Unquiet Grave

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE POLK CONSPIRACY

by Kati Marton

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

371 pages; $22.95

In the spring of 1948, the body of CBS correspondent George Polk washed up in Salonika bay, his hands and feet bound with rope, a bullet hole in the back of his head. The Greek pathologist who conducted the autopsy on the 34-year- old journalist found 3 lbs. of undigested lobster in his stomach.

The condemned man had eaten a hearty meal, perhaps even two. But who picked up the check? And who took him on a one-way boat ride? For 42 years circumstantial evidence and plain common sense have pointed to agents of the ruling Greek Royalist Party, then conducting a civil war against communist guerrillas. The Polk Conspiracy supports this view. So why, after all these years, should one bother to read more about it? Because Kati Marton, in spinning a real-life thriller, brings fresh material and renewed outrage to < one of the fascinating stories of the cold war. She also points the finger at a surprising cast of collaborators.

Like his CBS boss Edward R. Murrow, Polk is a model for the American journalist as brooding idealist. Not satisfied with accepting government handouts, he tried to report the Greek civil war from behind the communist lines. Such enterprise disturbed the Royalists. Either they did not understand the role of an independent press or they understood it too well.

Polk's dispatches about corruption and misrule had already embarrassed the Greek government. Within weeks of his planned return to the U.S., he confronted Foreign Minister Constantine Tsaldaris with evidence that in violation of his country's currency laws, he had transferred $25,000 to a personal bank account in New York City. The newsman then rashly promised he would broadcast the fact as soon as he got home.

Royalists in general and Tsaldaris in particular had the motives to murder Polk. It is possible they did not kill him. But they did attempt to frame the communists. Ineptly and tirelessly, the descendants of Socrates neglected to ask fundamental questions. Why, for example, would the reds silence an American journalist who not only made their enemies squirm but could also be used to report their side of the war? Under increasing pressure, the police eventually provided a scapegoat. A confession was tortured out of him; he was found guilty of complicity in Polk's death and given a life sentence. He was released in 1961, five years after evidence emerged that the Polk case had been rigged.

Doubt still obscures the affiliations of the man who actually pulled the trigger. But Marton's diligent research provides a convincing case against those who allowed the killers to go free and others who shared responsibility for covering up the truth.

William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, head of the OSS, the World War II spy unit that evolved into the CIA, did a bang-up job of protecting the Greek government and U.S. interests while heading Washington's "investigation" of the Polk case. Columnist Walter Lippmann lent his authority to the official better-dead-than-red position as head of a committee of press pooh-bahs who shuffled aside contrary evidence and refused to cooperate with other U.S. reporters investigating the murder. Echoing biographer Ronald Steel's view, Marton concludes that "Lippmann the establishment grandee seems to have won out over Lippmann the journalist."

Polk, by striking contrast, was a front-line reporter schooled by the Depression and World War II, which he saw from the cockpits of Navy warplanes. He shot down 11 Japanese aircraft, was gouged by shrapnel and bitten by malarial mosquitoes. He also developed a chip on his shoulder. Marton, a former Bonn bureau chief for ABC News, prefers facts to psychological speculation, although she does allow that Polk indulged "a dangerous streak of self-righteousness."

Marton catches the recklessness and the rectitude just right. More important, she highlights that faded period when America was cutting its cloaks and sharpening its daggers for the cold war. Polk was among its first casualties. The truth, Marton persuades us, was a close second.