Word: sebold
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...agents had reason to be nervous. For some two years the FBI had been working on this case; in three more days it would be ready to round up 33 individuals for its biggest spy trial so far. The tenant of that next office was glum-looking William Sebold, an FBI decoy (TIME, Sept. 22). Its walls were painted a bright white-to make the movies clearer. The camera focused on a calendar (June 25), on a clock on the desk (6:16) and on a tall, sardonic-looking, dark-haired man-Frederick Joubert Duquesne. Agent Johnson began to turn...
While the camera ground, Sebold maneuvered Duquesne to face the invisible lens. Duquesne picked his nose, in most un-Hollywood fashion. While he warned Sebold about carrying secret papers on his person, he gestured like an old veteran of the silent films...
Like a man in a nightmare, who finds that he must live his most private life in the midst of a great crowd of friends and relatives, William Sebold lived constantly in the presence of a veritable mob of Government agents. When he met men spying for Germany, hidden dictaphones recorded the conversation, hidden motion-picture cameras recorded the scene. And all around him industrious operatives collected evidence, still managing to look like casual passers-by in the ordinary run of U.S. life...
Last June the FBI swooped suddenly, arrested 33 (16 pleaded guilty). Last week in a Brooklyn courtroom a subdued William Sebold told his story, and narrative-wise U.S. Attorney Harold Kennedy filled in the gaps. On trial were Herman Lang, accused of selling details of the design of the bombsight, shadowy Frederick Joubert Duquesne, blond Axel Wheeler-Hill, brother of Bundster James Wheeler-Hill, as well as a baker, a shipping clerk, a book salesman, a photographer, a musician, a seaman, a machinist...
Last week watchers at the trial were mightily impressed at FBI efficiency. But watching glum William Sebold as he told his story, many a spectator was more impressed at the craziness and waste of the Nazi world his story pictured, a world so madly different from the desires of an ordinary German who had merely wanted to be an engineer in his own home town...