Authors: John Newman
"Aline had met him downtown," Snyder recalls, "at the Aragvi Restaurant," a popular Georgian restaurant and hangout in Moscow. "He put a pill in her champagne, and the drink went to her head. She went outside to get air, and that is the last thing she remembers. She passed out right there on the curb." Snyder was in his office when the Soviet Foreign Ministry called on the telephone. They explained there was an American who had gotten into trouble, and that the Moscow police had taken her to a vytrezvitel, which is Russian for a "sobering-up station."
"I went down there," Snyder says, "and they took me up to the women's ward. Aline was lying on a cot, and a big Soviet woman was standing there who looked more imposing than a German soldier from a World War Two movie." The large woman glared at Snyder and yanked away the blanket that had been covering Aline. "She had been stripped naked," Snyder recalls, and was still woozy from being drugged. The Soviet woman jerked Aline off the cot like a rag doll and shoved her into Snyder's arms. "You hold her," the woman ordered Snyder, who put one hand under each arm to balance Aline.
So there the American consul was, holding the naked Mosby in his arms. It was an unusual role for a diplomat, but he had no choice but to help as the Soviet woman, piece by piece, dressed the dragged American reporter. Mosby could not be accused of leading a dull life in Moscow. While she enjoyed the diplomats, defectors, and tourists she moved among in Moscow, Aline Mosby was not a CIA informant and had never applied to work for the Agency. The same was not true for another woman, Priscilla Johnson, the only journalist besides Aline Mosby who succeeded in getting an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Case of the Two Priscillas
"Screwball," said a CIA employee who had known Priscilla Johnson at Harvard. "Goofy," and "mixed up," said an April 1958 CIA message characterizing Johnson at the time she had applied for CIA employment in 1952.1 These unkind, condescending words were accompanied, however, by "excellent scholastic rating" and "thought [to be] liberal, international-minded, and antiCommunist."
Priscilla Johnson came from a wealthy Long Island family and had a master's degree from Radcliffe College. Perhaps the general political inquisitiveness of this intelligent girl rendered her insufficiently malleable for work with the CIA, but it was her associations with left wing organizations like the United World Federalists (UFW) which, in the end, became the red flag that made her unattractive to the CIA.
"Security disapproved," wrote Sheffield Edwards, CIA security officer in 1953, at the end of an investigative process that lasted more than six months.' By this time-April 13-the point was moot because Priscilla had withdrawn her application. In fact, in April 1953 she was working for Senator John Kennedy.
While membership in organizations like the UFW were an obstacle to Priscilla Johnson's application for CIA employment, the same was not true for someone else she met in the UFW. He was Cord Meyer, a man whom Johnson says eventually went on to become "the brains behind the CIA program to fund left wing publications."' The umbrella organization for these publications, according to Johnson, was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the CIA was the "covert" source for its funds. Its publications were "respected Cold War liberal" journals, she recalls, like Encounter and Survey, which I did some writing for."
CIA interest in Priscilla Johnson was reopened in 1956. On August 8, Chief, CI/Operational Approval and Support Division (CU OA) submitted a new request to a Mr. Rice in the deputy director for security's office.' This was a standard CIA form asking for approval of operational use of Johnson, and it was accompanied by a CIA standard form 1050, Personal Record Questionnaire. The questionnaire listed Priscilla's previous work in 1955 and 1956 as a translator for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and also her "freelance" writing for several publications, including the New York Times and the North American Newspaper Alliance.
On August 23-and in spite of the 1953 security disapproval-a CIA Security Office and FBI records check was completed without adverse comment.' This information was passed in a Security Office memo from Robert Cunningham back to the requesting counterintelligence element, CI/OA. The Cunningham memo partially illuminates the original CI/OA request. For example, it said, "Pursuant to your request, no other action is being taken at this time." In other words, the chief of CI/OA had specifically requested that no further action, which presumably included further investigation, about Johnson be carried out. It also said this about Johnson: "who is of potential interest [approximately four to five words redacted]." The redacted words were probably a name or element in the CIA's Soviet Russia Division, most likely SR/10, the branch that handled "legal travelers" to the Soviet Union.
We may surmise that SR/10 was behind the request for operational approval because of a CIA document five months later. On January 25, 1957, SR/10 sent a standard form to Chief CI/OA asking for cancellation of the approval for Johnson's operation use.' In Form 937's box "Reason for Cancellation" was this typed note: "SR/10 has no further operational interest in subject [Johnson]. Please cancel."
To understand the significance of this form, we must return to the 1956 Cunningham memo of August 23. There is something terribly wrong about the contents of this CIA document. It said that Security Office files showed Priscilla's middle initial was "L for Livingston and is not R."8 That the Security Office had uncovered this kind of error is perhaps understandable, but the next sentence was extraordinary: "She was apparently born 23 September 1922 in Stockholm, Sweden, rather than 19 July 1928 at Glen Cove, New York." The Cunningham memo made no attempt to explain this transformation. Instead, the memo rather matter-of-factly proceeded to explain the new history of Priscilla this way:
She was utilized by OSO in 1943 and 1944. Clearance was based on Civil Service Commission rating of eligibility which in turn was based on a favorable investigation and record checks. An FBI record check completed 21 August 1956 was returned NIS [Naval Investigative Service].
The 1928 birth date carried in Priscilla Johnson's CIA records for the preceding four years could not be reconciled with this new data unless a fifteen-year-old girl, not yet out of high school, had been working for the Office of Special Operations during World War Two.
The Cunningham memo is all the more incredible because it makes no attempt whatsoever to reconcile the incongruity between these two seemingly different Priscilla Johnsons, one an OSO veteran at the time the other was a child. Moreover, this time there was no mention of adverse information about Priscilla's left wing activities. There appears to be too many egregious errors by the Office of Security, and therefore this story does not sound believable.
The bizarre story of the CIA's 1956 renewed scrutiny of Priscilla Johnson does not end with the Cunningham memo. If we back up one step for a closer look at the August 8 request for operational approval, we notice something weird about the CIA standard form 1050, Personal Record Questionnaire, which accompanied it. The questionnaire's contents purport to be about the Priscilla born in New York on July 19, 1928. Yet it is strange that Priscilla's memberships in professional and social organizations, her political affili ations, contacts, acquaintances, brothers, sisters, and relatives, were all listed as unknown. The form did manage to correctly name her parents, Stuart and Eunice Johnson. Priscilla's alleged signature, however, is now too faint to read, as are the date and the city and state where she supposedly signed it. Moreover, it was witnessed by someone who lived in Somerville, Massachusetts. Priscilla was in New York during August 1956.
Perhaps the Office of Security has an excuse for why it failed in 1956 to furnish CI/OA with the same "derogatory" information on Priscilla that it furnished in 1953. That excuse might be that the second, Swedish-born, Priscilla Johnson-whether she was a real person or a cover story-had a good security record. Historians now have the unenviable task of trying to figure out whether the CIA was inventing a false Priscilla Johnson or whether it was incapable of telling the difference between two people born five years and three thousand miles apart-not to mention possessing different middle names. The Central Intelligence Agency owes the American public an explanation for the case of the two Priscillas, if for no other reason than because a Priscilla Johnson-whom we know to be real-did in fact conduct the longest interview on record with the accused assassin of President Kennedy.
The most important question is this: What was the real Priscilla Johnson doing that led the CIA to reopen its interest in her in 1956? The answer might lie in an Agency interest about her 1955 to 1956 sojourn in the Soviet Union. It would not be unusual for the Agency to want to debrief someone who had recently returned from there. But why do two Priscillas then appear in the CIA's files? To proceed logically here, from Priscilla's return from Russia in April 1956 to the emergence in August of the CIA two-Priscillas problem requires more information than we have in the files. One new lead comes from a heretofore unconnected recollection of Priscilla's. It concerns a neighbor, who was a close friend and regular tennis partner of Stuart Johnson's, Priscilla's father. Sometime soon after her return from the Soviet Union, this friend asked Stuart if he might speak with Priscilla about her experiences in Moscow. The meeting took place, and Priscilla told the man what she could remember about her stay in Moscow. That man, who had known her since she was a small child, was F. Trubee Davidson. He worked for the CIA.9
Looking back on her experience now, Priscilla believes it is possi ble that Davidson "was waiting for me to grow up to recruit me." It is an intriguing thought, and one that she has had about one other person too. "The other person who was waiting for me to grow up," she recalls, "was Cord Meyer." While we do not know the extent of Cord Meyer's knowledge or interest in Johnson up to the time that the CIA closed out its interest in her in January 1957, he does show up the next time they become interested.
More than a year after this close-out, the CIA again reopened its interest in Priscilla Johnson. On April 10, 1958, CIA headquarters sent a cable to a place that is still classified but which, from all indications, was one of its stations in Western Europe. It contained this detailed and condescending description of Johnson referred to earlier. It is worth repeating in full:
Subj DOB July 1928. MA Radcliffe 1952. From wealthy Long Island Famil[y]. Excellent scholastic rating. Application [for] KUBARK [CIA] employment 1952 rejected because some associates and memberships would have required more investigation than thought worthwhile. Once [a] member of United World Federalists; thought liberal, international-minded, anti-communist. Translator, current Digest of Soviet Press, New York, 1954. Considered by present KUBARK employee [who] knew her [at] Harvard to have been "screwball" then; considered "goofy, mixed up" when applied KUBARK employment. No recent data. No Headquarters record [of] prior KUBARK use."
The releasing official listed on the bottom left of this cable was then the CIA's chief of Investigations and Operational Support. His name was Cord Meyer, Jr.
Again the question is: Why the renewed CIA interest in Priscilla? The answer: Because she was planning to return to the Soviet Union. Cord Meyer's cable in April occurred after her visa application, during the period she was waiting for it to be approved. "I went to Cairo in February 1958," Priscilla remembers, "to see a boyfriend. Then in March of 1958 I went to Paris, and did a little translating in a building on Haussmann Boulevard."" There she worked for "someone I knew either for Radio Liberty or the Congress for Cultural Freedom." While in Paris she applied to the Soviet consulate to go to the U.S.S.R. It "took a couple of months" for the Soviets to approve it, and Priscilla arrived in Moscow for the third time on July 4, 1958.
On May 6, 1958-again, possibly on behalf of SR/10-Chief, CU OA submitted a request for an operational approval on Johnson. The operation for which she was being considered is still classified, but we may presume that SR/10 wished to take advantage of her as a "legal traveler" to the Soviet Union in some sort of passive collection role. This time the Security Office furnished a "summary of derogatory information."" Whereas in 1956 the Office of Security failed to furnish CUOA the 1953 "derogatory" information on Priscilla, there was no problem finding this information in 1958. The April 10 Cord Meyer cable, for example, made clear reference to her earlier security rejection.
The story after the Cord Meyer "screwball" cable is intriguing. There is evidence to suggest that the CIA, in June 1958, discovered the problem of the two Priscilla Johnsons. A June 6, 1958, internal CIA handwritten note "for the record" on SO 71589, which is definitely one of the real Priscilla's CIA numbers, reads:
SO stated this date that which had been previously written was being revised and should be coming down today. In addition [name redacted] stated that [name or office redacted], who is handling the memo, doubted if subject would be utilized because of the record.14
This may indicate that the Stockholm Priscilla, whose Security Office and FBI records checks had been favorable, was being revised to reflect the real Glen Cove, New York, Priscilla. The author of this June 6 memo and office from which it came are still classified, but it is clear that the author, whoever it was, felt that a request to use Johnson in an operational role in the summer of 1958 had been or was about to be killed.
The ax came three weeks later, on June 27, as the result of a memorandum from an office whose identity is still classified. In fact, the June 27 memo itself is still entirely classified, and we know of its existence only because of a passing reference to it in another CIA memorandum almost six years later." The possibility exists that while SR/10 had again initiated a request to use Johnson, it was a different office that killed the plan. This is at least suggested by the fact that SR/10 did not submit a Form 937 canceling their interest until August 28.16