MURDER WILL OUT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200060005-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: January 13, 1970
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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Approved For Release 204/10/13: CIA-RDP88-013501R00020O 60005-3 L, e- )*t_5
BOOKS
1970
1 3 JAN
physical facts, construed more logically,
Murder Will Out to prove murder, On authority from fo-
THE MASARYK CASE by Claire Ster- renste medicine, she makes the point
that men on the point of suicide do
ling. 366 pages. Harper Row. $7.95. not lose control of their bowels. Such
Views of the cold war are still being loss of control is a symptom of the last
busily revised. Much that was once taken stages of suffocation. As the author vi-
on this side of the iron Curtain as a clear- sualizes it, the struggle between the 200-
cut matter of Soviet aggression is now Ib. Czech statesman and his assailants
being questioned. Among many events began in the bedroom and progressed
that revisionism is unlikely to explain to the bathroom. There they finally man-
away, however, is the murder of Jan Ma- aged to hold him down in the tub and sti-
saryk in Prague on March 10, 1948. Ile him with pillows. When he was un-
Or so Claire Sterling concludes in a conscious or nearly so, he was shoved
new study of the case. The Czecho- out the nearest window, feet first.
slovakian Foreign Minister, she says, In some ways, the method of Ma-
was murdered-exactly as cold war his- - saryk's murder is the least of the mys-
tory had it-by the Communists, under AP
party had taken power in Czechoslo-
vakia. The guilty party was quick to de-
clare Masaryk a suicide. Even in 1948,
hardly anybody in Prague believed the
story. Four weeks ago. after more than
20 years, the Czech Communists closed
an investigation they themselves had
opened under the liberal Dubcck re-
gime. Despite the new presence of the
Russian army, they withdrew the sui-
cide verdict. But in a grotesque com-
promise (TIME, Dec. 19, 1969), they
decided that Masaryk's fall from his
bathroom window was an accident.
Detective Story. The circumstances
were obscene. At sunrise on March 10,
Masaryk's body was found in'the court-
yard of the Cernin Palace. He was in pa-
jamas, barefoot. He lay on his back a
yard from the open bathroom window
30 feet above. He seemed to have land-,
ed on his feet, for both legs were bro-
ken at the ankles, the heels shattered,
the stumps protruding and bits of bond
strewn over the cobbles. His hands were
scuffed, and the fingernails had paint
or plaster beneath them.
Within minutes of the "discovery" of
Masaryk's body, the case and his apart-
ment were sealed off by the Communist-
run security police, led by interior Min-
ister Vaclav Nosck. Within months,. at
least 25 people who knew something,
or were believed to know something,
were locked up. Of these, 14 were ex-
ecuted, murdered, committed suicide or,
as the phrase went, "died in prison.
By sifting every scrap of evidence
and interviewing virtually everyone still
alive who could have knowledge of the
death, the author has reconstructed cer-
tain essentials. There was extreme dis-
order in both Masaryk's bedroom and
bathroom-pillows on the bathroom
floor and in the dry tub, glass bottles
from the medicine chest ground under
foot, a smear of excrement on the sill.
Strangely, Masaryk had gone out the
hatbro,.)m window even Ihough it was
such smaller than the one in the bed-
,_
rliN,fA4VI~nr Rctcal lbl`~ ~~ill~/ ~c1"
Claire Sterling, a 9cte?an ioretgn cot- a ~~ ~~~~? b
respondent now on the staff of. Her-, palimpsest of ~histtory. Author. Stsrli g qlict u enit to commitatives and sleeping drugs sot-
L
JAN MASARYK
Into a world gone soft on myths.
tcries surrounding the case. Presumably
Masaryk was murdered because he was
the only remaining political figure who
might stir popular resistance against the,
party, and so draw in Western support,
But who ordered the murder? Were the
murderers themselves killed? When a
now investigation began during the brief
freedom permitted by the Dubeck gov-
ernment in 1968, why did the new in-
vestigating prosecutor distort the ev-
idence-as he did, among other ways,
by downplaying the disorder in Ma-
saryk's apartment? Claire Sterling an-
swers these attendant mysteries of 1948
by relating her long train of sleuthing.
'i'houf;h repetitive, and at tinges infu-
riatingly complex (there are 112 char-
nelcrs involved), the result is a sporad-
-,, C. c .._-
rounding the 1948 putsch and describes
the earlier tragic betrayal that loci to Hit-
ler's 1938 march into the Sudetenland.
She outlines the Russian troop move-
ments that took place in 1948 and shows
how in 1968 Soviet agents poured into
Czechoslovakia in much the same fash-
ion. It is indeed melancholy to be re-
minded that men like Ludvik Svoboda
and Josef Smrkovsk', valiant champions
of liberal democracy in 1968, were deep-
ly implicated in the 1948 putsch?-Sva-
boda as a pliant Defense Minister who
kept `the troops in their barracks,
Smrkovsky as the than who armed and
loci the Communist Workers' Militia into
the streets.
Deeper Mystery. Beyond the bloody
murder and the political history lies a
deeper mystery: Jan Masaryk himself. -
I-Iis fiancee-mistress, Marcia Davenport,
who left Prague two days before his
death, has written that he did not kill
himself.,' and would not "intentionally
have gone out the window." As the son
of the austere Tomas Masaryk, founder
of the nation after World War 1, Jan Ma-
saryk was revered by the Czechoslovak
.people. He was also loved by them for
his charm and his proven loyalty. But
much that he did, or failed to do. remains
unclear. Why, for instance, as the person- -
ification of Czechoslovak democracy, did
he remain in the Czech government after
the 1948 Communist takeover? Was he
in touch with Western agents? Was he
planning to flee?
In the absence of hard evidence, in-
sight into such questions might come
from inner knowledge of Masaryk's
character. Claire Sterling devotes a
chapter to martyred Religious Hero Jan
Hus and to Ji,ra,slnv Hasek's rumpled an-
tihero Good Soldier Schweik as they re-
late to the Czechoslovak national char-
actor and to Masaryk's own. Masaryk
remains curiously elusive, a betwixt arc C:
between figure. If he had been a pas-
sionately unrelenting zealot like Hus (a
figure hardly characteristic of his coun-
try in modern times), the history of
Czechoslovakia after the war might have-
been different. He loved Schweik, with
his comic, little-plan's passive resistance
to "patriotism, militarism, idealism, to-
talitarianism, causes of whatever kind,
and all plots, schemes, blandishments
- I exhortations." On the record, Ma-
saryk, in dealing with the Communists.
tried to follow severe{ Schwcikian rules:
Never offer open resistance to an ir-
resistible force.
Always offer to cooperate.
Never actually cto so, despite your
most valiant efforts.
In the end, though, Masaryk bore
too much responsibility and was too aris-
tocratic to play the lowly Schweik for
long. Though it was not his fault, he
failed tragically to live up to Schwcik's
cardinal rule: "Always try to outlive
the enemy; dying will get you nowhere."
^ F{ Ail'Qai3?0R0A9A} Q6,Q scar of pain. He had