New York police officials were today conducting an intensive inquiry into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the discovery yesterday of a consignment of 65,000 pounds of TNT which was to have been shipped to Tel Aviv tomorrow.
The discovery of the shipment, in crates marked “used machinery,” resulted from an accident in the loading, of the American Export Lines freighter Executor. A case fell from the loading crane to the Jersey City pier and broke open. When one of the dock workers approached the crate to repair it, he found the cans inside labelled “TNT, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army.” Police and F.B.I. officials immediately ordered the ship impounded and the explosive was removed by a Coast Guard cutter to a “safe anchorage.”
The export declaration papers listed the Oved Trading Company, of Tel Aviv as the consignor and the Haboreg, Ltd., also of Tel Aviv, as the consignee. Neither firm could be traced immediately. Meanwhile, New York police authorities announced that they had found a three-story warehouse in upper Manhattan where, after a long search, they discovered two cartridge-loading machines and a stencil which had been used in marking one of the cases in the shipment.
While the police were searching the warehouse, they received several telephone calls, and each caller asking the same question “Anything doing tonight?” The callers hung up immediately when they were asked to identify themselves. The ware house was operated by the Machinery Processing and Converting Company, whose head, Julius Chender, left his home a few minutes before police called. His whereabouts are still unknown.
Police officials declared that the TNT was capable of blowing up “six cities the size of Jersey City.” They said that other stencils found in the warehouse included the names “Palestine Glass Works, Phoenicia, Ltd., Haifa,” “H. Slavin, Haifa, Palestine,” “Van Cleef Toy Company, Capetown, South Africa,” and “Perez Garcia Company, Brazil.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
