Spy Stories

Details were left to the imagination, but the half-lighted plots of a dozen spy thrillers came out last week in a Congressional hearing on censorship.

> On the Atlantic, a far-flung gang was refueling enemy subs. Army & Navy Intelligence got a line on only one or two of the gang. But from intercepted letters additional clues were picked up; arrests were made, and the operations stopped.

> There was cause for suspicion in Alaska, with Japanese entrenched at the back door. People were writing about dangerous subjects : how to get secret ink, a radio station in the wilderness, hidden uniforms, submarine nets, the location of defense installations and troops. The FBI moved in, fast.

> Censors also intercepted letters with information that helped track down stockpiles of hoarded raw materials, strategic minerals needed for the war. One resulting seizure alone was worth almost as much as the cost of operating the Office of Censorship a year--$26.5 million.

Called in by the Senate Judiciary Committee to tell these stories, to soothe a teapot tempest, were Censor Byron Price, Attorney General Francis Biddle, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, Captain Ellis M. Zacharias of the Navy Intelligence, Brigadier General Hayes A. Kroner of the Army Intelligence.

Alaska's Governor Ernest H. Gruening started the tempest. Choking with indignation, he had appeared before the Committee to protest against a bill to authorize mail censorship between the U.S. and territories. For a year, he sputtered, censors' had been prying into mail to Alaska. Private letters were passed around for the censors' amusement. Personal items were scissored, put on mimeographed sheets, circulated to British and U.S. officials.

Censoring foreign messages was one thing, complained the Governor. So was the regular Army censorship, as worked out before Pearl Harbor by able Colonel W. Preston Corderman. But this tampering with private mail was extra-legal and grotesque.

Mad as hops, Committee Chairman Frederick Van Nuys demanded explanations from Censor Price: How come such snooping? Why was not Congress informed? Calmly the witnesses explained: their authority to censor territorial mail stemmed from the President's constitutional powers. They told their spy stories, soothed ruffled tempers.

Then back to his job of opening mail (which takes 87% of his budget) went calm Byron Price, knowing full well his work was a criminal offense in peacetime, un-American at any time, a vital necessity in wartime.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.