A plan by defense attorneys to utilize the sedition trials, which opened here yesterday, for wide-scale anti-Jewish propaganda was seen today in the charge made by attorney Ira Chase Koehne that the trial is “a Jewish plot.” The 30 alleged selectionists are charged by the government with conspiracy to inspire disloyalty and incite mutiny among members of the U. S. armed forces.
Mr. Koehne, designated by the court to serve four of the defendants who took a “pauper’s oath,” was the first to inject an anti-Semitic note into the trial with an attack on the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith. He said that the League had investigated the jury panel to determine whether prospective jurors had connections with the anti-Semitic, Fascist, and pro-Nazi groups in America.
“The Anti-Defamation League has a more efficient secret service than the FBI,” Koehne said. “The Anti-Defamation League is responsible for bringing this indictment and has been responsible for bringing this investigation. This is an imitation of the mass Moscow trials.”
The government is anxious to begin selecting the jury and to begin calling its 125 witnesses to prove its charges that the thirty defendants conspired with Nazi agents to undermine the morale of American soldiers and sailors with seditious literature, advocating the creation of a Nazi government in the United States. According to the indictment the government hopes to prove that the use of anti-Semitism by the defendants was part of the alleged plot to spread mutiny in the armed forces.
The government has charged that part of the alleged collaboration of the defendants with the German government consisted of issuing the following types of anti-Semitic propaganda:
1) That the government, Congress and public officials are controlled by international Jews.
2) That the Democratic and Republican Parties are tools of international Jewry.
3) That President Roosevelt is a warmonger, a liar and a pawn of the Jews, Communists and plutocrats.
4) That President Roosevelt is a Jew and is working with international Jewry against the interests of the U. S.
5) That the cause of the Axis powers is the cause of justice and morality; that they have committed no aggressive act and are fighting a solely defensive war against British imperialism, American capitalists, the desire of American public officials to rule the world, and to free the world from domination by international Jewry.
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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.
