1. Arranging to supply Germany with shells and powder (as soon as smuggling could be effected) at a time when official Germany was attempting to persuade the United States to place an embargo on the shipment of war materials to the Allies.
2. Securing a monopoly on all powder available.
3. So tying up the machinery and tool manufacturers that all their production for months to come was under contract to the Bridgeport Projectile Company, yet so wielding the cancellation clauses in its contracts that delivery could be delayed and the date further postponed when the manufacturers of machinery and tools could be free to take Allied orders.
4. Arranging to accept contracts for the United States and the Allies under such provisions that there would be no impossible forfeit if the contracts could not be fulfilled. This would have the effect of making the Allies believe that they were going to receive supplies which the Bridgeport Projectile Company had no intention of furnishing them.
5. Heynen, by the contract with the munitions industry, which his work afforded, knew where Allied orders for shells were placed, and he learned to his pleasure that the Allies were being forced to contract for shrapnel which was forged—a less satisfactory process than pressing. He also learned that the first two orders for forged shrapnel placed by the Allies had been rejected because the product was inferior.
6. Paying abnormal wages with the unlimited funds at its disposal, stealing labor from the Union Metallic Cartridge Company in Bridgeport, and generally unsettling the labor situation.
7. Offering powder to Spain, a neutral with strong German affiliations.
The project was glorious in its forecast. But we may well let a German hand describe how it failed; among the papers captured by the British on the war correspondent and secret messenger Archibald at Falmouth in late August was a letter from Captain von Papen to his wife in Germany, in which he said:
"Our good friend Albert has been robbed of a thick portfolio of papers on the elevated road. English secret service men of course." (Papen was not altogether correct in this statement.) "Unfortunately, some very important matters from my report are among the papers, such as the purchase of liquid chlorine, the correspondence with the Bridgeport Projectile Company, as well as documents relating to the purchase of phenol, from which explosives are manufactured, and the acquisition of Wright's aeroplane patents. I send you also the reply of Albert, in order that you may see how we protect ourselves. This we compounded last night in collaboration."[4]
Dr. Albert could hardly have chosen a more unfortunate set of documents to carry about with him and lose. "Pitiless publicity" was his reward, and the statement which he and von Papen prepared in refutation and denial was received by those in authority as precisely the sort of denial which any unscrupulous and able master of intrigue might be expected to issue under the circumstances—and no more. If there had been any doubt of the perniciousness of his activities—and there was none—it would have been dispelled by the seizure of the Archibald letters, but the result of the exposures of German activity which made the New York World, a newspaper worth watching during August and September, 1915, was not the expulsion of Dr. Albert, but of the military and naval attachés. Albert, while he had been magnificently busy attempting to disturb America's calm, had been cunning enough to keep his hands free of blood and powder smoke; Boy-Ed and von Papen had to answer for the origination of so many crimes that it is almost incredible in the light of later events that they escaped with nothing more than a dismissal. On December 4, Secretary Lansing demanded their recall on account of their connection "with the illegal and questionable acts of certain persons within the United States"; Bernstorff made no reply for ten days, and received a sharp reminder for his delay; he then replied that the Kaiser agreed to the recall. Four days before Christmas von Papen sailed for England and Holland. On January 2 and 3, 1916, his effects were searched by the British at Falmouth and two documents among others found may be cited here. Boy-Ed sailed on New Year's Day, but with no incriminating documents, for he had been warned.