The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

Douglas DC-3 over international waters as it was monitoring Soviet installations in occupied Estonia. Whether such actions were designed to provoke a reaction or serve as a show of force is still open to debate. Skeletons in the Closet Henry Antheil became the subject of controversy within the State Department immediately after his death. His work as a code clerk came under intense scrutiny when the lega- tion staff member tasked with going through his possessions on June 20, 1940, discovered evidence in his apart- ment closet that he had failed to pro- tect U.S. diplomatic codes properly. Specifically, as materials from a recently declassified internal State Department investigation indicate, he had falsified assignment cables in order to remain together with his Finnish fiancée, Greta — and had been supplying his brother George with snippets from Embassy Mos- cow reporting cables. This material, documenting Stalin’s purges and the dark side of the Soviet Union, served as background information for George’s articles in Esquire and his prophetic pamphlet, The Shape of the War to Come (1940). When many of his predictions came true, George was recruited by the Los Angeles Times to be one of their war correspondents. A man of many talents, brother George went on to patent spread- spectrum (frequency-hopping) tech- nology together with Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr in 1942. Both believed that German fascism and Soviet communism were simply different sides of the same totalitarian coin. Married to a Hungarian Jew named Böski Markus, George devel- oped a first-hand aversion for totali- tarian regimes while living in Ger- many in the 1930s. Born into a Jewish family in Austria, Hedy made her way to Hollywood after escaping both the Nazis and her first marriage to prominent fascist Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian weapons manufacturer. (After World War II, Mandl fled to Argentina, where he worked both as an adviser to strongman President Juan Perón and as a movie producer. He later introduced leading lady Eva Duarte to her future husband.) Hoping that their invention would aid the ongoing war effort, they offered the patent to the U.S. Navy for use in its torpedo guidance systems. Unfortunately, the invention was 20 years ahead of its time, and the U.S. Navy was only able to make practical use of the idea for the first time during the Cuban blockade of 1962. Today, spread-spectrum technology is an essential part of mobile telecommuni- cations and is used in everything from mobile phones to WiFi. Leading a strange kind of afterlife, 50 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 7