In the First Line of the Cold War
At the beginning of August 1968, František Vojtásek, an intelligence officer, was in terms of work assigned to the Czechoslovak embassy in Paris. The moment when the Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Warsaw Pact troops, he describes as watershed for his life and career: “I had been working in Paris for three weeks and when the occupation started I swore not to be a part of this. I started to see the whole situation with different eyes. That time I split myself in two. The next day I wrote a letter to the director of French intelligence service and proposed some connection and my servitude.” František Vojtásek really got into contact with an agent of French intelligence agency and worked as a double agent, the so-called mole, till February 1978 when he was caught by the Czechoslovak intelligence service.
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František Vojtásek
František Vojtásek was born in 1930. He graduated from the infantry school in Lipník nad Bečvou as a lieutenant. He became a member of Communist Party and continued his studies at Military Academy of Klement Gottwald in Prague. After 1956 he was deployed at the Slovakia frontier and was gaining information from people who were escaping the Hungarian uprising. After his studies he started to work for a military secret service. Then he became an intelligence officer of the Czechoslovak army, military intelligence in other words. In 1958 he worked in Pilsen where he recruited three agents-walkers who were gaining information when crossing the border to the Western Germany. But he also met agents who were coming to the Czechoslovak Republic. In 1965 he completed the ten-month training in Moscow and after three years he was transferred to the Czechoslovak embassy in Paris where he ran the so-called “illegalists.” After the occupation in August 1968 he decided not to work for the communist regime and offered his services to the French intelligence agency. Vojtásek handed over the secret materials and other important information. His biggest act was when he carried out the plans tasks for intelligence for France with prospect until 1985. In 1971 František Vojtásek had to go back to Prague and continued the cooperation with France. He made up a contact with a fictional agent who he was supposed to meet in Austria. This trick worked till spring 1977 when he got an order to go back to work. In that time he had an idea that the counterintelligence suspects him. He was arrested on February 3, 1978 and when he figured out that his wife and daughter are about to be arrested too, he confessed himself. He was sentenced to twenty-five years of imprisonment for espionage, sabotage, and high treason. Later he found out that he was revealed several years earlier, probably by another “mole” agent who worked in the French headquarters. He served twelve years of his term in Valdice. He was rehabilitated in 2006 when he was given back his rank of lieutenant colonel.
