Page 64 - All About History - Issue 59-17

operation
Underworld
When the East Coast was
under threat from Nazi spies

and submarines, the US Navy

found an unlikely champion:

the mafia. But was America’s
alliance with the criminal

underworld a spying success

or big mob con?

ust a few months after its explosive entry
into World War II, the US suffered another
significant naval casualty. USS Lafayette,
an 80,000-ton former French ocean
Jliner, caught fire and capsized in New
York Harbor in February 1942. Commandeered
by the authorities, the ship was in the process
of being converted into troop transport when it
sank. Happening so soon after the attack on Pearl
Harbor, the government immediately suspected
enemy sabotage. A congressional investigation
eventually ruled the disaster an accident but the
incident exposed how vulnerable the East Coast
was to infiltration by Axis agents.
U-boats had been spotted patrolling in packs
along the coastline. German torpedoes were
taking out dozens of merchant ships — on their
way to resupply Allied forces in Europe — every
month. In June, German agents were captured on
Long Island with explosives, maps and details of
strategic installations along the waterfront (see
‘Hitler’s Doomed Sabotage Mission’, page 67).
The US had become complacent during
peacetime and had dropped the ball as far as
military intelligence was concerned. But after USS
Lafayette went down, it prompted the head of the
Office of Navy Intelligence (ONI), Commander
Charles Radcliffe Haffenden, to launch a counter-
espionage initiative. He wanted all eyes and ears to
the ground in the dockyards.
The trouble was that some of the workers and
proliferate criminals in that area, particularly
along the piers, were suspected of assisting
Axis spies and saboteurs. Lieutenant O’Malley
of the ONI later wrote in a post-war report how
concerned the US Navy was about sensitive
information being leaked to German submarine
commanders: “Some weight began to be
accorded […] to the possibility that information
as to convoy movements assistance in refuelling
of submarines might be traced to criminal
elements of Italian or German origin
on the waterfront.”

Written by
Ben Biggs

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