"Snoop, Look & Listen"

The evening that a Federal Grand Jury in Manhattan indicted 18 persons for spying on the U. S. military defense machine, and pitted the U. S. Department of Justice against the German Government, their employer (TIME, June 27), a lean, sparse-haired man with steel-drill eyes and a steel-trap chin flung himself on a Manhattan hotel bed, exhausted. He was Leon G. Turrou, G-Man. He had been working on the spy case 16 1/2 hours a day for 14 weeks. He had not seen his family for four months. His doctor had told him he must rest, long and completely. So he wrote a letter of resignation to his boss, Director John Edgar Hoover of the F. B. I.:

"In the past few years I have worked many thousands of hours overtime under great tension and the strain has had its effect. I do not regret those hours, nor complain of them. . . . I was offered an opportunity to turn to writing as a profession. That made me realize my duty to my family and that for their sake I must try to better establish my financial position. . . . The welfare and the glory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation will always be uppermost in my mind. . . . "Leon G. Turrou"

G-Man Turrou, 42, had been in the Bureau for nine years. Russian-born, an able linguist, he served in the Marines after the War and with Herbert Hoover's relief mission in Russia. In the Lindbergh Case, he helped dig up the ransom money in Hauptmann's garage, wangled samples of Hauptmann's handwriting to match with the ransom notes. When the dirigible Akron was abuilding, he grew a beard and became a laborer to detect sabotage. For his work on a white slave ring in Connecticut (40 convictions), he was advanced to the highest pay bracket for G-Men privates ($4,800 a year). He was one of three among 670 G-Men to enjoy the top rating "Pre-eminent."

Very much of a hero seemed tired ex-G-Man Turrou, until the day after his resignation, when the nature of his "opportunity to turn to writing" became known. For a reputed $40,000, Publisher Julius David Stern, ferociously anti-Nazi publisher of the Philadelphia Record and New York Post, had bought from Mr. Turrou, 15 minutes after he resigned, an "authentic" inside story behind U. S. Grand Jury Indictments of 14 German officials! On two excited pages, embellished with a Nazi air bomb plunging down on U. S. warships in the Panama Canal, Publisher Stern shouted: "ACE G-MAN BARES GERMAN CONSPIRACY TO PARALYZE UNITED STATES!" Tired Mr. Turrou was going to turn out enough articles to run "for several weeks." Said he in Publisher Stern's advertisement: "I Can Tell You That a confidential conference between President Roosevelt and a foremost naval designer, held secretly in the White House, was known in detail in Nazi spy headquarters in Germany within a few hours! "I Can Tell You That the Nazi Government spent huge sums to further their espionage in this country. . . ." U. S. Attorney Lamar Hardy, in charge of the spy prosecutions in Manhattan, feared that the articles might help his quarry defend themselves. He sought a court order to restrain Publisher Stern from printing the stories before the trials. Said he: "He [Turrou] obtained this information while in the employ of the United States. He doesn't own it. He has it in his care, but he hasn't the right to sell it."

Author Turrou replied indignantly: "There exists no pledge, no agreement, no rule, no statute and no regulation which forbids my revealing [the information]."

Publisher Stern spluttered about freedom-of-the-press, but after sleeping on it, agreed to postpone the Turrou articles until after the spy trials.

The F. B. I. produced a copy of its G-Men's oath, signed by Leon Turrou. Excerpt: ". . . The strictly confidential character of any and all information secured by me in connection directly or indirectly with my work ... is fully understood by me, and neither during my tenure of service with the Federal Bureau of Investigation nor at any other time will I violate this confidence. . . ."

Even President Roosevelt, at a press conference, deplored the "patriotism and ethics" of a G-Man who would retire from the service to cash in on his country's secrets, declared the Army & Navy should get more money to spy on spies.

In Berlin, U. S. Ambassador Hugh Wilson called on Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to explain in diplomatic language that German spying, though stupid and relatively fruitless, is annoying and insulting.

In Manhattan, another ex-G-Man, Tom Tracy, declared in the Daily News: "Because of our moral aloofness to the great international pastime of snoop-look-and-listen, America has become just one vast peek-easy."

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