Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

In September 1941, reporter Dillard Stokes was staked outside 1430 Rhode Island Avenue, near Washington, DC. He watched as a few young men unloaded bags into a government mail truck. Meanwhile, Special Prosecutor William Power Maloney was guiding a grand jury that had been impaneled to weigh evidence that Germany had worked with US Congressmen to spread Nazi propaganda throughout the US. Maloney, who had a 400-0 record as a prosecutor, was known for taking on high-stakes, challenging cases.

Evidence indicated that the mail truck at 1430 Rhode Island Avenue was sent on the orders of Republican congressman Hamilton Fish. Fish denied involvement, claiming that it was all the doing of Prescott Dennett, the man who lived at that address. Dennett was the press agent for the Islands for War Debts Committee, which had been founded by Senator Lundeen. Despite Fish’s denial, the missing mail bags turned up in Fish’s office. Stokes investigated the office and found eight mail bags stuffed with anti-Roosevelt speeches in franked envelopes.

One of the places the mail truck had stopped was the DC headquarters of an organization called the America First Committee. Investigators found 10 mailbags there, full of pro-German propaganda in franked envelopes. Maloney summoned George Sylvester Viereck as a witness. Viereck was charged with aiding and abetting Dennett. While prosecutors claimed that Viereck was dangerous, Viereck protested this characterization, insisting that he was merely misunderstood. Fish’s congressional staffer, George Hill, was also called to give evidence before the grand jury. Hill refused to give up the mail bags that were in Fish’s office. He also refused to explain who had deposited $12,000 into his bank account—a huge sum compared to his $2,000 annual salary.

In October 1941, Stokes, while staked outside the America First Committee’s headquarters, witnessed an America First employee burning evidence in a trashcan. Stokes later salvaged the burnt mail and took it to the DOJ. Even though Fish had been subpoenaed, he left for reserve army training without appearing before the grand jury.

Shortly before Hitler started World War II by invading Poland, George Sylvester Viereck traveled to Berlin to solidify his position with the Nazi Foreign Office. He came away from his visit with two contracts that allowed him to register with the US State Department as an author and journalist of the German press services. This essentially provided him with cover so that he could legally work as a Nazi agent, orchestrating Nazi propaganda efforts in the US.

Upon his return to the US, Viereck contacted his friend Senator Lundeen. Viereck made him an offer: Viereck would write speeches and articles for Lundeen, arrange for them to be published, and Lundeen would receive compensation. Lundeen agreed. The material for these speeches and articles came directly from the German Foreign Office.

Viereck then went further: He had discovered a useful loophole. He had Lundeen form a committee—the Islands for War Debts Committee—as an excuse for Lundeen to use his franking privileges nationally rather than just locally. Viereck then started sending propaganda nationwide using Lundeen’s frank. He did this by ghostwriting speeches for Lundeen and having Lundeen deliver these speeches on the senate floor so that they were entered into the Congressional Record. Then he used laundered German funds to print a huge number of copies of these speeches, and used Lundeen’s frank to mail them across the country for free.

Lundeen’s ally, Congressman Hamilton Fish, assisted Viereck in these efforts. Fish referred Viereck to his staffer George Hill, and told Viereck that he could use the mailing list compiled by Fish’s own committee, which contained 100,000 names. Ford Motor Company offices also contributed 300,000 names to the cause. Hill received significant compensation for running this propaganda operation, mailing out Viereck-written propaganda using Lundeen’s frank.

By July 1942, Maloney had won the convictions of George Sylvester Viereck, George Hill, and Laura Ingalls. His federal prosecutors then released another court filing that indicted 28 people and charged them with sedition. While the filing did not name or indict any congressmen, it clearly telegraphed that Maloney was expanding the investigation’s reach, which put pressure on the implicated officials. Without giving names, Maloney described how members of Congress had assisted in the spread of Nazi propaganda throughout the US. These congressmen started to speak out on the floor of Congress, protesting the investigation.

In early 1943, after examining the evidence accumulated by Leon Lewis and his spies over the course of a decade, Maloney released a superseding indictment. This indictment added several more individuals, including George Deatherage.

Then, the US Supreme Court then overturned the decision in the Viereck case. North Dakota senator William Langer proposed that a committee be formed to determine how much to compensate Viereck for the time and expenses he incurred during the trial. Langer was an isolationist who had previously been convicted for taking kickbacks while in office and who had called for the shooting of his successor, declaring martial law in the state and refusing to leave office. Still, he was reelected governor of North Dakota in 1936 and became a US senator in 1940.