Editorial Note
Robert A. Vogeler, an American citizen and Assistant Vice President of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, was secretly arrested in Hungary on November 18 while on a trip from Budapest to Vienna by officers of the Hungarian State Security Office (AVH—Államvédelmi Hatóság). Vogeler was also Assistant Vice President of International Standard Electric Corporation, the firm which supervised the foreign manufacturing subsidiaries of IT&T, and was serving as that firm’s special representative in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Throughout 1949 Vogeler had visited Hungary frequently in connection with negotiations with the Hungarian Government on the terms of operation of IT&T’s subsidiary in Hungary, the Standard Electric Company of Budapest. The nature of Vogeler’s activities, his negotiations with the Hungarian Government, and the circumstances of his arrest and subsequent police interrogation are described in Robert A. Vogeler (with Leigh White), I Was Stalin’s Prisoner (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, [Page 483] 1951, 1952). The Minister in Hungary, Nathaniel P. Davis, first inquired of Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Kállai on November 19 regarding the disappearance of Vogeler. Kállai at that time denied any knowledge of Vogeler’s whereabouts. The documents that follow are concerned with efforts to deal with the situation caused by the detention incommunicado of Vogeler.