Posted on 06/21/2008 6:22:20 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Threaded back through New York City, where it originated, a tenuous clue picked up in Dundee finally caused the exposure of an international spy system whose leaders occupied high places in the German War Ministry. Driving for advantage in the European armaments race, their aim was to get advanced technical secrets of the United States.
The far-flung syndicate of prying secret agents, smashed by an accidental discovery, had shown its power and authority in such places as Buffalo, Brooklyn, Havana, Newport-News, Va., Bremerhaven, Bremen and Hamburg, besides Berlin and New York.
Also there existed an indirect line of intrigue by which information obtained in the United States was communicated to Tokyo. This was a sort of back-door circuit between the headquarters of the spy corps in Berlin and the Japanese Army, according to witnesses involved in the case, and was used for the mutual exchange of military data in the interests of the “anti-Communist” alliance.
Weighed realistically the achievements of the intriguers, officials admitted, were not of great importance, though they are known to have obtained some interesting facts. They never cracked a vital secret of the sea, land or air forces.
What concerned the authorities, however, was the broad scope of the conspiracy and its potentialities for subversive action in the future, particularly in a time of national emergency, if it had not been scotched. In the event of war a well organized and informed group could make an easy transition – from espionage to sabotage, from spy to agent provocateur, as this country learned in pre-World War days.
Professional military observers, who have been studying German military affairs since the rise of Chancellor Hitler and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty have sized up the spy group here as one arm of an aggressive espionage organization that Germany has been building on a bureaucratic scale. Its program is to develop progressively, following the thrust of Nazism with its claim of blood loyalty on all Germans living abroad, and with the growth of the German Army and Navy.
How this idea was being carried out was suggested in the thoroughly Germanic coloring of the New York cabal and the agencies for infiltration that it employed. Its operatives were on the ships of the North German Lloyd and the Hamburg-American Line, in the regular army of the Unites States, its Reserve Corps, and in factories that manufacture and experiment with the army’s and the navy’s latest developments in aircraft.
The band of comparatively minor intriguers found here was backed up by experienced military directors in Berlin, who worked through intermediate traveling deputies having political and technical experience.
Foremost in this hitherto obscure background were Dr. Erich Pfeiffer, chief of the German Military Intelligence Service, and a Lieut. Col. Busch, head of the Nationale Abwehr Geheime, or Secret Defense.
One step lower in the scale were Captain-Lieutenants Hermann Menzel and Udo von Bonin of the German Navy. These officers, it was established, were in closest contact with the alleged spies in the United States. They had been detached from naval service and assigned to the War Ministry for espionage duty.
Pfeiffer also is a navy man, holding the same rank as Menzel and von Bonin, but evidence obtained in this country indicated he troubled himself only with spy missions of the greatest importance.
Menzel was an active line officer while von Bonin had been “reactivated,” apparently recalled to duty in the growing armed forces of his fatherland from retirement.
Stringing down from these men extended a line of cunning agents as well as novices who pressed for leaks in all divisions of America’s national defense. The cream of this lot consisted of William Lonkowski, a political and mechanical genius; Karl Eitel, an operative who masked his operations behind a menial job on the liner Europa of the North German Lloyd Line; and Karl Schleuter, another ocean-crossing director noted for his organizing abilities.
The investigators have dated the activities of the spy ring in this country as far back as 1935, when the treaty-stunted Germany Army began to feel growing pains again. In October of that year Lonkowski, one of the biggest possible catches in the case, fled this country, just one step ahead of United States naval intelligence operatives. It has been established that Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl, former Nazi leader wanted as a spy, helped him to get to Canada.
Now Lonkowski is reported to be holding a high position in the Reich Air Ministry.
To Lonkowski must be linked Werner George Gudenberg, another mechanic skilled in airplane design, whom the authorities did not accuse of espionage until he had escaped, without a passport, like Dr. Griebl. Together they worked in an airplane factory in Buffalo before they separated and Gudenberg went to work in the Curtiss Wright plant in the same city.
Gudenberg was employed on the Curtiss scout bomber, a naval plane that in 1935 was in its experimental stages. It was learned that Gudenberg removed a blueprint for the bomber from the factory one night. Lonkowski photographed it, making seven negatives to cover the whole design, and Gudenberg returned the plan to its file the next day.
Nothing was known of this until Lonkowski took a violin case containing incriminating documents to a courier of the spy service on a German ship. For some reason, however, this courier feared to take the material. On the way out Lonkowski was stopped by customs guards and his violin case was confiscated.
The nature of the documents and of the seven negatives was not recognized at once. Not until Lonkowski had been paid off by Dr. Griebl, it was said, did the negatives reach the Office of Naval Intelligence. The negatives were enlarged and naval operatives saw that joined together, the films showed the design of their secret bomber. The plan itself was plainly marked X, designation of a government experimental plane and therefore a “restricted” article.
The authorities at that time understood that Lonkowski had chartered a plane at a cost of $600 to make good his getaway. There was another version, to the effect that Dr. Griebl had taken him all the way to Canada in his automobile, but Dr. Griebl himself is reported to have told the authorities he drove Lonkwoski only as far as Peekskill, where the Griebl Summer home is located.
At any rate Lonkowski escaped and his wife followed him soon after on a ship. Apparently no suspicion centered on Gudenberg at the time.
So Gudenberg went about his business, and it has since developed that he had an important goal in mind. He had filed an application for a position in the navy’s aircraft factory at Philadelphia, where experiments are carried on to develop speedier and more formidable aircraft.
But in the meantime the mechanic had gone to work at the Hall Aluminum Company in Bristol, Pa., which has been manufacturing a “torpedo bomber” for the navy. Whether he carried on any illegal business there is not known, but he was still employed in the factory when he fled after testifying twice before the grand jury.
In one official quarter it was believed that Gudenberg was frightened when he realized the extent of the revelations made by Dr. Griebl while he was an apparently willing witness, and decided to run while the running was good. He got away on the steamship Hamburg of the Hamburg-American Lines.
Neither of these men was guarded, the government having relied on their apparent willingness to testify. It became evident after they left, however, that some powerful and sinister influence had forced them to go. This was a contingency which the authorities evidently did not anticipate.
In one government department close to the situation it was believed that agents of the Gestapo, Germany’s secret police, had established themselves here for the purpose. This belief gained support yesterday when an official disclosed that Carl Frederick Wilhelm Hermann, held as a material witness in the case, has been identified as a member of the Gestapo.
But these revelations and those indicated yesterday by the grand jury were made possible only by the Dundee clue to the fantastic plot to abduct Colonel Henry W. T. Eglin, commander of Fort Totten, which was concocted by Guenther Gustave Rumrich, deserted sergeant of the regular army, as reported in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Feb. 27.
The clue developed out of the surveillance of Mrs. Jessie Wallace Jordan, a hairdresser in Dundee, recently sentenced in Edinburgh to serve four years for espionage. Hardly credible, because it was patently foolhardy and impracticable, the scheme was not taken seriously. Nevertheless, an American representative in London flashed it to the War Department for evaluation.
By itself the tip seemed worthless, but it fitted neatly into a typical military “mosaic” of counter-espionage information. This had been forming for several years and showed that foreign agents had been systematically trying to break American defense secrets.
The idea of luring Colonel Eglin in the Hotel McAlpin and robbing him of the mobilization plan of his regiment, the Sixty-second Coast Artillery, an anti-aircraft outfit which recently figured in the General Headquarters Air Force manoeuvres, received the approval of his German masters, according to Rumrich’s confession.
They even assisted him in preparing the exact military language he was to use for plausibility, Rumrich added. This was important because the scheme was to persuade Colonel Eglin to bring the secret plan by the unorthodox method of telephoning rather than through regular military channels, which require written orders.
Rumrich, it was said, had submitted the plan to Berlin through Mrs. Jordan, who was, in the parlance of espionage, a “postoffice” through which alleged spies here routed their communications to avoid suspicion. But his letter was intercepted by British agents.
The time set for the kidnapping was Jan 29 or Feb. 1, and the information reached Washington in time to prepare a trap. Colonel Eglin, Federal agents and army officers were primed to seize the plotters.
But the call to Colonel Eglin was never made, a disappointment to the authorities, who felt that many suspicious activities would have been uncovered if an attempt had been made to carry through the job.
For almost two months the tip remained dormant because realistic men in Berlin, according to Rumrich, had abandoned the plot as unfeasible. Then it flared up again when the deserter from the Medical Crops was arrested on May 15, this time really betrayed by another faulty venture. He was caught while posing as “Mr. Weston” of the State Department as he tried to get fifty passport blanks which, it was reported, were to be used by German agents to penetrate Russia as Americans.
This scheme might have succeeded except for the fact that he got the idea for it from the Robinson–Rubens fake passport ring, which was under intense investigation, with the authorities on the alert.
Picked up as a suspect in that case, Rumrich convinced the authorities he knew nothing of the Rubens couple. When State department agents learned that he was an army man they notified headquarters of the Second Corps Area on Governors Island and Major Joe N. Dalton, then G-2, or corps intelligence officer, took charge of the inquiry.
Among Rumrich’s papers Major Dalton found notes of military phraseology, it was said, that coincided neatly with the clue picked up in the surveillance of Mrs. Jordan. He sensed a connection with the Eglin plot, and after some questioning Rumrich admitted it.
The army being without an active secret service organization for counter-espionage in peace time, Major Dalton conferred with Reed Vetterli, head of the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation., who saw the possibilities of the case and started a thorough spy hunt.
For the purposes of prosecution United States Attorney Lamar Hardy assigned an aide, Lester C. Dunigan, to help him prepare the case and when a special grand jury was convened on March 16 Mr. Hardy personally presented the evidence. The FBI assigned Leon G.Turrou, one of its most versatile agents, as spearhead of its squad. Mr. Turrou, foreign-born, is a linguist. During the World War he fought with the marines and afterward served with Major Dalton in Moscow on Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration.
With such a concentration the case split open.
Under questioning Rumrich told the authorities he offered himself as a spy by writing a letter to the head of the German Secret Service through the Voelkischer Beobachter, official organ of the National Socialist party in Germany.
Rumrich said that the man he had addressed as head of the secret service was Colonel Walthar Nicolai, who was in that post only during the World War. At present he is a member of the Reich Institute for History of the New Germany, created by Hitler to rewrite German history with the ink of National Socialism.
To his letter, the renegade soldier explained, he had signed the name of Theodor Koerner. Whether he selected that name with design is not known, but it was one certain to be received gracefully in the Third Reich. Rumrich evidently had in mind, for he had been educated in Germany, Theodor Korner (1791-1813), the solder-poet who wrote stirring battle paeans and died heroically on a battlefield during Germany’s war of liberation from the Napoleonic yoke.
His first contact having been made, Rumrich soon learned that close at hand were several secret agents forming a direct, personal line of communication to Germany; so he did not often have to resort to letter writing to “Sanders” in Hamburg, another “postoffice.”
Before long Rumrich met the important functionary Schleuter, who made frequent trips here on German ships, ostensibly as a steward. In reality Schleuter was a sort of traveling adjutant for Menzel and von Bonin. He introduced the soldier to Johanna Hofmann, the hair-dresser of the North German Lloyd liner Europa, described as a transatlantic courier for the spy syndicate. Then he took him to Dr. Griebl, who was looked upon as head of the New York center of the fraternity.
Rumrich took to his new, adventurous job with zest and became probably the most active secret agent here since the World War, if activity rather than results is considered.
Having learned the ropes in the six years he was a soldier, Rumrich audaciously tapped information sources of the regular army. His rewards were trifling at first - $3 or $4 for each bit of stolen information, C. O. D. Later he got on the “payroll” at $50 a month, paid from Berlin.
But some of the world-leading military technical developments, anxiously sought for exploitation in the European armed camp, were in the United States Navy, and Rumrich said he was assigned to go after them too.
His employers were particularly interested in naval aircraft and aircraft carriers, so Rumrich picked from published orders the names of young officers with the intention of attempting to corrupt them.
Informed officials believe that the directors of the espionage organization were most anxious to steal the secret of the arresting gear that facilitates the landing of planes on carriers. A similar gear is used in all the navies of the world, but it has been acknowledged that none is closer to perfections than the type devised by the United States.
Externally the arresting gear consists of a series of cables stretched a few inches above the landing deck. When a plane pancakes down its hook catches on one of the cables and it is gradually stopped, its wheels rolling over the yielding wires.
The great value of the gear rests in the precise degree of tension imparted to the cables to slow down and hold the plane within the allotted space without creating harmful stresses. And the governing machinery, whose design is closely guarded, is below the steel decks of the ships.
In one instance Rumrich endeavored to obtain information from an ensign who was being transferred from the Ranger, one of the earlier carriers, to the Yorktown, one of the newest carriers which was commissioned in October, 1937, at Norfolk, Va.
Rumrich, it was said, offered the officer a suitable reward for data, but he also threatened violence if he reported the letter to his superiors. The ensign immediately informed his commanding officer. It was not learned how closely Rumrich was traced at that time.
The Enterprise, a $21,000,000 aircraft carrier that got its first trial last month, was another espionage target. When Miss Hofmann was arrested, according to the authorities, she had a letter for Rumrich which offered $1,000 for information about this ship. Junior officers were to be tempted with “increases in pay” in what apparently was a general drive to create information leaks in the service.
Navy secrets were sought also in other quarters by other members of the espionage ring. During the investigation the accumulating evidence of their activity caused grave concern in navy circles and it was learned that Rear Admiral Ralston S. Holmes, chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence, came to this city from Washington to look after the navy’s interests.
According to information obtained in reliable quarters the spy clique had a prying informer in the office of a leading concern of naval architects here that designed warships, not only for the United States but for another great power. While it is believed this agent did not succeed in copying plans, it is known he was in a position to overhear discussions of building programs.
Rumrich eventually found himself hard pressed to maintain a regular flow of information and feared he might lose his clandestine job if it slackened. So his items were many and varied, according to the authorities, but none was of great value. Federal officials said they found on his person sketches of a tank and of an airplane so rough and elementary that they could have been of little value.
When Federal agents got around to Dr. Griebl’s office with information obtained from Rumrich and others, it was said, they found a match box imprinted with the same code key the soldier had. Confronted with this and with other compromising evidence, Dr. Griebl became a willing witness. Also there was his connection with the Lonkowski incident of 1935 to induce him to talk. So Dr. Griebl, it was alleged, sketched out the entire pattern of the espionage syndicate and only then did the authorities begin to view with concern what at first they had considered isolated attempts at spying by novices.
Rumrich had told the investigators about the intelligence exchange link with Tokyo and Dr. Griebl added a bit to authenticate this. He was reported to have said the agents here were instructed to carefully avoid being seen with Japanese operatives.
Linked with Dr. Griebl and Rumrich later was Private Erich Glaser of the Eighteenth Reconnaissance Squadron, stationed at Mitchel Field. Glaser has been accused of stealing an Air Corps code sent to Germany, for which Rumrich is alleged to have paid him about $70.
To Long Island ran another line of intrigue, according to the investigators. At the de Seversky airplane plant in Farmingdale they arrested Otto Hermann Voss for espionage. He is charged with having furnished many documents pertaining to army planes to Lonkowski and other agents.
Attractive women, valuable in espionage for making easy contacts with government employes, were to play glamorous roles, like those created by fiction writers, according to the syndicate’s future plans.
One of the women now being held in custody as a witness was slated to be established in a sumptuous apartment in Washington. She was to invite there officers of the army and navy and entertain them well – and “talk shop” with them.
Miss Eleanor Boehme, the attractive graduate of Hunter College, it was learned, was innocently drawn into association with some characters in the conspiracy by Schleuter, whom she met on a German ship once when she went to see some friends.
She was receptive to his offer of a “job.” He was vague about it, merely giving her a letter to the woman who was to go to Washington. His intention, it was said, was to engage her for a similar glamour job.
Miss Boehme went to see the woman one evening. They chatted but nothing was said about the job. When they parted, however, the young woman received a match box from the woman and was told to keep it. Not knowing what to make of the incident Miss Boehme told her mother about it. They attributed the whole business to eccentricity and forgot about it until the other woman’s name cropped up in the investigation.
In panic Miss Boehme rushed to the FBI office and told what she knew.
A special Federal grand jury revealed yesterday the activities of the German espionage service in the United States and indicted eighteen persons, two of them women, in one of the bluntest documents castigating a friendly government since the tense days of the World War.
Usually untraceable or unmentioned in such cases for diplomatic reasons, the reputed master minds, who included officers in the German War Ministry, were not only named but indicted. Furthermore, for the first time since the investigation began, Germany was officially named as the power responsible for an under-cover force that aggressively sought to pry out the best technical military defense secrets of the United States.
It was established also, from statements by at least two persons involved in the case, that the Japanese Army was indirectly benefited by Germany’s agents here. Leaders of the ring, it was said, maintained a “free exchange” of military intelligence obtained by their respective operatives. It was emphasized, however, that Japan’s role was merely the passive one of receiving interesting data, that she had no direct link with the activities of those indicted.
But of the eighteen persons indicted only four are in this country. The fourteen others are in Germany. From this fact the action of the grand jury appeared to be mainly a moral indictment of the German Government.
The manner in which the entire case was exposed by the grand jury and United States Attorney Lamar Hardy indicated that the course taken had the approval of the Administration.
In fact, Mr. Hardy went to Washington before the grand jury was convened on May 16 and outlined the grave nature of the case to Attorney General Homer Cummings and other officials. It was understood that he was told, in effect, that the case was not one calling for kid gloves, which coincided with Mr. Hardy’s view.
The action of the grand jury was written into three documents. The most important, a conspiracy indictment, accused all, from the lowly self-confessed novice agent, Guenther Gustave Rumrich, to Captain Lieut. Erich Pfeiffer, head of the German Secret Service, of twenty-four overt acts intended to deprive the United States of its best defense developments.
Then there were two substantive indictments. One was concerned with the theft of plans for the army’s pursuit plane made by the Seversky Airplane Corporation, one of the fastest fighters in the world. The other true bill accused three men and a woman of stealing and sending to Germany the “Army and Navy Radio Telephone and Telegraph Procedure” book, which contains a confidential code.
Although the results of the long, tedious inquiry, frustrated in part by escaping witnesses, appeared inconsiderable because only four apparently will face trial, the authorities indicated that only the first chapter of the case had been completed.
What the next step would be Mr. Hardy would not say, but the grand jury’s tenure was continued indefinitely. It was understood, however, that one other important phase of the case that is still unsolved will cover the question of obstruction of justice. This relates to the escape of Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl, former Nazi leader, wanted as a spy, and other witnesses who were compelled to and received aid in escaping.
If Dr. Griebl had not escaped, Mr. Hardy probably would have had a stronger case, with his testimony the basis for indicting others. The leading part he acted was indicated by the indictment, which set forth that on June 7, 1937, he held a conference on espionage activities in the Hotel Eden in Berlin.
On that trip to Germany he sailed on the Europa, and it was established last night that Mrs. Kate Moog Busch, held now in protective custody as a witness, was on the same ship.
The authorities believe that coercion was used to force Griebl to give up his informer’s role, and this was substantiated with the identification yesterday of Carl Frederick Wilhelm Hermann, a material witness in the case, as an agent of the Gestapo, Germany’s secret police, in this country.
Besides Pfeiffer and Rumrich, those indicted were:
Captain-Lieutenant Hermann Menzel, also on espionage duty with the German War Ministry.
Ernst Mueller, a resident of Hamburg.
Schmidt, first name unknown, believed to be in Germany.
Sanders, first name unknown, of Hamburg.
Mrs. Jessie Jordan, recently convicted as a German spy in Edinburgh and sentenced to serve four years.
William Lonkowski, one of the most important secret agents of Germany in this country since the World War, who eluded capture in 1935.
Karl Schleuter, a traveling deputy of Menzel and von Bonin, who is reputed to have been instrumental in organizing espionage work here.
Herbert Haenichen, believed to be a resident of Germany.
Karl Eitel, another traveling agent, reported to have carried stolen secrets to Germany.
Theodor Schultz, a resident of Germany.
Johanna Hofmann, a hairdresser, employed on the liner Europa of the North German Lloyd, accused as a transatlantic messenger of the spy syndicate.
Dr. Griebl, whom the agents here looked upon as their local chief.
Otto Hermann Voss, the airplane mechanic, arrested at his bench in the de Seversky airplane plant in Farmingdale.
Werner George Gudenberg, a skilled airplane designer, reported to have assisted Lonkowski in filming plans for a Curtiss navy plane that was still a secret in 1935, when the illegal act was alleged to have been committed.
Private Erich Glaser of the Air Corps, arrested after he was alleged to have sold to Germany, through Rumrich, a code book for about $70.
Of those indicted Miss Hofmann, Rumrich, Voss and Glaser are under arrest here.
In the indictments the grand jury invoked Title 50 of the United States Code, entitled “War,” which contains emergency legislation enacted in the year that the United States plunged into the World War.
The espionage section, Section 32, imposes a maximum penalty of twenty years’ imprisonment upon conviction in peacetime. In time of war the minimum is thirty years and the maximum, death.
The indictment charged the leaders with paying for the documents alleged to have been stolen. Haenichen, Schuetz, alias Karl Wiegand, Eitel, Schleuter, Schmidt and Miss Hofmann, it was alleged, were employed on various ships plying between the United States and Germany in the service of the spy syndicate.
It was further charged that they reported to Pfeiffer, also known as N. Spielman, and Sanders, for instructions.
Similar allegations, without detail, were made against Rumich.
The first overt act in the indictment placed Lonkowski and Voss in Hempstead, L. I., where they “met and conferred.” It is in that town that Miss Senta De Wanger, also known as Dirwa, conducts a liquor shop. She is being held in protective custody in the case and it has been established that she knew Lonkowski well, when he moved around the vicinity of New York in 1935 as Germany’s alleged chief agent here.
The indictment charging theft of the de Seversky army pursuit plane designs named only Voss and Haenichen.
In the other substantive indictment Schleuter, Miss Hofmann, Rumrich and Glaser were accused of sending to Germany the telephone and telegraph procedure phone book used by the army and navy.
Before the grand jury, which was composed mostly of business men and included at least two reserve officers, marched into the courtroom of Judge Vincent Leibell to watch Mr. Hardy hand up the indictments they held a morning session to hear the testimony of Miss Hofmann and Glaser.
The appearance of these two defendants was a surprise and indicated a last-minute decision on their part, for it was their first appearance before that body.
Before she entered the secret chamber Miss Hofmann had conferred with her attorney, George C. Dix, who later said he had advised her to “tell the whole truth.”
In the brief proceeding before Judge Leibell Mr. Hardy simply handed up the indictments with a brief reference to their nature. His remarks were mainly concerned with gratitude for the work of the grand jury; of his assistant, Lester C. Dunigan, and of Leon G. Turrou, the Federal agent who was the leader of a squad of operatives assigned to the case by Reed Vetterli, head of the local F. B. I. and by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal detective agency.
Official quarters denied any official information concerning the indictment, but at the Propaganda Ministry it was said the accusations against the indicted persons must be of same kind as those against Dr. Karl Otto, whose brief case, supposedly containing espionage material, was stolen in Wheeling W. Va., although the material later proved to be harmless.
I found this one entertaining. It might make a good story line for a movie.
In all the Franklin Roosevelt years, did they ever even look for Soviet spies?
Might we suppose that Soviet spies of the time outnumbered Nazi spies by a factor of, what, maybe 10 to one?
Clearly, Roosevelt even then hated Nazis, had no fear of Communists.
What was J. Edgar Hoover's position on counter-espionage? I thought he kept strict control over how his enforcement resources were used.
I think it's fair to say that Hoover was not then a completely independent actor. His priorities would have reflected Roosevelt's.
They were clearly concerned about Nazis, and apparently not concerned about Communists.
But I'm not 100% certain of this, so I ask the question: does anyone know of examples where Hoover or anyone else chased down Communist spies before or during the war?
I'm not too surprised that Roosevelt wasn't very aggressive towards doing the same with Communist agents since he was really sympathetic to them. FDR was constantly bending to Stalin's will (in my opinion).
Even Henry A. Wallace (FDRs VP from 41-45) wrote a book in 1952 titled “Where I Was Wrong” in which he discusses his regret for his sympathies towards the Soviet Union, and his trusting of Stalin.
I've read here and there that the U.S.A. was actually in danger of communist revolution during the thirties because of the depression. Maybe Roosevelt simply wanted to keep the topic of world revolution out of the public consciousness by pretending it didn't exist.
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