Soon after the Black Tom incident, Wunnenberg approached Bacon in New York City under the alias “Davis.” Wunnenberg asked whether Bacon would be willing to go to England to collect information useful for the German government, including antiaircraft defense, troop movements and morale, and information on new battleships. Scheele and his spy ring were implicated in the huge Black Tom explosion in July 1916 that woke up half of New York City and destroyed a major munitions warehouse along the New Jersey shoreline, but Scheele escaped to Cuba. Walter Scheele, who created a cigar bomb. They even had chemical specialists based in Hoboken, New Jersey, like Dr. The Germans had launched a massive sabotage campaign in the United States focused on the East Coast because they wanted to block delivery of materials to the Allies. Both of these spy runners had cover jobs in journalism and allegedly worked at the Central Powers Film Company.Īlthough the United States was still neutral when Wunnenberg and Sander were sent over, it had been supplying the Allies with munitions, war materials, and provisions. Sander and Charles Wunnenberg (Karl Wünnenberg in German). The Bacon investigation in turn led to an “important gang of American spies,” as MI5 called them, sent to England from the United States by two German master spies based in New York City-Albert O. German spies who had been apprehended, counterintelligence decided to shadow him during his stay there. Since Bacon planned to travel to Rotterdam like some of the other Unfortunately for Bacon, the Rotterdam address had recently been placed under censorship surveillance because MI5 had received a tip from MI6 that German intelligence was using it as a cover address. Soon after Bacon arrived in England, censors intercepted his mail-with suspicious underlining-to a contact with a cover address in Holland. Most of the spies they captured had commercial cover. Bacon really was a writer and journalist who worked for magazines like the film tabloid Photoplay and served as the New York City publicity representative of a film production company before the German Secret Service recruited him to become a spy.īritish counterintelligence wondered why the Germans hadn’t sent any journalists into England yet. The journalism occupation was no cover story, though. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed round glasses that made him look intellectual. Bacon was a lanky Minnesota-born young man, with light reddish hair, pale blue eyes, a fair complexion, and a weak receding chin. His name was George Vaux Bacon and he was an American journalist sent to Britain in September 1916 by German Secret Service officers based in New York City. In the fall of 1916 British censors opened a letter by a most intriguing spy. Excerpted with permission from Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al Qaeda, by Kristie Macrakis.
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