Chapter II THE PASSPORT FRAUDS

Chapter II THE PASSPORT FRAUDS Passport control is an outgrowth of the World War. Before the war, it was possible to travel all over the world without a passport; it was only the careful traveler who availed himself of this means of personal identification. He carried it for his own convenience, and foreign gov- ernments rarely used it to check up on him. Consequently, in the United States obtaining a passport was a simple matter which resolved itself into filling out an application form signed by two witnesses of American nationality who certified that they knew the applicant to be an American citizen. The passport carried a rough general descrip- tion of the bearer but no photograph. To prevent the return of reserv- ists to the Central Powers the Allies insisted on every traveler's carry- ing a passport. Passports were examined at all Allied ports; and, as the cordon tightened, every merchant vessel was stopped at sea by patrols and searched for suspects. Von Papen and Boy-Ed were therefore immediately faced with the problem of securing neutral passports for the thousands of reservists who were pouring in on them. Since the peacetime passport regula- tions remained in force for some time, the task was at first a simple one; but soon the Government tightened its rules; the applications were closely scrutinized and checked; and more and more informa- tion was required on the instrument, such as the names of the coun- tries the holder intended visiting. A photograph was also added to the requirements. It became necessary, therefore, for the two Attaches to set up a special organization for supplying passports. They realized, too, that the difficulties were now such that they would have to aban- don sending back reservists on a wholesale scale, and instead would have to concentrate on the officers, of whom there were from 800 to 1,000 scattered through North and South America and who, as they THE PASSPORT FRAUDS II were sent on by the various German Consulates, were flowing into New York in a steady stream. Hans von Wedell, a reserve officer who had many connections in New York and who knew the city well, having both practiced law there and served as a newspaper reporter, was designated to head the organization. Furthermore, he had already made a trip to Germany as a courier for von Bernstorff, and while there had discussed the reservist question with his uncle, Count Botho von Wedell, a Foreign Office official in Berlin. When approached by von Papen, von Wedell eagerly undertook the task. He opened up an office in Bridge Street and then set about acquir- ing neutral passports. German-Americans in Yorkville and Hoboken, bums on the East Side, and longshoremen and sailors of Spanish, Scan- dinavian, or other neutral nationality, who frequented the water front, were his prey. For the $io to $25 he offered them they delivered to him the passports he had persuaded them to apply for in their own names. For a time von Wedell got along famously. The two Attaches sent a steady stream of reserve officers to him, and with the false neutral pass- ports furnished by him they were successfully sent on their way to Scandinavian, Dutch, and Italian ports. His bills were paid by Captain von Papen. Proof of this was revealed later when the Attache's check books were seized by the British at Falmouth while he was en route home after being recalled. Soon, however, von Wedell was in difficulties; some of his men started blackmailing him. This was followed up by the disturbing news that the Department of Justice was on his trail. He was an American citizen, and as a lawyer he knew the penalties ahead of him. Hence, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, he fled to Cuba; but not, however, before sending von Bernstorff the following letter, dated December 26, 1914, from the Hotel St. George, Nyack-on- Hudson, which clearly implicated von Papen and his assistant, von Igel: 12 THE ENEMY WITHIN His Excellency The Imperial German Ambassador Count von Bernstorff Washington, D.C. Your Excellency: Allow me most obediently to put before you the following facts: It seems that an attempt has been made to produce the impression upon you that I prematurely abandoned my post, in New York. That is not true. I — My work was done. At my departure I left the service, well organized and worked out to its minutest details, in the hands of my successor, Mr. Carl Ruroede, picked out by myself, and, despite many warnings, still tarried for several days in New York in order to give him the necessary final direc- tions and in order to hold in check the blackmailers thrown on my hands by the German officers until after the passage of my travelers through Gibraltar; in which I succeeded. Mr. Ruroede will testify to you that without my suitable preliminary labors, in which I left no conceivable means untried and in which I took not the slightest consideration of my personal weal or woe, it would be impossible for him, as well as for Mr. von Papen, to for- ward officers and "aspirants" in any number whatever, to Europe. This merit I lay claim to and the occurrences of the last days have unfortunately compelled me, out of sheer self-respect, to emphasize this to your Excellency. II — The motives which induced me to leave New York and which, to my astonishment, were not communicated to you, are the following: 1. I knew that the State Department had, for three weeks, withheld a passport application forged by me. Why? 2. Ten days before my departure I learnt from a telegram sent me by Mr. von Papen, which stirred me up very much, and further through the omission of a cable, that Dr. Stark had fallen into the hands of the English. That gentleman's forged papers were liable to come back any day and could, owing chiefly to his lack of caution, easily be traced back to me. 3. Officers and aspirants of the class which I had to forward over, namely the people, saddled me with a lot of criminals and Jjlackmailers, whose eventual revelations were liable to bring about any day the explosion of the bomb. 4. Mr. von Papen had repeatedly urgently ordered me to hide myself. 5. Mr. Igel had told me I was taking the matter altogether too lightly and ought to — for God's sake — disappear. 6. My counsel . . . had advised me to hastily quit New York, inasmuch as a local detective agency was ordered to go after the passport forgeries. THE PASSPORT FRAUDS I3 7. It had become clear to me that eventual arrest might yet injure the worthy undertaking and that my disappearance would probably put a stop to all investigation in this direction. How urgent it was for me to go away is shown by the fact that, two days after my departure, detectives, who had followed up my telephone calls, hunted up my wife's harmless and unsuspecting cousin in Brooklyn, and subjected her to an interrogatory. Mr. von Papen and Mr. Albert have told my wife that I forced myself forward to do this work. That is not true. When I, in Berlin, for the first time heard of this commission, I objected to going and represented to the gentleman that my entire livelihood which I had created for myself in America by six years of labor was at stake therein. I have no other means, and although Mr. Albert told my wife my practice was not worth talking about, it sufficed, nevertheless, to decently support myself and wife and to build my future on. I have finally, at the suasion of Count Wedell, under- taken it, ready to sacrifice my future and that of my wife. I have, in order to reach my goal, despite infinite difficulties, destroyed everything that I built up here for myself and my wife. I have perhaps sometimes been awkward, but always full of good will, and I now travel back to Germany with the consciousness of having done my duty as well as I understood it, and of having accomplished my task. With expressions of the most exquisite consideration, I am your Excellency, Very respectfully, Hans Adam von Wedell Carl Ruroede, a former senior clerk in Oelrichs and Company, re- ferred to in the above letter, whom von Wedell had carefully groomed to take his place, was not long left in peace. Albert G. Adams, an agent of the Department of Justice, cleverly disguised as a pro- German Bowery tough, managed to enroll himself as one of Ruroede's agents in obtaining fake passports. They bargained over the price and finally agreed on $20 each for passports of native-born Americans and $30 each for passports of naturalized citizens — the higher price was fixed for the latter as the application requirements were more severe. A few days later Adams dashed into Ruroede's office brandishing four passports. Ruroede expressed satisfaction, as indeed he should have; for they were perfect, having been made out by the State Depart- ment at the special request of the Department of Justice. 14 THE ENEMY WITHIN "But what about the photographs ?" said Adams with a worried look, after Ruroede had got through examining them. "Oh! That's simple," replied Ruroede; "watch me." At this, Ruroede took one of the passports, examined it carefully, then from a stack of passport photographs picked out one of a reservist officer whose description fitted the one shown on the instrument. Next he moistened this photograph, applied some mucilage, and then stuck it over the photograph on the passport, which had been similarly dampened. He then turned the paper over, laid it on a cloth, and with a dull-pointed bone knitting needle traced out the lettering on the seal. "When this dries," said Ruroede with a triumphant smile, "the new photograph will bear the imprint of the United States seal and Arthur Sachse, Reserve Lieutenant in the German Army, will have become Howard Paul Wright, bearer of passport Number 45573." The unfortunate Ruroede little knew that Howard Paul Wright happened to be a Department of Justice agent. It was not difficult for Adams to discover that the reservists who had received the four passports furnished by him, under the names of Howard Paul Wright, Peter Hansen, Stanley F. Martin, and Herbert S. Wilson, were to sail on the S.S. Bergensfjord, a Norwegian liner, bound for Bergen, Norway. On January 2, 191 5, as soon as they received word that Ruroede had been arrested, four agents of the Department of Justice hurried to the Barge Office and boarded a revenue cutter, on which they overtook the Bergensfjord a few minutes after it had sailed. The ship was or- dered to heave to. All the male passengers on board were lined up, and the four bearers of the passports were picked out. After a short interrogation they realized that they had been trapped, and identified themselves as Sachse, Meyer, Wegener, and MuUer, reservists home- ward bound to the Fatherland. On the same day, while Department of Justice agents were gathering up the papers in Ruroede's office at 11 Bridge Street, a German walked in bearing a letter of introduction from von Papen and introduced himself as Wolfram von Knorr, Captain of Cruiser, who up to the out- break of war had been Naval Attache in Tokio. Cleverly drawn out in conversation by Joseph A. Baker, Assistant Agent in Charge of the THE PASSPORT FRAUDS I5 Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York, von Knorr guilelessly admitted that von Papen had sent him over to get a passport. He v^as allow^ed to depart; and it was only the next day, vv^hen he read the morning paper, that he realized he had been questioned by a Depart- ment of Justice agent. Von Knorr also unw^ittingly supplied additional proof of von Papen's complicity in Ruroede's activities. Expert examination showed that the typewriter used in writing the letter of introduction was the same one employed in typing the lists of names and descriptions of reservists which were found in Ruroede's office. Faced with the facts, Ruroede confessed. He was sentenced to three years in Atlanta prison. The four reservists, advancing the plea that they had accepted the passports out of patriotism, were fined $200 each. There was still, however, one more act to the drama. The luckless von Wedell had returned from Cuba and was on the Bergensfjord at the time of the search. This came out in Ruroede's confession. The Department of Justice had missed him in the line-up; but there was still the wireless. On January 11, 191 5, the boarding officer of a British patrol boat took Rosato Sprio, a Mexican, off the Bergensfjord, Sprio admitted after close interrogation that he was Hans von Wedell, an American citizen. The British patrol boat never made port. She struck a German mine, and von Wedell went to the bottom with her. The attitude of official Germany to these passport frauds can be gauged from coded telegram Number 39 which passed between Wash- ington and Berlin, on January 7, 1915 : In consequence of the instructions sent to me by private letter from the [ ? ] and officially to Herr Papen to send home the largest possible number of German officers, it was necessary to furnish the latter with false passports, in regard to which I had, in the circumstances above referred to, no thought of objection. Details have unfortunately become known to public opinion and the American Government started an investigation, in the course of which there is no reason to fear that the Embassy will be compromised. State De- partment informed me definitely that this Government attached no impor- tance to the rumors that the Embassy had been concerned. But in regard to l6 THE ENEMY WITHIN this question, a strong difference of opinion has arisen between Consul General Falcke and me. The Consul General considered himself bound to raise pedantic objections, while I only wanted to give weight to the point of view that it was incumbent on Hcrr Papen to see that as many officers as possible were provided. I have already submitted to your Excellency part of the correspondence with the Consul General. The rest of the papers are to follow as soon as the matter has been settled. Bernstorff Fully agreeing with von Bernstorff in his estimate of Consul General Falcke, Zimmermann replied on January ii, 1915: Intelligence has reached us from private sources which raises doubts as to whether the Consulate General at New York is at present in competent hands. Please acquaint me with your views by telegraph. Von Bernstorff then promptly replied on January 12, 1915, suggest- ing the transfer of Falcke: Unfortunately I have to confirm the news which has reached Your Ex- cellency. As I have informed Your Excellency in my dispatches . . . various differences of opinion have arisen between Falcke and me. He always ended by yielding to my direct orders, and I have exerted myself to the utmost to avoid a conflict at this juncture. All the time I took into account the fact that it was all but impossible for Falcke to travel from here to Europe. Perhaps he could be transferred to a South American post Albert already sees to many matters which ordinarily the Consul General would have dealt with because we had to take Falcke's passive resistance into account. The arrest of Ruroede did not put an end to the passport frauds, though their execution became much more difficult. Von Papen and Boy-Ed continued to hire men to secure passports for them. One of the latter's men, Richard Peter Stegler, a reservist, was arrested in Feb- ruary 1915. He admitted that on instructions from Boy-Ed he had obtained the birth certificate of Richard Madden, of Hoboken, and had used it to obtain an American passport for which he paid Madden $100. Both of them were sentenced to a term in prison. Not only reservists but also spies were sent over to Europe with these THE PASSPORT FRAUDS I7 false passports. Several of those recruited and sent over by Boy-Ed were caught by the British. Of them, Karl Lody, was shot in the Tower of London, and Kuepferle committed suicide in Brixton Prison. When such of the reservists as managed to get across the Atlantic reached Germany, their passports were carefully collected by the Ger- man Secret Service and were again used to send spies from Germany into England, France, and Russia — fully 90 per cent of the spies who were sent out from the various German spy bases were equipped with neutral passports. As the war progressed, the German Secret Service became more scientific; they copied minutely the texture of the paper, the seals, and even the watermark, and made up passports in Germany which would have defied expert examination. Such, however, were not available to von Papen and Boy-Ed, who had to continue to rely on the ones obtained by von Wedell and Ruroede. But the Department of Justice steadily increased its vigilance, and the State Department changed the form of the passport and made the application requirements more severe. These measures rapidly reduced the number of passport frauds. The passport control of the Allies, too, became more efficient. But during the first few months of the war only von Papen and Boy-Ed can tell how many hundreds of false passports they made use of.