LIFE Nov. 22 - Ellen Rometsch
Peter Fokes
>From LIFE: issue Nov 22, 1963
(Vol 55 # 21)
-from an article entitled The Bobby Baker Scandal
(Notice that President Kennedy is not mentioned as knowing Rometsch.)
<quote>
"Once, perhaps because it was a hot summer night, the idea caught on and the
other girl guests either decided independently or were persuaded to peel as
well. That time the girls grew playful and finished the party pouring
champagne over one another in the bathtub. Because she left early, she
remembered with some regret, Miss B did not witness an odd incident in the
dead of the night. Three girls, still rosy from their champagne bath but
drowsy too, elected to sleep together; but one woke up and in an
unaccountable fit of annoyance bit an exposed portion of another's anatomy.
Victim of the chomp was Mrs. Ellen Rometsch, 27-year-old wife of a soldier
assigned to the West German military mission. She recently acquired belated
fame after being forcibly detached from the Washington scene last Aug 21.
Prior to her departure, Mrs. Rometsch apparently held social converse of one
sort or another with several of Baker's friends or their friends. Mrs.
Rometsch was often invited to social functions where members of the Group,
were present, partly because she was handsome and partly, as has been
reported, because "she would do anything."
Other acquaintances have described Mrs. Rometsch as quiet and refined. The
description may well be accurate for, on the night in question, she
apparently bore her wound with fortitude and no ill will. Indeed, when dawn
disclosed that another all-nighter's shoes were missing and her cocktail
dress greviously torn, Mrs. Romersch arranged emergency attire. The costume
consisted of a square pair of the host's pants and a sweater and shoes lent
by Mrs. Rometsch. Thereafter Mrs. Rometsch generously waited until just
before she was ordered home by the West German government to send her
husband to reclaim the borrowed apparel.
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What we Know Now:
<quote>
LAMB: Another liaison you'd write about here is Ellen Fimmel Rometsch. The
reason I bring that one up is that she was a 27-year-old wife of a West
German airman attached to the West German military mission in Washington.
But later on, you get into the fact that Senators Mansfield and Dirksen got
into this act. Tell us that story.
BESCHLOSS: This comes from FBI files that have been opened only in the last
several years. I might parenthetically say that FBI files turn out to be a
very interesting source for the historian. You have to be very careful
because in some cases, FBI files will have reports that are from unreliable
sources, and you've got to take those with a grain of salt. In other cases,
you have a situation where there are wire taps on telephones, and you get an
exact account of a conversation. None of us historians ever expected that J.
Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, would turn out to be so useful to us.
Of course, that was not his purpose.
In the summer of 1963, Hoover went to Robert Kennedy and said, "We have
information that not only your brother, the president, but others in
Washington have been involved with a woman whom we suspect as a Soviet
intelligence agent, someone who is linked to East German intelligence."
Robert Kennedy took it seriously enough that he acted very quickly to
control the damage. He spoke with the two leaders of the Senate, Dirksen and
Mansfield, the Republican and Democrat, asked them to keep to themselves
whatever knowledge they had of this. He also had the woman expelled from
this country within a week, flown to West Germany. She was put in a house
that was surrounded by guards to keep people away, and so whatever scandal
might have occurred did not occur. This was a crisis that was basically kept
under control. But the historian, once again, has to say that that very well
could have become public. It very nearly did. Had it done so, you could very
well have had a Red scare in this country that would have dwarfed the Joseph
McCarthy period.
LAMB: Were you also saying here that J. Edgar Hoover had an enormous amount
of power because he had this information that he could use against the
president at any time?
BESCHLOSS: Absolutely, and we know from history that J. Edgar Hoover was not
loathe to use negative files against presidents and senators and others for
his own purposes.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a89750.htm
Peter Fokes
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