Rep. Samuel Dickstein (Dem., N.Y.) today accused William Dudley Pelley, other Silver Shirt leaders and allied anti-Semitic groups of treason, in testimony before the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities.
Dickstein, who in 1934 was vice-chairman of a House committee which was a forerunner of the present Dies body, produced documentary evidence from the forgotten files of his committee to show that Pelley was organizing an armed legion and recruiting reserve officers of the United States Army to march on Washington and take over the Government.
The New York Representative produced letters seized in 1934 by Rep. Charles Kramer (Dem., Calif.) at Pelley’s Asheville, N.Car., headquarters in which Captain S.J. Rubley of the Michigan National Guard said he was training members of the Ku Klux Klan in horsemanship and gunnery and offered to train the silver shirts.
Chairman Martin Dies immediately ordered subpoenas served on Captain Rubley and Michigan K.K.K. officers.
Another witness was Miss Dorothy Waring, former Dickstein investigator who said that the German steamship lines had helped to support the Pelley publications. She said Pelley kept a Washington office principally to gather American military secrets to be turned over to the German Government. She told of frequent parties on German liners in New York harbor which were attended by Silver Shirt leaders and heads of other anti-Semitic organizations.
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