The Best American Crime Writing (47 page)

Until later,

I’m your sincere friend,

George

Dasch arrived in Washington late Thursday and checked into the Mayflower Hotel. After breakfast the following morning he phoned the Information Service of the U.S. government and asked the young woman who answered to explain the difference between the FBI and the Secret Service. “She asked me what the purpose of my visit was,” he later recalled, “and I told her that I had to make a statement of military as well as of political value.” Directed to phone the FBI, Dasch ended up speaking to Agent Duane Traynor, who listened politely as Dasch identified himself as George John Dasch, the leader of a team of eight saboteurs who had just arrived from Germany. Traynor told him to remain in his room so that FBI agents could escort him to the Justice Department.

Dasch spoke with FBI special agents over the next five days. He told them he wanted to lead them to each of the seven other men and expressed an interest in “having the opportunity to meet your superior, and Mr. Hoover perhaps?” He told the agents all he knew about Kappe. He discussed his experiences after his return to Germany, his dissatisfaction with the Third Reich, and the circumstances of his amphibious return to the United States, including his encounter with John Cullen. He insisted that he had planned his betrayal long before. “This is an idea,” he said, “that is eight months old.”

Dasch also insisted that Burger was as staunchly anti-Nazi as he, having joined the mission “as a way to get even.” Quirin and Heinck he dismissed as “a couple of Nazis who have only one duty
to perform and that is to listen to the command.” He said, “They have not to question the sincerity, truthfulness, and correctness. Their duty is to follow it, otherwise to die.” By the end of the second day of interrogation, working with information provided by Dasch, the FBI had located and apprehended all three members of Dasch’s team.

Rounding up the second team, which had landed near Jacksonville, Florida, during the night of June 16, was somewhat more difficult. All Dasch knew was that the two teams were to meet in Cincinnati on July 4, but he offered up the white handkerchief as a potential lead. At first he could not remember how to handle the invisible ink, but the FBI lab “broke the hankie,” and agents were dispatched to shadow the contacts named on it. Within days the FBI had found all four members of Kerling’s team, in New York and Chicago, and had them in custody.

Only after all the other men had been jailed, in New York, did the FBI officially arrest Dasch, on July 3. During his interrogation, Dasch later said, the FBI had told him to plead guilty and not to mention his betrayal—just to put on “the biggest act in the world” and “take the punishment,” for which, after a few months in prison, he would receive a presidential pardon. After his arrest Dasch begged to be jailed with his colleagues, so that they would not suspect he had turned them in. The FBI obliged. Dasch was walked past the cells of his colleagues and then placed in his own cell. He was under the impression that his new friends at the FBI would soon come to release him. But not long after he arrived, he looked out the peephole of his cell and saw a guard reading the New York
Daily News:
Dasch’s picture was on the front page, accompanied by the headline “CAPTURED NAZI SPY.”

So it was that two weeks after the Long Island landing, all eight Germans found themselves in custody without having even tried to commit a single act of sabotage. Dasch consoled himself by remembering the FBI’s promise of a presidential pardon.

When the men had all been apprehended, Attorney General Bid-die telephoned President Roosevelt with the good news. Roosevelt was determined that punishment be harsh, to discourage future infiltrations. In a memorandum to Biddle, Roosevelt wrote that the two American citizens among the eight were guilty of high treason and the other six were spies. All, he felt, deserved the death penalty. “I want one thing clearly understood, Francis,” he told Biddle. “I won’t hand them over to any United States Marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus.”

Meanwhile, Hoover and his aides at the FBI had decided that when the story was made public, Dasch’s surrender and his and Burger’s cooperation would go unmentioned, so as to give the German government the impression that the U.S. authorities were so efficient and so well-informed that additional landings would be a waste of time and manpower.

With the approval of the President and the Attorney General, Hoover broke the story at a press conference on June 27, making headlines nationwide the following day. “FBI
CAPTURES
8
SABOTEURS
” read the front page of
The New York Times
. The story itself, however, was remarkably light on the details of the men’s capture. When pressed on how the FBI had broken the case, Hoover was quick and succinct. “That,” he said, “will have to wait until after the war.” Hoover did, however, reveal exactly which aluminum plants and railway bridges had been targeted, how much explosive material had been found on the beaches, and the fact that two of the men were American citizens.

Immediately after the arrests the FBI swung into action. Agents swarmed over the Swedish liner
Drottningholm
, for example, in search of German spies masquerading as refugees. They subjected the baggage and the mail of all 868
Drottningholm
passengers to two days of intensive investigation—the most rigorous examination ever
of a vessel docked in the Port of New York up to then. They questioned some 250 “enemy” aliens in Altoona, and seized many “powerful short-wave radio transmitters.” When asked if these efforts were in any way connected to the eight Germans, the head of the FBI’s Philadelphia field office responded, “Draw your own conclusions.”

The public vilified the would-be saboteurs.
Life
magazine published FBI mug shots of the men, photographs of some of their equipment, and display type reading “
THE EIGHT NAZI SABOTEURS SABOTEURS SHOULD BE PUT TO DEATH
.” When the
South Bend
(Indiana)
Tribune
polled its readers on July 2, only one respondent wanted them set free. An overwhelming majority—1,097 people—were in favor of immediate execution. One reader went so far as to suggest that the men be fed to Gargantua, a giant circus gorilla—and enclosed money for Gargantua’s funeral, writing that the gorilla would “surely … die of such poisonous eating.”

On June 30 Biddle informed the President that a military tribunal would be preferable to a civil trial for handling the case, because it would be quick and secret and because the death penalty could be imposed with only a two-thirds majority among the judges. Biddle also feared that if the eight defendants were tried in a civil court, the jury might find that no sabotage had been committed, and the men might therefore receive sentences of only two or three years. He dredged up a seventy-six-year-old precedent, dating from the Civil War and involving Lambdin Milligan, a resident of Indiana and an outspoken opponent of Abraham Lincolns. Milligan had been charged with giving aid to and communicating with the enemy and violating the laws of war. He had been tried by a military commission and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court heard the case and unanimously granted him a writ of habeas corpus, citing a citizen’s right to a trial in civil court unless “ordinary law no longer adequately secures public safety and private rights.”

On July 2, less than a week after the men had been captured, Roosevelt issued a proclamation to the nation.

Whereas the safety of the United States demands that all enemies who have entered upon the territory of the United States as part of an invasion or predatory incursion … should be promptly tried in accordance with the Law of War; now, therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, … do hereby proclaim that all persons who are subjects, citizens or residents of any nation at war with the United States or who give obedience to or act under the direction of any such nation, and who during time of war enter or attempt to enter the United States or any territory or possession thereof, through coastal or boundary defenses, and are charged with committing or attempting or preparing to commit sabotage, espionage, hostile or warlike acts, or violations of the law of war, shall be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals; and that such persons shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on their behalf, in the courts of the United States.

The wording of the proclamation was broad enough to cover almost any remotely similar future offense.

Major General Frank R. McCoy was chosen to preside over the tribunal (it was never to be called a court) that was hastily convened to handle the case. Three other major generals and three brigadier generals completed the commission. Attorney General Biddle was assigned to lead the prosecution, assisted by Major General Myron Cramer, the Army’s judge advocate general. Brigadier General Albert L. Cox was the tribunal’s provost marshal. Among the many lawyers working for Biddle was Lloyd Cutler, who went on to become the White House counsel to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—and who has now been consulted by the Bush administration as it attempts to set up military tribunals.

Colonel Cassius M. Dowell and Colonel Kenneth C. Royall
were ordered to serve as defense lawyers. Dowell, a forty-year Army veteran who had been wounded in World War I, handled a number of legal issues for the Army. Royall, a trial lawyer from North Carolina with a degree from Harvard Law School, had recently been appointed by Army Secretary Henry L. Stimson to head the Army’s legal division in charge of military contracts. The two men came to the conclusion that it was best for their case if Dasch was defended separately, so Colonel Carl Ristine, of the Army Inspector General’s Office, was appointed counsel for Dasch.

The votes of five of the commission’s seven members were required for conviction and sentencing. As Commander in Chief, the President would be the final arbiter of all commission recommendations. There would be no appeal.

On July 4 the eight Germans were moved in secret from New York to Washington, where they were incarcerated in the District of Columbia Jail. Each man was isolated in a tiled cell, with an empty cell on either side of him, and was under surveillance around the clock. Clad only in pajamas and paper slippers, the prisoners were denied writing materials. They were allowed to read old magazines and newspapers and to smoke cigarettes lit for them by their guards. Current newspapers were forbidden, so that the prisoners could not learn of their fate. No man was allowed to talk to any other. They were given only paper spoons and paper plates with which to eat their meals—there was to be no opportunity for suicide. The men never asked to see clergymen or relatives.

Room 5235 of the main Department of Justice building was ordinarily used by the FBI for lectures and films. On July 8, however, it became a military courtroom, its windows covered with heavy black curtains that blocked all daylight. At the front of the
room that day, as the tribunal began, long tables were placed end to end to serve as the bench for the seven judges. To the left of the bench stood a witness chair, a small table for the court reporter, and tables for the prosecution and the defense. Behind the table for the defense sat all eight defendants, in alphabetical order, dressed in the clothing—suits and two-toned shoes—that they had bought during their brief time at large in the United States. Each man was flanked by guards. At the rear of the room were the buried clothing, the explosives, and the crates, all of which were to be entered as evidence.

Each day of the trial the prisoners were transported from the jail to the Justice Department and back, in two armored black vans. FBI agents led the procession, and nine police officers on motorcycles followed alongside. Behind the prisoners’ vans were three Army scout cars with soldiers and machine guns at the ready. Each of the nineteen days that the men were summoned before the tribunal, the motorcade took a different, circuitous route to the Justice Department, where fifty soldiers stood guard outside the entrance. Hot-dog and ice-cream vendors set up stands to feed the curious.

Colonel Royall opened his defense with a statement to the tribunal. “In deference to the commission,” he said, “and in order that we may not waive for our clients any rights which may belong to them, we desire to state that, in our opinion, the order of the President of the United States creating this court is invalid and unconstitutional …. Our view is based first on the fact that the civil courts are open in the territory in which we are now located and that, in our opinion, there are civil statutes governing the matters to be investigated.”

Biddle was no less tough in his response. “This is not a trial of offenses of law of the civil courts, but is a trial of the offenses of the law of war, which is not cognizable by the civil courts. It is the trial, as alleged in the charges, of certain enemies who crossed our borders …
and who crossed in disguise and landed here …. They are exactly and precisely in the same position as armed forces invading this country.”

Royall argued that the articles of war cited in the charges applied solely to U.S. citizens caught aiding an enemy, and not to enemies themselves. He further contended that no evidence suggested that the men would have followed through with their plans for sabotage. They had not been trained for espionage, had only vague contacts through which to communicate with Germany, and had no plans to return home until after the war. In response Biddle cited the case of Major John André, the British officer executed during the Revolutionary War for passing through American lines with the intention of bribing an American officer.

Lloyd Cutler remembers the opening arguments as a harbinger of what was to come. “Royall stood up and made an objection—a perfectly good one. The president of the court banged his gavel and said, The court will rise.’ Forty-five minutes later the court came back and said ‘Objection overruled.’ Then Biddle asked a second question, and the same thing happened. The court took another forty-five-minute break and overruled the objection. Royall got the message.”