Smashing The Nazi Spy Ring!

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 13 (Supplement)

Smashing The Nazi Spy Ring!

TJERE is the inside story of the smashing of the Nazi spy ring 4 How British Secret Service agents co-operated with American G-men to expose the secret lines of communication of the German War Office, how Leon Turrou, ace G-man, worked day and night in disguise. trapped 18 suspccts, and then, his health ruined, retired from the force a broken man . . . make this the greate-st spy drama since the

Glamorous blondes, champagne parties, lavish orgies in luxurious settings, mvs-

terious meeting* in an exclusive nursing home . . . all the ingredients of a Phillip Oppenheini thriller were used by the Nazi spy syndicate.

Kate Moog Buscli, an attractive blonde nurse, was their chief siren. Kate ran a nursing home on Xew York's famous Riverside Drive. The nursing home was mainly a liliml: her patients were the chiefs of the spv ring.

1 hey used her nursing home as a conference house, hut more often a* a "•club" where they could relax and enjoy themselves.

Mrs. Busch is said to have told the prosecution *hat she was about to be installed in * luxurious flat at Washin^-

ton when the spy ring was broken. Usin~ her allure to attract high officials of the Army and -Navy, she had to worm out t ho in important sorvioc sc<?r< w ts. Lavish surroundings, whoopee parties «it i plenty of drink were expected to reduce U.S. officials to a state when they would talk. Turrou speaks seven languages fluently and is a master of disguise.

For nearly four months he lived as a German immigrant. There in the docks and "the low cafes of the waterfront he found contacts. Then Turrou became a commercial traveller, a clerk . . . but always an ardent Xazi anxious to do something for Germany. German agents were ready to use him, <iml so Turrou edged his way into the spy ring.

Slowly he pieced together the evidence that led him to the discovery that there was a huge and efficient system of espionage. Meanwhile the British Secret Service were conducting inquiries on the other side. They were ready to pounce on one, Mrs. Jessie Jordan, of Dundee when new clues came into British possesion. They indicated a link between -Mr*. Jordan and the United Statee. Communication was at once made with the G-men. This exchange of clues it ifi now revealed, led directly to the Berlin office of the German War Ministry.

The two Governments were now working in close co-operation. The British War Office delayed the arrest of Mr« Jordan for nearly four month*. It "Ave time to Leon Turrou to gather "still more spies into his net. The unobtru>j\e Xazi ' was working 1G hours ada v. . . . One slip, one false move . . . arid he won id probably have l>een "bumped off. But Turrou made no mistake.

The arrest of Mrs. Jordan in March w«s the signal for the G-men. Mrs. •lonian received a four years' sentence for espionage.

The G-men worked swiftlv. but not swiftly enough to stop some of the leaders of the American spv syndicate escaping.

But as the result of Turrou'e work an American Federal grand jury indicted 18 persons of espionage.

The blundering methods of this latest German ring betrayed it; some of its local agents had concocted an impossible Oppenheim scheme to lure Colonel H. VV. T. Eglin, commanding the Sixtysecond Coast Artillery (anti-aircraft) at Fort Totten Queens, to the McAlpin Hotel, in the hope of there relieving the colonel of secret documents which he aid not have and never carried! The was abandoned, but not until a tip had put the counter-espionage agents of the Government on the ob In America, investigation and prosecution of espionage cases in peace-time are entrusted to the Department of Justice, with O-men acting as sleuths in co-ope rat ion with 0-2 of the armv. the Office of Naval Intelligence and "other government agents, such as St-ite JJeparaent and Customs men, postal inspectors and the Secret Service. The army and navy bureaus have practically no investigating staffs; the navy has "a

British were fully informed of German operations and concentrations before the Battle of St. Quentin, in 1918, and prior to other battles.

For even though espionage Kerr ices should perform their functions well-nigh Perfectly and they rarely do, for sooner or later all of them blunder— they are only one element, and not a major element, in a nation's complex defence. There is little evidence to support the theory that anv spv ever won a war, ami although today" the se.ret .iirent s field of opportunities ha? increased, his difficult ies Imi e many tunes mult ij.lii'd. I iiu* r lie .-j>y. though he may he always with us—an adven* turer in fact as well as in fiction, a man mean or mighty, a •'srlamour" boy of • secret ■nnrhl — will probably never again rock thrones, or destroy nations, as h» helped to do in years now long gone.