A Charming Witness

Senators enjoy barking at witnesses much as mastiffs enjoy barking at treed cats. But when Mrs. Olga Konow of Forest Hills, N.Y. took the stand in the Senate's tanker investigation last week, the committee fell instantly into a state of trancelike gallantry. Improbable as it seemed, Mrs. Konow had arranged for the enormously profitable sale of three surplus tankers to United Tanker Corp.--a Chinese firm with a phony U.S. front, which subsequently delivered oil to the Chinese Reds. The Senators loved her.

It was not so much Mrs. Konow's looks --although she cut a striking figure with her prematurely grey hair, her creamy complexion, coquettish eye and dashing figure. It was that Mrs. Konow thought the Senators were wonderful; she had spent hours the day before hanging on their every word as they growled at witnesses, and had giggled in delight at their every witticism. When she was sworn in she giggled again and said in happy Slavic accents: "I am having lately a nickname. I am called 'Oilboat Olga.'"

"None of My Worries." Frock-coated Chairman Clyde Hoey responded gallantly: one of the committee (Wisconsin's Joe McCarthy) had expressed the hope that she would state her telephone number as well as address. Oilboat Olga smiled as though North Carolina's Hoey had given her the Hope Diamond to use as a paperweight. She answered all the committee's, questions. She was born in a part of Austria-Hungary which is now Czechoslovakia, came to the U.S. in 1939. She was married to a wealthy, Norwegian-born shipping man named Magnus Konow. In 1947, out of sheer vivacity and a desire to prove that she was not just a "sweet child," she had bought two ships herself and had, in her own words, become the world's only lady tanker operator.

Far from seeming apologetic about the tanker deal with the Chinese, Olga said simply: "I was very fortunate, because in the tanker business it is usually good to have a buyer. Tankers you always have." She had discovered that United Tanker Corp. wanted ships, that former Massachusetts Congressman Joe Casey & Co. had three ships and that he was having trouble financing them. Olga brought both sides together. Had she investigated the people with whom she was dealing?

"I just, after I met, or in between, or in before, whenever I met Mr. Wei, or Mr. Du or Dr. Chen, or whatever the name of these distinguished Chinese gentlemen are, it was none of my worries to worry about them," she said discerningly. She was only interested, she said, in getting $100,000 as a commission on the sale of each of the three ships. Eventually she threw her own two tankers into the pot, too, and wound up with only $450,000, but was satisfied.

The Main Thing. What kind of a deal did the buyers & sellers make? "I wasn't interested in what happened," she said. "I had done my excellent work and I was waiting to receive my moneys. It never interested me from where it [the money] would come. The main thing was that it was coming."

When the questioning was over, Olga cried, joyously: "I want to thank you very much. It was the thrill of my life." She kissed three startled reporters on the way out. It had, if the Senators' expressions meant anything, been a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.

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