The U.S., unaccustomed to dealing with the enemy within, stumbled all over its feet last week in attempting to put a handful of would-be Nazi saboteurs on trial.
Hitler may well have guffawed at the idea of no less than seven generals of the U.S. Army being detailed to decide the fate of eight of his lowly underlings. But the generals who were to try the eight Nazis whom U-boats jettisoned on U.S. beaches did not see the joke.
If the trial were to disclose any particularly clever detective methods used by the FBI in apprehending the eight Nazis, other saboteurs might be harder to catch. That much was true. But the generals developed a consuming passion for Star Chamber secrecy. Even before the trial began, no one in the Department of Justice building was allowed to admit officially that anything was going on.
The Generals refused the request of Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War Information, that one representative of each of the three big press associations be allowed to attend the trial if their copy were censored. They refused to let anyone from the Office of War Information prepare a digest of the proceedings.
Henry Paynter of OWI, trying to see Major General Frank R. McCoy, head of the trial commission, went to the floor where the trial was to be held. He was brushed off. He could not even get a message to the General. When Attorney General Biddle, on behalf of Elmer Davis, sent a note saying that Paynter wished to see the General, McCoy did not deign to answer. A second note from the Attorney General brought a terse answer: the General had nothing to say.
In the end Elmer Davis, to save the prestige of OWI from total destruction, had to go to Franklin Roosevelt. There he and the Secretary of War argued whether it was democratic to keep any more of a trial secret than national safety required. In the end the President of the U.S. solemnly handed down a compromise.
Thereafter General McCoy handed out two communiques a day solemnly announcing that the trial was going on-and not much more. He allowed the Army Signal Corps to take photographs and silent movies. The final act of the comedy occurred when Elmer Davis finally got eleven reporters admitted to the court room. The newshawks marched in, looked around, asked the court's provost marshal questions in an undertone. For 15 minutes the defendants, the lawyers, the seven judges sat doing nothing—except to let the representatives of the public look.
At the end of the trial's first week came the first official admission of a story long circulated in Washington and New York: that a Coast Guardsman had surprised the four saboteurs who landed on Long Island's Amagansett Beach; that, after they tried to bribe him into silence, he gave the alarm which put the FBI on the saboteurs' trail. The Coast Guardsman, young, dimpled Coxswain Jack Culley, (see cut) told his story at the trial.
Ten lawyers handled the prosecution, four the defense. Significantly, one of the saboteurs (gaunt George John Dasch) had separate counsel, leading to the speculation that he had turned state's evidence. As the evidence kept pouring in, General McCoy grew almost garrulous. He said it would be a long trial.
Meanwhile the FBI arrested eight men and six women who had aided the saboteurs. Ten of them were U.S. citizens.
Other encounters last week with the enemy within: