The Professor from Seattle, Oregon

Western journalists on assignment to Eastern Europe often operate under a double handicap. Because they are inquisitive by trade, they are usually assumed to be agents working for the CIA. Or, equally bothersome, they are harassed by KGB agents who try to pump them for information. Two years ago, TIME Washington Correspondent William Mader came across an unusually inept operative while he was in Prague. As Mader recounts it:

I WAS approached in the sordid lounge of the famed Alcron Hotel by a portly, fortyish fellow who sported a handsome toothbrush mustache and a button-down Oxford-cloth shirt. He plumped himself down in an overstuffed armchair next to me. After ordering scotch with water "but no ice," he introduced himself as "Roger Smith, a professor of social sciences." He noted that he was an American scholar studying the aftereffects of the "Prague Spring" and the Soviet invasion. With a heavy Slavic accent, he lapsed for several minutes into part sociological jargon, part hilariously outdated American slang, last heard in 1930 movies.

Upon my pressing questions, he admitted affiliation with the "University of Seattle--you know, in Oregon." When I queried him about the current price of McDonald's hamburgers, he brushed it aside with: "I've come directly from the States. I haven't been to Scotland recently." Thereupon, he began flashing small cards at me with the penciled names of Czech dissidents, deeply involved in the Dubeek era. I instantly recognized them, but pretended not to know them at all. After a dozen tries, my friend sneered, "You're not very good at your job, are you?" I assured him that I was far better at mine than he was at his. Muttering an oath, he got up, walked across the lobby and sidled up to another Western reporter, to begin the same routine.

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