Editorial Note
At his press and radio news conference on October 12, Secretary of State Acheson was asked about the recent wave of arrests in Czechoslovakia. The Secretary replied that the United States Government regarded it as another example of the terroristic tactics which were being employed in the Soviet satellite states. He said further that it was a quite familiar method of mass arrest which was calculated to terrorize the population and to suppress any dissent whatever from the purposes and practices of the regime (Memorandum of Press and Radio News Conference No. 38, October 12, 1949: News Division Files). The information and opinion of the Embassy in Praha regarding the large-scale arrests in Czechoslovakia were transmitted to [Page 409] the Department in a number of telegrams culminating in telegram 1557, October 20, from Praha, not printed (860F.00/10–2049). It was the impression of the Embassy that the arrestees, probably numbering 10,000 or less, were almost all doctors, lawyers, and other professional people and businessmen and were being assigned to labor camps in the uranium mines and heavy industrial areas of western Bohemia.