The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 ne striking scene in “Other People’s Lives,” the landmark film about Cold War–era espionage, depicts Ulrich Muehe, a former high-ranking Stasi official, poring over his thick file in an East German secret police archives reading room. Inspired by this image, I decided to make a request for Czechoslovak records related to my time in Prague from June 1975 toMay 1978 as the U.S. embassy’s counselor for press and cultural affairs. Maybe there would be some astute commentary on my tenure there, as seen by the Czechoslovak Ministry of State Security. In early 2008, I sent a letter to the Czech Embassy in Washington, asking how I could access such documents. Sev- eral months later, a brief reply arrived from the Czech For- eignMinistry Archives notifying me that about 60 documents with my name in them had been found and suggesting I con- tact the Ministry of State Security Archives, where the bulk of Cold War surveillance documents were stored. Eventually, someone from that institution wrote to say that they had found about 800 pages of material they would photocopy in time for my planned visit to Prague during the summer. On June 22, 2008, I hired a rickety taxi and headed for the foreign ministry. The dark, grim palace on a hill overlooking Prague was much lighter now. I sat waiting next to an ATM as employees lined up for cash withdrawals. I remembered waiting in the exact same place in 1975; then it contained a photocopier guarded by a soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder, who would allow only authorized officials to use the machine. Next I headed across town to a new four-story building housing the archives of the Ministry of State Security, where two helpful archivists handed me three heavy stacks of doc- uments. Then I had to find a translator. Fortunately, my wife and I were already planning to visit Oxford, and the univer- sity’s modern language faculty gave me the name of Anna Fraser, who had fled Czechoslovakia after the Russian inva- sion of August 1968. Her father had been a leading Czech surgeon of the 1940s and 1950s, so Anna was well acquainted with the vocabulary of political repression that supplied the communist system with much of its ideology and imagery. Paging Graham Greene As a longtime reader of British mysteries and espionage novels, I hoped the files would contain some vivid prose wor- thy of Graham Greene or John le Carré. Instead, the files contained mostly dreary bits and pieces about my comings and goings that were boring and repetitive. But in fairness to the Ministry of State Security, when they turned their atten- tion to an event they were thorough in documenting it. In our case, my wife, Charlotte, and I had held numerous film evenings for artists, writers and dissident intellectuals, and often the guest lists were there in the MSS files, complete with the attendees’ names, addresses and dates of birth. The Secret Service’s political goal had been simple: to cre- ate a climate of fear among foreigners and citizens alike. The issue of the future of educational and cultural exchanges be- came more contentious in 1975 after Eastern and Western M Y P RAGUE S ECRET P OLICE F ILE A 30- YEAR - OLD FILE BRINGS TO LIFE A BYGONE ERA OF DREARY TENSION AND GIVES ONE RETIRED FSO AN UNUSUAL PERSPECTIVE ON HIS CAREER . B Y F REDERICK Q UINN Frederick Quinn spent three decades in the Foreign Service, serving as counselor of embassy for press and cultural affairs in Prague from 1975 to 1978, among other assignments. His most recent book is The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought (Oxford University Press, 2008). O