The spy rose from his bed on a cold winter morning in late December 1945. It
was still dark.  He put on his clothes without washing, and left his small, dirty room 
without having any coffee or breakfast.  His heart was pounding, his lips were dry and 
his breath came quickly. He walked nervously through the early deserted city streets. 
By the time he reached the White House complex, the sky was beginning to turn gray.  
He went through a wrought iron gate, down a short flight of steps and into the side 
door of the huge building that housed the State Department.  He showed the guard the 
forged identification card that had been handed to him the day before on the street by 
someone so bundled against the cold that his face was hidden.  The guard looked 
carefully at the identification, and let the spy pass.
	He walked down the long corridor, over endless black and white marble paving 
squares.  They almost hypnotized him with their repetitiveness.  He noticed that the 
white squares were more worn than the black ones, which he took as a good omen since, 
in this country at least, he was regarded as part of the forces of darkness.  He 
walked out of the building, across a small street, and into a modest white building.  
There was no guard to check his identification at the door of this building, which 
struck him as odd.  He walked up one short flight, down a narrow hallway, and slipped 
quietly into President Harry S. Truman's office.  Truman was in Independence, Missouri,
celebrating Christmas with his family.  Most of the rest of the staff were gone too.
	The spy is a Soviet agent.  His government is worried about the deterioration of 
relations between the American and Soviet governments that had occurred throughout 1945, 
and particularly in the period since Truman became President, beginning on April 12.  
The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been allies through 
four years of war, but now the war was over, Germany and Japan were defeated, and the 
two countries that the war had turned into superpowers stood staring at one another 
across a no-man’s-land in Central Europe with increasingly distrustful eyes. The Soviet 
Union is Worried that the United States will turn its great economic and technological 
power against Soviet interests in the world.  The Soviet government has asked the spy to 
find out what he can about American foreign and defense policies and about American 
intelligence capabilities.  
	The spy was told only the day before that he must enter the White House at 
precisely this time, and that he would be able to search through President Truman’s 
office for about an hour.  He quickly found the safe where the President’s most 
sensitive files were kept.  The lock was difficult, however, and he lost ten or fifteen 
minutes in opening it.  The pile of documents that he found was small, only about 
thirty-five pages.  He took from his pocket his tiny microfilm camera.  When he cocked 
it to ready the camera to begin filming the documents, he discovered that he had only a 
small amount of film left.  His upper lip trembled and his eyes blinked hard several 
times.  He clutched his camera in his hand impulsively, as if to solve his problem by 
crushing it.  What was he to do?  He had only about forty-five minutes left.  
	There was only one thing for him to do.  He spread the documents out on the 
floor and began to read them.  He would film the five best - or rather what he hoped 
were the five best documents.  If they were not, if he chose documents that did not 
please Premier Joseph Stalin in Moscow, he knew he would disappear into some cold 
winter’s day, shot or strangled or bludgeoned, or handled in some other cheerless way by 
those who dispose of spies who fail their masters.
	You are the spy, and you have forty-five minutes to save your life.  Film the 
five best among the following documents from President Truman’s secret files.  Write 
down your reasons for selecting the documents that you decide to film.  If you do well, 
you may be allowed to live.