Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

“This is a military commission,” he lectured. “Please use that term.”

An officer proceeded to read the charges against the eight saboteurs, beginning with “Charge One: Violation of the Law of War.” The defendants were “enemies of the United States acting for and on behalf of the German Reich,” who had passed through American defense lines “in civilian dress contrary to the law of war… for the purpose of committing acts of sabotage, espionage, and other hostile acts.” They were also charged with violating the eighty-first and eighty-second Articles of War. The first of these articles dealt with “relieving or attempting to relieve enemies of the United States with arms, munitions, supplies, money, and other things”; the second punished “lurking or acting as spies in or about the fortifications, posts and encampments of the armies of the United States.” The final charge was criminal conspiracy.

As they listened to the accusations, Dasch and the other saboteurs finally understood the seriousness of their situations. There could now be no doubt in their minds: if convicted, they faced the death penalty.

The defense lawyers objected that the accusation of “relieving” enemies of the United States was designed to be used against U.S. citizens who aided the enemy. Furthermore, their clients had never “lurked” about U.S. army encampments. McCoy overruled the objections in his usual brisk manner, causing Royall, who had been born and raised in the South, to think of an old saying from Reconstruction days: “Give the nigger a fair trial and hang him quick.” 11

Each defendant was required to respond to the charges, beginning in alphabetical order with Burger. They stood up one after another to plead “not guilty” to all charges. The trial proper could now get under way.

THE GOVERNMENT’S first witness was John Cullen, the coastguardsman who ran into the saboteurs the night they landed on Amagansett Beach, newly promoted to coxswain from seaman second class for his vigilance. After leading Cullen through his story, Biddle asked if he recognized the man who had walked toward him through the fog.

“I think so, sir.”

“Will you stand up and identify him, if you see him in court? Stand up please. Now do you see the man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which is he?”

“Right here, sir.”

“Go and point to the man you have in mind. It won’t hurt you. Just go and point at him. Point at him. Which is he?”

From the witness chair, Cullen walked over to the defendants, pointing at Dasch. In his well-cut suit and highly polished shoes, the defendant looked very different from his scruffy appearance on the beach, when he was dressed in sodden pants and a black fedora. But he was easy to recognize from the gray streak running through his hair. To make sure there would be no mistake, FBI agents had taken Cullen to the D.C. jail the evening before. He had stood in front of each cell door, examining the saboteurs in turn, before picking out the man who had introduced himself as George John Davis.

Biddle asked Dasch to stand up. He did so, taking a couple of steps toward Cullen, so they were barely inches apart.

“Is that the man you remember seeing?” Biddle asked the witness.

Cullen wanted to make doubly sure. He asked the accused to say “a few words.” Dasch obliged with the first phrase that came into his head: “What is your name?”

“That’s the man.” Cullen sounded very confident now.

Cullen ran through the rest of his testimony quickly: how Dasch had pretended to be a fisherman stranded in the fog, how he refused to go with him to the Coast Guard station, the attempt at bribery, the menacing phrase “I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.”

The defense lawyers allowed most of Cullen’s testimony to stand without objection. Royall interrupted on one point only, when Cullen talked about other coastguardsmen digging up four boxes of sabotage equipment. This was “hearsay,” Royall argued, and should be stricken from the record. Since Cullen was not present when the boxes were dug up, he had no direct knowledge of what had happened and was relying on secondhand accounts. McCoy was unimpressed. He pointed out that the presidential order establishing the commission gave extraordinary latitude to both sides to introduce any evidence that would have “probative value for a reasonable man.” As chairman of the tribunal, he would rule on what was “reasonable” or not.

It was left to the prosecution to speak for the defense. Biddle said he would call other witnesses later to establish how the boxes had been found, and there was therefore no need to rely on Cullen. He agreed that the witness’s assertion should be struck from the record. Faced with this common front, McCoy grudgingly accepted Royall’s objection. It was the first time he had ruled in favor of the defense.

Cross-examining Cullen, Royall established that the saboteurs would have had little difficulty overpowering him, as there was no one else on the beach and the Coast Guard station was not visible through the fog.

“No one was in your vicinity, no member of the Coast Guard?”

“No, sir.”

“And no one attempted to injure you in any way?”

“No, sir.”

Dasch’s defense counsel, Colonel Carl Ristine, joined in the cross-examination of Cullen. A lawyer in the office of the army inspector general, Ristine had been pressed into service at the last moment to represent Dasch, whose role in going to the FBI put him in a different category from the others. He barely had time to talk with his client or review basic court documents. Dasch would later complain that the pleasant, soft-spoken Ristine lacked forcefulness; he wished his defense had been entrusted to a man like Royall, who “fought like a lion” for his clients. 12

At the end of the session, Dasch asked Ristine if he could arrange a meeting with Cullen, as he wanted to refresh his memory about events on the beach. Ristine brought the young coastguardsman over to the defendants. Although Dasch was polite and very friendly, he was also upset with Cullen for not standing up for him.

“I was supposed to kill you, but I didn’t,” he told the coastguardsman. “Now it’s your turn to help me.” 13

Dasch said he had never used the phrase “I wouldn’t want to kill you” when talking to Cullen on the beach, but instead something like “You want to live, don’t you?” He asked Cullen to change his testimony. But Cullen insisted that he had clearly heard the word “kill.”

Hoover, who was seated next to Biddle at the prosecution table, was alarmed to see the government’s lead witness chatting with one of the defendants. He walked over and told them brusquely to break it up. Soldiers escorted Dasch out of the room.

PRACTICALLY NOTHING of what was happening inside room 5235 was known to journalists assigned to cover the trial. The secrecy was intensely frustrating. This was one of the biggest stories of the war, and it was taking place behind closed doors. Instead of real information, the journalists were fed irrelevant scraps, such as the detail that the prosecution team included a lawyer named George Washington, “the nearest living collateral descendant” of America’s first president. 14The most that Biddle would say when he emerged from the barricaded corridor was that the trial would continue “tomorrow.” The secrecy was not his idea, he told reporters. To say anything more, he joked, would be to risk a court-martial himself. 15

The biggest excitement of the first day of the trial for the press was the fleeting appearance in the Justice Department of the twenty-four-year-old girlfriend of Herbie Haupt. The New York Post described the dark-haired Gerda Stuckmann as a “vision in white,” wearing a white suit, white shoes, and a white turban. Gerda had given reporters her version of her relationship with Herbie, claiming she had turned down his offer of marriage. Underneath the headline “Widow Jilts Haupt, One of 8 Seized Spies,” the Washington Post quoted Gerda as saying, “He always appeared to be a gentleman, interested in reading and music. He played the piano and was especially fond of the music of Schubert. I knew he liked Hitler’s policies, but that was a couple of years ago and we weren’t in the war. Now I am ashamed of him and don’t want anything more to do with him.” 16