"The Most Interesting Hungarian Abroad" - Andor C. Klay

[...]

In the early 30s, Andor Sziklay graduated in law in Budapest. During his university years he wrote for newspapers and studied the violin, taking the conservatorium examination as a private pupil. Being a U.S. citizen through his father, he then returned to the States. His stint at journalism while a student in Budapest came in useful, lending him a job with a Hungarian paper at the Cleveland office of Consolidated Press. Meanwhile, he continued his studies, taking a Ph.D. in 19th-century diplomatic history. He spoke four languages, German and Italian in addition to Hungarian and English, which explains why after the outbreak of the Second World War he found a post in the censor's office at the Depart-ment of Defense, thus exempting him from military service. Displeased, he used political connections to have the exemption cancelled and, in his brother's footsteps, joined the Army Air Force. He was posted to the OSS, predecessor to the CIA. "I thought I might be sent to Hungary, but I only flew over Budapest once. A sorry sight, the city was in flames," he said. Serving in North Africa and at the Italian and German fronts, he did not have much to do with things Hungarian although he once interrogated the Regent, Miklós Horthy, and Colonel Pajtás, Keeper of the Crown.

He returned to Washington at Christmas 1945 and joined the State Department in the New Year. He was an expert first on Western European, then Soviet and Eastern European intelligence. He was a civil servant when, in early 1956, President Eisenhower appointed him to the diplomatic corps. He followed the events of the 1956 October Revolution as head of the section on Hungarian intelligence in the State Department. "In the dangerous days of the Suez crisis and shortly before the presidential election no one ever considered intervention as a serious option," he wrote.

[...]