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Washington Law Review

Myron C. Cramer

Abstract

When your President asked me to talk about something and gave me the choice of subjects, I really didn't know just what to select. I much would have preferred that he would have told me what he would like to have me talk about, but being this is a lawyers' meeting and being that we have been through the trial of the eight saboteurs in Washington, I thought that probably you ladies and gentlemen would be interested in the legal aspects of that trial. Now, I have got to say at the outset that so far as the facts are concerned, the record of the trial has been ordered sealed by the President until the close of the war and those connected with the trial have been told not to disclose any of the facts concerning it. However, to all intents and urposes, I might say what you have read in the papers is the gist of the whole trial, where these eight men, who were trained in a sabotor school in Germany, came over to this country in two submarines, four of whom landed on Long Island and the others in Florida, with $180,000 altogether in United States money, a lot of ammunition, secret paraphernalia for secret writing, and instructions on how to bomb bridges and munition plants and that sort of thing. They were speedily caught. They were tried. We even went through habeas corpus proceedings in the Supreme Court of the United States. And six of them were electrocuted and the other two sentenced to long prison terms, the terms being reduced by the President, all in the short time of two months and one day.

First Page

247

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