ESPIONAGE CHARGES

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIV, Issue 22671, 26 August 1943, Page 5

ESPIONAGE CHARGES

Three Arrests Made (7.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON. Aug. 24. The arrest of Theresa Behrens, the German-Hungarian secretary of -the International Centre of the Y.W.C.A., Grace Buchanan-Dineen and Dr. Fred William Thomas on charges of espionage is announced by the Justice Department. They are all of Detroit. The accused are charged with obtaining information for Germany, including the location of war plants and their production capacity. They are alleged to have gathered information concerning military planes departin? for war theatres. The Justice Department said that these are the first arrests under the Wartime Espionage Statutes which provide the death penalty. The Federal Bureau of Investigation Director. Mr Edgar Hoover, said that the Group’s activities since the United States entered the war centred about Grace Buchanan-Dineen, who is described as an attractive and wellinformed descendant of French nobility who. though a native of Canada, has been carefully trained by the Germans in espionase work. Mr Hoover said that she entered the United States on October 27, 1941, arriving in New York on the Atlantic Clipper. She first came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the mysterious “Miss Smith” of Detroit in November, 1941. Subsequentlv she co-operated fully with the F. 8.1.. receiving information desired by the German espionage service. When she realised that she could not carry out her Nazi employers’ instructions she operated under the surveillance of the F. 8.1., to which she passed on all information which, though forwarded to Nazi espionage superiors abroad, was cleared through the F. 8.1., Army and Navy Intelligence Services.