The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective LeagueHough, Emerson
History
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League
Hough, Emerson
American Protective League; Propaganda, German; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- United States
League operations were distributed under a Bureau of Investigation
and a Bureau of Information, each in charge of an assistant chief.
The investigation work was divided by Special D. J. Agent Beckham
as follows: Headquarters bureau, handling enemy alien activities,
disloyalty, sedition, propaganda, etc., had two units, a staff of
eighty-three headquarters lieutenants, and also a ward organization. In
each of the seventeen wards of New Orleans there was a lieutenant who
had enough operatives under him to cover his neighborhood thoroughly.
The second bureau, that of Information, took up on its part the trades
classification rather than that which we may call the geographical
classification into city districts. There was a captain in each of
the seventy-eight commercial lines of the city, and each captain had
lieutenants and operatives in his particular line of business. In this
way there was what might be called a double covering of the city,
both as to information and investigation. For instance, in each hotel
there would be a captain, lieutenant and operatives. The Bureau of
Information had entire charge of the financial end of the League, and
it supplied men to the Investigation Division for the purpose of raids,
or for whatever matter required special assistance.
In the War Department work, the selective service bureau was in
charge of a captain with proper assistants, who handled all violations
under Section 6 of the Act. A member of this bureau was detailed
with each exemption board, and this division handled all the draft
investigations. It made a great many searches of this sort, prevented
a great many evasions, and corrected many incorrect classifications.
In the slacker raids which New Orleans had in common with practically
every other big city of the country there were sometimes as many as
three hundred operatives employed, and it is estimated that more than
20,000 slacker investigations were made in all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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