One “wrong” picture with that fancy camera or one “wrong” word with a private citizen, or the use of illegal currency could result in your detainment and there is nothing we can do about it” he had warned, as I replaced my lens cap, tucked my new Canon 2000 under my arm and put my hand on my wallet.
This was my 1963 college Sophomore awakening that there is life beyond Michigan and even your nearest Amex traveler’s check office, if you happen to be abroad.
“Mott L. Groom Finds Trying to Pass For Native Doubles Fun in Europe”, read the 3 column wide Op Ed headline in the Jackson paper of September 1962, but that article’s emphasis on travel “fun” referred to my visits to Paris and West Berlin; in another article for the same paper, I report on the not so “fun” part where a newly erected 35 mile long “5 foot high Walltopped with 3 feet of barbed wire and jagged glass to “deter escapees”, of which I didn’t want to be among, took place.^2
Just 9 months before, in October 1962 President Kennedy had ordered a US Naval Blockade (an act of war under Int’l Law) on Cuba and I witnessed the standoff between Kennedy and Khruschev from my Albion College fraternity house where a very sober group of “brothers”, all carrying federally required US Draft Cards (Selective Service ID) reading “1A- Draft Eligible Student Deferment” in their wallets, breathed a sigh of relief as Khruschev backed down and the nuclear warhead transporting Soviet ships turned to home. World War III had been postponed, and for “now”, only the rapidly expanding Vietnam War was our call to service.
This wasn’t the beginning of the “Cold War”, just one more incident as it escalated from its origins when the US built and used the first atomic bomb in 1945 and faced off Josef Stalin over the territorial division of Europe.
We were on a college summer study trip to examine Europe’s 2000 year past, its 1960’s post war culture and its Cold War present and foreseeable future.
Our student group left Berlin’s Soviet sector by train and traveled to UN mandated “Neutral” Vienna where I note in the article “the European’s love of their culture and their way of life” ^1 by rebuilding their bombed out “Stats Oper” as the first citizen act following armistice after their defeat. Never supposing, when I wrote this in 1962, that one day I would pass the “war rebuilt Statsoper daily on my way to my Vienna office 16 years later.
From there we caught the “Orient Express”, made famous by Agatha Christie, to a renegade Tito Communist Belgrade Yugoslavia which I compare in the article on East Berlin as “less fear more smiles’ and where for $13 US dollars I purchased a 350 dinar priced guitar, my first “illegal” currency transaction of the Cold War.
After a stop in Athens and a play in Epidarus’ ancient outdoor theatre in the Peleponies (sp) we landed in Italy and on to Naples where a loud non-violent “anti-Americandemonstration” was underway.
The Italian State oil company ENI had just agreed on a crude oil purchase with Moscow to rescue their dire post war economy; Josef Stalin had his eyes on the Italian peninsula for annexation into the East Bloc and was using Soviet oil to entice their friendship. Washington vigorously objected.
Three months after that demonstration (October 1962), Enrico Mattei, the head of ENI, who had done the oil deal with Russia, was murdered on his way to a meeting with the American oil company Esso in a fiery airplane crash at Milan Linate airport. The crime was never resolved and the alleged murderers, the CIA in retribution for Mattei’s Moscow deal, was . . . .
A month at University in Neuchatel Switzerland convinced me to add French to my Junior year curriculum at Albion and build a closer relationship with History Department Chairman Coy James who, with his wife, had chaperoned our summer program, and seemed very interested in my fascintion with things European.
I proudly showed him my 2 newspaper articles (attached) and he offered me the opportunity to write my history “Honors Paper” on Conrad Alexadre Gerard, a French diplomatto the US during the American Revolution.
I turned to my close friend and confidant, an English major and Smith Corona typewriter owner for help in a library research effortthat took me from Albion, Ann Arbor, Boston, London and Paris pursuing every, facsimile, notation, Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature and American history reference book and thesis paper I could locate in this pre-internet era. Her typewriter would make my Honors Paper (attached) readable.
In my next summer’s return to Paris I absorbed more Europeanculturewhile attending the Sorbonne Cours d’etat, (summer program) where i studied Albert Camus’ novel L’ Etrange, “The Stranger”; “Aujourdie, Mama est Mort”. The opening lines were my first exposure to existentialism and current European thinking.
Law school was targeted and I was offered Albion’s single scholarship to U. of M. Law school, but my LSAT’s wouldn’t convice U of M to admit me. Not a good start to life at the Bar.
Dr. James intervened, “We sent a fellow to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,” he told me, “which is part of Harvard and you get full credit to Harvard law school for Fletcher courses”. “I think you can get in,” and he immediately, i am sure, contacted my other first semester Senior year Professors, to make sure I got a perfect 4.0 to attach to my Fletcher application.
A ½ tuition scholarship in hand I packed my Kharmen Ghia with newly installed rear suitcase rack and $13 Yugoslavian guitar and headed to Boston. Two months earlier my English major friend with the Smith Corona got accepted to the Radcliffe College summer Publishing program and a new job at Ginn and Company textbook publishers.
I learned a lot at Fletcher but didn’t appreciate it at the time.
My first International Law exam convinced me that I wasn’t made for Law School, but that international law which doesn’t really exist except as diplomacy and power politics wasn’t so bad. My professor was John Spencer, the former Legal Advisor to Ethiopian Strong man and Monarch Halie Selassie and he sprinkled the law course with UN references and scenarios on international power politics, a lesson in how Ethiopia under Selasie had used the international institutions and diplomacy to punish italy for its chemical war attacks on its people.
Prof. Halm’s Int’l Monetary Systems course at Fletcher made me realize that the US was the key actor in the Cold War, not because it had the best planes or bombs but because it had the US dollar and access to mideast crude oil.
The concept of international “power” based on currency and oil didn’t gel until a few years later; but the US soldier’s warning at Berlin not to make any illegal currency exchanges and my cheaply dollar purchased Yugoslavian guitar did leave an indelible impression of the power of a strong currency. It wasn,t a broad mental leap to understand how a strong currency is related to a strong economy which is closely related to access to the fuel that makes an evonomy strong.
Job hunting was top priority. I wanted my MA in 1 year and to get out of academia as quickly as possible. International businesses, mostly banks, hired Fletcher grads and one day the CIA left a notice in my mailbox asking me to contact them, which I did, somewhat intrigued by the world of espionage.
The application arrived and several Fletcher colleagues who opposed the Vietnam War convinced my not to apply, at least not directly. They suggested i first apply to the Foreign Service, which to my Goldwater mind meant another government bureaucracy.
I tossed the application and several days later I got an early morning phone call from a Mr. Smith, who asked for the application back. “I threw it out” i responded and was immediately warned that “that is not the correct procedure, the application is secret” and i suppose it was at this point that a black mark was entered next to my name for future encounters with the Agency, of which there were several in pittsburgh, santiago, vienna, warsaw and points unknown.
