Otto Otepka

Otto F. Otepka (May 6, 1915 – March 20, 2010) was a Deputy Director of the United States State Department's Office of Security in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Born in Chicago to of Czech-born immigrant parents, his father had been a blacksmith and worked in America at a forge. He could offer his brilliant son little in the way of material support. Otepka worked his way through college and law school. Following military service, he joined the Civil Service Commission as an investigator on the look-out for Nazis and crypto-fascists. In 1953, he arrived at the Office of Security with the authority to uncover both criminal acts and Communist sympathies in the history of people to be hired by the Department of State.^[1]

This was at the beginning of the Eisenhower Administration and Otepka's "Evaluations" section was faced with Senator Joseph McCarthy who was at the height of his power and making accusations that Communists and Communist sympathizers had infiltrated the U.S. Army and U.S. Department of State. Otepka was assisted by another newcomer to the State Department, William Bud Uanna, who would soon head up "Physical Security" at State. Otepka, Uanna and R. W. Scott McLeod, another newcomer in Security at State, were mentioned in a 1954 article in The Reporter (magazine) entitled "Big Brother at Foggy Bottom." The article describes how the State Department implemented Eisenhower's answer to McCarthy - Executive Order 10450 - and the reaction to it by State's employees.

The Office of Security was often simply known as "SY" and in the 1980s became the Diplomatic Security Service. Otepka was in charge of vetting clearances for the State Department and he gained public attention when he was sidelined and then later fired by Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Otepka claimed he was punished for not clearing names proposed by the Kennedy administration for employment in the State Department. Some of these names had previously been banned during the Eisenhower administration, according to at least one source.^{[citation needed]} Details concerning Otepka are outlined in The Ordeal of Otto Otepka.

By the late 1960s there was a Congressional hearing into the dismissal of Otepka but in the end Otepka was never returned to his previous station. He died in Cape Coral, Florida in March 2010.

External links

• BBC article on DSS
• U.S. Diplomatic Security Website
• Washington Post article on DS
• Diplomatic Security Special Agents Association
• Unofficial Diplomatic Security Special Agent Forum
• Mobile Security Deployments (MSD)
• Computer Investigations & Forensics Investigative Resource Page
• Office of Foreign Missions
• 2006 interview with Otto Otepka
• Otto Otepka's obituary

References

1. ^ Otto Otepka (SY Director 1959 - 1962)

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Name	Otepka, Otto
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Date of birth	May 6, 1915
Place of birth
Date of death	March 20, 2010
Place of death