Supporters of the proposal and many in the media have pointed to the use of such a secret military tribunal to try 8 German saboteurs put ashore by Nazi submarines in 1942. What has not been widely reported is that one of America’s most disgraceful miscarriages of justice was perpetrated by the use of a secret military tribunal in that case.
The leader of the German saboteurs who landed on Amagansett beach in New York’s Long Island, was George Dasch. He was a German who had lived for many years in the USA and had a wife who was still in America. He also hated Hitler.
As soon as possible Dasch called the FBI. However, the FBI agents who answered Dasch’s calls thought he was a crank. Dasch was then forced to travel from New York to Washington D.C. and was only able to convince the FBI that he was indeed the leader of the German saboteurs by dumping $84,000 that the Nazis had supplied him with on the desk of an FBI agent.
With Dasch’s help the FBI quickly apprehended all of the saboteurs. Dasch expected to be hailed as the anti-Nazi hero that he was. Were it nor for Dasch, the German plans to blow up American aluminum and power plants could have succeeded and severely hampered the war effort.
J. Edgar Hoover had other plans for Dasch. Hoover figured that if Dasch could be tried and executed by a secret military tribunal, the FBI’s ineptness in ignoring Dasch’s original phone calls could be covered-up. Furthermore, the FBI could then claim that it had broken the Nazi sabotage ring by itself.
Hoover concealed Dasch’s heroism from the press and lied about it to Roosevelt. A secret military tribunal sentenced all 8 of the Germans, including Dash to death in July 1942. However, Roosevelt did find out the truth and commuted Dasch’ s sentence to 30 years imprisonment and the death sentence of another German who had sided with Dasch was commuted to life imprisonment. On August 8th, 1942 the other six Germans were electrocuted in the District Jail in Washington D.C. Dasch was deported in 1948.
Roosevelt never told the public about Hoover’s deception. The truth only became known many years later. Those who now favor the use of secret military tribunals, should be aware of the way that a secret military tribunal was used to perpetrate a tragic injustice against one of America’s most mistreated heroes – George Dasch.
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