GERMAN SPIES ON TRIAL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21179, 28 October 1938, Page 9

GERMAN SPIES ON TRIAL

QUEST OF AVIATION SECRETS Extensive Espionage Exposed Strong Indictment of Nazis Dramatic Moment in Court United Press Association—By Elecwto Telegraph—Copyright (Received October 27, 7.45 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 26. After weeks of not particularly interesting testimony at the German spy trial, the real seriousness of the Reich’s espionage activity In the United States was revealed to-day. Turning from ths clumsy amateurish efforts of Gunther Rumrich, the Prosecutor began to lay bare the skilled accomplishments of the professional operatives in the German Intelligence Service. A United States Custom’s Guard related -the seizure of a violin case containing photographs of an experimental United States army bombing plane, from Lonkowski fugitive defendant and Schlueter. The photographs were accompanied by documents and letters covering vital construction details, known only to army engineers, for retractable landing gear, sever sky floats, wing-tank sections and streamlining. The letters were all signed “Sex,” allegedly Lonkowski’s alias. Army Officers Implicated The Customs Guard’s testimony showed that the letters contained such confidential matter that the United States, even to-day, forbid them being read in open court. One epistle linked an army captain, stationed in a New Jersey post, with a German spy circle, apparently working directly with "Von Papen.” The Guard said he asked Lonkowski to identify Von Papen, and received the reply: “He is a German official in Austria now, but I do not know him.” Dramatic Disclosures 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 become a naturalised American citizen three years ago.

Miss Dewanger appeared nervous, but her prettiness seemed to bear out the Government’s contention that a liquor store, which she operated in the vicinity of Long Island airports, became the centre of army officers’ gatherings from which the German operatives obtained important aviation secrets. Witness testified that Lenkowski had rooms in her house at which he maintained a chemical and photographic laboratory. He received among his visitors Voss. Griebl and Schluter. Paid by Germany There was a dramatic moment when Miss Dewanger said: "Once when Mrs Lonkowski had too much drink she boasted that the German Government pail for 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 Czecho-slovakia as a Germany 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 cn 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 the payment of informers on periscope designs; fifthly, a plan to open a house in Washington where officers of the army and navy would be entertained with “wine, women and song.” The fourteen others who were indicted were safe in Germany. Gunther Rumrich is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty.