[silk] A matter of humanity

[Srini Ramakrishnan]

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII
Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits'

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007; Page A01

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the
decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their
top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first
time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between
the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh
measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of
bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about
censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften
them up. They played games with them.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess
or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm,
90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany
with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at
the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across
the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of
detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office
appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the
controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept
honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused,
citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been
used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff
then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor
of European history at Princeton University.

When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered
the microphone and gave his piece.

"I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my
presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss,
chairman of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human
rights and trademark lawyer in New York City.

The veterans of P.O. Box 1142, a top-secret installation in Fairfax
County that went only by its postal code name, were brought back to
Fort Hunt by park rangers who are piecing together a portrait of what
happened there during the war.

Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and
submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks,
before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that
did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators
were refugees from the Third Reich.

"We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John
Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and
ambassador to Denmark.

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said
George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a
battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Exactly what went on behind the barbed-wire fences of Fort Hunt has
been a mystery that has lured amateur historians and curious neighbors
for decades.

During the war, nearby residents watched buses with darkened windows
roar toward the fort day and night. They couldn't have imagined that
groundbreaking secrets in rocketry, microwave technology and submarine
tactics were being peeled apart right on the grounds that are now a
popular picnic area where moonbounces mushroom every weekend.

When Vincent Santucci arrived at the National Park Service's George
Washington Memorial Parkway office as chief ranger four years ago, he
asked his cultural resource specialist, Brandon Bies, to do some
research so they could post signs throughout the park, explaining its
history and giving it a bit more dignity.

That assignment changed dramatically when ranger Dana Dierkes was
leading a tour of the park one day and someone told her about a
rumored Fort Hunt veteran.

It was Fred Michel, who worked in engineering in Alexandria for 65
years, never telling his neighbors that he once faced off with
prisoners and pried wartime secrets from them.

Michel directed them to other vets, and they remembered others.

Bies went from being a ranger researching mountains of topics in
stacks of papers to flying across the country, camera and klieg lights
in tow, to document the fading memories of veterans.

He, Santucci and others have spent hours trying to sharpen the focus
of gauzy memories, coaxing complex details from men who swore on their
generation's honor to never speak of the work they did at P.O. Box
1142.

"The National Park Service is committed to telling your story, and now
it belongs to the nation," said David Vela, superintendent of the
George Washington Memorial Parkway.

There is a deadline. Each day, about 1,100 World War II veterans die,
said Jean Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army's Freedom Team Salute
program, which recognizes veterans and the parents, spouses and
employers who provide support for active-duty soldiers.

By gathering at Fort Hunt yesterday, the quiet men could be saluted
for the work they did so long ago.

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