OCR Text |
Show FBI Nets Alleged German Spy After Six-Month Hunt Bring in Nazi Called Privy To U-Boat Saboteurs, Snared in Trinidad. WASHINGTON. The department of justice announced recently the capture of a 25-year-old German it described as a Nazi espionage agent j who had been sought for six months by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Investiga-tion, says the Associated Press. The FBI identified the captive as Hans R. Zuehlsdorff and said he was an associate of William C. Cole-paugh Cole-paugh and Eric Gimpel, the German Ger-man agents who were arrested by the FBI in New York after landing from an enemy submarine at Hancock Han-cock Point, Maine, in November, L944. Zuehlsdorff was apprehended by British authorities in Trinidad, on August 9, and was brought to Miami by an FBI agent, John Edgar Hoover, Hoo-ver, director of the Bureau, said. A search throughout much of this hemisphere "paid off," Mr. Hoover said, when Zuehlsdorff was identified identi-fied by Allied authorities on August 9 at Port of Spain, Trinidad, as a passenger on a Spanish ship, and using the alias, Juan V. Collens, equipped with forged Argentina documents doc-uments and posing as an Argentine citizen. Held for Action. He is being held for action by United States authorities, Mr. Hoo ver said, because "it is known he had an espionage mission for th Germans in the Western hemi sphere." Zuehlsdorff, the directo: said, admitted his identity to thi FBI. the investigation into the landing land-ing of the two German espionage agents in Maine." Mr. Hoover said in a statement, "had disclosed that Zuehlsdorff and two other German agents, Oscar M. Wilms and Max C. Schneemann, were being 'groomed' by the German intelligence intelli-gence service for important roles in the last desperate attempts of the German high command to obtain vital vi-tal information concerning Allied military and political intentions." Colepaugh and Gimpel, after an army trial, were sentenced to death, but President Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Wilms and Schneemann still are at large. An Active Nazi. Zuehlsdorff, the announcement said, was born in Guestrow, Mekl, Germany, but had spent most of his life in Latin America, where he traveled trav-eled extensively. He was reported by the FBI to have worked for German Ger-man firms in Latin America and to have been prominent in Nazi activities, activi-ties, which resulted in his expulsion from Colombia. He was interned in the United States in April, 1942, as an enemy alien and was repatriated repatriat-ed to Germany on an exchange ship, in July, that year, the announcement an-nouncement added. Immediately after aft-er his repatriation, he went to work in Berlin as an English language propaganda broadcaster and singer, j the FBI said. He attended the school for German espionage agents at The Hague during 1944, according to the bureau. In February, 1945, the announcement an-nouncement continued, he was flown from Berlin to Madrid, where he assumed as-sumed his alias and set out for Argentina. |