Playing Cat and Mouse with the Secret Police in Prague

Agent SAVOJ

(Front cover of file from Czecholovak State Security Police. Jiri Dienstbier photo on left, Charles Sawyer photo on right.)

Choosing a name for a website is not easy these days. Finding a website name unique across the Internet is daunting. I tried everything I could think of that would be descriptive and memorable, like "charliestracts," "charlieblues," "blues4charlie," "charliesblogs," "cmsblogs." Google Sites rejected them all as conflicting with names of existing sites. I was running out of ideas when I remembered one moniker that was bound to be off the beaten path because it was given to me by the State Security Police in Czechoslovakia in 1978, SAVOJ (pronounced "savoy"--the 'J' in Czech sounds as the English 'Y').

It sounds preposterous and so it was that I should be recorded in the archives of the Czechoslovak Secret Police as an active agent, complete with a code name. It happened like this. In 1976 Harper's Magazine published an article I wrote under a pseudonym ("Philip Carey") chronicling the daily agonies of ordinary artists and intellectuals living under Communist rule in the aftermath of the failed "Prague Spring" of 1968. Two years later a few hundred Czechoslovak artists, scholars and writers put up a petition called Charter 77, calling on the regime to abide by the commitments it made in signing the Helsinki Declaration, which bound signatories to respect human rights. The regime retaliated quickly and harshly by arresting some and seeing to it that others lost their jobs (those of them that had non-menial jobs, that is). It was front page news in the N.Y. Times. I proposed to Harper's that I return to Prague and report on the fate of these people and the editor, Lewis Lapham, agreed to sponsor me, officially as an accredited journalist. Thus I arrived in mid-spring on a journalist's visa and registered with the Foreign Press Office. My stated purpose was to write a general overview of cultural life in the country and the Press Office arranged interviews for me with writers and artists still in favor, which meant a series of mostly hacks who had sold out by signing loyalty oaths and agreeing to report on their fellow artists.

Meanwhile, well prepared with contacts supplied by exiled dissidents in London, I began meeting signatories of Charter 77. It was not long before I realized I was under police surveillance. I was scared, but at the same time thrilled. I was living out a cross between a Le Carre novel and a Woody Allen movie. It did not really spoil my reporting on the Ch77 people and it made for great copy. I complained to the Press Office about harassment, to no avail, of course. Eventually I was even taken into custody but released after a few hours. I left the country and my piece about the plight of writers was published, eventually, in Harpers. The part about playing cat and mouse with the STB appeared in The Nation.

Twelve years after my Prague adventure the Communist regime was swept out of power by the Velvet Revolution, lead by Vaclav Havel, who was in prison when I was dodging fizls (Czech for "snooper") In the ensuing years the archives of the STB were opened to the public. I always wondered what might lie buried in those archives but it was idle wonder until I learned that the index to those archives had been posted to a public website as part of the policy of transparency. A Czech friend, Jirka Hokes, queried the online index and found references to several files in which my name figured in some way. Jirka offered to be my proxy to visit the archives and survey the files. I gave him written power of attorney and he was granted a 3-hour appointment to read and photograph any pages in any files he might request.

The files Jirka examined showed that I was known there by code name "Savoj". Why this name was chosen was not explained. There are a few Savoy hotels, one famous one in London, and Louis Armstrong recorded a song named "Savoy Blues." I like to think the STB spooks saw me as an American James Bond, but I know nothing of the sort was true. But it does have a nice ring to it, I think.

The files contained entire transcripts of conversations I had with dissidents, recorded by wire taps, no doubt. I was not seen as a CIA agent, proper, but rather as a journalist determined "to damage and defame the state." They got that right. I was surprised to learn the size of the operation to keep tabs on me. When I was on the street there were seven STB men on the detail to follow me. I learned that one of my helpers was actually an STB agent. As far as I know, none of the people who cooperated with me suffered anything more than some unpleasant interrogations at STB offices. Nobody went to jail for talking to me.