ALLEGED SPIES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 15, 28 October 1938, Page 5

ALLEGED SPIES

AVIATION SECRETS SOUGHT. WOMAN’S DRAMATIC EVIDENCE. THE TRIAL IN UNITED STATES. (United Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 9.5 a.m.) NEW YORK, October 26.

After a week of not particularly interesting evidence at the German spy trial the real seriousness of Germany’s espionage activity in the United States was revealed to-day.

Turning from the clumsy, amateurish efforts of Rumrich, one of the accused, the prosecutor began to lay bare the skilled accomplishments of professional operatives of the German intelligence service. A United States Customs Guard told of the seizure of a violin case containing photographs of an experimental United States Army bombing aeroplane from Lonkowski (one of the defendants, who is a fugitive), and Schluter. The ! photographs were accompanied by documents and letters covering vital construction details known only to Army engineers, for retractable landing gear, Seversky floats, wing tank sections, and streamlining. Tlie letters were all signaled “Sex,” which is allegedly Loukowski’s pseudonym. . The Customs Guard’s evidence showed that the letters contained such confidential matter that the United States Government even to-day forbade their being read in open Court. One letter linked an Army captain stationed at a New Jersey post with the German spy circle, apparently working directly with “Von Papen.” The guard said he asked Lonkowski to identify “Von Papen,” and received the reply: “Ho is a German official in Austria now, but I do not know him.” Miss Senta Dewanger, who has been in the protective custody of Federal agents since last summer, said she was a native of Germany, but had been a naturalised American citizen for three years. She appeared nervous, hut her prettiness seemed to bear out the Government’s contention that the liquor store she operated near Long Island airports became a centre for Army officers’ gatherings, from which German agents obtained important aviation secrets.

This witness gave evidence that Lonkowski had rooms in her house, at which he maintained a chemical and photographic laboratory. He received among his visitors three of the accused —Voss, Griebl and Schluter. There was a dramatic moment when Miss Dewanger said: “Once, when Mrs Lonkowski had had too n#uch drink, she boasted that the German Government paid for the various luxuries they had. The couple always seemed well supplied with money.” Senta Dewanger added that she ■often brought parcels from Lonkowski to Griebl and Schluter. She said Voss (who is accused of stealing aeroplane plans, while working in an American factory) frequently brought small packages to Lonkowski. It was revealed later that Lonkowski was allowed to escape because the Customs officials did not realise the importance of their discoveries at the time. Gunther Rumrich, returning to the stand, admitted that his brother Hans had been arrested in Czechoslovakia as a German spy, after British and American sources had warned the Czech authorities.

Early this month Mr Lamar Hardy, in opening his address as attorney to the jury at the trial of Johanna Hofmann, Voss, and Erich Glaser, German spy suspects, said: “This conspiracy was conceived, and directed from Germany,” and disclosed sensationally, first, a plot by German spies to forge President Roosevelt’s signature on White House stationery in an attempt to obtain vital secrets regarding American aircraft carriers; secondly, a boast by Berlin intelligence chiefs that they had obtained blueprints of certain American destroyers and found defects of construction; thirdly, the rifling of trans-Atlantic mail pouches on German ships, and the opening of an envelope containing a Soviet armament contract with the Bethlehem Steel Corporation; fourthly, a display of 1000-dollar notes supposed to be destined for tlie payment of informers on periscope designs; fifthly, a plan to open a house in Washington where officers of tho army and navy would be entertained with “wine, women and song.” The fourteen others who were indicted wore safe in Germany. Gunther Rumrich is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty.