In September a statue of Nathan Hale, martyr-patriot of the Revolution, is to be unveiled near the main entrance to the CIA headquarters in Washington. A similar statue has stood for some years next to the headquarters of the FBI, and there are other copies of it in New London and Bristol, Connecticut, and at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Hale was hanged by the British in New York in 1776 while on a behind-the-lines espionage mission for General Washington. It has been claimed that he was betrayed by his first cousin, a Tory—and a Harvard graduate.

In 1914 the original of this statue was erected in front of Nathan’s college dormitory, Connecticut Hall, on the Old Campus at Yale, where he received his H.A. degree in 1773. Created by the noted American sculptor Bela Lyon Pratt, the stylized, slightly larger-than-life-size design was based on contemporary descriptions of Hale, of whom no portrait existed. For more than a half century the patriot stood in heroic dignity watching over the passing generations of Yale students. Then, in June of 1969, he suddenly disappeared from public view.

Leaping to the conclusion that he had been removed in order to quiet student protests against the continued display of a symbol of militarism, angry alumni and townspeople sent irate letters to university authorities and to the local press. A lady from a nearby town, having visited the campus and found the statue missing, wrote that it was “impossible NOT to attribute the ‘burying’ of Nathan Hale by Yale to the demonstrations & disorders at Yale against Vietnam, the draft… and the demonstrations against the ROTC .” She also stated that she would “appreciate a direct, unequivocal answer” as to where Nathan was.

Actually, except for an occasional graffito chalked on the pedestal, the statue had generated no manifestations of protest, even in times of maximum antiwar activism. And far from being politically inspired, Nathan Male’s removal had been merely a matter of housekeeping. For a long time the statue had needed cleaning, especially since, about ten years earlier, a tinsmith working above on the eaves of the building had spilled a can of muriatic acid, a quantity of which had hit Nathan squarely on the head and given him the appearance of having had milk poured over him. Estimates had been obtained for having him cleaned, but each successive year’s budget had carried too many items commanding a higher priority than Nathan’s refurbishing.

In order to make a copy of the statue to stand in front of Nathan Hale House, a new dormitory at Phillips Academy, the Renaissance Art Foundry of South Norwalk, Connecticut, had borrowed BeIa Pratt’s original plaster model from the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London. After the new statue was made and sent to Andover, the plaster cast was destroyed in a fire at the foundry.