Double Agent (7 page)

The new German ambassador in Washington, Hans Dieckhoff, was worried that the German American Bund would be just the thing to inflame the Americans from their isolationism and into a war on the side of France and England, the potentially devastating eventuality he was working so hard to prevent. He penned two long memos to Berlin suggesting that unambiguous action be taken to shutter the organization. “The tradition of the American nation, the American national ideology, is really built upon the concept of the amalgamation of races, the dissolving of racial segments into the great American whole,” he wrote. “Anything which would give rise to the impression that this development was to be stopped or completely reversed would encounter strong antagonism on the part of the government and the people.” The various functionaries in Berlin responsible for cultural outreach to Germans living in foreign countries fell in line, fully aware that the Reich
was
more interested at this point in keeping America out of Europe’s affairs than in developing a public movement of German Americans to prepare for any eventuality.

In response to Dieckhoff’s concerns, a directive of two sentences was released to the German news agency, DNB, which instructed Reich citizens who were members of the German American Bund to “immediately give up their membership.” Since German nationals represented the core of the organization, Bundesführer Fritz Kuhn saw the order as “tantamount to the destruction of the Bund.” But Yorkville’s Little Hitler had no intention of relinquishing his rightful place at the head of the Nazi movement in America. He had become a genuine celebrity, a boldfaced name in an era of tabloid excess who frequented non-Teutonic hot spots in midtown (Leon and Eddie’s, El Morocco, Kelly’s Stable) with pretty fräuleins while his loyal hausfrau minded the two children in their top-floor apartment in a brick-fronted row house in Jackson Heights, Queens. He was determined to remain the unchallenged proprietor of a handful of Bund entities that were collecting dues from members and allied businesses, selling newspapers and pamphlets, hosting celebrations in the city and in the pure air of the country, and soliciting donations to pay increasingly sizable lawyers’ fees necessary to fight charges brought by municipalities looking for any legal pretext to take down those damn Nazis. To his followers, Kuhn delivered the fraudulent news that he had spoken with Göring and Goebbels and both had assured him that his rule was smiled upon favorably by the regime. In defiance of Berlin’s directive, he established auxiliary divisions that were open to “any worthy Aryan” who expressed solidarity to the Bundist cause “by paying regular donations of money.”

US congressman Martin Dies, a racist and xenophobic Democrat from the hill country of east Texas who had turned against Roosevelt and the New Deal, took advantage of the headlines about Hitler’s bellicosity to introduce legislation to restart a tribunal (the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities) that had examined mostly domestic Nazis for a few months in 1934–35. By a vote of 191 to 41, the House of Representatives removed the reference to Germany and set up the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities and Propaganda in the United States. Although Martin Dies’s committee would make its name with innuendo- and insinuation-laden expeditions to prove that the Roosevelt administration and its allies in labor unions, Popular Front groups, Hollywood, and New Deal agencies were serving the Communist agenda, it couldn’t help but slip in testimony every once in a while against the German American Bund, which was seeking to establish “a powerful sabotage machine” and “a vast spy net,” according to testimony. Two weeks after the creation of this early version of HUAC, Congress followed up by passing the Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA), which strengthened a 1917 law that required anyone engaged in political activities on behalf of a foreign power to register with the State Department. Congressman John McCormack said, “The spotlight of pitiless publicity will serve as a deterrent to the spread of pernicious propaganda.”

▪  ▪  ▪

With the explicit intention of rousing the American people to accept a more confrontational stance toward the Nazi danger, the US government announced its plan to salvage the espionage investigation that had been filling the papers for months now. With approval from the highest reaches of the Roosevelt administration, the US attorney in Manhattan decided to conduct a kind of democratic show trial, designed not solely to convict the four spies still in US custody but to lay before the public the full extent of the German government’s efforts to infiltrate the US defense establishment as uncovered by Special Agent Leon Turrou’s interrogations.

On Monday, June 20, 1938, a federal grand jury issued indictments against eighteen individuals, fourteen of whom were little more than names (or aliases) on a press release, which allowed all the papers to write front-page headlines focusing on “Nazi Spy Chiefs” while devoting less attention to the fact that only one agent of real significance would actually be in the dock (the Seversky technician). “The important point is that the American public must be made aware of the existence of this spy plot and impressed with the dangers,” US Attorney Lamar Hardy said. Duly shaken, the country would then lend its support to the creation of “an efficient counterespionage service to protect us against such vicious spy rings as this,” he said.

To spread the message to the widest possible audience, the indictments were announced two days before the Aryan superman Max Schmeling was to enter a Yankee Stadium ring against the pride of (a racially segregated) America, Joe Louis, in a feverishly anticipated bout that was already being seen as a symbolic clash between two antagonistic ideologies. It was a telling fact, wrote a young Richard Wright in the
Daily Worker,
that the fight was occurring in New York, “where a foul nest of Nazi spies has just been routed.”

But Agent Turrou was not through making a mess of the case. On the same day as the indictments were issued, and months before the trial was expected to begin, he quit the FBI, announcing he was exhausted from his duties and wanted to devote his full energies to writing “fully and without restriction” about the dangers of German espionage to America, a decision that was reported to cause “confusion in the local FBI office and in federal circles,” wrote one paper. The central witness for the prosecution in a major espionage trial would now be identified to jurors as an
ex
-FBI agent with a budding literary career and perhaps a pecuniary motive in hyping the threat. Then on June 22, just hours before the ringside bell was to sound in the Bronx, the
Post
hit the streets with the sensational news that it was preparing to run a multipart series authored by Turrou and reporter David A. Wittels, which would deliver “the most astounding revelation ever published by any newspaper.” Across a two-page advertisement on facing pages was the announcement “G-Man Bares German Conspiracy to Paralyze United States! The Man Who Cracked the Spy Ring Reveals How Nazi Spies and Traitors Sold Out the United States Army and Navy.” Beginning next day, the
Post
promised “amazing inside facts” would be delivered by “the ONE MAN who knows them—the Ace G-Man who, virtually single-handed, blasted the most vicious peacetime attack ever made upon this country!”

US Attorney Lamar Hardy took one look at the paper, rushed before a federal judge, and obtained a court order to prevent the
Post
from publishing, alongside the boxing coverage in the next afternoon’s paper, sensitive material that might jeopardize his prosecution. The
Post
’s publisher, J. David Stern, a committed anti-Nazi liberal who also owned the
Philadelphia Record
and Camden, New Jersey,
Courier-Post,
blasted the “unprecedented attempt to erase the freedom of the press from the Constitution.” On the hangover morning after the “Brown Bomber” knocked out Hitler’s hero in 124 seconds, perhaps the most lopsided famous fight in boxing history, Lamar Hardy’s assistant argued before a judge in the federal courthouse at 40 Centre Street that the
Post
should be enjoined from publishing confidential information that could taint the jury pool in obstruction of justice. Further, Agent Turrou had broken the law in providing the information to the
Post
in the first place, since his resignation from government service wouldn’t become effective until September. “It is desirable for Turrou to make money,” prosecutor John W. Burke told the court. “I would like to see him make money. It is desirable for the
Post
to extend its circulation. But not at the expense of the federal court.”

Lawyers for the
Post
and Mr. Turrou countered that it was a central tenet of First Amendment law that the government was forbidden from exercising prior restraint of controversial speech. And anyway, Turrou’s attorney charged, J. Edgar Hoover had achieved national fame by doing the same thing, publishing articles and books that used materials from the “secret files” of the FBI. “If it’s all right for Mr. Hoover to get his name in the papers and his picture in the papers, then it is all right for humble Mr. Turrou to do the same,” said lawyer Simon Rifkind. Understanding that he was being asked to render judgment on what could become a landmark press-freedom case, Judge Murray Hulbert threw up his hands and retreated to chambers, communicating the message that no decision would be forthcoming that day.

On the next morning, June 24, a reporter asked President Roosevelt during a press conference around his desk in the Oval Office, “Any comment you care to make on the New York spy inquiry—espionage?”

The president “sat silently considering the question, obviously aware of the significance that would be attached to his reply, and after a long pause he answered in the affirmative,” wrote the
Times
.

“Yes, I think so,” he said, according to the transcript. “I have been a good deal disturbed by that because it raises a fundamental double question in relation to the press. Perhaps I should not say ‘the press’ because there is only one syndicate involved in this particular thing. The issue is, frankly and squarely, an issue of patriotism and ethics combined. As I understand the facts, a government employee, in the pursuance of his regular duty, unearthed a great deal of information relating to foreign spies in this country. Well, that is a pretty serious thing. It was information which seemed to call for criminal action on the part of the government. The Department of Justice undertook that criminal action. This government employee, having obtained all of the details on which the presentment to a grand jury would be based, and before the grand jury had taken any action and before the trial, resigned from the government services and within fifteen minutes signed a syndicate contract.”

Press secretary Stephen Early interjected, “Not before the grand jury.”

“Not before the grand jury,” FDR corrected himself, “but before the trial—thereby in a very serious case relating to the national defense possibly jeopardizing the criminal prosecution by the government.”

The president continued, “I am not talking about the law of this case, I am talking about the patriotism and the ethics; first, of a government employee doing that, and secondly, any newspaper undertaking to syndicate information of that kind. I think that is the proper way to present this particular problem that faces the government of the United States today. I think that is all the comment that could be made.”

After dodging a question about whether the US ambassador in Berlin would make a formal protest over the spy issue, President Roosevelt was asked whether “the Army and Navy and their intelligence units should have more money and more men for counterespionage.” The questioner was referring to the nearly moribund Military Intelligence Division and Office of Naval Intelligence.

“Yes, I think so, frankly. Both the Army and Navy intelligence have been held pretty low on funds.”

“Do you mean by that answer, sir, to approve activities of counterespionage?”

“What do you mean?” FDR said. “Do you mean running down spies in this country? That is what I mean by counterespionage. I think we ought to have more money for that purpose.”

With a presidential rebuke stinging in his ears, the
Post
’s FDR-supporting publisher caved. A few hours later, that afternoon’s edition carried a front-page notice announcing that the Turrou series had been postponed until after the trial. “The
Post
believes that nothing in this series of articles would have, in any way, interfered with the course of justice,” the notice read. “But it desires to avoid setting a precedent which might handicap the government in guarding itself against other spy activities.” The paper understandably focused the bulk of its coverage on the second part of the president’s comments, when he seemed to propose a new counterintelligence policy for the United States, which, the paper noted, was the whole point of the prosecution to begin with. “Roosevelt Asks Spy Hunt Fund,” read the banner across the top of the
Post
. But other papers also fronted with this angle. The
New York Times
began its page 1 article (“President Urges Fund to Fight Spies”) with the news that the president “favors larger appropriations for the Army and Navy Intelligence Services for the expansion of counterespionage activities within the United States.” The
Los Angeles Times
(“Counter Spy Fund Sought”) said more generally that FDR “came out in favor of more cash to detect and apprehend spies.”

Hoover, who refused to accept Turrou’s resignation and instead fired him “with prejudice,” now set about ensuring that the FBI would lead the counterespionage initiative that the president had publicly committed himself to launching. Like the rest of the nation, he was now certain that many more Nazi spies were yet to be uncovered.