Facing the chair

by John Dos Passos

AFFIDAVIT OF FRED J. WEYAND

My name is Fred J. Weyand. I reside in Portland, Maine. I am a Special Agent of the Attorney General’s office of the State of Maine, and have been since I resigned as an agent of the Department of Justice about a year and a half ago.

I became connected with the Department of Justice in the year 1916, and shortly afterwards became a Special Agent with an office first at 24 Milk Street, Boston, later at 45 Milk Street and later at 7 Water Street, where the Department had offices on the eighth floor, and later at the Post Office Building. My duties as Special Agent were in general to investigate and report upon any and all violations of the penal code which I might be assigned to investigate by my superiors, who were first Frederick Smith, next George E. Kelliher, next John Hannahan, next Charles Bancroft and last Lawrence Letherman. These were my superiors while I was working from the Boston office. I occasionally worked in other parts of the country and then came under other superiors temporarily. I was a Special Agent during the entire administration of Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General of the United States, and was concerned in the activities against the so-called Reds or Radicals, including arrests and deportations which were instigated by Mr. Palmer, and which included the wholesale raids made in the month of January 1920, in some of which I participated.

Sometime before the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti on May 5, 1920—just how long before I do not remember—the names of both of them had got in the files of the Department of Justice as Radicals to be watched. The Boston files of the Department, including correspondence, would show the date when the names of these men were first brought to the attention of the Department. Both these men were listed as followers or associates of an educated Italian editor named Galleani. Galleani was the publisher of an anarchistic paper. He lived in Wrentham and published his paper, I think, in Lynn. Among other persons associated with Galleani were Carlo Tresca, Carlo Valdinoci and David Tedesco. The suspicion entertained by the Department of Justice against Sacco and Vanzetti was that they had violated the Selective Service Act, and also that they were anarchists or held Radical opinions of some sort or other.

A man named Feri Felix Weiss was transferred from the Immigration Bureau to the Department of Justice in Boston in the year 1917, and remained a Special Agent of that Department in Boston until 1919, I think. He then travelled abroad and returned in 1920 and opened an office as a scientific detective and lecturer at 7 Water Street, Boston, with an office on the floor below occupied by the Department of Justice. In 1925, Weiss returned to the Immigration Department at Boston, where he is at the present time.

William J. West, who is now a Special Agent of the Department of Justice, became such in July or August 1917. Prior to that he was an Immigration Inspector with Feri Weiss. Since his appointment as a Special Agent he has spent most of his time in the Boston office of the Department of Justice, having in charge during the past seven years the so-called Radical Division of the Department of Justice, which has been in operation since about 1917.

During the year 1920 I did a good deal of work in the State of Maine, but was in Boston for several days at least once every two weeks. I have knowledge that the result of the trial before Judge Anderson of the Radicals or Communists, as we called them, arrested at the time of the raids above referred to, and of the decision of Judge Anderson freeing many of them and of his criticisms of the Department of Justice, was to make all agents of the Department of Justice in Boston more cautious afterwards in proceeding against suspected Radicals.

Shortly after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti on the charge of the South Braintree murders, meetings began to be held by sympathizers, and I was assigned to attend these meetings and report to the Department the speeches made. We also assigned a certain “under cover” man, as we called him, to win the confidence of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, and to become one of the collectors. This man used to report the proceedings of the Committee to the Department agents in Boston, and has said to me he was in the habit of taking as much money collected for his own use as he saw fit. So far as I know, no evidence was obtained of utterances at any of these meetings which warranted proceedings against anybody. Mr. West was also attending meetings of Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers during the same period. The original reports thus obtained were sent to the Washington office of the Department of Justice and duplicates kept in the Boston office, where I believe they now are. I know that at one time as many as twelve agents of the Department of Justice located in Boston were assigned to cover Sacco-Vanzetti meetings and other Radical activities connected with the Sacco-Vanzetti case. No evidence was discovered warranting the institution of proceedings against anybody. I have no present recollection of the trial of Vanzetti for the alleged Bridgewater robbery; but when the joint trial of Sacco and Vanzetti for the South Braintree murders began in the summer of 1921, the Department of Justice at Boston took an active interest in the matter. I was assigned to cover the trial for the purpose of reporting the proceedings and picking up any information that I could in regard to the Radical activities of Sacco and Vanzetti, or of any of their friends. Mr. West also attended the trial for the same purpose. I was not personally in touch with Mr. Katzmann, the District Attorney, or his office, but Mr. West was in touch with them and was giving and obtaining information in regard to the case.

Going back now before the trial, a certain John Ruzzamenti had been informally employed by special agents of the Department of Justice from some time in the year 1917, to furnish information concerning Radical activities and evasion of the draft by Italians, and in this connection had made an investigation of Tedesco, above referred to, who was once arrested in consequence of information furnished by Ruzzamenti, but was never tried. During this time Ruzzamenti also worked occasionally for detective agencies. He was well known to Weiss.

I have been informed by Mr. West and believe, and therefore allege, that there was another Italian whom the Department occasionally used for similar purposes, named Carbone and that he, under an arrangement with the District Attorney, the Sheriff, and Mr. Weiss, was placed in the cell next to the cell of Sacco sometime during the year 1920 for the purpose of winning the confidence of Sacco, and thus of obtaining, if he could, incriminating evidence against him, but no evidence of the sort was obtained by Carbone. The primary purpose of the Department in putting Carbone there was to obtain evidence, if possible, concerning the so-called Wall Street explosion; but it was also hoped that other incriminating evidence might be obtained.

Sometime in the early part of the year 1921, I was informed by Ruzzamenti that he had been sent for by Weiss, who was then out of Government service, to come on here to help convict Sacco and Vanzetti; that he had seen Katzmann, and that an arrangement had been made by which he was to secure board in the house of Mrs. Sacco and obtain her confidence, and thus obtain information; but that arrangement had never been carried out, and he had not been paid. I annex to this affidavit photostatic copies of parts of a letter which I identify as in the handwriting of Weiss.

Shortly after the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was concluded I said to Weiss that I did not believe they were the right men, meaning the men who shot the paymaster, and he replied that that might be so, but that they were bad actors and would get what they deserved anyway.

Instructions were received from the Chief of the Bureau of the Department of Justice in Washington from time to time in reference to the Sacco-Vanzetti case. They are on file or should be on file in the Boston office.

The understanding in this case between the agents of the Department of Justice in Boston and the District Attorney followed the usual custom, that the Department of Justice would help the District Attorney to secure a conviction, and that he in turn would help the agents of the Department of Justice to secure information that they might desire. This would include the turning over of any pertinent information by the Department of Justice to the District Attorney. Sacco and Vanzetti were, at least in the opinion of the Boston agents of the Department of Justice, not liable to deportation as draft dodgers, but only as anarchists, and could not be deported as anarchists unless it could be shown that they were believers in anarchy, which is always a difficult thing to show. It usually can only be shown by self-incrimination. The Boston agents believed that these men were anarchists, and hoped to be able to secure the necessary evidence against them from their testimony at their trial for murder, to be used in case they were not convicted for murder. There is correspondence between Mr. Katzmann and Mr. West on file in the Boston office of the Department. Mr. West furnished Mr. Katzmann information about the Radical activities of Sacco and Vanzetti to be used in their cross-examination.

In the years 1922–1924 Mr. West had working for him as “under cover” or secret operators an Italian and a Syrian or Armenian. The Italian worked as a printer. I do not remember the names of either of them; but I know that he put the Italian in as a linotyper in the office of an Italian newspaper in Boston as a spy. The Syrian or Armenian is the man to whom I have referred above as having become a collector for the Committee.

From my investigation, combined with the investigation made by the other agents of the Department in Boston, I am convinced not only that these men had violated the Selective Service rules and regulations and evaded the draft, but that they were anarchists, and that they ought to have been deported. By calling these men anarchists, I do not mean necessarily that they were inclined to violence, nor do I understand all the different meanings that different people would attach to the word “anarchists”. What I mean is that I think they did not believe in organized government or in private property. But I am also thoroughly convinced and always have been, and I believe that is and always has been the opinion of such Boston agents of the Department of Justice as had any knowledge on the subject, that these men had nothing whatever to do with the South Braintree murders, and that their conviction was the result of co-operation between the Boston agents of the Department of Justice and the District Attorney. It was the general opinion of the Boston agents of the Department of Justice having knowledge of the affair that the South Braintree crime was committed by a gang of professional highwaymen.

I annex hereto a picture of Mr. Feri Felix Weiss printed on the outside of one of his advertisements.

So ends as fine a picture of the inner workings of the Spanish Inquisition as has seen the light in many a day. I can’t help quoting again Judge Thayer’s very pertinent question:

“Have Attorney General Sargent and his subordinates ... stooped so low and are they so degraded that they are willing by the concealment of evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they were murderers but because they were radicals?”