Leon George Turrou (September 14, 1895 – December 10, 1986) was an FBI Special Agent from 1929 to 1938. He was involved in several high-profile investigations including the USS Akron Airship disaster (1933Turrou, Where My Shadow Falls, Page 67), Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping (1932-34),Turrou, Where My Shadow Falls, Page 106 and enforcement of the Mann Act (White Slave Traffic) (1936-37).Turrou, Where My Shadow Falls, Page 129 In February 1938 Turrou was assigned by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to head a foreign espionage investigation, the Rumrich Nazi Spy Case. Turrou's surprise decision to resign from the FBI on June 20, 1938 and go public with details of the investigation in a series of newspaper articles made him the target of a 27-year vendetta by Hoover.Jeffreys-Jones page 149 However, Turrou's collaboration with the New York Post and Warner Brothers Pictures has been credited with alerting Americans to the Nazi threat, shifting public opinion against neutrality, and increasing the funding of counter espionage agencies prior to World War II.Jeffreys-Jones page 9, Ross page 49 Attempts by the Department of Justice to prevent publication of his articles raised constitutional issues regarding prior restraint, secrecy of grand jury proceedings, whistle-blower rights, employee retribution, and the validity of non-disclosure agreements that anticipated “the landmark ruling in favor of the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case of 1971.”Jeffreys-Jones page 143
Early life Turrou was born Leon Turovsky on September 14, 1895, in Kobryn, Russia (later in Poland, now in Belarus). He claimed in a 1939 interview that both his French father and Russian mother had died by his first birthday.FBI 1/3/1/270 In reality, his mother, Rebecca Turovsky, age 41, and her other son, Rudolf (or “Randolph”) age 16, sailed from Singapore via Yokohama, Japan, arriving in Seattle, Washington on July 13, 1916. On the ship's manifest under nationality, “Russia” had been crossed out and replaced with “Hebrew” for both passengers. Jeffreys-Jones page 44; List or Manifest of Alien Passengers to the US, SS Sado Maru (Ancestry.com search) In 1920, while enlisted in the US Marine Corps, Leon listed “Mrs. Rebecca Turovsky” as his mother and person to be notified in case of emergency.US Army Transport Service, Passenger List, vessel: Pocahontas, date of sailing: November 22, 1920
Turrou's descendants believe that the open antisemitism of the era may have persuaded him to deny his Jewish heritage.email, Robert Turrou, February 18, 2017 Turrou did have a clear motive to do so because his marriage in 1917 to Teresa, a Catholic, would have required a dispensation, difficult or even impossible to obtain under existing Church canon matrimonial law.
However, Jewish heritage may not have been an issue in the FBI. Hoover, a Freemason and Presbyterian, had Jewish agents. Harold Nathan, born of a Jewish family in New York, was highly respected by Hoover. In May 1925, he promoted Nathan to Assistant Bureau Director, “charged with supervising all personnel matters, coordinating investigations, and running the Bureau in Hoover's absence.”Gage, Chapter 11
Turrou became a target of antisemitism only after his resignation from the FBI. Ignatz Griebl, one of the Nazi spies indicted in the 1938 trial, attacked Turrou's veracity because he looked Jewish. In his 1939 book “The Nazi Spy Conspiracy in America”, Turrou observed wryly: “As for Griebl's recognition of me as a Jew ‘by facial landmarks,’ I have a Slavic cast of countenance, and just to keep the record clear, I happen not to be a Jew, either by birth or faith.”Turrou, Chapter XX
Turovsky traveled widely in his youth, becoming fluent in French, German, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Malay and English.FBI 1/1/1/17, 23 He arrived in New York City on March 12, 1913, sailing on the SS Bremen from Germany,FBI 1/3/1/46 and found work selling papers and doing odd jobs. He claimed that during the World War he joined a Polish unit of the French Foreign Legion and was wounded. But a search by the FBI in 1938 could find no record of his wartime service.FBI 1/3/1/52, 57, 86 and 88 Later he worked for the Chinese Eastern Railway and in 1917 married Teresa Zakrzewski, a Polish woman, in Vladivostok, Russia. They had two sons, Edward and Victor, both born in Tayga, Siberia. During the chaos of the Russian Civil War, Turovsky and his family became separated. Unable to confirm his family's fate, Turovsky returned to America and in 1920 enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.FBI 1/1/1/21
On February 7, 1921 Turovsky became an American citizen under provisions of the 1918 Alien Naturalization Act, which allowed any alien who had served honorably in the U.S. military to petition for citizenship. At this time, he also changed his name to Turrou.USA Petition for Naturalization No. 5027, Ancestry.com search On February 12, 1921, Turrou applied to the Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, as an interpreter. Captain Lemuel C. Shepherd, Turrou's Marine Corps commander, wrote a letter of recommendation extolling Private Turrou's six months with the France Map Detachment, where he was of “inestimable service as an interpreter”.FBI 1/1/1/23 (General Shepherd was Commandant of the Marine Corps from 1953 to 1956). J. Edgar Hoover, then Special Assistant to the Attorney General, personally interviewed Turrou, and strongly recommended to Bureau of Investigation Chief Lewis J. Baley that he be hired “for the use in translating and investigations into radical matters.”FBI 1/1/1/17 However, no appointments were available. After a medical discharge from the Marines on May 3, 1921, Turrou successfully applied to Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA) as a translator. This was during the Russian famine of 1921–1922. He worked in Soviet Russia from September 1921 to February 1923, primarily as an interpreter for Chief of Mission William N. Haskell. He participated in meetings with senior Soviet officials.Patenaude, page 685 Turrou's own account (“An Unwritten Chapter”) of his work for Haskell highlights a fraught negotiation with Felix Dzerzhinsky (head of the Cheka and Transport Commissariat) over delays in food distribution.Hoover Institution, Russian Revolution Institute, Turrou search In May 1922, he was reunited with his wife and children in Moscow. Turrou resigned from the ARA and brought his family to America, settling in Westbury, New York.FBI 1/3/1/1 In August 1923 another application to the Bureau was rejected, this time for lacking a law degree. In 1926 he applied to the Department of Justice, and was told that no positions were available. In this period, he was employed as a salesman at the Macy department store in New York City and a clerk in the U.S. General Post Office.
FBI Career On December 2, 1928 Turrou again applied to the Bureau.FBI 1/1/1/29 During the 1928 presidential campaign, Turrou had canvassed for Herbert Hoover in New York City's Russian immigrant neighborhoods, earning him endorsements from several prominent Republican politicians.FBI 1/1/1/45-50 Although an investigation involving interviews with those knowledgeable of Turrou concluded he was of good character, he was found not qualified because he still lacked a law degree (L.L.B.).FBI 1/1/1/34 and 55 J. Edgar Hoover rejected Turrou's application on December 29, 1928. Nevertheless, on February 2, 1929, Assistant to the Attorney General William J. Donovan forwarded several letters to Hoover again urging Turrou's appointment.FBI 1/1/1/75 Donovan had expected to be nominated Attorney General by the President Elect, but was passed over on February 27. He resigned shortly thereafter. Herbert Hoover was inaugurated President on March 4, 1929. Conveniently, the law degree requirement was waived and J. Edgar Hoover appointed Turrou a Special Agent on March 7, 1929.FBI 1/1/1/78 On April 1, 1929 he swore his oath of allegiance to the United States and began his career as a Special Agent.FBI 1/1/1/97 Originally assigned to the Chicago office, he was transferred to New York in 1930. Turrou earned commendations for his diligent and effective performance.FBI 1/1/1/116, 120, 132, 185, 203 His language skills were assets in several investigations. In a November 6, 1935 efficiency report reviewed by Clyde Tolson, the rater noted that Turrou had “an uncanny knack of securing information.”FBI 1/2/1/56 On November 19 Hoover promoted Turrou from Special Agent, Caf 10, at $3700 per annum to Caf 11 (the highest Special Agent grade) at $3800 per annum.FBI 1/2/1/59
The Rumrich Nazi Spy Case On January 29, 1938, MI5 (the British domestic counter-intelligence service) shared with the U.S. Military Attaché in London the contents of a letter sent from New York to Dundee, Scotland. The recipient, Jessie Jordan, a hairdresser, was already under surveillance and known to be a “post box” for the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. The sender, a German agent code-named Crown, described a plot to abduct and possibly murder a U.S. Army officer in New York. This tip brought the FBI into discussions with the State and War Departments over who should investigate, as the U.S. did not have a counter-intelligence service. Director Hoover was reluctant to accept the case because of possible conflicts with the other agencies, and his own unfamiliarity with espionage, but was persuaded to do so.Jeffreys-Jones, page 41 Hoover assigned Turrou, who was now earning $4600 per annum,FBI 1/2/1/136 as lead investigator. He had little to go on until an Army deserter, Guenther Rumrich, was arrested by the New York Police on February 15 while attempting to obtain blank passport applications under an assumed name. Evidence found in his apartment by Army investigators suggested Rumrich might be a foreign agent. The NYPD, State Department and Army were all involved with Rumrich before Turrou learned about the case from newspaper accounts on February 17.Turrou Nazi Spies in America, Chapter 4 ; Turrou WMSF, page143
On February 19, Rumrich was transferred to FBI custody, and interrogated by Turrou. Rumrich quickly confessed to being Crown and began cooperating, naming other members of a spy ring run by the Abwehr. Turrou followed his leads and quickly obtained confessions from more spies. Turrou had the gift of making people talk. Particularly helpful was Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl, an outspoken local Nazi leader, Army Reserve officer, and obstetrician-gynecologist. Griebl revealed details of an espionage network that was providing Germany with vital U.S. military secrets. Korvettenkapitän Erich Pfeiffer, a German naval officer stationed in Bremen, was identified as responsible for the Abwehr's American operations. On February 27, Hoover and Reed Vetterli, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's New York office, briefed reporters on details of the investigation. They named Rumrich and two other suspects under arrest, Erich Glaser and Johanna Hofmann. Photographs of Rumrich and Hofmann were published in the New York Times report on the FBI briefings. More arrests were expected. A “reliable source” (presumably Hoover himself) disparaged the spy ring as naïve and obtuse. “None of this information would be of value to Germany with one possible exception, the secret codes of the Air Service.”NYT February 27, 1938, page 1 These revelations had consequences. “To Turrou's dismay, German intelligence diverted ships carrying spies, destroyed evidence and told its agents to run for cover.”Jeffreys-Jones, page 57