Read Online Double Agent by Peter Duffy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Duffy
Tags: United States, General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, World War II, Military, 20th Century, Political Science, Intelligence & Espionage
Ads: Link
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
▪ ▪ ▪
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
Similar Books
