
As of Wednesday, Mrs. Bartholemew went to the hospital to
see her husband only to discover that without any notification
to her he had been shipped off to the army hospital at Frankfurt
about 200 miles away. A friend drove her to Frankfurt where she
finally made contact with her husband only to learn that from
there the next day he was to be shipped by plane to the United
?States without permission of her or any member of the family.
In Frankfurt, Fletcher Bartholemew's drug treatment was
switched from 'capsules to hypodermic injections. The following
day, Thursday, he was given a large injection, placed on a
stretcher, his wrists were strapped down to the side frames of
the stretcher, his ankles were strapped to the end frame, and
a fan was placed across his forehead. He was placed in a litter
plane, with the stretcher above him being just a few inches
above his face; the injection caused his head to swim violently;
he lapsed into unconsciousness. The next he knew he was on the
411 ground in the Azores, when he was injected again and again lapsed
into unconsciousness. Very late Friday he arrived at McGuire
airport base in New Jersey and was taken to Fort Dix army hospital
where he again was placed in the mental ward, this time behind
barred doors, still in his bathrobe and slippers.
Mrs. Bartholemew, left back in Munich with the three children,
had frantically changed her return reservations and rushed back
to the United States with the children by plane, arriving Sunday
morning only to find that none of the army hospital officials was
on ?duty until Monday morning. She did, however, drive from New
York to the hospital and saw her husband. She said she found him
perfectly normal again and by this time the drugs had pretty well
worn off. The president of the Free Europe Committee, Mr.
Sheppardson, visited Mrs. Bartholemew at the Hotel Salisbury,
told her that he certainly hoped her husband would be released
that day, saw no reason why the whole Bartholemew family couldn't
be on its way back home to Minneapolis the next day.
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On Monday morning,, Mrs Bartholemew went to Fort Dix by bus
(Mr. Sheppardson?hail promis6d to provide ?her with a limoutine
which he forgot about):; she? obtained her husband's release with-
out difficulty; he was, given back his clothes and possessions
and by Monday night hejtas with his family, back at the hotel.
One final point.;' In investigating the various characters
involved in this case, there is an interesting angle about
Captain Cam, who first committed ,Fletcher Bartholemew to the
mental ward on Saturday afternoon in Munich. I find from army
records, that Captain Alfred Cam, serial number 0535767, still
on duty at the army hospital in Munich, is not a psychiatrist.
In fact, Captain Alfred Cam is not even a medical doctor, he is
not even in the army medical corp. The principals in the case
did not know this until I told them three weeks ago--Father
Rush, now in California, probably is learning it for the,first
time--but Captain Cam's rating in the Pentagon is "social
worker."
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