BARRY FARBER SHOW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 21
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 4, 1999
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: August 25, 1966
• Content Type: TRANS

FOIAb3b
.
RADIO TV REPORTS, Itsla
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RD
41 EAST 42ND STRE
FOR
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM Barry Farber Show
DATE
CPYRGHT
August 25, 1966 - 9:15 P.M.
FULL WM
STATION won
CITY
New York
FARBER: "If you keep your radio fixed right where it is
you'll hear a story of stupidity inside government intelligence
that could only be told by an American.
"Sylvia Press, a lot of people, including Malcolm Muggeridge,
liTiting in Esquire, claim that the Central Intelligence Agency
suppressed your book when it was first written, eight years ago.
"Lou were an intelligence officer yourself. As a former
telligence officer, do you believe that?"
:MESS: "I just don't know what to say, as an intelligence
f-nl'icer. Of course it would be rather satisfying I suppose in
a zm.7 to think that they had, that it was important enough for
nem to want to do it. But I don't know who the source is, and
12 a former intelligence officer I always vat a great deal of
st.vess on the source."
FARBER: "I want to know haw the Central Intelligence Agency
could suppress a hook even if it wanted to."
PRESS: "Well? a I envisioned it when it was told to me
apparently they bought WO copies that were on the market. I
suppose anyone could do that if they had enough money."
FARBER: "Right.. But then isn't the publisher in a free
enterprise economy going to say 'Het dog, that was a good customers
lets print a few thousand more.'"
PRESS: "Well, I suppose it would depend upon how enterprising
the publisher waso''
FARBER: 'Your book is fiction. If it was written as non-
Sanitized -Approved ForRelease,?CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
OFFICES IN: NEW YORK ? DETR I ? LOS ANGELES ? wASHINGT0.-.. D. C. ? SAN FRANCISCO ? NEW ENGLAND ? CHICAGO
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
2
CPYRGHT
fiction you'd probably be in jail by now."
PRESS: "Well, I don't know. I haven't given away any
secrets that I should not have or that Mr. Dulles has not spoken
of and written of in the public press."
FARBER: "I want to pin down right now though that you and your
heroine, Bolen Simon, are the same person."
PRESS: 'les, that is true."
FARBER: "Bow much of The Care of Devils happened the way
you wrote it? Fifty per cent? Seventy-five per cent -- just so
we can judge as we talk together what kind of outrage has really
been committed against you."
PRESS: "I would say 95 per cent, And the other five per
cent was just for the sake of turning it into a novel -- I mean
T compressed a few things perhaps, split up things into different
times or something like that, but actually every word of the
dialogue is 100 per cent accurate."
FARBER: "Okay. We've heard how nazism and communism des-
troyed the individual. Let's see how good Americans can be at
that same game -- when we really try.
"This is Barry Farber. Sylvia Press, across from these
414crobhones, used to work for the Central Intelligence Agency
CIA. One day she was called from her desk to report to an
unfamiliar part of the building and what happened to Sylvia
rz,ess in the days and weeks and months and years that followed
is best told by Sylvia Press personally. First..."
l'ARBER: "Sylvia Press, did you enjoy your career as an
2.1-:erican secret intelligence officer?"
:MSS: "Well, I don't know if enjoyed is the word. I
.L:at -- of course there was a war on at the time; otherwise I
'1''obably never would have gone to Washington. I always bated
fay kind of red tape or bureaucracy; I don't know why. I
1-4nIt experienced it, but I just didn't like the thought of
I like to fee/ I'm my own person, you know. And of course
the war changed things, and I Sus -- one afternoon it came to
i;o, it just c me to me that it was the right thing to do."
FARBER: "This was the war against nazism."
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
- 3 -
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "The war everybody agreed should be fought. Right."
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "After World War II was won, did you ever say,
okay, I'm tired of intelligence, I'm tired of conspiring, I'm
tired of handling the lives of people across the planet; I want
out?"
PRESS: "Many times. But you see I was in the area of the
world, in Europe, where nobody was able to come out anymore.
I had a pretty good background because I'd lived there for -- in
that Particular area -- for about, nearly a year during the wars
had been able to gather Quite a lot of information, which was
still good and still necessary and still useful, and many of the
people who had been in the same area at the time I was had
loft, had families or some of them had been in the Army and got out
of the Army, and so it was just understood that I would stay for
a while until -- and see what was happening.
"SO eventually I always wanted to come back to New York; New
York is my home and I love it, and I didn't like Washington par-
ticularly. I never did. It's a lovely city, but not my kind
of city, you know. So, I got a little lonely sometimes for
Now York and for people that I cared about. But I stayed."
FARBER: "All right. One day, a bright sunny morning in
Tiashington at the beginning of summer -- what was the year?"
PRESS: "Nineteen fifty-four."
FARBER: "Nineteen fifty-four. Eisenhower President."
T.7S3: "That's right."
FARBER: "Okay. You got a call to go to a certain section
07! the building where you'd never been called to go before. And
you thought, hot dog, my report, which you happened to know
a good humming cracker jack good piece of work, you thought
o,3 3a13-G they're going to compliment me officially, or you had
;jot guessed right on a certain communist defector and other people
1.1
the department of a higher rank than you had guessed wrong
lbout this guy.
"You thought maybe they were going to congratulate you on
'6.12ai4 neither was the case. What was?"
ns12SS: "Well. actually the Part of the building that I got
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
11.
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
- 5 -
PRESS: "No."
FARBER: ".,.to pick up your cigarettes or anything..."
PRESS: "That's right. I had a package there, I had a
secretary there and she wouldn't be, she would be baffled about
my sudden disappearance in the middle of the morning. And the
worst thing that happened though, happened oh, I guess it was
within that same week, but a few days later, when they asked me to
give up my badge,
"Now the badge was the thing that permitted you to enter and
leave -- you couldn't even leave; not only couldn't you enter
but you couldn't even leave without showing that. And I think
that was when I really realized what a horrible mess I was in."
FARBER: "All right. Now let's let everybody put himself
in your position right. You're working for a supersecret United
States Government intelligence agency. You are innocent, of
anything. You've done your job and you've done a good job.
You've heard that there are evil forces in the land that want to
get people like you and offer them up, sacrificially so that we
can say ha ha we caught three of them this month and wait'll
next month.
"Anyhow, you know that certain people are on the prowl looking
Lor anything irregular. They want to be absolutely ruthlessly
clean and make sure that everybody is secure.
"Now than, Knowing you're innocent, and here's a friend --
you call him Van in the book, and here's a Hr. Jameison (7) who's
the head of security for CIA -- you know, making sure everybody
inside is really an our side. I wouldn't feel -- you felt panicky
in the book. I wouldn't feel the least..."
PRESS: "I didn't feel panicky in the beginning. It was not
until they suddenly shoved across at me a petition it -- and
it was f recognized it because it was going all over the
place during, even before the war. It was a petition for a
Cfommunist. I don't even know who the man was; I didn't know
then and I've never heard about him since. But they told me that
ho was a Communist who'd been I think working for the Government
or Possibly teaching, and this was a petition dated -- oh, some-
17here in the Thirties, I think it was; I mean it had been kicking
around for a long time, and lo and behold, in the list of sig-
natures was my name -- not my signature, by my name. So, I knew
that I hadn't signed it, because I don't sign petitions0
suPpose if anyone came around that really affected me
deeply enough: perhaps I could and perhaps I might; I can't say
categorically that I never would. But I didn't."
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
6 -
FARBER: "One thing I learned from your book, The Care of
Devils, was bow to put somebody absolutely ill at ease, even when
they're innocent."
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "You must have had a tape recorder with you that
they didn't know about because you couldn't capture this kind
of dialogue that accurately."
PRESS: Nell, I have a pretty good memory."
FARBER: "In other words, Jameison would say you signed this,
didn't you. You said no, I never sign anything like that,"
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "And be said you're sure about that. You know it
didn't every -- you know, insinuation cutting into your gut like
a laser beam,"
PRESS: "The point is that they never in all -- it lasted
about seven weeks, and never in all that time did they once
accuse me of anything."
FARBER: 'You'd say what is it, and they'd say don't you
?now."
PRESS: "That's right,"
FARBER: "You'd say no, what is it. Sure you don't know --
and then no matter what you say it sounds like you're wrong."
PRESS: "That's right. You're cursed if you do and cursed
a:f you don't really* But as I say, the first point was that
algnature and that really troubled me, because I thought how can
they possibly believe this, Of course it was a different address,
but that wouldn't have mattered; and it could have been, you know*
And it wasn't till after it was all over, or practically over. I
"abink it was not quite over, that I came to New York myself, and
-ahile I was here I looked up the records for that year, I think
f_.t was 1933 or something like that, and I looked up the directory,
the New York City directroy for that year, and I found this other
person with the same name as mine, but our parents' names were
different; our addresses -- we lived in different boroughs as a
iaatter of fact, and I thought bow could they not have looked this
11p. And if they did look it up, why did they have -- made a
point of it as though they thought it was me."
FARBER: Nell, you realized early the answer to what you
just asked. They were not investigating. They were, they were
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT - 7 -
indicting. In other words they wanted you to be guilty. They
didn't want to find oW,; if you were guilty or not."
PRESS: "All right. And what -
through it I couldn't really belive
one would want to do that, you know,
and it was like living through Alice
thing was upside down."
FARBER: "How many days did this interrogation go on?"
PRESS: "It went on for seven weeks."
FARBER: "Day after day after day."
PRESS: "Day after day. There were a few days when I
think he had something to do when they suggested I could go
up to the office if I wanted to, and which I did. But outside
of that it was every day -- except Saturday and Sunday."
FARBER: "Now this was maddening from your point of views
because you know you were innocent. Now I did something un-
forgiveable. I kept trying to sympathize with the CIA guy across
the desk; I'm sure you'd find that unforgiveable."
PRESS: "No, I'm not -- I understand human nature pretty
well, and I think maybe anybody would have; I don't know."
FARBER: "well, they uncovered some things; they found out
that you had indeed gone to Mexico* with a man."
- in spite of that, all
-- couldn't believe that any-
It just seemed so strange,
in Wonderland, where every-
PRESS: "This was no secret."
FARBER: "Ahh2 but..."
PRESS: "On my application, on everything I ever wrote,
where it said, 'foreign travel,' I put down Mexico. I made
no bones about it. But it was they who turned it around.
Everything that I told them of course was simply turned -- it
was like --did you ever see a Franz Kafka picture? Well, that
was the way I felt."
FARBER: "I felt like I lived too long till I saw this
book."
PRESS: "You remember The Trial?"
FARBER: "Yeah."
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-8
PRESS:
FARBER:
guilt."
PRESS:
FARBER:
all about?'"
PRESS:
step,"
FARBER:
"It was exactly like that,"
"Where there was no accusation, no crime; just
"We know more than you do about it,"
"Well didn't you ever ask, 'Look, what is this
"Of course I.did. I asked that on every other
"And what did they say?"
PRESS: "We're asking the questions*"
FARBER: "Was there a veneer?after 4a4ou were still an
employee o
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "In good standing*"
PRESS: "And I pointed it out to them and at one point
said to the man I called Sameison in the book; I said, 'Re-
Immber, after this is all over we're going to have to meet each
ether; we're going to. have to work together again. Don't
say things unless you're sure--but even to look at me. But
suddenly it dawned on me: Is it possible that we won't be working
together again? And yet I couldn't be sure; I mean I couldn't
be sure because I had, I just had faith that if I told the
complete truth and witheld nothing that it would be self-evident,
"And I still think it was, I think it wouldn't have made
much difference what I had said, really,"
FARBER: "What happened at the end of that seven weeks?"
PRESS: "At the and of the seven weeks--I learned it In
the doctor's office, in their hospital actually, end I couldn't
oven dismiss it with the doctor; they wouldn't even let MB
do that, So that I had to give him half information, I mean
he saw the state I was in. I was practically ready to crack
up, and he said, 'How long has this been going aa?' He was
a lovely man, 'How longis this been going on?' and I said
I think five or six weeks; I'm not sure,
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
"And I never saw a man look more shocked in my life,
He sent MB to the hospital to get checked up, and he himself
said--he said, You know,' he said, 'this is a strange city
and these are strange times,' and then he looked away and
said, 'I have children growing up and I don't think I want them
to grow up here,"
FARBER: "Did he mean in Wasington or in the United States?"
PRESS: "No, Washington, He meant in Washington, I don't
judge the United States by two compatriots who happen not to
know their jobs,"
FARBER: "In a minute, I want to go to that scene e ? o"
PRESS: "Yes."
FARBER: "Where they actually strap you inside a lie
detector*
"First . 0 0"
43.
FARBER: "This is WOR 710, Radio New York, I'm Barry
Farber and we're retracing the rise and fall of one American
who underwent what she calls psychological hell without justice
td without mercy because she looked like a security risk@
"She's Sylvia Press, She worte her story inside a book
that became widely unknown, The Care Of Devils, Other people
claim that this book was suppressed by interested Government
agencies who didn't want the story told, I can see why the CIA
wouldn't want the story told. I cannot see how the CIA or anybody
else could suppress a book, but I'm massing the part of the story
where your testimony is most valuable, mainly what you lived
through and what happened to you and why, Miss Press,
You were subjected to interrogation through a lie detector,"
PRESS: "That was Dart of it."
FARBER: "Yeah, part of it, after?this was after seven
weeks of picking,"
PRESS: "After about five weeks, I would say,"
FARBER: "Incidentally this book would make a better play
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-10 -
than a movie, and the movie would drag because almost everything's
in that one room, Plays like it that way, you know, so they only
have to build one set."
PRESS: "As a matter of fact I sold an option on it for
a play, Recently."
FARBER: "Well, it ought to come about 0 0
PRESS: "Yes."
FARBER: 0 0 0 because ? . 0It
PRESS: "I hope so,"
FARBER: "Because this book shows how you, how you inter-
rogate, and how you defend yourself against interrogation and
how the whole process can break you down even if you're innocent,
if you're guilty--you'd have probably buckled halfway through
the first ten minutes, but you were innocent, and you lasted
seven weeks; and you surprised them,"
PRESS: "I certainly did. I don't think anybody was more
surprised than those two men."
FARBER: "Was there ever a moment when you wanted to say,
1Look, I can't,'--incidentally, what time did the interrogations
start?"
PRESS: "You mean what time of day?"
FARBER: "Yes."
PRESS: "They started, I think, around ten o'clock and
lasted till late in the afternoon, middle or late afternoon."
FARBER: "You broke for lunch,"
PRESS: "Sometimes it was just a sandwich that was brought la,"
FARBER: "Well I just majoyed seeing the techniques, and if
? wove a stage director you could bring all these things to life
qa state?how you an just have a yellow pad in front of you
and be writing down a few words every now and then, and you make
the person wonder, 'What does he find important in that?"
PRESS: "I wandered after, those are the mey things that
? wondered about, I thought, 'Well what's he find so interesting
adput that?'--I mean some perfectly innocuos statement. And
then I'd see him writing and I thought, 'Well, why does he want to
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-11-
record that for posterity,"
FARBER: "And then he'd switch hit. You pretend you're
interested in your trip to Mexico with Steve Lasker, not his
real name--this was incidentally the big 0 ? 0IV
PRESS: "I don't, but they do."
FARBER: "Yea, yeah, And Steve Lasker was the man you
were not married to but you went to Mexico with him, And the
CIA knew all about Steve, you had made no secret of him, You
had made a point of going and explaining everything in your
life before this happened, right, and then they'd switch around
to a banquet in Maxieo City and weren't you sent there, weren't
you assigned, and when you put a question that way all you can say
is, 'no,' and that sounds pretty lame."
PRESS: "That's true. That's very true."
FARBER: "And than the part that would make anybody not
just seem guilty but feel guilty was when they keep reminding
you that they know more than you know, and they say, 'Did you
aign this petition?' and you say, 'I &Nast sign petitions.'
They say, 'You sure about that?' and you say, 'Yes, I'm $ure.'
And they say, 111h-tuh.1 And then they look at each other know-
ingly.
"At that moment I or any other honest man in the world
would say, Now wait a minute, maybe I did; if I did I've forgotten,'
And, my Lord, if they'd show me a petition that I actually did
sign and forgot about then I look like a liar across the board
on everything else."
PRESS: "Well that's exactly what happened* Not--I knew
1 didn't sign the petitions I mean there was no doubt in my mind.
But there were some things--there were people mentioned and things
mentioned which I thought I was sure about, and yet I kept thinking,
tWell, why would they mention this if there wasn't something
there,' you know, and I would try to think of every contact
that I had had,
'Th fact I had a trunk down in the basement. and I spent
night after night?after I'd leave them--going through this trunk
wing to find letters )c)'' reference of any kind, because I'd,
I'd?although I had a fairly good idea that I could trust my
r4amory, 1 still wanted some corroboration. But if you don't
know where to begin, where do you begin?"
FARBER: "There's one essential flaw that I would have to fight
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
- 12 -
if I were directing your story an stage, Now I want to get to
that, but first you tell us about the lie-detector test."
PRESS: "Well it's never a pleasant thing, I can tell you that,
but the strange thing about this is, that I did take a lie
detector test when I first came back from Europe after the end
of the war, I had a little forgotten about it at that point
until I thought about it later, and I feel if anything had
been wrong with me--and all the things that they mentioned or
that they had me dig up out of my mind happened long before
the war, and if I had just come back from the war and my sym-
pathies were not with the United States, let's say, just for
the sake of the argument, if they'd put me an the lie detector
then I thin they should have been able to find out.
"But they had. It was just a routine thing. Everyone who
came back from the field, Europe or Asia, were given a lie-
detector test, they did that as a routine matter, And I thought
about that later, and I felt, well, they haven't even mentioned
the fact that I'd been on it before and nothing happened.
But when you've been harried for five or six weeks, when you're
told that everything around you was slimy and miserable and that
either you're tricking them or you've been tricked?your mind
is in a pretty weird state, I can tell you that,"
FARBER: "Well you know, your book let me down in one
respect. You never really got to the?mow for instance I don't
kaow why to this day why they were interrogating you, do you?"
PRESS: "I don't,"
PARBER: "Was Steve ',esker, your former boy friend now
a communist that they knew about. Wasn't he with Whitler, the
man who hired you to begin with, back when everybody was anti-
Nazi and the Communists were friends. Was he a Communist who was
using you all along?"
PRESS: "I don't believe that either of them was,"
FARBER: "To this day you don't know why you were brought
into that roam,"
PRESS: "No I do not. unless they needed a number,"
FARBFIR: "You still think
PRESS: "There was a man :named McCarthy at that time.
don't know whether you remember that,"
FARBM: "I remember McCarthy, and I was waiting for you
to bring, him Into it."
Sanitized - Approved For Release : GIA-KLJP/5-00001K00040015000/-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-13-
PRESS: "oh. Well, McCarthy had been feuding with CIA
because CIA wouldn't give him personnel records, You can imagine
what would happen to the personnel if he ever got hold of any
records at all at that time, And thepapers, at least the
Washington papers, were full of it. They were taling about
people in various agencies trying to fulfill quotas so that
they'd keep him appeased and keep him quiet, and it was getting
very close to CIA and he was threatening?in fact even
while this was going an, when I was in my own room at night
and I was listening to radio, I would?while the thing was going
on I didn't know what I was listening to most of the time any-
way, I was in such a daze, but I would hear this mad voice.
It would be repeating the day's hearings, you know, McCarthy
hearings. I never associated myself with them for a long time."
FARBER: "You did in your book compare that McCarthy voice 000"
PRES: "Yes,"
FARBER: "Senator Joe McCarthy, the late Senator Joe
McCarthy."
PRESS: "Yes."
FARBER: "You compared his voice to Adolph Hitler."
PRESS: "It's true, It's a strange thing, but it's true?
Ho bad that same--you know that breathless?he'd run off a
thousand words an'one breath and would end up on a very high
Ditch, It was the same kind of technique."
FARBER: "Sylvia, acme on now, don't you think it's a
little much to compare Joseph McCarthy at his worst with
Adolph Hitler?"
PRESS: "No, I do not. I think if McCarthy had had the
op-oortumiteis that Hitler had it wouldn't seam so strange,"
FARBER: "I thtnt. if McCarthy had had more of Hitler's
coatorical abilities be might have come closer to having the
possibility. I think that McCarthy's voice ?."
PRESS: "I'm afraid hs came close enough,"
FARBER: "McCarthy spoke in a dull, draneing voice,
Hi.tler's was animal hysteria."
PRESS: "I'm soeaking now of their, of their actual
physical techniques. I mean they'd run the words along so they
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
would almost sort of pull you along with it, you know, No,
Hitler's--Hitler's voice didn't sound natural if you ever heard
that. It was a very unnatural voice, just as McCarthy's seamed
to be,"
FARBER: "Well, I cannot wait to read the definitive work
or to hear the definitive testimony that will help me make
up my own mind about the life and work of the late Senator
Joseph McCarthy, I'm far from having made it up yet, which is
one reason I was so eager to invite you.
"I was of political age, consciousness, during the McCarthy
era, and I remember?let's be grown up about it, shall we."
PRESS: "We must always be grown up."
FARBER: Vo real American wants a climate of fear through
government or anywhere else. Also, I aseume that no real
American wants communists in sensitive posts where they can
do damage,"
PRESS: "But he was not the man to do it,
I mean he was such an intemperate person,"
FARBER: "Aha, Well, All right. Let's
he was not the right person."
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "TO purge the United States Government politely,
as politely as we would want a government to be purged. Let's
take one fantasy at a time. Let's--you know a lot of people
ill just pooh-pooh you when you say there are communists trying
to get into sensitve government spots."
PRESS: "Oh, I believe that's true, I don't pooh-pooh it
by any means."
FARBER: "All right, Can we conclude that some communists
!Imre made it to sensitive spots?"
that's the point,
agree then that
PRESS: "I don't know of any, but I'm sure there must have
-11
ocen.
FARBER: "Good possibility because they were trying on
a lot of fronts,"
PRESS: "Anything is possible. In fact?what's that
chase' Don't underestimate the power of a woman. I'd say
the power of your enemy, I mean I think all nations are busy
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP/5-00001R00040015000(-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
doing that. Not only the communists but all over the world.
It's the kind of world, unfortunately that we're living in."
FARBER: "All right. Now, having agreed, at least you and
from our respective vantage points?you being on the outside
and I being on the inside of something else at that time, which I'll
bring up a little bit later--we agree then that there were eam-
muaists trying to get into government and there were communists
who might have made it. So there's nothing really essentially
repugnant to a United States Senator trying to clean communists
out of government."
PRESS: "Nod I don't know whether it is the business of
a United States Senator when they had a CIA and an FBI. I
don't know that it was his job to do it,"
FARBER: "'Well, in a state in balance--I'm sorry, go ahead."
PRESS: "No, I mean there are, there are rules and there
are ways set 111:0 for such things., and I don't think that it was
ever set up for Joseph McCarthy, particularly."
FARBER: ?Well, when the founding fathers founded our
constitution they must have gotten up mighty early because they
foresaw the possibility someday of something like a
sure they couldn't conceive of an intelligence agency in those
days when the Constitution was written."
PRESS: "They had intelligence."
FARBER: "Aw right, but I'm sure they didn't think we'd
over go into the business of conspiracy world-wide and full
re Aw right, but they must have thought of executive agencies
Which the CIA is, which the FBI is, part of the Justice Depart-
ment, administrative, executive agencies? They must have fore-
seen that some of these agencies might someday go wrong and
that's why they set an the *hocks and balances."
PRESS: "Oh, I believe in the cheeks and balances system,
But I don't believe in its misuse; that's the only thing."
FARBER: "I see. So you think that MeCarthys worst crime
is that he misused .?."
PRESS: "He misused his power. I think that's one of
his crimes. I charge him with a few more."
FARBER: "All right, Now, the moderate who complains about
McCarthy is, as you do, won't get too much of an argument from
MB0 I too wish that the arch senatorial anti communist had been
a more pleasing type than the late Senator McCarthy,
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-16 -
because he wouldn't have been so vulnerable to anti-anti-com-
munist attacks."
PRESS: "Well the thing that I usually use--it's a pretty
good yardstick, I think?is motive, And McCarthy was falling
all over himself. He was accusing one agency of having
50 communists; the next day it was 20, then it was three,
mM then, when challenged to produce those three, he couldn't
produce them,"
FARBER: "All right, I would too, Now Senator McCarthy
is gone, he's been laid to rest. Let's talk about the so-called
climate of fear which so many people talked so poetically and
piously about. Was there a climate of fear from where you
lived and worked in those days."
PRESS: "There was a climate of terror."
FARBER: "Really?"
PRESS: "Absolutely. I saw it immediately because the moment
disappeared from my office the most natural thing in the world
t4ould be for people who knew ma to call ms up, find out where
was or what I was doing. Nobody called. They knew that some-
thing?they sniffed it, you know, it was a sort of a ?
FARBER: "You later found out, point blank, that somebody
you liked and trusted at your job had been advising your
other mutual friends to, 'Stay away from Ellen, she's hot."
PRESS: "That's right."
FARBER: "Of course your reel nem is Sylvia, but in the
book you're Ellett."
PRESS: "That's right. And of course the only reason that
fouad it hard to believe anybody is that we daa't always know
how we would react ourselves. Who knows, I might have done the
naue thing. I might have hated it, but I might have just
chosen the course of self preservation.
But the feet that you had to be faced with such a choice,
think is a pretty dreadful thing."
FARBER: "My own concept of the McCarthy era--and admit-
tedly this is not hardened. I am looking for testimony. I
don't think history has spoken the final word yet. We have to
wait and see what happens, Or at least I have to read a lot
-Aore books like yours from different side of the story. But
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
it always struck me as being like I am walking in the woods,
and I throw a rock aimlessly into a place with an awful lot
of pigeons, and those pigeons cause a tornado trying to flee.
Now, I didn't mean to terrorize those 6,000 pigeons in that
field, I just threw one rock. Maybe I was aiming at some-
thing, and these pigeons just took off in panic. Question,
did McCarthy cause all the terror or was be after specific,
legitimate objectives,,nanely rooting Communists out of sensitive
spots, and did the Washington sheep--and certainly you could
corroborate the character of a lot of people working
in sensitve agencies?did these people just take off in terror
an their own?'
PRESS: "No, the fact that most of us remained there and
went on and did our daily work as though nothing were really
wrong. But at the first smell or fear of something wrong, it
was the same technique. Nobody knew what was right and what
Was wrong, what was good and what was bad. They couldn't be
sure. That was the climate of fear."
FARBER: "I was in Washington, employed officially in those
days, too, in another sensitive agency. And I have never
been able to accept the fact that McCarthy caused a wave of
terror, I think he scared an awful lot of people, most of them
pretty timid types who might need a good scaring to shake them
up, I have more respect some time for the terror monger
than the terrorized. And I think if Washington had been--if
America in general were a little tougher to terrorize, than we
could contain people who want to take over,"
:PRESS: "Wells I don't want to see a country full of
weaklings myself, God knows, I'd like to see us strong. I'd
like to see us strong both as a nation and as individuals. How.'.
over,, when strong people even can be reduced by terror--and terror
is something tangible almost. We saw that in Germany. We know
what it did to peoples destroying people in Germany.
"So we can't just dismiss it and say, 'I will not be terror-
ized, I am different,' you know?"
FARBER: "Right now I want to issue an appeal. I think we
ought to study MaCarthyism. I am not talking now about the
Edward R. Murrow's who stood up publicly, or &out attorney
Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings, who stood up publicly
to Senator McCarthy.
"I want to hear from people who know about people or who are
themselves people who stood up on the level where you were,
in the middle of a totem pole in some anonymous government
Sanitized Aoorovedr Release? CIA RDP75 00001R000400150007 1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
- 18 -
bureau and who saw the terror creeping around in whispers, and
this one 'a a security risk and this one disappeared from her
desk for three days, maybe she is being interrogated, and what-
ever happened to Sylvia Press? I want to know someone who
stood up and said, is nonsense and that Senator McCarthy
is a jerk and I don't care who hears what I am saying, that's
my opinion,' I want to know what happened to people like this
in that riptide of terror that you talk about."
PRESS: "Well, on that level, if they were not on a level
above him, I don't think they stood up very long,"
FARBER: "Why do you think the nation took it if it was that
bad? I am talking about the era of Senator McCarthy. We're not
a cowardly nation, we're not a cowardly nation."
PRESS: "Oh, there are many people who followed McCarthy,
don't forget, We aren't all as intelligent as we might be or
as kindly disposed toward our neighbors as we might be. And
that I think is a very important feature."
FARBER: "I'd almost like to demand a post card ballot,
if I could, If you work in Washington or in a sensitive govern-
ment agency or any government agency or any agency where you
were directly under the threat of Senator Joseph McCarthy in
those days,"
PRESS: "We were indirectly under it, too."
FARBER: "Indirectly to college professors, union and so
forth, All right, if you were vulnerable to Senator McCarthy,
please write me, 1.ras 1:1ere a reign of terror or was there not,
and if so, how terrifying was this particular terror? You and
I really share what I think is a common enemy: pigheadedness,
the pigheaded guy you call Jameson and this pigheaded coward you
call Herman arid Van, and a pighead to end all pigheads, the
boss of the bosses at that time, whom you personally appealed
to.
"All right, fine, I'm against cheeseheadednees, somebody
beeause you took a train trip to Mexico with a man you
weren't married to, is going to Bey, 'Whoop you are a security
risk*"
PRESS: "People who live by the book rather than by their
hearts,"
FARBER: "And who don't know, don't care. You must have felt
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
-19-
like crying just thinkiTtg of the real hero types that you worked
ulth in World War II, parachuting into Albania, and so on,
"All right, so let's agree the =amyl, our common enemy,
is pigheadedness and fear."
PRESS: "I'm for that. I mean I'm agin" it, but 14m with
FARBER4 "The big flaw is this, Sylvia, The book. says,
The Care Of Devils, on the front, and the, 'The nightmare
novel of what they did to a woman behind the closed d000rs of
the CIA,' and here is a woman bent over, obviously crying,
four artfully shadowy men standing over her. And the big
flaw. Sylvia the big flaw is at it is most horrifying, at its
most horrifying, this is a distress, But when I hear of terror
_nnA interrogation, I think of, 'To the wall,' and you disappear
nnd you never see your wife and family again.. You wound up
in a Dominican Republic sewage pipe in 85 pieces or ?. ."
PRESS: "Oh, those are the way-Out things. But there are
ways of terrifying people that have nothing to do with anything
physioally."
VARBER: 'But do you understand 'what I mean? The worst
that happened is that you got fired by the Director of this,
and you were free to go to New York ?and live in the sun."
TRESS: "It's not the worst that happened, it was not the
orst that hanpened. First of all, it nearly drove me to insanity.
The reason I Worte the book, really, was as a therapeutic exercise,
I yilean to get it out of my system so that 1 could start living
ramn ;And--but it's pretty terrifying.
qlhan you are entrusted with something by a Country like
ours and two stupid men?really that's what they werea-who
don't know their- jobs come along and show signs of wrecking your
life7-itin not enough to wreck your life, but an the grounds
that you Were disloyal to your own country, donit you consider
that pretty terrifying?"
PARBER:- "I conSider it pretty terrifying and distressing
mad thoroughly un-American and to be fought by every honest
kmerican. But a story of American terror where I would expect
I0R3Fir "I did not design the cover. All I asked pvi- new
3lisher was that in designing it they not whow someone being
attacked on the cover, or something like thatct'
0 0 0
V?
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-20 -
FARBER: "That's the point. Where I would expect a bamboo
reed to start being fitted under the fingernails, you were taken
off to lunch, and having gone to one little restaurant after
mother in Washington
PRESS: "Oh, no, indeed, it wasn't that way at all. I
practically--I didn't see a soul for seven weeks except these
two men, who were constantly putting ideas in my mind that
were enough to terrify anybody. I began to fear that--I began
to think, Who, among the people tat I know, is the one? Have
I been so stupid all my life? I thought I understood people.
Is it possible that everybody around ma has been partaking
of something, has been using me, has been identified with all
the wrong things that I myself an against?'
"And it's a mental?as you say, you know, the Kafka tech-
nique, but Kafka didn't write light comedy, you know, and most
of his people were not--there was no physical brutality in his
stories. But there is such a thing as mental brutality, and that's
what it wan."
FARBER: "In a minute, I want to know if you th3nk that
America, knowing what you now know about the real American
under psychological fire bureaucratically in the government,I want to know if you think America could ever let itself be
swallowed by a dictatorship of the right or the left?"
it?
(A commereial for Rambler automobiles had mentioned this
being "National Mind Changing Month.)
FARBER: "Well, it's almost national mind changing life-
time in the book that you're writing."
PRESS: "Yes, I think that's very apt,"
FARBER: "Sylvia Press, do you think America could ever
be engulfed by a dictatorship?"
PRESS: "Well, I have my own feeling about the American
people, It's awfully hard to talk about the American people
because, as you know, we are made up of so many things. But
I think there is an American?I an sure there is an American
--
it's a sort of coast that may need a little alteration on one
man or another womaa, but it fits us all, you know, And in
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1
-21 -
my own lifetime I have seen things happen with people. Great
numbers of people got hysterical over one thing or another,
or fearful. But fundamentally, I don't' think we are that kind
of people, I think that we have our feet pretty well planted
on the ground. We may go off in a tangent,. we may make awful
fools of ourselves for a time, but I think there is a fundamental
common sense that permeates this country. I think that's a
pretty dependable thing."
FARBER: "Apparently even our tangents aren't as tragic
as they are elsewhere on the planet."
PRESS: "Well, thank God, so far they haven't been."
FARBER: "Sylvia, I became your friend by reading your
story, to be put inside the Care Of Devils, and .I just want to
thank God that your personal reign of terror happened to
happen in the United States instead of in Germany, Nazi German,
or today's Russia or Poland or Czechoslovakia or Hungary, Rumania,
Bulgaria, Albania or Communist China."
PRESS: "I don't even make the comparison. There is no
comparison. I agree with you."
FARBER: "Thank you for coming."
PRESS: "I enjoyed it. It was pleasant to talk with you."
FARBER: "Sylvia Press, She wrote her story in fiction
form, but it happened, 95 percent of it, she says, inside her
book, The Care Of Devils. The book has been 'in' for a long
time, written, but somewhere underground, you couldn't buy it.
Now it's coming out in paperback, published by Sylvia Press.
The Care Of Devils. It's the story of what happened to Sylvia
Press when she was an employee of an American intelligence
agency, trying to do her best at a time in America where the
best was still suspect.
"This is Barry Farber and I thank you for your attention."
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001R000400150007-1