The big murals of the Spanish inquisition on the walls of Budapest's Marko Street courthouse had been obliterated with a coat of pastel blue paint since Cardinal Mindszenty's trial (TIME, Feb. 14, 1949). But the same judge who had sentenced Mindszenty was in chargeCourt President Vilmos Olti, a prominent, fascist of the Hitler era now known as the Red "government hangman." Mindszenty's prosecutor, Gyula Alapi, was also on hand again.
The principal defendants, however, were different. For the first time Budapest's Red regime was trying its tactics on Anglo-American businessmen, and their...