Sherlock Stokes

A Washington reporter's two-year crusade has begun to pay off. Scheduled to go on trial shortly in the District of Columbia are 34 persons already indicted for sedition. A dogged Pinkerton-minded reporter had a big hand in bringing them to book.

In 1940 the Washington Post's grey, sharp managing editor Alexander F. ("Casey") Jones became convinced, that all the pro-isolationist, anti-Semitic propaganda that was then flooding the U.S. was more than mere coincidence. To Reporter Dillard Stokes, who has a nose sharpened by 19 years in U.S. newsrooms, has studied law and authored many a spare-time true detective story, Casey Jones gave a blank-check assignment: investigate and expose subversive activities --"take your time, be sure of your facts," then shoot the works.

In September 1941 Stokes heard that Prescott Dennett, chief of the "Islands for War Debts Committee," had received a summons to appear before the District of Columbia grand jury. Stokes grabbed a taxi, scooted for Dennett's office, there watched a truck being loaded with mailbags. He followed while some of the bags were delivered to the America First Committee headquarters, others to the offices of isolationist Republican Congressman "Ham" Fish. When he phoned Fish's office and got a flat denial that any of the mailbags were there, Stokes wangled his way into Fish's locker room, found the bags.

Later he discovered a bonfire behind America First headquarters. At night he crept in, gathered up charred debris, examined the fragile fragments under magnifying glass, deciphered many names.

Another time he obtained, by means he will not disclose, waste paper from Dennett's office and made a file of persons and organizations corresponding with Dennett. Then he rented a special mailbox, adopted the phony names of "Jefferson Breem" and "Adam Quigley," wrote Jew-baiting letters to all the names in the file. He was flooded with antiSemitic, anti-Roosevelt, isolationist literature, not only from persons to whom he had written, but from others as well. Soon other organizations he had never heard of had him on their mailing lists.

Results of all this sleuthing discovery: that many propaganda agencies in the U.S. were working together, swapping mailing lists; that many an isolationist Congressman's free mailing privilege was being used to disseminate such propaganda, some of which even was inserted into the Congressional Record and then mailed out as Congressional Record "reprints"; that Congressman Fish's secretary, George Hill, later jailed for perjury (TIME. March 2), was serving as handyman for a propaganda ring managed by George Sylvester Viereck and Dennett.

To belligerent William Power Maloney, special assistant to the Attorney General, Dillard Stokes gave his evidence. For his courage and diligence he has received many a threatening letter. A woman phoned him every Saturday for six weeks, told him each time she was on her way to kill him. But his rewards have been many: he scooped other newsmen because he knew what the grand jury was doing, while they did not; he had the satisfaction of watching as the grand jury handed down 34 indictments based often on evidence Dillard Stokes had dug up; in July 1942 he received the Heywood Broun Memorial award for "persistent, tireless, intelligent" newspaper effort.

Said Casey Jones last week of Dillard Stokes: "He has handled probably the touchiest material we have printed in years, and he has been right all down the line." Another tribute to Stokes came a fortnight ago from Montana's Senator Burton K. Wheeler. Said the Senator, denouncing the prosecution of the alleged plotters as "a disgrace": ". . . You are nothing but a stooge for the Department of Justice, a little newspaper spy; it's a dirty business you are in and the time will come when you will all regret it. . . ."

Stokes published the Senator's remark, as well as pictures of Wheeler being hailed by one Frank F. Ferenz, later convicted as a Nazi agent.

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