J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (44 page)

Though Cullen was convinced the men were German spies, and maybe even part of an invasion force, his superiors were skeptical and debated whether to sound a general alarm. Had they done so, probably both the men, who were standing around the Amagansett station of the Long Island Railroad waiting for the first train at 6:00
A.M.
, and the submarine, which was beached on a sandbar, would have been captured. Instead, fearing at least ridicule and possibly even reprimand for filing a false report, they did nothing until nearly dawn, when they sent Cullen and an armed patrol back to the spot. Although by now both the men and the submarine were long gone, the Coast Guardsmen dug up several caches containing a large quantity of explosives, fuses, blasting caps, timers, and incendiary devices (some in the form of pen-and-pencil sets), as well as German uniforms, cigarettes, and brandy.

It was noon, however, before the FBI learned of the landing—from a Long Island police chief. By the time the first special agents arrived, with orders to seize the evidence and maintain a discreet surveillance, a couple dozen vacationers in beach chairs were already doing their own watching. By then the four would-be saboteurs had reached New York City, split into pairs, obtained hotel rooms, and ordered expensive lunches.

Hurrying across the hall to the attorney general’s office, Hoover excitedly informed Biddle of the landing. “All of Edgar Hoover’s imaginative and restless energy was stirred into prompt and effective action,” Biddle later recalled. “He was determined to catch them all before any sabotage took place. He had steadily insisted that this war could be fought without sabotage. But he was, of course, worried.”
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He had reason to be. An immediate decision had to be made. If a military alert was called—even as they talked other submarines might be landing—the press would surely learn of it and the result might be public panic. And of course, publicity would alert their quarry.

The alternative—that the FBI go it alone and hope to catch the four before they committed any acts of sabotage—also had its risks.
Very serious risks,
as far as the future of Hoover’s FBI was concerned. If the FBI failed…

But Hoover’s belief in his organization was so strong that he opted for the latter course. So did the attorney general. “But I wanted the President’s approval, and telephoned him,” Biddle recalled. “He agreed.”
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A news blackout was imposed, while Hoover ordered the largest manhunt in the Bureau’s history, putting all of its U.S. field offices on full alert.

Even then, they almost blew it, not once but twice. The day after the landing, the leader of the saboteurs, George John Dasch, informed his partner, Ernst Peter Burger, that his real sympathies were with the United States, where he had lived for almost twenty years, and that he planned to call the FBI and turn
them in. Dasch later claimed that he was prepared to push Burger out of their hotel window if he opposed him.

Burger didn’t. Himself a naturalized U.S. citizen, Burger admitted that he too had no intention of carrying out their mission. Instead he had planned to disappear with the $84,000 in U.S. currency the Abwehr had provided them. On hearing this, Dasch took charge of the funds.

In most of the large Bureau field offices there is what the agents themselves refer to as the “nut desk.” The special agent who had the unwelcome task of manning it that day at NYFO listened skeptically to Dasch’s tale, observed, “Yesterday Napoleon called,” and hung up.
³⁰
Although the whole Bureau was on alert, nobody had informed him. He thought the call so ridiculous he didn’t even bother to log it.

Rebuffed, Dasch decided to see Hoover personally and, after packing the money in a suitcase, took a train to Washington. His reception at the Department of Justice was less than cordial. After being shunted from office to office, he was finally allowed five minutes with one of the director’s assistants, D. M. “Mickey” Ladd. As head of the Domestic Intelligence Division, which handled all sabotage, espionage, and internal-security cases, Ladd was in charge of the spy hunt. But despite the news blackout, Ladd was convinced that Dasch had somehow heard of the landing and was just another crackpot eager to make a name and some money for himself. Ladd was already edging him toward the door when Dasch realized he had to do something dramatic to convince the obtuse FBI official.

“I seized the suitcase that had been lying on the floor, tore its snaps, and dumped the contents on the desk,” Dasch recalled. “The three feet of polished wood were too narrow to hold the eighty-four thousand dollars in cash. Packets of bills cascaded over the sides to create the illusion of a miniature waterfall.”

Even then, Ladd had his doubts. “Is this stuff real?” he asked.
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A few minutes later George John Dasch was finally allowed to see J. Edgar Hoover.

During his interrogation, which lasted for eight days, Dasch gave the FBI invaluable information about the training he and the others had received at the Abwehr’s school of sabotage; their assigned targets in the United States (which included the Aluminum Corporation of America, the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant, and the New York water supply system); and their contacts—plus equally welcome intelligence regarding German war production, plans, codes, and submarines.
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Of more immediate import, after telling the agents where they could pick up
Burger and the other two men, Dasch also informed them about a second submarine, which had landed four more saboteurs off the coast of Florida.

And this was just the beginning, Dasch said. Additional groups were scheduled to land every six weeks. By sabotaging vital industries, and leaving bombs in such public places as railway stations and department stores, the Abwehr intended to initiate “a wave of terror” within the United States.
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On June 20, two days after Dasch surrendered to the FBI in Washington, Burger and the other two members of the Long Island group were arrested in New York City. Burger also proved cooperative. Acting on the information he provided—which included descriptions, real names, cover names, and a list of possible contacts—the Bureau was able to track down and apprehend all four of the saboteurs who had landed near Jacksonville, Florida, arresting the last member of the group in Chicago on June 27.

It was a tremendous accomplishment. Exactly two weeks after the Long Island landing, all eight of the German agents were in custody. They hadn’t even had time to commit a single act of sabotage. Hoover had won his gamble.

At some point—it is unclear when, but it was probably right after the New York City arrests—Hoover and his aides reached a decision: when the story of the landings was made public, there was to be no mention of Dasch’s surrender or of his and Burger’s voluntary cooperation.

The reason for suppressing this information was obvious: to deceive the Germans. It was wartime and the less the enemy knew, the better. If the Abwehr didn’t learn of Dasch’s betrayal, it was possible its leaders would conclude that the U.S. coastline was nearly impenetrable and, far more important, that the FBI was itself so efficient and well informed that it would be a waste of agents to attempt additional landings.

This explanation makes of the FBI’s decision an ingenious disinformation ploy. It fails to account, however, for why Hoover also felt it necessary to deceive the president of the United States.

Between June 16 and June 27, Hoover sent the president three “personal and confidential” memos on the case. In the first, written before Dasch turned himself in, Hoover summarized the evidence found at the landing site. In the second, written on June 22, he proudly informed the president that the FBI had “already apprehended all members of the group which landed on Long Island,” adding, “I expect to be able to have in custody all members of the second group.” Although it is obvious from the detailed information he included that one or more of the German agents was cooperating, there is no mention of Dasch’s turning himself in; or of his fingering the other three members of his group; or of Burger’s having supplied the information which Hoover hoped would lead to the arrest of the second group.

On June 27, probably within minutes after being informed of the last arrest, Hoover called the White House and asked the presidential secretary Marvin McIntyre to inform the president that all eight saboteurs were now in custody.
Knowing Roosevelt would be interested, McIntyre asked Hoover to send the president a memorandum outlining the developments in the case, and this Hoover did, that same day. In his third and last memorandum, Hoover not only failed to mention all of the above but even changed the facts to hide Dasch’s key role: “On June 20, 1942, Robert Quirin, Heinrich Heinck, and Ernest Peter Burger were apprehended in New York City by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The leader of the group, George John Dasch, was apprehended by Special Agents of the FBI on June 22, 1942, at New York City.”
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By falsifying both the date and the place Dasch had been “apprehended”—he’d surrendered to the FBI on June 18, 1942, in Washington, D.C.—Hoover made it appear that Dasch’s capture was the result rather than the cause of the other arrests.

If Hoover’s purpose was to deceive the Germans, the change made sense. But what was his purpose in deceiving the president? Perhaps the clue lay in a little plot Lou Nichols was cooking up in Crime Records.

With the approval of the president and the attorney general, Hoover ended the news blackout with a press conference on the evening of June 27, 1942. Coming when it did, while U.S. military victories were still few and far between, Hoover’s surprise announcement commandeered the nation’s headlines.

FBI CAPTURES 8
GERMAN AGENTS
LANDED BY SUBS
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Although it was one of the most sensational stories of the war, Hoover’s statement was tantalizingly brief. “He gave no details of how the FBI ‘broke’ the case,” the
New York Times
complained. “That will have to wait, FBI officials insist, until after the war.”
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The press, however, wasn’t content to leave it at that. Biddle recalled, “It was generally concluded that a particularly brilliant FBI agent, probably attending the school in sabotage where the eight had been trained, had been able to get on the inside, and make regular reports to America. Mr. Hoover, as the United Press put it, declined to comment on whether or not FBI agents had infiltrated into not only the Gestapo but also the High Command, or whether he watched the saboteurs land.”
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In the aftermath of the announcement, President Roosevelt received dozens of telegrams and letters urging that J. Edgar Hoover be given the Congressional Medal of Honor. The campaign, secretly organized in the FBI’s own Crime Records Division by its director, Lou Nichols, was not successful. But on July 25 both the president and the attorney general released statements extolling the FBI director, who would be celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary with the Department of Justice the following day.

Hoover was not the only one disappointed at not receiving the medal. George John Dasch thought it the least the United States could do in recognition of his heroic, self-sacrificing act.

Instead Dasch was tried with the others and, like them, sentenced to death.

In great secrecy—both the public and the press were excluded, and a censorship order was imposed to forestall any possible leaks—the eight were tried before a military commission, composed of seven generals. Although it was a military trial, a civilian, Attorney General Francis Biddle, served as prosecutor. In a scene vaguely reminiscent of the Palmer days, Hoover sat next to the attorney general, handing him typed summaries of the evidence each witness could provide just before he took the stand.

It was a quick trial. As Biddle put it, “It was obvious that the reliance of the public on their government would be immeasurably strengthened if these would-be saboteurs were disposed of promptly.”
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It took exactly one month to try the eight men, find them guilty, sentence them to death, and execute six out of the eight, by electrocution, in the District of Columbia jail.

The public first learned of the verdict, and the deaths, in a brief presidential statement issued a few hours after the last execution took place. Acting upon “a unanimous recommendation, concurred in by the attorney general and the judge advocate general of the Army,” the president had commuted the sentences of two of the men, the statement said.

“The commutation directed by the President in the case of Ernst Peter Burger was to confinement at hard labor for life. In the case of George Dasch, the sentence was commuted by the President to confinement at hard labor for 30 years.”

“The records in all eight cases will be sealed until the end of the war.”
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Even then, Hoover strongly opposed releasing the true story. No single episode it its history did more to perpetuate the myth of the FBI’s invincibility than its capture of Germany’s elite spies. Hoover wanted nothing to tarnish that myth.

In the fall of 1945 the
Newsweek
correspondent John Terrell asked Tom Clark, President Truman’s first attorney general, to open the Justice Department’s files on the cases. The war was over now and there was no reason the public shouldn’t be allowed to know the facts, Terrell argued. Clark, apparently so fresh to the job that he didn’t realize the AG had to obtain his subordinate’s permission, agreed.

Hoover, learning of the article on the eve of its publication, “vigorously” complained to his new boss, who in turn called the editors at
Newsweek
and pleaded with them to delay publication. “Hoover wants to make some changes,” Clark said.
⁴⁰
But since Clark admitted that the facts were correct and honestly obtained,
Newsweek
decided to go ahead and run the story.

Even then Hoover did not give up easily. Under the direction of Lou Nichols, the staff in Crime Records worked all night, turning out a press release which deemphasized the importance of Dasch’s surrender and subsequent cooperation
and presented the FBI’s role in a much more heroic light. It was released early the following morning, in time to beat
Newsweek
to the stands.
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