Unwelcome Guest

Three Federal officers in plain clothes one day last week shouldered their way into a luxurious suite in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. To the thin, tall, elderly man who stood inside, wearing a wrinkled pajama coat and a pair of trousers, they said curtly: "Dr. Rieth, you are under arrest."

Dr. Kurt Heinrich Rieth, onetime German diplomat, undercover agent for Adolf Hitler, had been living at the Waldorf for two months. Federal agents, who called him the "No. 1 Nazi now in the U.S.," knew he was there. They were keeping their eye on him to see what he would do when last fortnight the New York Herald Tribune forced their hand, broke a page 1 story about Dr. Rieth's activities.

Ever since Agent Rieth landed in Rio de Janeiro one day last March in an Italian plane from Rome, newsmen have been watching him. From their cabled reports, and from his diplomatic record, it was easy enough to figure out what he was up to in Manhattan.

Born in Belgium 60 years ago, Dr. Rieth was the son of a German who once did some work for the Standard Oil Co. in Europe. When the German Army rolled into Belgium in 1914, Kurt Rieth fled through the Belgian lines, joined the invaders. became a civilian administrator in occupied territory.

He was Germany's Minister to Austria when in 1933 Adolf Hitler climbed into power. Dr. Rieth stayed on in Vienna, was soon knee-deep in Nazi intrigue. After the assassination by Nazi gunmen of Austria's brave little Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, Minister Rieth was recalled to Berlin, replaced by his good friend Franz von Papen.

First thing Agent Rieth did when he arrived in Rio three months ago was to call a meeting of German consuls in South America, set up a commission composed of two Japanese, an Italian, a German, to look after Axis interests in Latin America. A subsidiary, the Inter-American Abstention Committee, was also formed. Purpose: to keep in touch with U.S. isolationists, encourage those who would hinder U.S. aid to Britain.

Then Dr. Rieth turned up at Brownsville, Tex. aboard a Pan American Airways plane from Mexico City. At the U.S. customs office he said he was "a retired capitalist" on his way to Manhattan on "a personal financial mission." His immediate destination, he said, was the office of Walter Clark Teagle, chairman of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey.

Actually, as FBI men soon discovered, his business was to direct anti-British activities in the U.S. Like Dr. Gerhardt Alois Westrick, who beat a hasty retreat last summer after his activities were unmasked by the press (TIME, Aug. 12), Dr. Rieth also hoped to persuade U.S. businessmen to feel more friendly toward the Reich. With that in mind, he called on bankers and industrialists, introducing himself as "a very dear friend" of Standard Oil's Teagle. Mr. Teagle denied that he had ever met the Nazi agent or communicated with him in any way.

Unlike Dr. Westrick, who left under his own power, Dr. Rieth had no diplomatic credentials. Taken in custody last week by Sylvester Pindyck, supervisor of a special investigating unit of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he still maintained that he was a private citizen, in the U.S. to look after his family's holdings. Immigration officers took him to Ellis Island, there lodged four charges against him; said his entry was improper because he had stated that he was on private business and claimed never to have visited the U.S. before.

While immigration authorities, moving with unaccustomed speed, made ready to hear his case this week, Nazi officials protested in vain against their No. 1 agent's arrest. In Berlin, Nazi spokesmen said Dr. Rieth had had no "official" connection with the German Government for seven years. In Washington, the German Embassy said he had resigned from the diplomatic service four years ago. In Manhattan, Dr. Hans Borchers, German Consul General, demanded bail for Dr. Rieth, was firmly refused.

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