The Story from APM

Dad's Secrets

Tuesday, February 05 2008

Dad'S SECRETS

Charlotte Dennett, photo: Paul Boisvert
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The CIA is under renewed scrutiny this morning. Lawyers and judges in Denmark and Spain have announced their push for evidence that the CIA directed secret flights through their countries. It's suspected that these flights were used to transport suspected terrorists to prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Charlotte Dennett has faced the secrecy of the CIA up close. Her father was a high level spy for the OSS, the pre-cursor to the CIA, based in the Middle East. He was killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1947, when Charlotte was just a baby. Charlotte never knew much about him, but years later, she became curious enough to go into her family's attic and open up an old steamer trunk. She found four scrapbooks of his letters and photographs - and ever since, she has been on a quest to find out who her father really was, and what he did when he was a spy.

So far she knows her father's code name was "Carat." And that there has been talk that his plane was sabotaged. For Charlotte, the personal fight to get at the truth has become political - fighting to get her father's papers, even going so far as to file suit against the CIA, she feels that she is fighting for the democratic process itself.

• Read a piece in The New York Times about Charlotte's journey
  
• Read a piece in The Village Voice about Charlotte

Charlotte would be very interested in finding out any information about the men on the plane. The roster included:

• Daniel C. Dennett, Jr. of Winchester, Massachusetts (Charlotte's dad); American Cultural Attache at Beirut
• Don L. Sullivan of Beverly Hills, California; Petroleum Attache
• Lieut. Howard B. Smith, pilot, of Boise, Idaho
• Lieut. John Creech, Army Signals Officer, of Oregon
• Sgt. Dale M. Holmes, crew chief, of Iowa
• Master Sgt. Donald Tisdale, radio operator, of the New York area

Music heard in this story: The Scam by Jerry Goldsmith for the album Matinee (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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Registering his opinion

Adewale Adewumi

Adewale Adewumi heard the story of first-time memoirist Harry Bernstein. Harry talked about the rift in his childhood between Jews and Christians. Adewale is a pastor and he sees a similar rift in his congregation between blacks and whites.

Adawale is Nigerian by birth, and he's just decided to get his American citizenship. Though he won't be able to vote in the primaries, he's been inspired by the energy of the current election season and believes it's his duty to enable himself to vote. As he tells Dick, people back in Nigeria have died trying to exercise their democratic right. There's no excuse not to participate here.