Rintelen's next venture attracted some unpleasant attention. The United States Government had condemned some 350,000 Krag-Joergensen rifles, which it refused to sell to any of the belligerents. Rintelen cast a fond eye in their direction. President Wilson had told a banker: "You will get those rifles only over my dead body." Rintelen heard, however, that by bribing certain officials he could obtain the guns, so he sent out agents to learn what they would cost, and found a man who said he could buy them for $17,826,000, part of which was to be used for effective bribery. "So close am I to the President," said the intermediary, "that two days after I deposit the money in the bank you can dandle his grandchild on your knee!" But just when the negotiations were growing bright, Rintelen was told that the man who proposed to sell him the rifles was a secret agent from another government. A certain "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was known to have been groping for those rifles, and the newspapers and government officials became suddenly interested in his real identity. A dowdy woman's implication reached a reporter's ears; presently the newspapers burst out in the "discovery" that "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was none other than Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt, a German Red Cross envoy then in the United States. Like the popping of a machine gun, "correct versions of the facts" were published: "Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt denied vigorously that he was 'Dr. Alfred Meyer,'" then "'Dr. Alfred Meyer' was known to have left the United States on the same ship with Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt," then "an American citizen came forward anonymously and said that he had posed as 'Dr. Alfred Meyer' in order to test the good faith of the Government." This last announcement may have been true. It was made to a New York _Sun_ reporter by a German, Karl Schimmel, who professed his allegiance to the United States, and by the "American citizen" who said he had posed as "Dr. Alfred Meyer." It may have been made to shield Rintelen himself, for the "American citizen" was an employe of a German newspaper in New York, a friend of Rintelen's, a friend of Schimmel's and Schimmel himself was in von Rintelen's pay.