The Best American Crime Writing

by Otto Penzler

  “What are you doing down here?” Cullen asked. “Who are you?”

  “We’re a couple of fishermen from Southampton who have run ashore,” Dasch answered. “We will stay here until sunrise and we will be all right.”

  Cullen told them that sunrise was hours away and said that there was no reason Dasch couldn’t come with him to the Coast Guard station until then. Dasch, concerned that the seabag might raise Cullen’s suspicions, decided to pretend to go along with him. In the meantime, one of the Germans came running down the beach with the seabag and addressed Dasch in German, Dasch hollered, “You damn fool, why don’t you go back to the other guys?” He then took Cullen’s arm and asked menacingly how old he was, and if he had a father and a mother. Cullen said he did.

  “Well,” Dasch said, “I wouldn’t want to have to kill you. Forget about this and I will give you some money and you can have a good time.” He offered Cullen $100, which Cullen refused. Dasch then offered $300, and Cullen accepted. “I was afraid they were going to knock me off right there,” Cullen later said. “But when he offered me the money, I knew that was a little encouragement.”

  Dasch took off his hat and shined a flashlight into his own face. “Take a good look at me,” he said to Cullen. “Look in my eyes. You will hear from me in Washington.” Dasch then turned around and joined his colleagues, and Cullen began walking cautiously backward before turning and racing toward the station, in the town of Amagansett.

  Burger told the others that Dasch had been talking to an American sailor. The men were concerned, but Dasch said to them, “Now, boys, this is the time to be quiet and hold your nerves. Each of you get a box and follow me.” Burger dragged the seabag, deliberately leaving a track that could be identified later, and then helped the others bury it, along with their army uniforms.

  The team proceeded inland, almost crawling, for half a mile. They lay still in the dunes for an hour and then began walking until they found a road. Whenever a car passed, they dove into nearby bushes. Heinck, shivering like a dog, said over and over, “We’re surrounded, boys!” Eventually, at just after five in the morning, they stumbled into the tiny train station in Amagansett. They were wet, grass-stained, and generally filthy.

  When the station opened for business, at six-thirty, Dasch bought four tickets to Manhattan. “Fishing in this neighborhood has been pretty bad lately,” he observed at the ticket window, in a feeble attempt at nonchalance. Not long after, he and his men boarded their train.

  DOUBTS AND BETRAYAL

  After moving out of sight of Dasch and his men, Cullen raced to the Coast Guard station and sounded the alarm. He and other officers quickly formed a search party and returned to the site of the encounter. “While I was standing there,” Cullen recollected recently, “I saw the light from the sub. I could also smell diesel oil. I knew it had to be a sub, so we notified the main Coast Guard station at Napeague. The sub was stuck on a sandbar, and when they revved the engines, the ground where I was standing shook. We didn’t know at the time whether the Germans were coming in or leaving.”

  At daybreak they found the cigarette tin and the bathing suit. After following the trail left by the seabag, a member of the search party poked a stick in the sand and struck something hard. The men dug the four crates of explosives out of the sand. Other members of the party followed footprints and soon found the buried German clothing, including a cap with a swastika sewn on it.

  Sensing the gravity of what had been found, Coast Guard intelligence officers came and immediately took it all to Governor’s Island, near Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, where, at the area Coast Guard headquarters, they opened three of the crates. The fourth, hissing because the TNT inside had been exposed to salt water, was moved to the end of a dock and carefully opened there. At 11:00 A.M. the FBI was notified of the find, and by noon everything the Germans had brought with them, with the exception of their money and the clothes on their backs, had been impounded by the Bureau. Tension remained high, however: No one knew how many men had landed or what their plans were.

  In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, breathlessly informed Attorney General Francis Biddle of the news of the moment. Biddle later wrote, “All of Edgar Hoover’s imaginative and restless energy was stirred into prompt and effective action. His eyes were bright, his jaw set, excitement flickering around the edge of his nostrils. He was determined to catch them all before any sabotage took place.” The FBI worked with the Coast Guard to set up continuous surveillance of the area where the materials had been buried, hoping to apprehend the men when they returned for their stash. The Bureau commandeered a private bungalow on the beach and began interviewing local residents who fit the descriptions given by Cullen. Hoover also imposed a news blackout on the story.

  Meanwhile, Dasch and his team had arrived at Jamaica Station in New York, at about 9:30 A.M., and had immediately bought themselves new sets of clothes. After changing in the men’s room at a restaurant, they threw their old clothes in a trash can and split into two groups, agreeing to meet later. Dasch and Burger registered at the Hotel Governor Clinton—Dasch as George John Davis, and Burger as himself. Heinck and Quirin registered at the Hotel Martinique under their respective aliases. They all ate, washed, and rested.

  The men found themselves completely on their own in the city. Free and loaded with money, they took full advantage of their situation by shopping, carousing in clubs, and seeking out prostitutes. Dasch later wrote, “There was nothing in the way of Nazi surveillance to prevent me from taking [all of the money] I’d been provided with and fading into a happy and luxurious obscurity.”

  But he didn’t. Dasch and Burger began to have frank discussions about their mission and their motivations. Dasch admitted to Burger that he felt he didn’t belong in Germany, and that he had in fact begun planning an escape back to America even as he had worked for Germany’s propaganda division. Burger, for his part, talked of his troubles with the Gestapo. Dasch then told Burger that he “was not George John Davis, the group leader of a gang of saboteurs, but George John Dasch, the man who came here into this country for the opportunity to fight Hitler and his gang in my own fashion.” Upon hearing this, Burger, according to Dasch, “broke out in a crying spell” and confessed to having left a trail of evidence on the beach, adding that he believed the crates of explosives must have been discovered by that time. The mission seemed botched before it had even begun.

  Dasch told Burger it was critical that Dasch contact the FBI, because, he said, should any of the seven men—or even Dasch himself—fall into police hands, “it would be very difficult for me to prove the real reason I came here.” First, however, Dasch and Burger needed to reassure Heinck and Quirin that all was proceeding according to plan. Burger met Heinck and Quirin several times during the next few days and persuaded the two to remain quiet in New York while Dasch supposedly pursued covert contacts for the team.

  On Sunday, June 14, Dasch called the FBI. Agent Dean McWhorter answered, and Dasch introduced himself as Franz Daniel Pastorius, “a German citizen who has arrived in this country only yesterday morning.” Dasch told McWhorter that he had information so important to report that “the only person who should hear it is J. Edgar Hoover.” McWhorter suggested that Dasch come to his office, but Dasch mildly replied, “I, Franz Daniel Pastorius, shall try to get in contact with your Washington office either Thursday or Friday, and you should notify them of this fact.” McWhorter indeed made note of the call, but rather than sending a message to Washington, merely wrote, “This memo is being prepared only for the purpose of recording the call made by [Pastorius].”

  On the morning of June 18, Dasch packed for Washington. He divided the money Kappe had given him into several envelopes bound together with a rubber band and attached a note that said, in part, “Money from German [government] for their purpose, but to be used to fight the Nazis. George J. Dasch, alias George J. Davis, alias Franz Pastorius.” He paid his and Burger’s hotel bills and left
Burger a note.

  Dear Pete:

  Sorry for not have been able to see you before I left. I came to the realization to go to Washington and finish that which we have started so far.

  I’m leaving you, believing that you take good care of yourself and also of the other boys. You may rest assured, that I shall try to straighten everything out to the very best possibility. My bag and clothes I’ll put in your room. Your hotel bill is paid by me, including this day. If anything extraordinary should happen, I’ll get in touch with you directly.

  Until later,

  I’m your sincere friend,

  George

  Dasch arrived in Washington late Thursday and checked into the Mayflower Hotel. After breakfast the following morning he phoned the Information Service of the U.S. government and asked the young woman who answered to explain the difference between the FBI and the Secret Service. “She asked me what the purpose of my visit was,” he later recalled, “and I told her that I had to make a statement of military as well as of political value.” Directed to phone the FBI, Dasch ended up speaking to Agent Duane Traynor, who listened politely as Dasch identified himself as George John Dasch, the leader of a team of eight saboteurs who had just arrived from Germany. Traynor told him to remain in his room so that FBI agents could escort him to the Justice Department.

  Dasch spoke with FBI special agents over the next five days. He told them he wanted to lead them to each of the seven other men and expressed an interest in “having the opportunity to meet your superior, and Mr. Hoover perhaps?” He told the agents all he knew about Kappe. He discussed his experiences after his return to Germany, his dissatisfaction with the Third Reich, and the circumstances of his amphibious return to the United States, including his encounter with John Cullen. He insisted that he had planned his betrayal long before. “This is an idea,” he said, “that is eight months old.”

  Dasch also insisted that Burger was as staunchly anti-Nazi as he, having joined the mission “as a way to get even.” Quirin and Heinck he dismissed as “a couple of Nazis who have only one duty to perform and that is to listen to the command.” He said, “They have not to question the sincerity, truthfulness, and correctness. Their duty is to follow it, otherwise to die.” By the end of the second day of interrogation, working with information provided by Dasch, the FBI had located and apprehended all three members of Dasch’s team.

  Rounding up the second team, which had landed near Jacksonville, Florida, during the night of June 16, was somewhat more difficult. All Dasch knew was that the two teams were to meet in Cincinnati on July 4, but he offered up the white handkerchief as a potential lead. At first he could not remember how to handle the invisible ink, but the FBI lab “broke the hankie,” and agents were dispatched to shadow the contacts named on it. Within days the FBI had found all four members of Kerling’s team, in New York and Chicago, and had them in custody.

  Only after all the other men had been jailed, in New York, did the FBI officially arrest Dasch, on July 3. During his interrogation, Dasch later said, the FBI had told him to plead guilty and not to mention his betrayal—just to put on “the biggest act in the world” and “take the punishment,” for which, after a few months in prison, he would receive a presidential pardon. After his arrest Dasch begged to be jailed with his colleagues, so that they would not suspect he had turned them in. The FBI obliged. Dasch was walked past the cells of his colleagues and then placed in his own cell. He was under the impression that his new friends at the FBI would soon come to release him. But not long after he arrived, he looked out the peephole of his cell and saw a guard reading the New York Daily News: Dasch’s picture was on the front page, accompanied by the headline “CAPTURED NAZI SPY.”

  So it was that two weeks after the Long Island landing, all eight Germans found themselves in custody without having even tried to commit a single act of sabotage. Dasch consoled himself by remembering the FBI’s promise of a presidential pardon.

  HOMELAND DEFENSE

  When the men had all been apprehended, Attorney General Bid-die telephoned President Roosevelt with the good news. Roosevelt was determined that punishment be harsh, to discourage future infiltrations. In a memorandum to Biddle, Roosevelt wrote that the two American citizens among the eight were guilty of high treason and the other six were spies. All, he felt, deserved the death penalty. “I want one thing clearly understood, Francis,” he told Biddle. “I won’t hand them over to any United States Marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus.”

  Meanwhile, Hoover and his aides at the FBI had decided that when the story was made public, Dasch’s surrender and his and Burger’s cooperation would go unmentioned, so as to give the German government the impression that the U.S. authorities were so efficient and so well-informed that additional landings would be a waste of time and manpower.

  With the approval of the President and the Attorney General, Hoover broke the story at a press conference on June 27, making headlines nationwide the following day. “FBI CAPTURES 8 SABOTEURS” read the front page of The New York Times. The story itself, however, was remarkably light on the details of the men’s capture. When pressed on how the FBI had broken the case, Hoover was quick and succinct. “That,” he said, “will have to wait until after the war.” Hoover did, however, reveal exactly which aluminum plants and railway bridges had been targeted, how much explosive material had been found on the beaches, and the fact that two of the men were American citizens.

  Immediately after the arrests the FBI swung into action. Agents swarmed over the Swedish liner Drottningholm, for example, in search of German spies masquerading as refugees. They subjected the baggage and the mail of all 868 Drottningholm passengers to two days of intensive investigation—the most rigorous examination ever of a vessel docked in the Port of New York up to then. They questioned some 250 “enemy” aliens in Altoona, and seized many “powerful short-wave radio transmitters.” When asked if these efforts were in any way connected to the eight Germans, the head of the FBI’s Philadelphia field office responded, “Draw your own conclusions.”

  The public vilified the would-be saboteurs. Life magazine published FBI mug shots of the men, photographs of some of their equipment, and display type reading “THE EIGHT NAZI SABOTEURS SABOTEURS SHOULD BE PUT TO DEATH.” When the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune polled its readers on July 2, only one respondent wanted them set free. An overwhelming majority—1,097 people—were in favor of immediate execution. One reader went so far as to suggest that the men be fed to Gargantua, a giant circus gorilla—and enclosed money for Gargantua’s funeral, writing that the gorilla would “surely … die of such poisonous eating.”

  On June 30 Biddle informed the President that a military tribunal would be preferable to a civil trial for handling the case, because it would be quick and secret and because the death penalty could be imposed with only a two-thirds majority among the judges. Biddle also feared that if the eight defendants were tried in a civil court, the jury might find that no sabotage had been committed, and the men might therefore receive sentences of only two or three years. He dredged up a seventy-six-year-old precedent, dating from the Civil War and involving Lambdin Milligan, a resident of Indiana and an outspoken opponent of Abraham Lincolns. Milligan had been charged with giving aid to and communicating with the enemy and violating the laws of war. He had been tried by a military commission and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court heard the case and unanimously granted him a writ of habeas corpus, citing a citizen’s right to a trial in civil court unless “ordinary law no longer adequately secures public safety and private rights.”

  On July 2, less than a week after the men had been captured, Roosevelt issued a proclamation to the nation.

  Whereas the safety of the United States demands that all enemies who have entered upon the territory of the United States as part of an invasion or predatory incursion … should be promptly tried in accordance with the Law of War; now, therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, … do hereby proclaim that all pers
ons who are subjects, citizens or residents of any nation at war with the United States or who give obedience to or act under the direction of any such nation, and who during time of war enter or attempt to enter the United States or any territory or possession thereof, through coastal or boundary defenses, and are charged with committing or attempting or preparing to commit sabotage, espionage, hostile or warlike acts, or violations of the law of war, shall be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals; and that such persons shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on their behalf, in the courts of the United States.

  The wording of the proclamation was broad enough to cover almost any remotely similar future offense.

  Major General Frank R. McCoy was chosen to preside over the tribunal (it was never to be called a court) that was hastily convened to handle the case. Three other major generals and three brigadier generals completed the commission. Attorney General Biddle was assigned to lead the prosecution, assisted by Major General Myron Cramer, the Army’s judge advocate general. Brigadier General Albert L. Cox was the tribunal’s provost marshal. Among the many lawyers working for Biddle was Lloyd Cutler, who went on to become the White House counsel to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—and who has now been consulted by the Bush administration as it attempts to set up military tribunals.

  Colonel Cassius M. Dowell and Colonel Kenneth C. Royall were ordered to serve as defense lawyers. Dowell, a forty-year Army veteran who had been wounded in World War I, handled a number of legal issues for the Army. Royall, a trial lawyer from North Carolina with a degree from Harvard Law School, had recently been appointed by Army Secretary Henry L. Stimson to head the Army’s legal division in charge of military contracts. The two men came to the conclusion that it was best for their case if Dasch was defended separately, so Colonel Carl Ristine, of the Army Inspector General’s Office, was appointed counsel for Dasch.