In May of 1990, while on a TV assignment in Prague, I was introduced by a Czech journalist to two former communist agents. During our meeting in a small cafe, they made me a surprising offer -- to take me and my camera to several sites supposedly housing secret archives and Nazi war treasures.

The agents asked for no money, arguing that my video recording would serve as clear proof of their fair play and their intention to turn everything they find over to the Havel administration. They figured the 10% finder´s fee, guaranteed by Czech law, would be more than fair compensation for their work.

Through local contacts, I was able to determine that one of the agents (we`ll call Mr. M. C.) was, until his dismissal in 1989, a Major in the Czech security forces. He headed a special unit designated to search for antiquities stolen by Hitler`s army during WWII. The other agent (Mr. Z. H.) was a well-known Czech explosive expert, who gained international notoriety when inventing the sophisticated plastic explosive called SEMTEX. All through the 1970´s, this powerful device was used by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in its bombing attacks on civil and military targets.

To validate their legitimacy, I accepted an invitation to follow them several days later to a small village called Zakupy, located in the northern part of the country. After a full day of extensive excavation work, we came across an entrance to a crypt...

After descending about twenty steps, a breathtaking view opened in front of me. Sitting on a stone pedestal were two richly-decorated medieval coffins. Regal crowns, mounting the head of the caskets, testified to their aristocratic origin. Sculpted skeletons and two cross bones were situated at the opposite end. The name inscribed on the copper name tag was that of the 18th century Italian Arch Dutchess, Maria Francesca de Tuscony (1672-1741). Her first husband, Philip Wilhelm of Faltz and Neuburg, was lying in the coffin next to her. Precious stones, carved symbols and guardian angels of death ornately decorated the almost intact caskets.

Hoping that this magnificent find might lead to yet other discoveries, I agreed to the agent´s offer to document their intended journey into the Nazi past.

WHY BURY IT HERE?

In April of 1945, the central part of the Czech Republic was the last battleground of WWII. One million strong, the German Army under the leadership of General Schorner, was fresh and well-equipped. Fearing harsh treatment from the Red Army led by Field Marshal Konev, German forces began moving south to surrender to the Americans.

Despite imminent defeat, close members of HitlerÕs inner circle, Borman and Miller, drafted plans to salvage what was left of the crumbling empire in hopes that someday the Third Reich would rise again. Top secret archives and stolen treasures, that were once kept in Hitler´s Chancellery, were now hurriedly being transported from Berlin to the protection of Schorner´s army.

The entire operation was entrusted to the hands of Otto Skorzeny, one of Hitler´s best intelligence officers. He had earlier proved his abilities, by orchestrating a daring rescue of Mussolini in 1944. Skorzeny was to direct this closely-watched cargo, through Bohemia toward its final destination: Austria´s Alpine Triangle and if necessary, to a newly- established safe haven in Juan Peron´s Argentina.

In Skorzeny´s charge were 540 crates containing an assortment of gold, art objects, German archives and research data from the Kaiser Institute which contained Germany´s atomic and biochemical weapons program. Some 450 crates were transported across the Czech border by train to the capital city of Prague. And in spite of serious fuel shortages, the remaining 90 crates also landed in Prague aboard two Junker bombers.

Since the beginning of February, 1945, main access roads and railways in most of the central and south-east parts of the Czech Republic were under direct attack by the planes of the 8th, 9th and 15th U.S. Army Airborn Divisions. By April 18th, Allied troops had successfully taken control of Austria and had crossed the Czech border.

From an authenticated document, we learn that on April 21, 1945 the German Supreme Commander of the occupied Czech Republic, K.H. Frank, received a telegraph message from Berlin headquarters, changing the order to direct this closely-watched cargo towards the Austrian border.

STECHOVICE

Situated only 30 miles from Prague, the quiet and secluded village of Stechovice had become the training grounds for the SS weapons engineering school during 1943-45. It was headed by an injured veteran of Hitler`s 1942 Russian campaign, Oberfuhrer Emil Klein. A concentration camp was established nearby to provide a labour force for the construction of underground tunnels and bunkers.German commander Frank visited the area several times during that period. On April 22, 1945, he met with Emil Klein at the Czernin Palace in Prague and ordered him to transport the crates (temporarily stored in the palace`s large cellars) to Stechovice. Commander Frank`s personal servant later confessed that hesupervised delivery of at least 56 crates through the SS base at Konopiste Castle to the crossroads outside Stechovice.

AMERICAN DISCOVERY

In February 1946, a year after Czechoslovakia inadvertently fell into the anonymity of a Soviet satellite country, the Control Mission of the U.S. Military Command in Germany (USPET) dispatched a special intelligence unit on a daring raid deep into Soviet occupied territory, near Prague.

It was headed by Captain Stephen M. Richards, one of the U.S. Army`s most experienced explosive experts and by captured SS officer Gunter Aschenbach, whom Americans discovered at the POW detention camp in Mulhouse, France. During a routine interrogation, Aschenbach admitted to supervising the construction of some of the underground bunkers in Stechovice.

Ten Americans and two French intelligence officers disembarked from Nurnberg on February 10. With the assistance of Major Charles Katek, head of the U.S. MIlitary Mission in Prague, they were granted a two-week-long permit to enter the Czech Republic. They claimed they wanted to recover a body of an American pilot shot down over Stechovice during the war.

During a swift operation which took place between the 11th and the 12th of February and lasting only 36 hours, the commandos guided by Aschenbach managed to locate one of the bunkers. After dismantling an intricate and protective explosive system, they carried away 32 crates. The crates measured approx. 100 x 80 x 70 cm and each of them weighed a minimum of 400 pounds. Photographs show members of the unit lifting heavy wooden boxes from a snow-covered bunker, loading them into waiting trucks and searching the grounds with mine-sweepers.

When three of the officers were discovered by Czech police, on the night following the operation at the Alcron Hotel in Prague, the crates were already safely situated in the American occupation zone in Germany. The three American officers were arrested and held until March 3. Following a public outcry and sharp protests from the Czech government, the crates were ultimately returned to Prague.

Lionel S. B. Shapiro, a correspondent of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) was the only participating civilian. He wrote that among the materials found, the Americans discovered K.H. Frank`s daily journals (1940-1945); Gestapo reports from the same period; a list of 60-70,000 Czech Nazi collaborators; guidelines for secrecy measures used during German research projects, and a complete inventory list of all significant Czech antiquities and state treasures -- including the coronation objects of the Czech kings. It is believed that the most valuable part of the documents remained in American hands.

In 1946, only Gunther Aschenbach and Emil Klein could provide information leading to thediscovery of the remaining crates. All of the other possible witnesses: SS personnel and the concentration camp inmates were assumed to have been eliminated.

COLD WAR SEARCHES

At the end of 1945, the Czech government established a special investigative team, led by General Ecer, which combed most of Germany for Nazi war criminals and the stolen property.

The Soviet Red Army, the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) and Soviet military intelligence each focused their searches mostly in the areas near Austrian and German borders, where they expected to find valuables that the German army tried to hide before surrendering to the Allies.

Two MOSSAD agents were apprehended while surveying various locations near the Stechovice dam in 1950. Israel always claimed only interest in finding the names of those responsible for WWII. atrocities committed against their people, but one wonders?

When the Czech Intelligence Service (CIS) managed to recruit captured war criminal Werner Tutter in 1948, as a communist agent, he warned that potential discovery of the archives would lead to the implication of several top ministers of the Soviet-installed government as having been Nazi collaborators.

As a result, military intelligence, the Federal Criminal Police, and the Ministry of Interior did not resume their search activities until the late 1950Õs. Their effort was aided by East Germany, which provided Czech authorities with a list of approx. 25 locations suspected of sheltering Nazi documents and valuable loot. Although different teams conducted clandestine operations at several of these sites, they were usually impeded by internal conflicts within the communist administration.

But the Stechovice region remained a top priority since the successful American raid in 1946. Emil Klein, sentenced after the war by the special people`s court in Prague to a 20-year long imprisonment, was a key to the mystery of the missing crates. However, according to his frustrated Czech captors, he behaved: "...as a duty-bound Prussian" and refused to co-operate inspite of severe physical and psychological torture. Each time he was escorted to the former SS training grounds, he would draw yet another elaborate false plan of the underground corridors and bunkers that he and his men supposedly built.

In 1962, a Soviet KGB agent in Vienna gave the CIS a promising lead. With a renewed interest in the case, the interrogation of Klein was resumed. But Klein, now aged and sickly, stayed silent until his release to West Germany in December, 1964.

His release strangely coincided with a new discovery of 15 steel boxes found at the bottom of Black Lake, located near the Czech-German border. They were filled with SS documents, describing in great detail Hitler´s successful assasination plots against several European opposition leaders.

A well-known Czech psychic, Dr. Rejdak, was called to Stechovice in 1967 to test his considerable detection skills. But aside from discovering part of a German-built labyrinth of underground corridors, he couldn´t provide any further proof that more than 500 crates were still hidden.

In June of 1968, Hollywood director John Guillermin decided to shoot some of the key scenes of his WWII. epic ÒThe Bridge at RemagenÒ in Stechovice. He chose an area in close proximity to the bunker once raided by the American commandos. Popular specula- tion had it that his multi-million dollar production was just a cover for a C.I.A. sponsored attempt to take away whatever was left of the Nazi treasure. Shortly thereafter, the Warszaw Pact invasion not only abruptly ended the ill-fated film production, it also quieted all conspiracy theories connected with it and effectively postponed any plans for new searches in Stechovice for several years.

In 1975, a team of at least one dozen military draftees equipped with picks and shovels, supervised by officers from the Ministry of Interior, was brought back to Stechovice and permanently stationed there.

Konopiste Castle, serving as an SS-headquarters during the war, became another target under special scrutiny by the Ministry of Interior. Following the end of WWII., several medieval manuscripts traced to KievÕs ÒLibrary of Old Russia,Ò were found scattered in the woods near the castle. On March 25, 1969, a scene reminiscent of a spiritual session was conducted in the castle cellars by Mr. Frantisek Karabina, reknown for his healing powers. He concluded, that one of the cellar walls wasnÕt a part of the original structure. Sensitive to colors and their aura, he speculated that the wall was erected only a few decades before and that behind the wall were hidden several art objects. Seven Russian icons were discovered when the wall was torn down.

The Czech police scored big in 1985. Under dramatic circumstances, they discovered a 12th century Reliquary Box of St. Maur -- one of only five existing in the world. This precious piece was buried by Nazi collaborators, an aristocratic family called: the Beauforts. They buried it under their private chapel floor in Becov Castle, in March of 1945, shortly before their escape from the advancing Red army.

In the fall of 1989, at the very end of the communist era, an American team of scientists, supposedly from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA and in close cooperation with the largest Czech weapons exporter, Omnipol, carried out an ambitious project in Stechovice hills under a veil of top secrecy. Continuously and around the clock, trucks loaded with tons of excavated dirt were seen leaving the closely-guarded and fenced-off compound. Mr. Z.H., was invited to the site as an explosive expert, but he got only a sketchy picture of the purpose for this undertaking. All activities were suddenly ceased in just a few weeks following the installation of the Havel democratic government, when the project´s main organiser, a son of the Communist Party General Secretary (Mr. Jakes, Jr.) escaped to Germany.

A RACE FOR DISCOVERY:1990 - 1999

Since the 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain, which opened Czech borders to the West, new treasure hunting speculators have emerged in the Czech Republic...Russian President Boris Yeltsin further raised the stakes of the race for Nazi treasures, by announcing during a state visit to Germany, that he had exclusive information on where perhaps the most valuable of all the missing war items was - The "Chamber of Amber".

THE ENIGMATIC AMERICAN

First to arrive was Helmut Gaensel (66), originally from Sudetenland, a mostly German populated western part of the Czech Republic, before WWII. Since his defection in the mid 1960´s, he became a U.S. citizen and started a Miami based mining company prospecting for gold in Nicaragua and Bolivia.

According to Gaensel, in 1962 and upon his return from a brief imprisonment, he was approached by the Czech Intelligence Service (CIS) officials and was offered a tough, but exciting and lucrative job. Posing as a captured West German spy, he was going to spend a period of time in Valdice, one of the toughest prison facilities in the country. His job was to befriend a former SS-officer Emil Klein, who was serving a 20-year war crimes sentence.

This ambitious, bright young man was the CIS`s last hope to achieve what even a shrewd communist police apparatus failed to do: to lure Klein into revealing his Stechovice secret. When Gaensel accepted, a plan code-named "Opera" was jointly devised. The CIS briefed Gaensel for two weeks before escorting him to the Valdice prison.

On his secret - overnight trips to Prague, he kept his superiors informed of the latest developments. But, months passed without any progress. Although Klein seemed to open-up in the company of this "anti-communist" compatriot, a year later, Gaensel, still hadn´t made any headway. When he eventually revealed to the already suspecting Klein his true identity, the old officer promised to co-operate in exchange for an immediate release. Since the Czechs had decided to release two German POW´s, as a means to assuage the West German government, non co-operative Klein was already being considered for release.

The CIS sanctioned Gaensel´s trip to Dusseldorf, where he met with Klein´s Nazi party contact: Major Von Dressler, the treasurer of "Odessa" -- a support network for former party members. On his own (unauthorised) initiative, he collected 150,000 DM to secure Klein´s release. On Christmas Eve of 1964, seventeen years after his arrest, Emil Klein walked-out of Valdice prison a free man.

Gaensel had visited him at his new home in Nurenburg at least three times between 1964-67. A tentative friendship developed between two former adversaries.