Word: rieth
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Meanwhile, in Manhattan, glum Germans and sad-eyed Italians were going aboard the West Point. From Ellis Island, where he was taken two months ago for violating U.S. immigration laws, onetime German Minister to Austria Dr. Kurt Rieth was set free. Freed also were Dr. Manfred Zapp and Günther Tonn, U.S. managers of the Nazi Transocean News Service (now closed), who had failed to register with the State Department as foreign agents. The newsmen were to be exchanged for two U.S. newsmen, Jay Allen of North American Newspaper Alliance, Richard Hottelet of United Press, "detained" by the Nazis...
...Then Dr. Rieth turned up at Brownsville, Tex. aboard a Pan American Airways plane from Mexico City. At the U.S. customs office he said he was "a retired capitalist" on his way to Manhattan on "a personal financial mission." His immediate destination, he said, was the office of Walter Clark Teagle, chairman of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey...
Actually, as FBI men soon discovered, his business was to direct anti-British activities in the U.S. Like Dr. Gerhardt Alois Westrick, who beat a hasty retreat last summer after his activities were unmasked by the press (TIME, Aug. 12), Dr. Rieth also hoped to persuade U.S. businessmen to feel more friendly toward the Reich. With that in mind, he called on bankers and industrialists, introducing himself as "a very dear friend" of Standard Oil's Teagle. Mr. Teagle denied that he had ever met the Nazi agent or communicated with...
Unlike Dr. Westrick, who left under his own power, Dr. Rieth had no diplomatic credentials. Taken in custody last week by Sylvester Pindyck, supervisor of a special investigating unit of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he still maintained that he was a private citizen, in the U.S. to look after his family's holdings. Immigration officers took him to Ellis Island, there lodged four charges against him; said his entry was improper because he had stated that he was on private business and claimed never to have visited the U.S. before...
While immigration authorities, moving with unaccustomed speed, made ready to hear his case this week, Nazi officials protested in vain against their No. 1 agent's arrest. In Berlin, Nazi spokesmen said Dr. Rieth had had no "official" connection with the German Government for seven years. In Washington, the German Embassy said he had resigned from the diplomatic service four years ago. In Manhattan, Dr. Hans Borchers, German Consul General, demanded bail for Dr. Rieth, was firmly refused...