The passport bureau is a striking instance of Germany’s disregard of the rights and laws in a neutral country. With the sending of Great Britain’s ultimatum to Germany, the cable between Germany and the United States had been cut. The United States forbade the use of wireless for the transmission of messages in code to Germany, or the use of the cable for cipher dispatches to the warring countries. The Allies’ war vessels began at once to search all passenger ships for German citizens, taking them off and sending them to concentration camps. Meantime, von Papen, Boy-Ed and the other German officials realized the utmost necessity of transmitting to their respective home offices information concerning the developments in America. They knew also the vital necessity of sending back to Berlin, army and naval officers who had been selected and trained for special commissions in the event of war.
But they had been taught in their early days the value of fraudulent passports, and to these they turned at once. The Germans had at first no regular passport bureau for the aid of German reservists. Every German, left to his own resources, did the best he could under the circumstances. Carl A. Luederitz, German consul in Baltimore, has been indicted on a charge of conspiracy in connection with obtaining a fraudulent passport for Horst von der Goltz under the name of Bridgeman Taylor. The young German has confessed that with the aid of Herr Luederitz he applied for a passport and on August 31, 1914, obtained one bearing the signature of William J. Bryan, then Secretary of State. To get that document von der Goltz took an oath that he was born in San Francisco.
But this method was rather loose, and upon Captain von Papen devolved the necessity of establishing a regular system. The military attaché, always resourceful and daring, selected for the work Lieutenant Hans von Wedell. Von Wedell had been a newspaper reporter in New York, later a lawyer; but when he received orders from Captain von Papen, he gladly undertook the work in New York, bureaus being started in other cities. He opened an office in Bridge Street, New York, and began to send out emissaries to Germans in Hoboken, directing them to apply for passports. He sent others to the haunts of hoboes on the Bowery, to the cheap hotels, and other gathering places of the downs-and-outs, offering ten, fifteen and twenty dollars to men who would apply for passports. He spent much time at the Deutscher Verein, at the Elks clubhouse, where he would meet his agents, give them instructions and receive passports. His bills were paid by Captain von Papen, as revealed by the attaché’s cheques and counterfoils. These show that on November 24, 1914, von Papen paid him $500; that on December 5, he gave him $500 and then $300, the latter being for journey money; that he paid von Wedell’s bills at the Deutscher Verein, amounting in November, 1914, to $38.05. Meantime, he was using Mrs. von Wedell as a courier, sending her with messages to Germany. On December 22, 1914, he paid Mrs. von Wedell, by his own account, $800.
BUYING PASSPORTS WHOLESALE
The passports which von Wedell, and later on his successor Carl Ruroede, Sr., obtained, were used for the benefit of German officers whom the General Staff had ordered back to Berlin. American passports, then Mexican, Swiss, Norwegian and the passports of South American countries, were seized eagerly by various reservists bound for the front. Stories were told in New York of Germans and Austrians, who had been captured by the Russians, sent to Siberia as prisoners of war, escaping therefrom, and making their way by caravan through China, embarking on vessels bound for America, arriving in New York and thence shipping for neutral countries. Among them was an Austrian officer, an expert observer in aeroplane reconnaissance, who lost both his feet in Siberia, but who escaped to this country. He was ordered home because of his extreme value in reconnoitring. The British learned of him, however, and took him off a ship at Falmouth to spend the remainder of the war in a prison camp.
Captain von Papen used the passport bureau to obtain passports for spies whom he wished to send to England, France, Italy and Russia. Among these men were Kuepferle and von Breechow, both of whom were captured in England, having in their possession fraudulent passports. Kuepferle and von Breechow both confessed.
But so reckless was von Wedell’s and Ruroede’s work that the authorities soon discovered the practice. Two hangers-on at the Mills Hotel called upon the writer one day and told him of von Wedell’s practices, related how they had blackmailed him out of $50, gave his private telephone numbers and set forth his haunts. As a result of this and other information reaching the Department of Justice, Albert G. Adams, a clever agent, started out one day, got into the confidence of Ruroede and offered to get passports for him for $50 each. Meantime, von Wedell had gone on a trip to Cuba, apparently on passport matters, and Adams, posing as a pro-German, got into the inner ring of the passport-buyers. He was informed by Ruroede as to what was wanted.
CHANGING OFFICIAL STAMPS
Though in the early days of the war it had not been necessary for the applicant to give to the Federal authorities anything more than a general description of himself, the reports of German spies in the Allies’ countries became so insistent that the Government directed that the document, bearing the United States seal, must have the picture of the person to whom it was issued. The Germans, however, were not worried. It was a simple matter to give a general description of a man’s eyes, colour of hair, age and so forth, that would fit the man who was actually to use the document and then forward the picture of the applicant, who, getting the passport, would sell it. Even though the official stamp was placed on the picture, the Germans were not dismayed. Federal Agent Adams rushed into Ruroede’s office one day waving five passports which had been issued to him in a batch by Uncle Sam. Adams seemed proud of his work. Ruroede was delighted.
“I knew I could get these passports easily,” boasted Ruroede. “Why, if Lieutenant Hans von Wedell had kept on here, he never could have done this. He always was getting into a muddle.”