Kramer, Paul 1914–2008

(S. Paul Kramer, Simon Paul Kramer)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 17, 1914, in Cincinnati, OH; died of congestive heart failure, April 6, 2008, in Washington, DC. Intelligence agent, international business executive, storyteller, and author. Kramer was known as a storyteller extraordinaire, drawing from a repertoire of adventures so extravagant that his listeners must have wondered if the stories were fact or fantasy. They would have learned that Kramer indeed led a life of adventure and excitement, even if the reality did not always match his memories of it. During World War II Kramer reportedly worked for what was called the Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics, a bona fide office of the U.S. government created by philanthropist and politician Nelson Rockefeller. Kramer wrote that he was assigned to monitor the activities of U.S. business executives with operations in Latin America, a task that was later expanded to include European nationals of dubious intentions. During the war he served in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific and Japan, where he became acquainted with the Japanese royal family, learned about Chinese emperor Henry Pu Yi, and eventually edited the autobiography The Last Manchu: The Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China (1967), which later was adapted for filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci as The Last Emperor. After the war Kramer worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, mainly in Latin America, and alternated work as a businessman with occasional clandestine intelligence assignments. One of his last business ventures came in 1959, as the head of the Panama Fisheries Corporation, when he may (or may not) have been indirectly connected to an attempted coup led by Robert Arias, husband of ballerina Margot Fonteyn. After 1960 Kramer settled down to a relatively quiet life in the nation's capital, where his successful investments and an inheritance enabled him to live in comfort and devote himself to what he seemed to enjoy most: a rich social life and a willing audience for his reminiscences. In his nineties, Kramer recorded his adventures (by his own admission only to the extent that he remembered them after so many years) in the book Memories of a Secret Agent (2006).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Kramer, Paul, Memories of a Secret Agent, Xlibris (Philadelphia, PA), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Washington Post, April 15, 2008, p. B8.