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. . . Not only did "Cicero" conveniently turn up in Ankara during the location shooting of 5 Fingers, but I put him in touch with [Director] Joe Mankiewicz, who spent more than an hour in deep conversation with him in the gardens of the Ankara Palas Hotel. "Cicero," whose real name is Elesya Bazna ("Ulysses Diello" in the movie version), was only one of a dozen aliases adopted by this clever, unscrupulous little man during his daring exploits of espionage.
Shortly after Mankiewicz met Cicero, I turned up strong circumstantial evidence that Bazna, last July, was attempting to extract money from Soviet agents—including the chief of the MVD in Turkey. I informed the Turkish Sūretė, which trailed Bazna, arrested him and held him for . . . interrogations . . . He was released for want of documentary proof of his current espionage activities.
Bazna lay doggo for almost eight months, under constant Turkish police surveillance. Recently, either because he badly needed the money or because his vaulting ego demanded it, he gave a private concert in Istanbul . . . (he has a melodious baritone voice). The concert drew a "gate" of more than 1,000 Turkish lira [about $350] . . . Bazna was seized again, the box-office receipts impounded, and he is currently under arrest . . . He is 51 years of age and the father of six children . . .
My bona fides in this extraordinary case are known to the Turks, to the British and to security officers of JAMMAT (Joint Allied Military Mission to Aid Turkey) . . .
RAY BROCK New York City
¶ TIME's thanks to Producer Lang and Foreign Correspondent Brock for their up-to-date footnotes to the spy story. —ED.
The Big Bite (Ruminations)
Sir:
Your March 10 article on taxes was timely and informative. I shed no tears for my fellow citizens who are being hit where it hurts them most. For years they approved a dishonest tax, and they deserve all they get. Unscrupulous politicians have always understood that they could depend upon the votes of those who are moved by "envy, malice and all uncharitableness." The Marxian concept of graduated income and inheritance taxes was made to order for them . . . The Communist Manifesto advocated ten measures which should be adopted in order to bring about a dictatorship of the proletariat. Two of these measures were: "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax," and "Abolition of all right of inheritance." Well, our politicians, more concerned with votes than with the welfare of their country, have saddled us with the former, and have gone a long way toward the latter . . .
In 1913 I was among the many whom the income tax did not affect, but I argued against it as being dishonest. I was told that it was a small tax and should not worry anyone, even the millionaires, but I insisted that it was essentially dishonest and could become confiscatory. Nobody heeded me. I was right. Poor old John Q. Public, the perennial sucker—who almost elected W. J. Bryan, who elected F. D. Roosevelt again and again and again, and who put Harry Truman into office—had better wake up.
GEORGE ALBERT DROVIN Chestnut Hill, Pa.
Sir: