862.20210/1360: Telegram
The Ambassador in Brazil (Caffery) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:08 p.m.]
1435. Department’s 759, referred to its 738 which while it gave some discretion in handling the source nevertheless made it clear that everything possible should be done to prevent the source of the messages from being jeopardized or destroyed.
Department’s 937, April 11, clarified the question of giving this evidence to the police here.
The police as you know have arrested and have held these at our request. It was necessary, the more so because as indicated in my 1413 April 25 their espionage activities did not constitute a crime while Brazil is not at war, to show the authorities here that we did in fact have “the goods” on them. The police have therefore been given some of the messages in strict confidence, with the request that they be used only to assist in questioning the prisoners, and under no condition, to be published. The form in which the messages have been given to the police to use has been either as a straight translation into Portuguese of these messages when as in the case of the HTT group, they presented an understandable record of the activities of the Hungarian ring, or as quotations in interrogatories prepared for them by the Embassy as was necessary in order to question Engels, von Heyer and Kempter. A selected group of Alfredo’s messages was furnished to the President, to Aranha and to the police. Another group of Alfredo messages dealing with leaks from the Air Ministry was given to Aranha to show to General Eduardo Gomes.18 As an example of the difficulty in holding these spies, Dr. Edmundo De Miranda Jordao, head of the Brazilian Bar Association, today made energetic representations both to me and to the police concerning the case of Rosa Debalas who is implicated in the HTT ring and is under arrest.
- General Gomes represented Brazilian interests in the construction by United States interests of air bases in northeast Brazil.↩