Stephen J. Ross

In the case of the New York Nazi group, they called themselves the National Renaissance Party.

In the case of Emmanuel Trujillo, probably the most unusual of all the spies, he rose up to become the number two person in the National Renaissance Party.

And because he could read and write German, he was assigned to be their overseas director, which meant he was corresponding with more Nazis and fascists, some still in Germany, but many had scattered, left Germany to avoid being arrested, and were living throughout the world in Latin America, in Sweden, in Australia.

And this man, Manu Trujillo, was his spy name, Emanuel Trujillo, his real name,

was corresponding with all of them and getting more information than the CIA had.

The reason is if you go back even to the early 30s, the FBI was not that big at the time.

There were only a few hundred agents.

And J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed.

with communist infiltration of America.

And to be blunt, he didn't give a damn about Jews and protecting Jews.

In fact, when there was a Jewish leader who was one of the founding members of the ADL, Leon Lewis, who had moved to Los Angeles,

And in August 1933, when he realized that no one was doing anything to oppose the rise of Hitler and a Nazi group had just held its first meeting in Los Angeles, he said, if no one's going to do anything, I will.

He was an attorney.

And he recruited four men, all Christians who went undercover.

joined these Nazi groups and got information that he knew would be sustainable in court.

And he went to the police chief

and tried to get him to take over the operation, saying, I'm just a lawyer, but I've discovered through these agents there are Nazi plots to drive through Boyle Heights, which was the Jewish neighborhood, with machine guns, killing as many Jews as possible.

There were plots to blow up the docks in Los Angeles where military installations were.

and various other plots.

And he tried to bring this to the police chief, and the police chief stopped him dead and said, you don't get it.