- Atlanta (Bloomberg) -
President
George W. Bush cites the 1942 military tribunal convened to prosecute eight
Nazis plotting attacks on U.S. soil to show how he wants to prosecute
present-day
terrorists.
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- It's a model, all right.
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- It's a model of a powerful government official using
the secrecy of a military tribunal to deceive the public, falsely embellish
his reputation, break promises to a whistleblower and sit by while a
30-year
prison sentence is given to the man who thwarted the Nazi sabotage, a man
to whom the agency had promised a presidential pardon.
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- That official was Federal Bureau of Investigation
Director
J. Edgar Hoover.
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- His aim was glory for cracking this hugely important
case. The problem was that it took no detective work whatsoever to crack
the case.
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- All it took was for FBI agents to believe a man, George
Dasch, who twice called and then walked into FBI headquarters to tell them
about the plot.
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- Dasch told them that Nazi submarines had deposited him
and seven other Germans at U.S. shores in New York and Florida in recent
days. Supplied with explosives and timing devices, their mission was to
blow up certain U.S. military equipment factories, transportation
structures
and Jewish-owned department stores.
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- Dasch, aided by another would-be saboteur, Ernst Burger,
led the FBI to the other six Germans, 14 American collaborators, $174,588
and a cache of explosives.
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- Pardon Promised
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- In return, FBI agents promised Dasch that if he pleaded
guilty to his role in the plot, he'd get a prison sentence of no more than
six months followed by a presidential pardon.
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- It didn't turn out that way.
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- During the 18-day trial, held in an FBI training room
at the Justice Department building, agents played down Dasch's and Burger's
cooperation, although one agent acknowledged Dasch had been promised the
pardon.
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- This was not reported, since no journalists were allowed
to cover the trial. Secrecy was necessary, Attorney General Francis Biddle
explained beforehand, to prevent America's enemies from learning "how
our intelligence services are equipped to work against them.''
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- All eight Germans were convicted and six were executed,
less than two months after Dasch arrived by submarine. Burger got a life
sentence; Dasch got 30 years.
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- Hoover Censors Report
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- Even after the war ended and a new attorney general,
Tom Clark, wanted to disclose what had happened at the trial, Hoover
intervened.
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- He censored the report the Justice Department produced,
cutting out information that could "discredit or embarrass the
bureau,''
Hoover wrote in a memo. Left out was any mention of the pardon promise
and the fact that Dasch's own confession sparked the investigation.
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- Decades passed and Hoover died before the full story
came out. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, Atlanta Constitution
reporter Seth Kantor obtained the trial transcript, FBI reports and other
documents and wrote a series of stories in 1980.
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- Those stories, on which this account is based, were
recounted
in an article this week by Cox News Service.
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- Prison Riot
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- As for Dasch, he'd been sent to the Atlanta Federal
Penitentiary
where his presence prompted a prison riot in 1944. Dasch, whom inmates
threatened to throw off a five-story building, had been the principal
target
of the rioting prisoners, according to Biddle.
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- He survived and was transferred to Leavenworth prison
in Kansas.
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- With pressure from new lawyers to release Dasch and
Burger,
President Harry Truman in 1948 ordered them deported to West Germany where
they'd eventually be free. The White House statement continued the
deception
in explaining Truman's generosity toward these infamous Nazis: "After
their arrest, Burger and Dasch gave full and complete identities of all
connected with the sabotage plot.''
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- This implied it was only after the FBI had tracked them
down that they confessed.
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- Nor did this version help Dasch in post-war Germany.
Nazi sympathizers threatened to avenge the executions of the other six
saboteurs and the thwarting of Hitler's sabotage plans, prompting Dasch
to move from city to city, job to job. By 1980, his trail had vanished,
Kantor wrote. He has since died, according to news reports.
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- `Museum Piece'
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- Bush has ordered the creation of military commissions
to conduct tribunals for the prosecution of non-U.S. citizens accused of
terrorism against the United States. The speed of such tribunals, their
portability, the availability of the death penalty and their looser rules
make them a good option, in Bush's view.
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- But looser rules also mean a greater likelihood that
the innocent would be convicted and the system manipulated by officials.
Secrecy would mean no public scrutiny.
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- "To do this in a healthy fashion, one has to make
trials as open as possible,'' says Ruth Wedgwood, a Yale law professor
teaching international law and criminal procedure.
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- Bush's order describes "a pre-1950 format'' for
military tribunals, says Eugene Fidell, a Washington lawyer and president
of the National Institute of Military Justice.
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- "This is a museum piece that's being trotted out,''
says Fidell. "The question is whether it's being properly brought
back.''
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- ___
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- ©2001 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved.
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