spioenasiesindikaat (13. 051)

Sentenced on this day in 1942 with cumulative incarcerations lasting three hundred years, the Duquesne Spy Ring was the largest espionage case in US history with thirty-three members of a Nazi Germany network of covert agents convicted after a lengthy investigation by the FBI, with a majority of the indicted pleading guilty on all charges and the remaining tried by an American federal district court in Brooklyn. Under the leadership of Frederick “Fritz” Joubert Duquesne, German-Boer mercenary of British extraction and naturalised US citizen, game-hunter (escorting Theodore Roosevelt on safari), journalist, hippopotamus exporter, and escape artist, members of the group were channelled into key administrative positions for counter-intelligence and sabotage, working as anchor restauranteurs, delivery men, power plant workers, and airline stewards, establishing safe-houses and front-companies—but none installed as politicians—to monitor Allied activities. Their operation was uncovered in part by reluctant double-agent William Sebold (Gottlieb Adolf Wilhelm, an engineer and industrialist emigrating to the US after WWI), coerced first by the Gestapo, recruiting the services of other emigres, and then by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under J Edgar Hoover’s administration. Most were convicted for failing to abide by the Foreign Agents Registration Act and disclose foreign interests—FARA not prohibiting lobbying or any specific activities, it was codified in 1938 primarily to control Nazi propaganda.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the See of St Mark (with synchronopticæ), early eight-bit licensed games plus embroidery journals

thirteen years ago: a numerically unremarkable year plus antique motivational posters

fourteen years ago: future prospects for the Euro currency union plus the history of submarine warfare

sixteen years ago: predictions for 2010