Paid Agent

New York Daily Newsmen knew Frederick Heizer Wright as a copy reader: razorfaced, begoggled, cadaverous, argumentative, generally broke, colorless. In 16 years he had worked all over the shop, ended up as night head of the copy desk. He was 41, twice married, childless, and given to speaking out against radical moves at Newspaper Guild meetings.

When a Federal grand jury in New York indicted him last week for failing to notify the State Department of his activities as a paid agent of the Japanese Government, most Newsmen realized that they really didn't know Wright at all.

Another Newsman, Walker Gray Matheson, now jailed for working as an undeclared Jap agent, purportedly got Wright his job with the Japanese in 1931. According to the indictment: they paid him $300 to $400 a month and expenses for writing speeches, Jap propaganda, etc.

What's China Getting? Wright was also supposed to investigate anti-Japanese organizations, the indictment said, and following this line of duty used his reporter's prerogative in 1940 to try to find out what materials and supplies the China Defense Supplies Corp. was shipping. In 1935, it was charged, the Japs gave him $5,000 to visit their homeland. He quit the Japs the day before Pearl Harbor.

The indictment carefully exonerated the News.

Wright surrendered peaceably, pleaded not guilty, put up his $5,000 bail, and went back to work. His appearance in the city room and the fact that, if convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of twelve years, $15,000 fine, caused no particular commotion or emotion among the reporters. They figured that he had taken the peacetime job to pick up some extra folding money.

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