Saboteurs

by Michael Dobbs

  The statement soon became too much for a single person to handle, so a team of six stenographers was assembled, each of them taking dictation for an hour and then typing up the transcript, with multiple carbons. The copies were immediately distributed to the FBI officials responsible for tracking down the suspected saboteurs. Regular summaries of what Dasch was saying were also rushed to Hoover in his fifth-floor office.

  By the time he got back from lunch, Hoover had decided that Dasch, alias Davis, alias “Franz V. Postoreous,” held the key to the “whole affair.” He was strengthened in this conviction by a surreptitious search of Dasch’s hotel room by agents of the Washington field office. It took the agents just a few seconds to pick the lock on his briefcase and find the thick wads of fifty-dollar bills wrapped up in manila envelopes. They then went through the rest of his belongings, noting that they all appeared “brand new.”26 They were particularly intrigued by a pair of “small white metal emblems, about the size of a fifty-cent piece, which were cut in the shape of porcupines.” One of the agents made a pencil tracing of the porcupines—a memento from Dasch’s U-202 trip—carefully replacing them in the pin tray where Dasch had left them.

  Marshaling his troops like a military commander, Hoover called his assistant, Eugene Connelley, in New York at 2:36 and again at 3:57 to go over the latest developments. He reported that “Postoreous” was a “rather temperamental individual” who had nevertheless “taken a shine” to Agent Traynor, and was being permitted to tell his story in his own way.27 He then reprimanded the New York office for failing to relay the message from Dasch the previous Sunday announcing that he was on his way to Washington. What disturbed Hoover most was the thought that Dasch “might have been considered crazy here and brushed off,” in which case— horror of bureaucratic horrors—he might now be meeting with some rival agency, such as the Secret Service, or army or navy intelligence. He demanded a full investigation.

  The next step, Hoover told Connelley, was to establish definitively that the man now talking to Traynor in room 2248 was the same man who accosted the Coast Guard patrol on Amagansett Beach.

  JOHN CULLEN’S life had been turned upside down since his mysterious encounter on Amagansett Beach. At first everybody had praised him for reporting the incident promptly, and turning in the money given to him as a bribe. But later, FBI agents had raised doubts about his story and kept watch over him day and night. They behaved as if he was somehow in league with the men on the beach. After failing to catch him in an obvious contradiction, they grudgingly accepted his version of events.

  As reports flooded in of suspected German spies, the agents drove Cullen around German-inhabited areas of Long Island and New York to see if he could spot the man who had tried to bribe him. Sometimes, he would sit for hours in a car, waiting for a suspect to walk out of an apartment building or a restaurant.28 But the search proved fruitless.

  On Friday afternoon, Cullen was taken to the FBI office in New York to meet with Connelley and examine a photograph album containing twenty-two pictures of middle-aged men of vaguely similar appearance. Did any of the pictures look familiar, Connelley wanted to know. Cullen narrowed the selection down to three, and then stared intently at an FBI photograph of Dasch, dressed in a suit and tie. He noted the light streak of gray in the man’s hair, and the thin face.

  “I don’t think this is him, but it’s the best likeness I have seen so far,” he told Connelley finally.29

  It was hardly a positive identification, but it was enough for Connelley, who excitedly reported the news to Hoover.

  HERBIE HAUPT arrived at Chicago’s Union Station around three o’clock on Friday afternoon, after a thirty-hour train ride from Jacksonville via Cincinnati, blissfully unaware that at that very moment one of his companions was meeting with the FBI. It was good to be home. Prior to traveling around the world, he had lived in Chicago for sixteen years, most of his life. He had gone to school in the German-inhabited neighborhoods of the North Side, goose-stepped down Western Avenue with other Bund supporters, got his first job as a messenger boy with the Chicago office of Western Union, and flirted with girls along the shore of Lake Michigan.

  Both the city and his own fortunes had changed dramatically in the year he had been away. When he left Chicago in July 1941 in a friend’s rickety 1934 Chevrolet on what promised to be the adventure of his life, he had just $80 in his pocket. America was still at peace. He was returning to a city at war in smart new clothes with a gold watch around his wrist and $10,000 packed away in his suitcase. Headlines about the arrests of Nazi sympathizers in the German-American community stared out at him from newspaper stands.

  In many ways, Haupt was the accidental saboteur. Had it not been for a series of chance occurrences, beginning with his girlfriend getting pregnant and Haupt fleeing to Mexico to avoid getting married, he would never have ended up in Germany. Once there, he quickly decided he did not like it very much. Athletic and good-looking, with wavy black hair that he liked to smear with brilliantine, he was a “typical playboy type,” in Burger’s phrase.30 He loved having fun, a commodity in somewhat short supply in Nazi Germany. For the twenty-two-year-old Haupt, Operation Pastorius was a ticket back to the pleasant, carefree life he had once led.

  From the railroad station, he took a cab to the home of his uncle, Walter Froehling, at 3643 North Whipple Street, arriving around 4 p.m. In Berlin, Haupt had agreed with Kappe that he would use Froehling as a mail drop and point of contact in Chicago.31 The Froehlings lived in a two-room apartment on the ground floor of a two-story detached house, with a small garden out back. Froehling’s wife, Lucille, answered the door. She was amazed to see Herbie. The last time anyone had heard from him, he was in Japan, working on some farm. He told the Froehlings he had come to their house first because he did not want to give his mother too much of a shock.

  His parents would have to come over right away, Lucille and Walter decided. To cushion the surprise, Walter Froehling invented a cover story. He telephoned Herbie’s mother and told her his wife was ill and needed help. When Erna Haupt arrived, she was escorted into the bedroom by a smiling, perfectly healthy Lucille. Her son was waiting behind the door.

  “Herbie, where have you been?” she gasped.32

  “Germany.”

  “How on earth did you get here from Germany?”

  “Well, I’m back” was all he would say.

  Suddenly she felt faint, almost “paralyzed.” She had to sit down and rest. A few minutes later, Herbie talked about coming back on “a sub.” The story sounded unbelievable, but she was so pleased to see him she did not press him on the details. She could not get over how well he looked, and what fine clothes he was wearing. “I made some money in Germany,” he explained.

  Hans Haupt showed up a couple of hours later, after returning home to find a note from his wife explaining where she had gone. He arrived as everybody was sitting down to dinner. “What would you say if Herbie were here?” Erna asked him softly, putting her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

  “Herbie?”

  As the elder Haupt walked closer to the table, grabbing a chair for support, his son came out of the bedroom. Hans was so startled he “didn’t know what to think.” It was not until after supper, while his wife helped Lucille Froehling put the children to bed, that he finally confronted his son. “Now, Herbie, tell me from the beginning how you left and how you returned.”33

  It was a long story, but Herbie launched into it with enthusiasm. He had left Chicago on June 16, 1941, with a German-American friend, Wolfgang Wergin. At first they planned to spend a few weeks south of the border and then come back. But their money ran out after a week in Mexico City. After various adventures, they ran into a German-Canadian trapper named Joseph Schmidt, who suggested a way out of their predicament. The German consulate in Mexico City was recruiting laborers for a German-run “monastery” in Japan, Germany’s Axis ally, and would pay their fare to Japan. Together with a dozen other young Germans, including Schmidt,
Haupt and Wergin set sail for Japan on July 26.

  The “monastery” turned out to be a labor camp run by German monks, with no sanitation and harsh working conditions. The two Chicago boys took one look at it and left for Tokyo, where they again threw themselves at the mercy of the German consulate. They were told that if they did not want to work in the monastery, they could sign on as seamen on a German freighter that would soon be sailing to Europe via Cape Horn. This seemed like the more attractive alternative, although they wondered if they had made the right choice as they rounded the Cape. Hundred-foot waves towered over the 8,000-ton freighter, threatening to crush it to pieces. Wergin later recalled that the boat would “go up so high, half of it would be out of the water, the propeller would spin around like crazy, and then it would crash down. We were scared. You would have to be an idiot not to be scared.”34

  The 20,000-mile trip took 107 days. They reached the French port of Bordeaux, then under German control, on December 11, the day Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. The Gestapo could not decide whether they were American or German and hauled them in for numerous interrogations, before eventually permitting them to visit their relatives. Herbie had a grandmother in the Baltic port of Stettin; Wolfgang’s family was from Königsberg in East Prussia, near the border with the Soviet Union.

  Herbie gave his father and uncle a somewhat romanticized account of his recruitment for intelligence work and his trip back to the United States on board a U-boat. He claimed—falsely—that they had sunk several ships on the way across. By now, Hans and Walter were beginning to think that Herbie really had been in Germany. He was using German expressions he had never used before, and seemed to know all about their relatives back home. Their remaining doubts vanished when he produced a green zipper bag with nearly $10,000 concealed beneath a false bottom, and asked his uncle to keep it somewhere safe. When they asked Herbie how he got the money, he replied, “The German Government.”35

  It was nearly eleven o’clock at night, and everyone was tired. Herbie’s joy at seeing his parents was turning to testiness. He became “awfully nervous” when they mentioned that the FBI had been looking for him because he had failed to report for the draft.

  “All you do is talk and talk,” he snapped.36 “Leave me alone for a while.”

  The Haupts took their son home, driving back toward the Loop to their apartment on North Fremont Street. As Erna prepared a bed for Herbie on the couch, he produced more wads of bills from his money belt. He counted out the money—it came to around $3,600—and transferred it to an envelope, which he hid under the rug in his parents’ bedroom.

  Suddenly, Erna and Hans Haupt felt very scared.37

  IN NEW YORK, Burger was trying to keep Heinck and Quirin from worrying too much about Dasch. The best distraction, he decided, was the whorehouse. Around 6 p.m. on Friday, he met the two men on the street near their lodgings, took them out for a meal, and then brought them back to his room at the Governor Clinton. From there, he telephoned Frankie, their friend from the Swing Club, who gave him an address on Eighty-sixth Street.

  While Burger was in the bathroom shaving and taking a shower, he could see Heinck in the mirror rummaging through the drawer of his desk and finding a note from Dasch. Burger was alarmed to see Heinck read the letter, show it to Quirin, and then replace it in the drawer. Although the note made no mention of Dasch’s intention to betray Operation Pastorius, it did talk about going to Washington “to straighten everything out.” Afraid that Quirin and Heinck would do him some “bodily harm,” Burger quickly finished dressing and hustled them out of the hotel. 38 Much to his relief, neither of them mentioned the note.

  Instead, they piled into a taxicab and headed uptown to Eighty-sixth Street. Quirin and Heinck were still very suspicious of Dasch, and guessed he might have “run out” on them, but they were also looking forward to their night on the town.39 As promised, there were three girls waiting for them, supervised by a madam named Anna. They stayed until three o’clock in the morning.

  IN WASHINGTON, meanwhile, Dasch was still talking to Traynor, pausing only for a light supper of clam chowder, ham salad, and milk. By now, he was almost on first-name terms with his interrogator.40 He demonstrated his familiarity with American popular culture by addressing Traynor as “Pie,” after the great third baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The FBI man reciprocated by calling him “George.” He was confident he would eventually extract enough information from Dasch to track down his accomplices.

  The agents poring over the typewritten transcripts from room 2248 were still frustrated by the gaping holes in Dasch’s statement. He had mentioned a second group of saboteurs who were meant to land in Florida around June 16, but did not provide a more precise location. He produced a handkerchief on which he had written a list of contacts in invisible ink, but he claimed to have forgotten the chemical needed to bring out the names. He talked about a rendezvous with the other saboteurs planned for July 4, but refused to say where it would take place.

  Hoover suspected Dasch of trying to use his information as a bargaining chip, that he was hoping to be seen by the FBI as the indispensable go-between for the arrest of the other saboteurs. To some extent, the FBI director was prepared to play along. Talking with Connelley by phone that evening, he said he would like to use Dasch as “a decoy” for unraveling the entire plot.41 If the FBI could arrest the other saboteurs and hold them incommunicado, they might be able to grab further teams of agents sent over from Germany. They would also have a channel for feeding false information to Berlin.

  On the other hand, Hoover also feared that the FBI would be robbed of much of the credit for rounding up the saboteurs if news of the landings leaked out prematurely. An Associated Press reporter had already called to check a rumor about the arrest of four German agents who had landed in Florida. At first, Hoover was inclined to dismiss the story: he knew very well that there had been no arrests, at least not by the FBI. But gradually his bureaucratic paranoia got the better of him. Perhaps the navy or some other government agency had made the arrests and were waiting for the right moment to “flamboyantly announce” the nabbing of Nazi agents. It would make the FBI look bad.

  By 11:30 p.m. on Friday, after more than twelve hours of nonstop talking, Dasch was hoarse and exhausted. He asked Traynor to go back to the hotel. He had one final nugget of information to pass on before they broke off for the night: his friend Peter Burger was staying in room 1421 of the Governor Clinton Hotel in New York.42 While Dasch was unable to provide the exact whereabouts of the other two members of his group, he was confident that Burger would certainly know how to find them.

  It was the break the FBI had been waiting for. With this information, they should be able to round up the remaining members of group number one, and focus their efforts on hunting down group number two. Instructions were issued to place Burger under surveillance, in the hope that he would lead FBI agents to Quirin and Heinck.

  Soon after midnight, Traynor escorted Dasch back to the Mayflower, persuading him that it would be best if he spent the night with him in his room. Traynor would sleep in the spare bed. FBI agents had already commandeered the adjoining room, and had the entire hotel under observation. They had vetted anybody with the slightest connection with Dasch, including hotel guests who checked in around the same time. An FBI report noted that one of these guests acted “extremely nervously,” pacing up and down the lobby.43 The agents went through his luggage and listened to his conversations, losing interest only when it became clear he had come to Washington “for the purpose of obtaining a Federal position.”

  Before retiring to bed, Dasch had one more thing to show his new friend “Pie.” He pulled his briefcase from under his bed, unlocked it, and took out three large envelopes, each crammed with more money than the agent had seen in his life.

  Traynor did his best to feign surprise.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE INVADERS (JUNE 20–22)

  THE FBI HAD still not put a ta
il on Peter Burger when he stumbled back to his room at the Governor Clinton Hotel at three o’clock on Saturday morning after what he later described as a meeting with “some chance girl acquaintances.” 1 But they arrived in force soon after breakfast, establishing a base of operations in the neighboring room. Since there was still no sound from Burger by 11:30 a.m., the agents made what was known in police jargon as “a mistake of identity call” to his room: when the subject answers, tell him you have dialed the wrong number.2

  Five minutes later, Assistant Director Connelley reported to Washington that Burger was just getting up, apparently as a result of the FBI call. Agents also intercepted the letter that Dasch wrote to Burger from Washington the previous day, telling him to look after “the boys.” They allowed Burger to receive the letter, calculating that it would encourage him to meet with Quirin and Heinck.

  Burger finally emerged from his room at 2:40 p.m. Five FBI agents followed him as he turned right on Seventh Avenue, cutting across to Fifth Avenue along Thirty-third Street. He then walked north on Fifth Avenue for eight blocks until he reached the Rogers Peet clothing store, where he stood in the doorway, as if waiting for someone. Sure enough, he was soon joined by two other men: one slender with a long face and prominent nose, the other swarthy with a large scar running across his forehead. After picking up some packages from the clothing store, the three men entered a restaurant, where they ate a meal. As they emerged from the restaurant, FBI agents observed them shaking hands with each other and saying goodbye.