ESPIONAGE: Story Book Reading

Early one morning last week FBI agents rapped sharply on the doors of five Detroit houses, made five arrests. Agents in New York boarded a freighter, made a sixth. Four of the prisoners—a countess, a fashionable doctor, a social worker, a sailor—looked to FBI like the shadiest spy ring yet rounded up in the U.S.

G-men called the case “… a bizarre plot. … It will sound like storybook reading, it is so fantastic.” Until the four are put on trial in mid-September, the Government is jealously guarding all details of its superduper spy story. But FBI introduced a cast of characters to jar the most jaded melodrama addict. Charged with collecting information on U.S. war plans and plants: > “Countess” Grace (pronounced “Grawse,” she says) Buchanan-Dineen, 34, Canadian-born, who traveled widely in Europe and somehow picked up a hyphenated name and title. FBI claims that she also picked up considerable spy-schooling in Budapest. In 1941 she landed in the U.S. by clipper from Lisbon, eventually turned up in Detroit. Ever since, says FBI, she has been the transmission point for an energetic little spy ring which was trying to get U.S. war-production figures to the Nazis.

Dripping real and fake jewelry, the vivacious, smartly gowned Countess endeared herself to Detroit’s uppercrust as lecturer and hostess (she served sherry with a dash of British accent). She kept: 1) a bottle of invisible ink in her apartment kitchen, 2) a black-and-green notebook containing the names of 200 “in fluential” people living in the U.S. For two years — since U.S. agents first called on her for a long, heart-to-heart talk —the Countess has played a dangerous double game: she has bossed the spy ring with one hand, tipped off FBI and U.S.

Army & Navy Intelligence with the other.

> Dr. Fred William Thomas, 44, sullen-eyed obstetrician furnished the “Countess” with prescriptions for the ingredients of invisible ink, says FBI. Lethargic (except when expounding Hitler’s New Order) Dr. Thomas once spent a year in Ham burg as an exchange surgeon. He denied being a spy.

> Mrs. Theresa (“Teri”) Wassertauer Behrens. 44, secretary of the International Center Y.W.C.A., was known in Detroit as “that nice social worker.” Shrewd, non descript Mrs. Behrens is the real-life version of that colorless character which seasoned spy-thriller readers have learned to watch with misgivings. Jailed, she refused food. FBI hinted that she might be the most sinister figure of the lot.

> Bertram Stuart Hoffman, 27, is a tall, spindly, none-too-brilliant ex-earmuff salesman, ex-U.S. sailor. Last March he joined the U.S. Merchant Marine and re ported to his Detroit pals (in simple cable code) on Allied convoy movements.

Also arrested by FBI in the same round up, as enemy aliens:

> Countess (the title is authentic) Marianna von Moltke, 46, greying, talkative poesy-minded wife of a professor of Wayne (Detroit’s city-owned) University. (The professor is said to be a grandson of Bismarck’s famed Prussian strategist. Field Marshal Count von Moltke.) With two sons in Germany, the Countess, Detroiters complain, has tried to interest college students in her pro-Nazi doctrines.

> Mrs. Emma (“Mamma”) Leonhardt, a motherly, sixtyish boardinghouse keeper, played hostess at cozy little German “coffee klatches” for the entire group. The name and address of Mamma Leonhardt were found on one of the Nazi saboteurs who landed last June on Long Island, was later executed.