![]() It was no wonder that Wilson wrote to his adviser Edward House that summer that the country was “honeycombed with German intrigue and infested with German spies.”Īlthough these plots are omitted from most discussions of the 1917 Espionage Act-the law now being invoked by those who would prosecute WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange-they go a long way toward explaining (but not excusing) that unfortunate piece of wartime legislation. ![]() American officials also learned of sabotage plans hatched by a different German spy, Franz Rintelen von Kleist, who was plotting to destroy American munitions plants and blow up the Welland Canal, a Canadian waterway of vital importance to the United States. More disturbing were schemes to provoke strikes in armaments factories to corner the supply of liquid chlorine, an ingredient in poison gas, in order to keep it from Allied hands even to acquire the Wright Brothers’ Aeroplane Company and use its patents on Germany’s behalf. ![]() There were plans to take over American newspapers, bankroll films, send hired lecturers on the Chautauqua circuit, and create pseudo-indigenous movements to agitate on behalf of pro-German policies. The documents that Wilson and McAdoo beheld detailed a sweeping secret campaign, linked to high-ranking German officials, of espionage, sabotage, and propaganda.
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