Viereck v. United States

• Decision Date: 10 January 1944
• Docket Number: No. 8578.,8578.
• Citation: 139 F.2d 847
• Parties: VIERECK v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

139 F.2d 847 (1944)

VIERECK v. UNITED STATES.

No. 8578.

United States Court of Appeals. District of Columbia.

Argued December 8, 1943.

Decided January 10, 1944.

Mr. John J. Wilson, of Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. Leo A. Rover, of Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellant.

Mr. George A. McNulty, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., with whom Messrs. Tom C. Clark, Asst. Atty. Gen. and Albert E. Arent, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., were on the brief, for appellee. Mr. Wendell Berge, Asst. Atty. Gen., also entered an appearance for appellee.

Before MILLER, Associate Justice, DOBIE,^* Circuit Judge, and ARNOLD, Associate Justice.

DOBIE, Circuit Judge.

George Sylvester Viereck (hereinafter called Viereck) was convicted in the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia for violations of the penal provisions of the Foreign Agent's Registration Act of June 8, 1938, 52 Stat. 631, as amended by the Act of August 7, 1939, 53 Stat. 1244, 22 U.S.C.A. § 611 et seq. (hereinafter called the Act.) The indictment contained six counts. Viereck, found guilty and sentenced under all six counts of the indictment, has duly appealed. Five questions, which we now proceed to discuss, are involved in this appeal.

(1) The Demurrer to Counts II, IV and VI of the Indictment.

It is first contended that the District Court erred in overruling Viereck's demurrer to the second, fourth and sixth counts of the indictment. These three counts (we are told) failed to charge a criminal offense within the purview of the Act. The counts in question charged that Viereck, as to three different supplemental Registration Statements, willfully failed to disclose certain activities on behalf of designated foreign principals in responses to Item 11, which called for a "Comprehensive statement of nature of business of registrant". The ground of demurrer, urged on us in this appeal, is that the Secretary of State had neither the power nor the authority to propound Item 11, even as to the activities of a registrant in his capacity as agent for a foreign principal. We believe that the power of the Secretary of State to propound Item 11, and to require answers thereto, under the penal sanctions of the Act, can be supported on three theories; the precise language of the Act, the legislative history of the Act, and the opinion of the Supreme Court on Viereck's former appeal.

Section 3 of the Act provides:

"Every person who has filed a registration statement required by section 2 shall, within thirty days after the expiration of each period of six months succeeding the first filing, file with the Secretary a statement, under oath, on a form prescribed by the Secretary, which shall set forth with respect to such preceding six months' period —

"(a) Such facts as may be necessary to make the information required under section 2 hereof accurate and current with respect to such period;

"(b) The amount and form of compensation received by such person for acting as agent for a foreign principal which has been received during such six months' period either directly or indirectly from any foreign principal; and

"(c) A statement containing such details required under this Act as the Secretary shall fix, of the activities of such person as agent of a foreign principal during such six months' period."

This is further reinforced by the provisions of Section 6 of the Act: "The Secretary is authorized and directed to prescribe such rules, regulations, and forms as may be necessary to carry out this Act."

If a purely analytical interpretation of these sections discloses any slight ambiguity (we think it does not), any such ambiguity should be quickly resolved against Viereck's first contention, if this language of the Act be interpreted in the light of both the manifest purpose of the Act and the necessities inherent in the practical enforcement of the Act. See United States v. American Trucking Ass'ns, 310 U.S. 534, 542, 60 S.Ct. 1059, 84 L.Ed. 1345; Southland Gasoline Co. v. Bayley, 319 U.S. 44, 47, 63 S.Ct. 917, 87 L.Ed. 1244.

The analytical interpretation of the Act seems to be strongly reinforced by the legislative history of the Act. Even a cursory reading of the resolutions and reports of Committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate would seem to make quite clear the comprehensive extent to which Congress intended that agents of foreign principals must disclose the details of their activities in the field of political propaganda.

Any further lingering doubts here should be dispelled by the language of Chief Justice Stone in the Supreme Court's opinion in Viereck's former appeal. Viereck v. United States, 318 U.S. 236, 63 S.Ct. 561. Thus, at 318 U.S. at page 243, 63 S.Ct. at page 564, we find: "But treating item 11 of the Supplemental Registration Statement (`Comprehensive statement of nature of business of registrant'), prescribed by the Secretary, as a regulation fixing the details of the registrant's activities which he is required to state, it must either be taken as limited to a statement of his activities as agent to which § 3(c) alone refers, or to exceed the authority conferred upon the Secretary by that section. In neither case does the statute command, or authorize the Secretary to command, registrants to make any statement of their activities other than those in which they have engaged `as agent'."

And, again, at 318 U.S. at page 241, 63 S.Ct. at page 563: "The Act of 1938 requiring registration of agents for foreign principals was a new type of legislation adopted in the critical period before the outbreak of the war. The general purpose of the legislation was to identify agents of foreign principals who might engage in subversive acts or in spreading foreign propaganda, and to require them to make public record of the nature of their employment. But the means adopted to accomplish that end are defined by the statute itself, which, as will presently appear more in detail, followed the recommendations of a House Committee which had investigated foreign propaganda. These means included the requirement of registration of agents for foreign principals — with which it appears that petitioner complied — and the requirement that the registrant give certain information concerning his activities as such agent."

While, at 318 U.S. at page 242, 63 S.Ct. at page 564, it was said: "The requirement of this section (3(c) of the Act) is subject to two limitations. One is that the statement is to be of such details of the registrant's activities `as the Secretary shall fix'; the other is that the details are to be of activities of the registrant `as agent of a foreign principal'."

Since the answers required from Viereck under Item 11 related to his activities as "agent of a foreign principal", we think the Supreme Court clearly implied that, as so limited, Item 11 was well within the power and authority of the Secretary of State under the Act.

(2) Alleged Errors in the Admission of Evidence.

We next consider three alleged errors in the rulings of the District Court permitting the introduction of evidence which is alleged by Viereck to be inadmissible.

Objection was made to evidence (particularly the testimony of Dr. Schwarz) showing that in 1933 and 1934 Viereck acted as a (behind-the-scenes) paid consultant of the German Consul in New York, for the purpose of influencing American public opinion in favor of the Hitler regime in Germany. We think this evidence was clearly admissible.

Testimony that Viereck was in the employment of the German Government in 1933 and 1934 tended to show that Viereck was acting for the same foreign principal at the times charged in the instant indictment. See Riverside Fibre & Paper Co. v. O. C. Keckley Co., 7 Cir., 32 F.2d 23, 26; Kent v. Addicks, 3 Cir., 126 F.2d 112, 116, certiorari denied 192 U.S. 607, 24 S.Ct. 851, 48 L.Ed. 585. Certainly this same evidence had some relevancy on the issue of whether the omissions charged against Viereck were willful and deliberate. See Moore v. United States, 150 U.S. 57, 60, 61, 14 S.Ct. 26, 37 L.Ed. 996; Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211, 215, 39 S.Ct. 252, 63 L.Ed. 566; Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1, 46, 31 S.Ct. 502, 55 L.Ed. 619, 34 L.R.A.,N.S., 834, Ann.Cas.1912D, 734; Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 65, 81, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680. Matters of this kind must rest largely in the discretion of the trial judge. See Alexander v. United States, 138 U.S. 353, 357, 11 S.Ct. 350, 34 L.Ed. 954; Clune v. United States, 159 U.S. 590, 592, 16 S.Ct. 125, 40 L.Ed. 269. The length of the time interval in cases of this kind between the acts proved and the acts charged, affects the weight, rather than the admissibility, of the evidence. Holt v. United States, 6 Cir., 42 F.2d 103, 106. See, also, Packer v. United States, 2 Cir., 106 F. 906, 909. In Viereck's first trial, his book "Spreading Germs of Hate" (published in 1930) was admitted as relevant on the issue of willfulness, and that ruling was approved by this Court. Viereck v. United States, 76 U.S.App.D.C. 262, 130 F.2d 945, 959, 960, reversed on other grounds 318 U.S. 236, 63 S.Ct. 561.

Even less merit, we think, has Viereck's objection to the admission of the evidence of Miss Anne Spardel (hereinafter called Spardel) as to the contents of certain letters concerning Viereck's demands for increased compensation, which passed between the German Consul General in New York and the German Charge d'Affaires in Washington. Over objection under the best evidence rule, the trial judge took judicial notice of the inviolability of diplomatic correspondence and the fact that a state of war existed between Germany and the United States. We approve this admission of secondary evidence of the contents of the letter without a showing that the primary evidence, the letters themselves, was unavailable. It is hard for even a fertile imagination to conjure up so futile a gesture, under the...