Benedict Arnold
Betraying the United States government is usually a bad idea,
especially if you're an American Citizen. Sometimes we've been too hard on
people who were forced at gunpoint to assist the enemy such as the case of "Tokyo
Rose", a Japanese American woman visiting in Japan and trapped there when
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It was later shown that she had been forced
to broadcast propaganda for Japan. But on the other hand, sometimes we've been
too soft on willing collaborators. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for
providing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union yet others who did the same thing
at the same time didn't even do prison time even though their activities were
uncovered.
Here are eight Americans who let our side down, ranging from
the Revolutionary War to present times.
8) BENEDICT ARNOLD
When your name becomes synonymous with the word "traitor"
you can usually expect to have it pop up on a fair number of lists of famous
traitors. You can also usually expect to have been executed by angry patriots
long before you get to read any of these lists, but in Benedict Arnold's case,
he was able to die peacefully in Canada at a safe distance from everyone who
wanted to kill him. Arnold was actually on track to become an American hero of
the Revolutionary War, scoring important victories at Fort Ticonderoga and
Saratoga and often leading his men from the front lines. Unfortunately for him,
his short temper and lack of understanding about the ins and outs of politics
made him some powerful enemies and few friends in the political structure of
the Continental Army. He was also deep in debt after paying for much of his
soldiers' equipment out of his own pocket, so when he found himself relegated
to military command of Philadelphia he developed contacts among Loyalist colonists
and eventually started selling crucial bits of intelligence to the British spy
service. When his handler was captured, Benedict Arnold officially joined the
British Army as a brigadier general, leading several attacks on targets in New
York before settling down in Canada, where he played a minor role in British
military intrigues and shipping but was mostly remembered for being an
incredibly bitter and unpleasant man. A foot note to his downfall has more
recently come to light with the theory that it was his young and ambitious wife
who actually led him into the world of espionage and ultimate downfall.
7) ALDRICH AMES
The most damaging mole in CIA history and believed to be the
most damaging spy in American history in general (until the discovery of Robert
Hanssen several years later), Aldrich Ames first started working for the
Russians in 1985. Nine years later, the CIA noticed that one of their analysts was
a $60,000 per year desk worker owned a $50,000 Jaguar and a $540,000 house,
both of which he had paid for in cash, and credit card debt with a minimum
monthly payment of more than his monthly salary. They belatedly realized that
these just might be signs of a man with more than one source of income. After
making sure that Ames hadn't recently inherited a fortune from some previously
unknown relative, the CIA arrested him. He casually admitted that he had sold
the Soviets information that had resulted in the exposure of over a hundred
Western agents behind the Iron Curtain, several of whom had been executed based
on his information. Ames pleaded guilty to dodge the death penalty and the
American intelligence apparatus breathed a sigh of relief knowing that their
worst leak had successfully been patched up…but that feeling of relief wouldn't
last long.
6) ROBERT HANSSEN
A computer and wiretapping expert, Robert Hanssen rose to
the top levels of the FBI hierarchy even though he was actively spying for the
Soviet and Russian Federation governments for all but the first three years of
his career. His work compromised hundreds of American counter-espionage
investigations and earned him over $1.4 million from grateful KGB and GRU
agents. Using a system of code names and dead drops to exchange information and
cash, Hanssen maintained a much lower profile than Ames and would have never
been caught if his brother-in-law (also an FBI agent) hadn't spotted a gigantic
stack of money on Hanssen's nightstand during a visit. When arrested in 2001
after 22 years as a double agent, Hanssen is reported to have said, "What
took you so long?"
5) EZRA POUND
American expatriate Ezra Pound was a revolutionary poet and
literary critic, a personal friend to nearly all the American and British
writers of the time, and a proud and committed fascist. Pound blamed the
international banking system for World War I, which disillusioned and
embittered him, and he felt that the experimental system of "social credit"
that was needed to replace the banks could only be implemented by a fascist
government. After moving to Italy and meeting Mussolini, Pound began working
less on his poetry and more on his economic and social lectures and pamphlets,
where he increasingly replaced the term "international banking" with "international
Jewry" and his articles or letters would end with the salutation, "Heil
Hitler." During the invasion of Italy in World War II, Pound convinced the
government of Rome to allow him to make propaganda broadcasts to American
troops, which were of dubious value as his voice was described as "like
the sound of a hornet stuck in a jar" and there were few poetry
aficionados in the army at the time to know who he was. Arrested in 1945 by
partisan troops, Pound endured harsh conditions in an American prison camp
outside Pisa, an experience that allegedly drove him insane (or more so
according to some) and left him unfit to stand trial. After his release from a
Pennsylvania mental asylum in 1958, Pound returned to Italy to live out the
rest of his days in bitterness and failing health.
4) FRITZ JULIUS KUHN
Born in Germany but living and working in America since 1928,
Fritz Kuhn was the man in charge of the infamous U.S. Nazi group, the
German-American Bund. An enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's ideas on racial
purity and the fascist system, Kuhn was also a fan of Hitler's political style.
Bund gatherings were known for dramatic outbursts of violence in a way America
had never seen before. Ironically, Hitler wasn't much of a fan of Kuhn and his
makeshift Nazi party—the dictator wanted Nazi influence in America to be
powerful, but not so powerful that it might backfire and draw America into the
war. The Bund's front-page antics weren't falling in line with that goal.
Eventually, Kuhn was taken down by a New York City tax investigation that
showed he had embezzled $14,000 from his own organization. When he emerged from
that jail sentence, he was immediately arrested for being an enemy agent. Kuhn
was released at the war's end and returned to Germany a bitter, broken man.
3) AMERICAN WAFFEN-SS
VOLUNTEERS
One of the stranger details about Germany's Nazi-run
Schutzstaffel (more commonly known as the SS) was that it formed a number of
volunteer and propaganda divisions of decidedly non-German and sometimes even
non-Aryan ethnicities. For years there were rumors of a so-called "George
Washington Brigade" made up entirely of renegade Americans. The GWB turned
out to be a myth, but it was a myth reinforced by the occasional discovery of
SS troops with American accents or names, who often turned out to be not just
naturalized citizens but born on American soil. It's impossible to know for
sure how many Americans fought for the Nazis as records are unavailable after
May of 1940.
2) MARTIN JAMES MONTI
One particularly noteworthy American SS was Army Air Force
pilot Martin James Monti, who in October of 1944 hitchhiked and transferred his
way to an Italian airbase, stole a fast reconnaissance plane and promptly flew
it north into Axis hands to defect. Searching around for something to do, Monti
made a few propaganda broadcasts under the name Martine Wiehaupt, but his radio
voice was lacking and he eventually became an SS sergeant in the closing weeks
of the war. Nobody is quite sure of Monti's motivation or why he chose to
defect to a country that was clearly losing the war. He served a brief jail
sentence before being released back into the Army, where he kept a low profile
and managed to make sergeant by 1948 before the FBI caught up with him. He
served the next 25 years in prison.
1) AARON BURR
Burr was vice president to Thomas Jefferson, back when the
president and the vice president tended to be from opposing political parties.
They spent a lot of time yelling at each other. He who shot Alexander Hamilton in
that famous duel. What most school history lessons don't really cover is that
Burr became so unpopular after essentially murdering his political opponent
that he decided his career was over unless he did something really dramatic. He
formulated a plan to take control of the Texas and Louisiana Territories with
groups of armed farmers and the help of sympathetic army officers and possibly even
invade either Mexico or Washington, D.C. if he could talk Spain into the deal.
Unfortunately for Burr, Jefferson had been keeping an eye on his former vice
president, and various state district attorneys were busy collecting evidence of
the so-called Burr Conspiracy.
The hammer finally dropped after Burr's co-conspirator,
General James Wilkinson, sent Congress the deciphered text of a letter Burr had
written of a planned attack on several important Mississippi River towns. Upon
being seeing his treasonous letter published in full in a New Orleans newspaper
including a reward for his capture, Burr abandoned his tiny army and attempted
to hide in the vast marshes of the Louisiana Territory. Aaron Burr was
eventually captured by troops from Fort Stoddard and delivered to Richmond,
Virginia for his trial at the Supreme Court. Despite Jefferson's desire to have
Burr executed, a stubborn Chief Justice John Marshall eventually threw the case
out based on technicalities. The case became one of the earliest tests of
Constitutional law and the limiting of the executive branch. Burr briefly
exiled himself to Europe, but returned later under an assumed name to try and
start anew. True to form, he was pestering various governments with plans to conquer
Mexico and installing himself as governor, even under his new identity. He died
hounded by creditors from both his old life and the new one.
8 comments:
thanks for sharing. I love learning about things like this.
What an excellent post, Samantha. Most of these I had heard of, but not all of them--and it makes for fascinating reading and speculation as to their reasoning, doesn't it? I really enjoyed it!
Wow, great post. I did not know about Ezra Pound. Thanks so much for posting this.
Barbara: I'm glad you enjoyed my blog.
Thanks for your comment.
Cheryl: It is interesting to discover who did it for the ideology and who did it for greed.
Thanks for your comment.
Debra: I had always known the name Ezra Pound but never knew exactly who he was or even what time period he lived in until I came across that list.
Thanks for your comment.
Interesting post, Samantha. Even more so after I just finished the last season of Granite Flats on Netflix a show rife with spies. The show even mentions the Rosenbergs. I was aware of Ezra Pound as his birth home was around the block from where I grew up. But he was mostly touted more as a poet, than a traitor in my hometown. Thanks for sharing.
Stanalei: Glad you enjoyed it. Interesting that Ezra Pound was from your neighborhood. I had been aware of his name (probably because it was an unusual name and stuck in my mind) and vaguely associated him with literature somehow, but never knew who he was.
Thanks for your comment.
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