Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

In the absence of hard facts, reporters ran with anything they could. Nolen Bulloch of the Washington Times-Herald provided his readers with a front-page description of the scene inside the D.C. jail as the saboteurs arrived. An FBI investigation later established that the reporter was “serving a short sentence in the District jail for drunkenness” at the time and was therefore “in a position to observe what was going on and obtain a scoop.” 17

Hoover was so worried about leaks that he ordered all his agents to refrain from discussing the trial in restaurants or other public places. 18One source of his concern was a memo from a deaf Justice Department employee who reported that he had been able to gather information about the trial by reading the lips of his fellow agents as they discussed the case in the office cafeteria.

Just how much information should be relayed to the press was the subject of heated arguments within the government. On June 13, the day Dasch and his men landed at Amagansett, the president had responded to complaints by journalists about the lack of reliable information from the army by setting up the Office of War Information (OWI) under Elmer Davis, a former journalist and well-known radio commentator. The media saw the saboteur case as the first test of the credibility of the government’s new information chief.

Davis wanted to be as open as possible with the press, while preserving necessary military secrecy. He felt “Americans are entitled to know everything that the enemy knows; that the better they understand what this war is about, the harder they will work and fight to win it.” 19This led him to favor some press coverage of the sabotage trial, either by a small group of pool reporters or a member of his staff. All reports would be subject to military censorship, thus ensuring that nothing was released that could be helpful to the enemy. It was unreasonable, Davis thought, to expect newspaper editors and reporters to agree to voluntary censorship if they were not given some information about this most sensational of trials.

From the army’s point of view, any information about the trial might be damaging, as it would provide clues to American intelligence methods and reveal flaws in U.S. coastal defenses. The Germans should be led to believe that the coastline was impregnable, which would deter them from mounting future sabotage missions. The military argued that there was no satisfactory way of editing the testimony for public release without disclosing sensitive information, either directly or by omission.

Stimson, in particular, was scathing about civilian meddling in military matters, and refused to permit an OWI representative to attend the tribunal hearings. When a reporter asked whether Davis would be supervising the release of military communiqués, he inquired with sarcasm, “Is Mr. Davis an educated military officer?” 20

The reporter remarked that the OWI director might be considered “one of those civilian generals.” “Yes, there are many of them,” the secretary shot back.

BY THE second day of the trial, Roosevelt had become exasperated by all the squabbles arising from the case. The FBI was at loggerheads with the navy and the Secret Service; the secretary of war could not stand the attorney general; the press was clamoring for access to the military tribunal. “I am going to go over to my office and will spend the day blowing up various people,” the president told Daisy Suckley after breakfast at the White House. 21

He had summoned Davis and Stimson to adjudicate their dispute about publicity for the trial. His press secretary, Steve Early, sided with Davis. At first, Roosevelt had also been inclined to allow some limited reporting of the trial, but Stimson had invoked national security. The president now told Davis that reporters should not be permitted to attend the trial. Instead the commission would issue communiqués through OWI.

This was viewed as a concession to the media—until the first communiqué appeared. It announced merely that the military commission had convened in the presence of the defendants and their lawyers, and continued: “The sessions will be closed, necessarily so, due to the nature of the testimony, which involves the security of the United States and the lives of its soldiers, sailors and citizens.” Subsequent communiqués were similarly terse.

As Stimson emerged from the Oval Office, he found himself besieged by “self-seeking journalists trying to make trouble.” 22He later complained to his diary that the press had “a vested interest in breaking down secrecy in order to sell more papers.” The secretary of war felt the media were picking on him because of his insistence on the need for confidentiality. He blamed Biddle for the unpleasantness.

The fault of the whole matter lies directly on the doorstep of the Attorney General. It was he who in the first place told me of the absolute necessity for secrecy in regard to the evidence. He told me of the particular evidence which was especially dangerous to have come out and said that he had told it to no one else. But immediately after he had taken this attitude and imposed on me the necessity for defending the secrecy of the court, he has wavered under the impact of the assaults of the press and has been rushing into publicity himself. His subordinate, Hoover, gave before the trial elaborate interviews as to the facts and Biddle himself has done the same thing in press conferences. This has made it very unfair and very hard on me.

For his part, Biddle felt the censorship was “overdone.” 23The Germans must have known “the substance of the evidence,” and there was “little if anything that had to be concealed, except the confessions of Dasch and Peter Burger.” But opinion polls suggested that the American public sided overwhelmingly with Stimson and the military on the need for secrecy. 24Of those questioned in a Princeton University study, 69 percent said the tribunal proceedings “should be kept secret,” while only 27 percent felt that reporters should be permitted to attend.

Stimson did make a couple of minor concessions. He permitted U.S. Army Signal Corps photographs of the hearing to be distributed to the press. He also allowed a group of twelve reporters to visit room 5235 during a break in the hearing. The reporters were not permitted to talk to anyone, but were free to report what they saw. At least they were getting their first glimpse of the saboteurs. 25The effect was deflating.

“Instantaneous reaction was that the mysterious Hitler agents were no Nazi supermen but merely a group of most ordinary looking individuals,” reported Lewis Wood of the New York Times. “Not one of these men charged with a desperate plot suggested in the slightest a burly booted Storm Trooper, a brutal U-boat captain or, indeed, anything resembling the vital, ruthless blond German glorified by Hitler. On the contrary, they were most inconspicuous physically.”

Dillard Stokes of the Washington Post reported that “the spies flinched” as their names were read out by General Cox for the benefit of the journalists. Dasch “sat tensely forward on his chair and took notes on a pad on his knee.” Kerling “gave the reporters a long, cold, level stare.” Neubauer clasped his hands “so tightly together that his knuckles were white.” The unshaven Haupt “chewed gum vigorously and his mouth curled into a sneer.” Quirin’s “wide-set eyes glared.” Thiel returned “stare for stare as long as he was under scrutiny.” Heinck “did not want to be seen at all and crouched behind a pillar until General Cox ordered him to lean forward.”

The reporters were also allowed to inspect objects on the evidence table, which included dirty socks and oil-stained dungarees, a pair of German army boots, a “fatigue cap with a swastika emblem,” spades, and other articles, all neatly tagged with green labels. After fifteen minutes, the journalists were escorted from the room, and the trial resumed.