Double Agent (36 page)

THE MAN WHO “KILLED” KITCHENER—“Colonel” Fritz Duquesne was a South African–born adventurer who dined out for years on tales of his spy exploits during the Boer War and World War I. His claim that he was responsible for the death of Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener during the Great War was unsupported by evidence, but the British government believed he had a hand in the explosion on the SS
Tennyson
that killed three British seamen on February 21, 1916. He told Sebold that he could pick out FBI men by the way they walked, “sort of pigeon-toed and with a peculiar halting step.”

THE COUP DE GRÂCE—In the final phase of the Sebold investigation, the FBI rented three rooms in the Newsweek building at the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street in Times Square, transforming Room 627 into the office of WILLIAM G. SEBOLD DIESEL ENG. The double agent met with a procession of spies who were unaware that they were being filmed behind a two-way mirror by a Bureau agent. When the films were shown in court, the American experience with hidden motion-picture footage was born.

Fritz Duquesne made a single visit to the office on June 25, 1941, just days before the arrests. At one point, he raised the leg of his trousers and pulled an envelope from his sock, a cloak-and-dagger detail that would be much remembered in later years by the agents who worked the case. During the trial, this son of the nineteenth century claimed it was all an optical illusion. “The taking of anything out of my stocking never happened,” he said.

Paul Fehse,
left,
and his sidekick Leo Waalen wandered the Manhattan and Brooklyn docks picking up information about British merchant ships that were being loaded with goods in preparation for running the U-boat gauntlet. They submitted such detailed reports that Sebold admonished them to provide only the most essential information for transmittal to Germany.

Erwin W. Siegler, the chief butcher of the SS
Manhattan,
later transferred to the SS
America,
was one of several German-born spies working on the kitchen staffs of American-flagged liners, who were hired because they produced the European dishes that sophisticated travelers expected during their transatlantic passage. Siegler bragged that he was “the biggest whoremaster in Hamburg.”

The “Duquesne” Spy “Ring,” shown here in FBI mugshots, was in fact made up of four separate rings with a smattering of lone wolves, a diverse collection of Hitler supporters that included a convicted counterfeiter from Dusseldorf and a former auto executive with Ford and Chrysler, an employee of a boat basin in the Bronx and a secretary for the law firm representing the German Consulate in downtown Manhattan. J. Edgar Hoover described the investigation as “the greatest of its kind in the nation’s history.”

Bill and Helen Sebold were relocated after the case to a small home outside San Francisco in an early version of the witness protection program. As the years passed, Sebold grew fearful of Nazi reprisals, which may have contributed to an increasing mental instability. But he never disavowed his service to the United States. He told an FBI agent in 1954 that he “did not take advantage of making money from his story or from radio or movie because he felt he had done what he did for the good of the country.”

This book could not have been written without the generous assistance of Christel Little, Shirley Camerer, and the late Helen Büchner (Bill Sebold’s sister-in-law); the family of the late James C. Ellsworth, in particular Thomas Ellsworth and Mary Pletsch; Katharine R. Wallace; Ray Batvinis; Art Ronnie; Joni Newkirk; Jim Millen; Diana “Dee” Schumann; Patrick Connelly and Trina Yeckley at the National Archives branch in New York City; Amy Reytar and Britney Crawford at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland; John F. Fox of the FBI; and translator Barbara Serfozo. Praise is due to the staffs of the FDR Library at Hyde Park, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Hagley Library and Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, Kulturbetrieb Mülheim an der Ruhr, Contra Costa County Genealogical Society, and Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt in Berlin. Thanks also to George Spitz, Brian Hollstein, Kathy Jolowicz, Arthur Jacobs, Steve Landrigan, Peg Hoversten, Hal Shevers, Alice Ra’anan, Carolinda Witt, Ed Appel, Jeff Cuyubamba, John Driscoll, Janon Fisher, Corey Kilgannon, Patrick Weaver, Thomas Buechner, Alan Goldberg, Leo Jakobson, Gene Fein, Robert Shapiro, Nancy Ellen Goldsmith, Joe Fodor, Michael Skakun, Dennis Heaphy, L. G. Khambache Sherpa, Steve Chiu, George Miller, Ran Graff, Nat A. Pinkston, Daniel Stein, Paul Kerzner, Charles Donaldson, and Laura Harris of the
New York Post
photo library. I am the lucky beneficiary of the skill and professionalism of my editor, Colin Harrison, and his outstanding assistant, Katrina Diaz. The sound advice and spirited advocacy of my agent, Mary Evans, have been invaluable. Without the love and support of my wife, Laura, and daughter, Eleanor, I would’ve been nowhere.

Peter Duffy is the author of
The Bielski Brothers
and
The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland
. He writes regularly for the
New York Times,
the
Wall Street Journal, New York,
the
New Republic, Slate,
and many other outlets. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

© RAN GRAFF

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