COMMUNISTS: How They Do It

COMMUNISTS How They Do It

The U.S. State Department last week published a remarkable document. It was one answer to a question which has interested the West since the famous Moscow purge trials of 1936-38, a question which has become increasingly urgent with such postwar trials as that of Hungary's Cardinal Mindszenty, Bulgaria's 15 Protestant leaders and the U.S.'s Robert Vogeler: How do Communist secret police extort "confessions?"

The Communists' first victim to tell his first-hand story is Michael Shipkov, a Bulgarian. Shipkov was a translator for the U.S. Legation in Sofia, which moved out two weeks ago when the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Bulgaria. He is now in the hands of the Bulgarian State Security Militia (secret police) for the second time. The first time, he was tortured into a false confession that he had been an espionage agent for the U.S. and Britain. Then the secret police sent him back to spy on the U.S. Legation for the militia. Instead, he wrote an account of his 32-hour interrogation, turned it over to U.S. Minister Donald Heath, with instructions to make it public if the Communists used his confession. The account was released last week when the State Department heard that Shipkov had been officially indicted for espionage in Sofia.

This is Shipkov's story.

Doodling. "On leaving the legation building at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 20, 1949, I bicycled down toward the tennis club . . . When I had reached the little park on Shipka Street, I was overtaken and passed by a civilian on a bicycle that did not bear any license plate, a matter which came instantly to my attention. This person crossed my line of progress, summoned me to descend, asked for my name and ordered me to walk alongside of him up Shipka Street. . .

"I was taken between two escorts up two flights of stairs into a small office . . . On the wall to my left was a picture of Lenin, on the opposite wall a frame with the phrase 'Merciless Fight Against Foreign Agents' . . .

"[There were] seven functionaries who dealt with me throughout my stay in the building. There were two relays of lesser agents, working in teams of two, one of which was always on hand. Then there were two higher ranking functionaries, aged between 30 and 40, who conducted the interrogation proper—the lesser ones merely kept up the tension . . . They all had the practice of taking notes from what I spoke . . . but I did see on frequent occasions that they merely scribbled or doodled on their papers . . . The head of the team—a short, stout, pasty-faced individual—. . . [was] very sharp and cunning, very highly strung and tense, very self-assured. He professed and indicated more knowledge of me than even myself

... He went off [reminiscing] about an anti-patriotic act of mine as far back as 1945, when I had gone shooting ducks with [British] General Oxley at Belem, on the Danube . . . [saying] that he had been there personally, shadowing us in the guise of a local huntsman ..."