The Bergdoll Boys, page 32
Johnson’s father, a veteran of bare-knuckle politics from Bardstown, Kentucky, had been a state senator and lieutenant governor. His mother had been on the committee that chose the design for the Confederate flag. Kentucky historians wrote of Johnson, “His early life included several shooting frays… a hunting trip with Jesse James [the train and bank robber], and numerous political quarrels. A pistol remained a part of his daily attire throughout his life.”3
The awkward incident delayed Emma’s testimony. She would return the following Monday.4
The House committee investigating Grover’s escape had already written its report. Still, with the new revelation, it was re-convened in mid-July 1921 when it received word from Department of Justice investigators in Philadelphia that Grover sent a letter from Germany to his mother claiming he had paid a bribe to his Army-appointed defense attorney, Captain Campbell. Despite the committee being warned in May by the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia, Charles D. McAvoy, that Grover often lied about paying bribes to gain freedom, the chairman called the members back to the hearing room for more questions.
In Grover’s letter to Emma from Germany, he ridiculed the Alien Property Custodian’s seizure of his assets, claimed three nations were offering him citizenship and asylum, and that the federal agents were “starting something they couldn’t finish.”
We made the Americans look like a bunch of boobs before the whole world. They are all laughing at them. You certainly did tell it to the investigators down at Washington, and you deserve credit. Why did you not tell them of the $5,000 which we gave Campbell up at Governors Island? If you did not, I would advise you to make it public, so that the grafters will be all exposed. We are writing a book which gives away the whole swindle from beginning to end, and the American public will wake up when they read it in the near future.
Grover never wrote a book about the “whole swindle” nor gave Capt. Campbell $5,000. Emma testified that Campbell was given only about $50 for a jail account from which Grover could purchase razor blades, toothpaste, other toiletries, and a new pair of shoes for his trial.
She also testified that a few hundred dollars were given to Grover’s jail mate, Frank E. Speicher, a prisoner freed daily from the Castle Williams jail to travel into Manhattan with the understanding that he would return each evening. The Bergdoll money may have bought his silence. Speicher later told the investigators that Grover would try to escape at his first opportunity, but he never warned their jailers about it.5
When the alleged $5,000 payment to Capt. Campbell became known, the committee called in Campbell, his father, and Emma and Charles for an explanation. Emma testified that she traveled to the Castle Williams jail and gave Grover $5,000 at his request, but she didn’t know what he did with it. She said Grover told her that Campbell wanted $100,000 to pay to “higher-ups” in Washington before he could be released. Emma went so far as to claim that while riding the Governors Island ferry with Campbell, he told her he “had given the money [the $50] to the proper person.” The press mistakenly reported this amount to be $5,000. In Emma’s testimony, it’s clear she was referring only to the $50 given to Campbell for Grover’s jail toiletries account.
Nonetheless, the Army Military Intelligence Department sent a man to New York to examine Campbell’s bank account, shared with his wife, Laura. He returned to the committee, not with copies of the Campbells’ bank statements, but with handwritten notes indicating deposits no greater than Campbell’s $252.50 monthly Army salary and checks drawn in the range of $7–60.
However, the committee later obtained bank statements showing a $5,037 deposit into Campbell’s account. Then, records from a stock investment firm in New York City showed that Campbell deposited $6,500 into an investment account in February 1920, soon after he was appointed Grover’s Army attorney. It also discovered that Campbell purchased a new automobile for $1,500 shortly after the alleged Bergdoll bribe.
Campbell was under heavy suspicion by the committee.
Not until the committee heard from the Campbells did the members’ suspicion begin to wane.6 Campbell testified that before his $6,500 stock investment, he and his wife had about $24,000 saved. Campbell’s father convincingly testified that his son won $6,000 in “a friendly gambling transaction.” Furthermore, Campbell convinced the committee with his reputation and military record. He had been gassed in the war, was in Walter Reed General Hospital near Washington for war-related treatments during earlier sessions of the hearings, and had been called from a military base in Arkansas to appear for the re-convened hearings. While traveling to Washington by train, he had been humiliated by the newspapers’ false reports that Emma gave him $5,000. His testimony was described as “rambling and disconnected,” but no one contradicted his explanation for the money. Furthermore, in her testimony, Emma contradicted some of the allegations Grover made in his letter. The committee ruled out bribery to any member of the Army or official of the federal government.
It determined that Major Campbell disproved the charges, and he was exonerated.
The select committee was not so kind to the small cadre of enablers employed by the Bergdolls and the Army commanders who signed off on Grover’s release to search for gold. Initially, it investigated to place blame on Major-General Peter C. Harris, adjutant general of the Army, Colonel (later Major) John E. Hunt, commander of the Atlantic Branch Disciplinary Barracks at Governors Island, Judge Romig, Gibboney, and prominent New Jersey lawyer, former New Jersey attorney general, and close friend of President Wilson, John W. Wescott.
In the end, however, the committee laid the most blame for the Bergdoll debacle on Gibboney, Wescott, Hunt, and two others, Washington lawyer and former acting judge advocate general during the war Samuel T. Ansell, and the Army prosecutor Lt. Charles C. Cresson.7
***
Soon after Grover’s conviction, Gibboney had arranged for Emma to give him $12,500 to hire civilian lawyers for appeals. He hired the Washington law firm of Ansell and Bailey, consisting of Samuel Ansell and partner Edward S. Bailey. With a $5,000 retainer, Ansell, Bailey, and Gibboney initially discussed an appeal on the claims that Grover’s Army induction failed to meet the 10 days’ notice before becoming effective and where the law was silent on a method of service of a legal notice, personal service was compulsory. The draft board had met neither condition. Gibboney had scant experience in military law, but Ansell and Bailey quickly determined that this line of appeal was not strong enough and would not work. It was abandoned.
With Gibboney, they negotiated and drew two contracts providing fees from $20,000 to $60,000 if they gained Grover’s release through whatever means, including clemency and presidential pardon. For an undetermined reason, however, neither of the two contracts was signed, although both Gibboney and Bailey verbally agreed that the second contract was favorable to both parties.
Then, Wescott was brought into the case. The former New Jersey attorney general during the war, Wescott made the Democratic National Convention nominating speeches for President Wilson’s two terms in office. Wescott helped elevate Wilson from New Jersey governor to the White House, and the President didn’t forget it.
Wescott was a Yale Law School graduate who practiced law in Camden, New Jersey, and lived in a lush neighborhood in Haddonfield. Along with his friendship with President Wilson, he was acquainted with Wilson’s secretary of war, Newton Baker, and on friendly terms with Wilson’s attorney general from Pennsylvania, Alexander Mitchell Palmer. Wescott’s contacts in the Democratic Wilson administration leave no doubt about why he was hired.
In his first act aiding the release of Grover, Wescott wrote a legal brief and sent a copy to Secretary Baker.8 In it, he said, “There is not the slightest doubt in the world but that the war authorities made a mistake. I am enormously interested in the situation and want, if possible, to keep the matter out of the courts.”
After retiring from the War Department and returning home to Cleveland, Baker acknowledged Wescott’s brief and sent it to the Army’s adjutant general. However, he dismissed any “degree of intimacy” between him, Wescott, or any other attorneys working for Bergdoll.
Nonetheless, Wescott’s correspondence achieved its goal. The secretary of war sent his legal brief to the Army’s adjutant general. It opened the door for Bergdoll’s paid civilian advisors to influence military decisions about the fate of the Army’s number one draft dodger.
When it was determined that an appeal of Grover’s conviction on technical grounds would not work, the investigators determined that Gibboney hatched the scheme for Grover to fetch gold he had buried in the Maryland mountains when he was a fugitive and hiding near Hagerstown. Gibboney told Ansell that Grover had hidden more than $100,000 in gold coins “in a lonely spot somewhere in northern West Virginia, and it was known only to himself.”9
Realizing he would be sent to serve his five-year sentence in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas prison, Gibboney said Grover wanted to recover the gold and put it in a bank for safekeeping. Ansell, the former acting adjutant general, told Gibboney there was precedent for releasing Army prisoners for personal reasons.10
The official investigation report indicates that Ansell, perhaps determined to collect the substantial fee he negotiated with Gibboney, first verbally discussed a conditional release for Grover with the adjutant general, the man in the same position which Ansell had vacated only a few years earlier, Major General Peter C. Harris, on May 10, 1920. Harris said to put it in writing, which Ansell did the following day.
The wheels of Grover’s release turned quickly. Harris discussed the release request with the Army chief of staff, Peyton C. March, who said it was OK and that responsibility for prisoners at Governors Island was up to General Harris. With approval from his superior, Harris said he did not deem it necessary to seek further permission from the secretary of war, so Baker was not consulted. Harris’ assistant sent a letter to Col. Hunt, commander of the Disciplinary Barracks at Governors Island, to arrange for Grover to leave his jail cell to recover his gold temporarily. The conditions were as follows: under armed guard, without handcuffs, with at least one of Grover’s attorneys, straight to the location to dig up the gold, then to a bank for deposit, and return to Governors Island. It was “suggested” that an officer accompany the Army guard. All expenses were to be paid by Grover.
The final part of the order was most curious. “You are further instructed to keep the matter strictly confidential and not to divulge the purpose of your expedition,” wrote Harris’ assistant adjutant general, Colonel Julius A. Penn, over his signature.
Soon after Gibboney and Campbell went to Governors Island to discuss details of Grover’s release with Col. Hunt, the conditions began to change. Hunt was a career officer from the United States Military Academy at West Point in charge of the Atlantic Branch prison and took his independent command seriously. He had served in Cuba and the Philippines and was into his second decade as a career officer. However, Hunt had a stain on his record: a court martial for drinking alcohol while on duty in 1905. The infraction would haunt him in the Bergdoll case.
Col. Hunt bristled when other officers tried to tell him how to guard his prisoners. He insisted that the Army prison command was to be independent of the Army general staff under Congressional regulations. He had been in control of the Disciplinary Barracks since August 1918 and shuttled some 4,000 prisoners through his prison in two years, far more than the 500 the island barracks were designed to hold. On the day Grover was released and escaped, more than 700 prisoners were held on Governors Island, many sleeping in tents instead of locked cells.11
Col. Hunt was also a stickler for Army rules and regulations. When he was informed that Grover would be coming to Governors Island, he summoned his higher command because the Disciplinary Barracks were for general prisoners, those tried and convicted of a crime. Bergdoll would be a garrison prisoner pending his trial and conviction. The ranking commanders immediately approved the deviation in regulations because they wanted Bergdoll in a secure prison cell.
On the same day as Grover’s appearance at Governors Island came the first order meddling with Hunt’s command. The adjutant general’s office sent a letter to Hunt saying that Bergdoll was not to leave the island without a signed declaration. When he did, “he should be securely guarded and not entrusted to the sole custody of the trial judge advocate, defense counsel, or any other officer.” This outside order, Hunt felt, was contrary to his independence. His practice was transporting prisoners on court dates with only a single sentinel carrying a stick.
Several weeks later, Hunt received another letter from a colonel in the Army’s general staff saying there should be two guards whenever Bergdoll left the island for a court date. “The commanding general directs that he [Bergdoll] be handcuffed to one sentinel and guarded by another sentinel.”
Hunt scoffed at the directive because he believed it was written by Bergdoll’s Army prosecutor, Lt. Cresson. Instead of following advice and orders from ranking officers, Hunt relied on Army psychiatrists who examined and determined Bergdoll was not dangerous and would not try to escape. Hunt later testified that he and the psychiatrists felt that placing Bergdoll in handcuffs for an extended time would be inhumane.12
Before the expedition was to leave the barracks, Hunt called Grover into his office and asked him specifically where the gold was buried. He wouldn’t tell. Hunt allowed Grover to keep the location a secret, even though he was a convicted Army prisoner. He was allowed to travel hundreds of miles to a remote area several days distant from the Disciplinary Barracks on a mission that could easily be seen as a mechanism for escape.
Furthermore, Hunt feared that Grover would be identified when he was out in public. He wanted the expedition to be secret, so he ordered that Grover wear a battalion uniform. But Hunt also sent Grover to Philadelphia, where he was most likely to be identified. The Congressional committee wondered why Hunt didn’t send the expedition directly to Maryland from New York via New Jersey or from a train station in Baltimore or Washington where Bergdoll was less apt to be identified.
Hunt, who deplored ranking officers’ advice on his prison command, had only a simple explanation. He turned control over to a civilian.
“I made a concession to Gibboney to send the prisoner [Bergdoll] to North Philadelphia and from where they would go by automobile to Hagerstown to search for the gold,” he said.13
Hunt said he was actively seeking rank and job promotion during the Bergdoll escape and was “practically selected” for command of the Army’s prison at Fort Leavenworth.14 The revelation was an effort to enhance his credibility among the members of Congress.
Congressman Johnson, who knew a thing or two about guns, especially the shooter in his pocket, asked Hunt if he would have trusted the advice of his psychiatrist if he had known that Grover had an arsenal of more than 30 shotguns, pistols, and rifles, one with a Maxim silencer, in his mansion when he was captured.
Hunt’s reply, “Certainly, such information would have had great weight with me if I had heard or known that Bergdoll had an arsenal in his house.” Hunt admitted he didn’t know much about Bergdoll before he arrived on the island.
Col. Hunt insisted his guard force had been depleted, and he could not afford to lose even one officer to be away from the island to guard the Bergdoll gold expedition. Instead, he chose two noncommissioned sergeants, John O’Hare and Calvin York, to serve as Grover’s guards. They were part of a sparse guard unit that Hunt described as “mentally under par.” Hunt’s orders allowed O’Hare and York to carry pistols but no handcuffs. Transporting a prisoner in bracelets would be too conspicuous, he later said.
Additionally, Grover would not wear his blue denim prisoner outfit with the large white number 10 on the back but, instead, wear a disciplinary battalion uniform which, to civilians, appeared no different than an enlisted man’s uniform: olive drab, wrapped leggings, and campaign hat, minus the hat cord identifying an Army unit.
Furthermore, none could agree on which attorney would go with the gold-hunting expedition: Gibboney, Campbell, or Romig. And, to make matters worse, Hunt gave Sgt. O’Hare only minimal information about his mission. O’Hare was told only that he was taking prisoner Bergdoll on the morning train to North Philadelphia. He was asked to read the adjutant general’s letter of release conditions (which he didn’t understand) and told he would meet Gibboney in North Philadelphia, where O’Hare would confirm the attorney’s identity by matching letters of expedition orders, a copy of which Hunt was sending to Gibboney.
Neither O’Hare nor York was told the true mission of the expedition. Hunt thought they were going to Hagerstown to get money from a bank and take it for deposit in a Philadelphia bank. York was only informed of the order the night before they were to leave. Neither carried additional provisions for a multiple-night expedition nor understood anything about digging up gold. They didn’t even have a shovel.
Incredibly, they were told to take orders from a civilian when they got to North Philadelphia: Gibboney.
Sergeant O’Hare was in command of the guard. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, he was an Army veteran with about five years of experience running drills with prisoners. But O’Hare had been on only one prisoner transport convoy by train to Fort Leavenworth. He was previously assigned to Fort Myer, Virginia, and had never ridden in an automobile until he got into Grover’s Super Six.
O’Hare testified that he was 5′5″ and 130 pounds, no physical match for the much heavier Bergdoll and half the size of the tall and stout Stecher. Under committee questioning, O’Hare was incapable of spelling or understanding the definition of certain words in the written order permitting Bergdoll’s release. The committee found that he did not have sufficient education and experience to guard a man like Bergdoll.
O’Hare initially met his charge by visiting Grover where he was assigned to work in the prison laundry, organizing uniforms for storage and dispensing to prisoners returning to the regular Army. Therefore, he said, Grover got to pick out his uniform for the expedition, approved by Hunt. Against Hunt’s order, however, Grover included a blue hat cord, indicating an infantry unit. It was the first time he’d worn the uniform of the regular Army.
