Robert Jackson's Busy Week
It was the lunch hour in Manhattan and all over the city waiters with flawless manners were getting orders wrong and with many an expert nourish placing the scrambled eggs before the man who ordered stuffed veal. Suddenly 40 immigration officials, 40 Canadian border patrolmen and 100 city detectives sprang from nowhere, seized 70 Italian waiters, and spread consternation through the $2-luncheon belt.
At the Ritz-Carlton five waiters took to their heels and got away. Only one, serving a group in the Oak Room, was caught--another waiter took over his customers and his tip. At the Ambassador, at the Caviar, at Joe's Restaurant, other rendezvous from Park Avenue to Sixth Avenue, the Government men struck so swiftly and quietly that customers just thought service was a little slower than usual. At the Pierre, necks were craned when a waiter, led off by two officers, let out a squawk: "They're taking us to jail!"
These waiters and eleven more gathered up by week's end had been brought over to work in the Italian Pavilion at New York's World's Fair. Having long overstayed the 30 days allotted them after the pavilion closed, they were legally deportable.
Like nearly 200 German seamen, seized in a dozen cities, including Miami, Kansas City, San Francisco, Chicago and Manhattan, two nights earlier, the Italian waiters were seized at Attorney General Jackson's orders. Most of those seized were not in hiding but it appeared that the Government meant to round up in advance transients from the Axis countries who might be potential enemy agents.
In speeches, conversation with individuals and in his first press conference in eight months, Attorney General Jackson undertook last week to tell about other of his department's activities against undercover foreign activities in the U.S.:
>The Government attached funds of the giant I. G. Farbenindustrie, German dye trust. Indicted last winter with several U.S. companies for violating the antitrust laws in the magnesium industry, officials refused to appear, contending they were not doing business as a U.S. corporation. The Attorney General claimed that the seizure (timed with expected receipt of $250,000 due I. G. Farbenindustrie that same day for license fees from U.S. firms) would compel the dye trust to appear before a U.S. court if it wanted to protest, w
>In Wilson, N.C., ten Italian officers and seamen were found guilty of sabotage of the seized Italian freighter Villarperosa, received sentences up to three years. First of 397 Italians, ten Germans up for trial, they got off easier than Robert Jackson wanted--he asked uniform sentences of five years for seamen, seven for officers.
>Manfred Zapp and Giinther Tonn, officials of the Nazi Transocean News Service (TIME, March 24), arrested on deportation charges because they entered the U.S. as "treaty merchants" and did not maintain that status, were held at Ellis Island. The Government argument against bail reviewed the case of Baron Franz von Werra, Nazi flier, who put up $15.000 bail and ran away.
>Bail was not refused in the mysterious case of Gaik Badalovitch Ovakimian, Russian agent picked up by the FBI. This stocky, greying, powerful man has been in the U.S. since 1936. Last month, for the first time, he registered with the State Department as the agent of a foreign power. He had sent his wife, child, furniture and car back to Russia, was himself due to leave this month.
A great hush-hush attended the proceedings where Ovakimian was held for $25,-ooo bail. When the U.S. attorney said that Ovakimian was a key figure in the Government's spy investigations, an FBI man shushed him in alarm. Ovakimian growled at the Soviet consul general, who treated him with vast respect (and posted a $25,000 bond with $50 and $100 bills), identified himself first as a buyer for Amtorg Trading Corp., next as representative of the "chemical trust," last as an agent of "the Commissariat." Around the Amtorg office he was always a feared and mysterious figure who came and went as he pleased, was reported to have studied in U.S. technical schools, and was believed by subordinates to be the CPU's industrial chief in the U.S. Whatever he had been, there was no doubt but that the FBI believed it had taken in someone very near the top.
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