Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Mixed up in all these calculations was the question of who would get the credit for rounding up the saboteurs. Already embroiled in a furious argument with the Coast Guard and navy intelligence over who had responsibility for investigating the case, Hoover feared that some other agency would “flamboyantly announce” a major breakthrough. The only way to prevent this from happening was for Hoover to make a flamboyant announcement of his own. He wanted the Nazi saboteur case to be recognized as a major FBI triumph, an important contribution to the war effort. Which meant a triumph for Hoover personally, since the Bureau was his creation and he was its public face. In Hoover’s mind, the national interest, the Bureau’s interests, and his own personal reputation were inextricably intertwined.

The press conference at which Hoover would break the news was planned like a military campaign. The director brought a large entourage to New York, having already decided that Haupt would be arrested as soon as he left his house on Saturday morning. He waited all day Saturday for news from Chicago of Neubauer’s arrest, which finally arrived at 6:45 in the evening. Journalists were then told to come to the FBI’s New York office at 8:30 for an important announcement.

The rest of the government had been left in the dark about Hoover’s intentions. A few minutes before 8:30, his aides began phoning senior government officials to tell them what was about to happen. 6Hoover himself called his nominal superior, Attorney General Francis Biddle, to say he had seized “the last” of the saboteurs, and was about to inform the press. Biddle, who was dining with the Yugoslav ambassador when the call came through, felt an immediate “flood of relief.” 7“I had had a bad week trying to sleep as I thought of the possibilities. The saboteurs might have other caches hidden, and at any moment an explosion was possible. Would it not have been better to alert the country, even if we lost our quarry?”

Hoover’s aides told the War Department that the FBI was compelled to go public because “the newspapers became aware of the story” as a result of the arrests of Haupt and Neubauer in Chicago. 8This was untrue. FBI memos show that Hoover had been planning to break the story for at least three days, and was simply waiting for the right moment.

“I have a very important statement to make,” the FBI director began, once the reporters were all assembled. “I want you to listen carefully: this is a serious business.” 9

The story that Hoover told the press was a dramatic one, and emphasized the central role played by the FBI in cracking the case. There was no mention of Dasch, and no mention of Dasch’s encounter with the Coast Guard on Amagansett Beach. An amused Biddle later recalled that Hoover’s performance and the accompanying press reaction created the impression 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 had watched the saboteurs land…” 10

The New York Times came out with a front-page banner headline of the type normally reserved for major events of the war, such as Pearl Harbor and the Japanese defeat in the Battle of Midway:

The Times story quoted Hoover as saying FBI agents had been pursuing the saboteurs “almost from the moment the first group set foot on United States soil,” and had recovered enough sabotage equipment for “a two-year campaign of terror.” 11It recalled the infamous Black Tom explosion in World War I, and accused former German diplomats in the United States of recruiting German-Americans for use as saboteurs prior to the outbreak of war. But it added reassuringly: “Before the men could begin carrying out their orders, the FBI was on their trail and the round-up began. One after another, they fell into the special agents’ net. Each confessed fully, providing information that will make repetition of the sabotage invasions difficult.”

A few more details were provided by Walter Winchell, the most widely read gossip columnist in America and beneficiary of frequent leaks direct from Hoover, including a fair amount of misinformation. In his weekly radio broadcast, Winchell reported that the saboteurs had “spent a lot of time in Broadway stores” and well-known Manhattan restaurants and nightclubs. “The apprehension of the spies by the G-men, based on the slightest of tips, will take your breath away,” he told his listeners. 12Although the full, incredible story could only be told after the war was over, Winchell was already in a position to reveal that “FBI agents are not only in the United States, but are even in the Gestapo and the border of Berlin.” He hailed the arrest of the saboteurs as “the most exciting achievement yet of John Edgar Hoover’s G-men.”

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT was entertaining European royalty at Hyde Park, his ancestral home, when he learned about Hoover’s latest exploit. Just why a wartime leader of the United States would want to spend so much time with dethroned monarchs was a mystery to his advisers, but they were willing to indulge him. It was one of FDR’s foibles, a way of relaxing, like mixing martinis or going through his stamp collection. But sometimes even kings and queens got on his nerves.

The royals “are driving the P to distraction,” Roosevelt’s seventeen-year-old goddaughter, Margaret “Roly” Hambley, wrote in her diary, after being roped into entertaining King George of Greece. To her great disappointment, the king turned out to be a very ordinary sort of person, not at all “the kind of man Churchill is… It is just awful trying to remind oneself that he is a king and should be treated as such… If only he had some kind of monocle or something on!” 13Other guests at Hyde Park that weekend included Princess Martha of Sweden, FDR’s alter ego Harry Hopkins and his fiancée, Louise Macy, who, Roly commented tartly, had “a very lifeless way of talking” in an affected “English accent.” The formidable Queen Wilhelmina of Holland was expected shortly.

The president had just returned from taking his guests for a ride through the Hudson Valley countryside when Biddle called with news of the arrest of the saboteurs and the seizure of $175,000, a huge sum by 1942 standards. “Not enough, Francis,” he joked. 14“Let’s make real money out of them. Sell the rights to Barnum and Bailey for a million and a half—the rights to take them around the country in lion cages at so much a head.”

As an aficionado of spy stories and tales of subversive enemy activity, Roosevelt was “delighted” by the latest turn of events, and chuckled at the thought of the embarrassment inflicted on the Nazis. 15Biddle thought the president really believed in the Old Testament principle “a tooth for a tooth.” Like Hoover, Roosevelt was concerned that America’s coastline was insufficiently protected: he wanted to use the case to send a very clear warning to Hitler to refrain from similar stunts in the future. He summed up his thinking in a memorandum to the attorney general three days later, outlining his ideas for making an example of the saboteurs, and deterring any others who might follow them.