SECRET AGENTS BLOCK OUT AMERICA
Captain von Papen’s cheque counterfoils are a veritable diary of some of his criminal—or if you please, military—activities in America. They give the names and the aliases of his secret agents; and day after day are recorded therein the payments made by von Papen to the persons working for or with him. The counterfoils tell the story of the purpose of the payment and by means of the endorsements on the cheques one can gather in skeleton form the story of a part—but not all—of the propaganda which the military attaché supervised. The stubs show the receipt of money, almost immediately after the beginning of the war marked for “War Intelligence Office.” The interesting thing is that money for war intelligence work came from von Bernstorff and that funds for salary and expenses came from Dr. Fr. Adler, the Ambassador’s secretary. To the fact that Captain von Papen kept such an accurate diary—an instance of German efficiency—is due in part the exposure of his varied activities in this country.
To Anton Kuepferle, another German spy captured in England and suspected after a confession to have shot himself, he gave $100. To Wachendorf he gave funds that the latter might go both to Berlin and England in the service of the Kaiser. To Paul Koenig, he handed many accounts for secret service work, paying also the expenses of Koenig’s agents on trips to Montreal and Quebec in hunting information about enlistments of soldiers in Canada and the shipments of supplies from Canadian ports. The stub book also shows that he sent agents to investigate ammunition factories in different parts of the country, and that he paid the expenses of von Skal in getting “photographs for the War Intelligence Office.” He constantly was sending cheques to consuls in various parts of the country to pay the expenses of reservists and agents.