“Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police” Exhibition Opens at Harvard University
Boston, November 15, 2009 – The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and Security Services Archive, in cooperation with the Cold War Studies Project at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, opened the exhibition “Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police” and introduced the companion book of surveillance photographs on November 15 at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Program at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and a member of the Institute’s Academic Advisory Board, introduced the exhibition, followed by opening remarks from guest speakers Jiri Ellinger, Political Counselor at the Czech Embassy in Washington, DC, and Haviland Smith, who served as station chief in Prague for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s. Mr. Smith additionally served in Berlin, Beirut, and Tehran during a 24-year career at the CIA. He later headed the CIA’s counterterrorism staff and became executive assistant to the deputy director of central intelligence.
The exhibition, which had its U.S. premiere in Washington, DC at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars this summer and fall, will be on view at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies, 1730 Cambridge Street, through December 21.
