Arsenic for the Ambassador

One of the best kept secrets of U.S. diplomacy has been the cause of recurring illnesses of Clare Boothe Luce during her three years-plus as Ambassador to Italy. Last week the secret came out: she was poisoned.

The scene of the poisoning was one of Borgian splendor: her spacious, high-ceilinged bedroom in the 17th century Villa Taverna, the residence of U.S. Ambassadors to Rome. When Ambassador Luce took over in Rome in late April 1953, she loved the bedroom at first sight, noted approvingly that the heavy-beamed ceiling--admired by a long line of predecessors as a fine example of Italian Renaissance decor--had been newly painted. The beams were in terra cotta green, decorated with cluster upon cluster of roses and rosettes. Many coats of heavy paint had been brushed onto the white roses to make them stand out richly against the background.

In the months that followed, the bedroom became her favorite room. There she could dictate and write after a day of meetings, interruptions, official calls and callers. There before another busy day she could read over her breakfast tray and a second cup of coffee.

Painful Waltz. After the first year in Rome, Clare Luce discovered to her surprise that she had to make great efforts to keep up the pace she had set herself. Day after day, she found herself feeling vaguely tired and ill. At first she ascribed the trouble to "Roman tummy," common to many a tourist. Then bone-gnawing fatigue set in. Nervousness and nausea followed. At an art festival in Venice a friend asked her to waltz. She found that her right foot was benumbed; she almost had to drag it in dancing.

In the late summer of 1954 she returned to the U.S., underwent long medical examination in a New York hospital. The experts' verdict: she had the symptoms of serious anemia and of extreme nervous fatigue. Feeling better after two months in the U.S., she went back to Rome to face the full work load. In a short time, all the symptoms reappeared and some new and frightening ones developed. Her fingernails became brittle, broke at a slight tap. She began to lose blonde hair by the brushful. Her teeth were noticeably loosening. Worst of all for a diplomat, she had become irritable. She was forced to spend more and more time abed, and she always felt the worse for it.

Ugly Word. Late in 1954, too busy to return to the U.S., she went to the U.S. Navy Hospital in Naples, where the doctors found a heightening of the conditions her New York physicians had listed. Noting that gum and mouth tissues were greatly inflamed, a Navy nose-and-throat specialist asked if any of her medicines contained arsenic. None did. It was the first time the ugly word had been mentioned in connection with her illnesses.

Some weeks later Ambassador Luce mentioned the ugly word to a friend in the Central Intelligence Agency. On a routine trip to Naples he checked with the Navy physicians. Suddenly the gravity of the situation hit home. On their own, the Navy doctors had already sent their findings and laboratory specimens to the topflight laboratories of the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md. On the Navy's records the patient was fictitiously identified as Seaman Jones. Back to Italy went the report: Seaman Jones is a victim of arsenic poisoning. The news was relayed to Ambassador Luce while, she was at home during the 1955 New Year's holidays. Further tests in New York confirmed it.

Clare Luce was quick to see that she had a dilemma to face. If the news became public, there would be an inevitable headline hue. In this ticklish situation the secret was born. CIA and embassy officials quietly went to work. U.S. and Italian employees at the villa and the embassy were quickly investigated. No individual who had any close contact with the ambassador seemed even remotely a suspect.

Peril Overhead. Within a week an assortment of disconnected leads pointed to the rose-covered bedroom in Villa Taverna. The villa's service quarters are immediately above the bedroom, and the ambassador had noticed heavy footfalls shaking the beams as the servants went about their chores. Another random point: her breakfast coffee had always tasted bitter and metallic--so much so that she decided privately that no Italian could make American coffee, and installed her own coffeemaker. Another point: she always felt worse in the mornings; the symptoms were most acute after she had been abed. One of the clinchers: a record player in her bedroom, frequently faltering, had been sent out for overhaul, and the repairman had reported that its mechanism was clogged with whitish dust and particles of paint.

The agents went to work on the room, found other lodes of white dust in folds of draperies, in cosmetics, in crevices and corners of furniture. Quick tests showed a high content of arsenate of lead. The source of the deadly fallout: the painted roses of the ceiling. The experts also found that the heavily leaded paint exuded fumes in Rome's humid weather. The conclusion: for 20 months Ambassador Luce had been breathing arsenated fumes, had been eating food and drinking coffee powdered day after day with the deadly white dust.

New Paint. The final discovery was made more than a year ago, and since then she has closely guarded the secret. But such a bizarre story could not keep for long. Last week friends told her they had heard snatches of the story--at a dinner in Virginia, at a Connecticut party, at a Texas air base. The details were coming out.

Since mid-May Clare Luce has been in the U.S. undergoing treatments to correct the arsenic-induced infection. Her general health is greatly improved, and she is scheduled to leave this week for a three-week Mediterranean cruise. Then she will return to Villa Taverna (the bedroom and its resetted ceiling have been long since redone in nonleaded paint) and to the embassy duties that she has often described as "no bed of roses."

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