Busse confessed later that he had discussed with Captain von Papen at the German Club in New York City the plan of damaging the boilers of munition ships with bombs which resembled lumps of coal.
Free access to Allied ships laden with supplies for Vladivostok would have been invaluable to the conspirators, and in order to obtain it Charles C. Crowley, a detective employed by Consul-General Bopp, resorted to the extraordinary scheme revealed in the following letter to Madam Bakhmeteff, wife of the Russian Ambassador to the United States:
Mme. J. Bakhmeteff, care Imperial Russian Embassy,
Newport, R. I.:
Dear Madam:—By direction of the Imperial Russian Consul-General of San Francisco, I beg to submit the following on behalf of several fruit-growers of the State of California. As it is the wish of certain growers to contribute several tons of dried fruit to the Russian Red Cross they desire to have arrangements made to facilitate the transportation of this fruit from Tacoma, Washington, to Vladivostok, and as we are advised that steamships are regularly plying between Tacoma and Vladivostok upon which government supplies are shipped we would like to have arrangements made that these fruits as they might arrive would be regularly consigned to these steamers and forwarded. It would be necessary, therefore, that an understanding be had with the agents of these steamship lines at Tacoma that immediate shipments be made via whatever steamers might be sailing.
It is the desire of the donors that there be no delay in the shipments as delays would lessen the benefits intended to those for whom the fruit was provided....
Respectfully yours,
C. C. Crowley.
The statements of Louis J. Smith and van Koolbergen, combined with a mass of other evidence consisting in part of letters and telegrams, caused the grand jury to indict Consul-General Bopp, his staff and his hired agents, for conspiracy to undertake a military enterprise against Canada. Among the purposes of this enterprise specified in the indictment was the following:
“To blow up and destroy with their cargoes and crews any and all vessels belonging to Great Britain, France, Japan or Russia found within the limits of Canada, which were laden with horses, munitions of war, or articles of commerce in course of transportation to the above countries....”
The following descriptions have been made by the United States Government of the tools of von Bernstorff in German plots:
Paul Koenig, the head of the Hamburg-American secret service, who was active in passport frauds, who induced Gustave Stahl to perjure himself and declare the Lusitania armed, and who plotted the destruction of the Welland Canal. In his work as a spy he passed under thirteen aliases in this country and Canada.