Return
Koecher returned to Czechoslovakia to a hero's welcome and was given a house and a Volvo car as a reward for his services. He was also given a job at the Prague Institute for Economic Forecasting, where he shared an office with Václav Klaus, the future Czech president. It is said that Koecher played an organizing role in the early days of the Velvet Revolution (1989), as he was seen by U.S. journalists issuing orders at the Laterna Magika theatre. Koecher denied any involvement in the Velvet Revolution, stating that U.S. journalists must have mixed him up with the then unknown Václav Klaus, who had a similar appearance.
The fall of communism has seen him fall from prominence, with the exception of his alleged involvement in a scheme run by self-professed former CIA operatives to defraud Mohammed Al-Fayed with false documents that would support his conspiracy theories about the death of Princess Diana. He continues to live in the Czech Republic in relative obscurity. His wife, Hana Koecher, made the headlines in the Czech Republic, when she was fired from her new job as a translator for the British Embassy in Prague. The British were completely unaware of her espionage past until a Czech newspaper reporter notified them. A suit she filed against a media organisation for revealing her past as a spy, damaging her business, was rejected.
An episode of the 2004 Canadian documentary series 'Betrayal!' covered the Koecher case.
Read more about this topic: Karl Koecher
Famous quotes containing the word return:
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1859–1924)
“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“I shall return in the dark and be seen,
Be led to my own room by well-intentioned hands,
Placed in a box with a lid whose underside is dark
So as to grow....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)