When Commander Yamaki was replaced by Commander Bunjiro Yamaguchi in November 1935, the latter decided to pay Farnsworth on a piecemeal, rather than retainer, basis. Faced with a sudden drop in income, and somehow having got wind that investigators were closing in on him, he approached Fulton Lewis Jr., the Washington correspondent for the Hearst newspapers, in early 1936. He proposed to Lewis that he would write a series of articles entitled: "How I was a Spy in the American Navy for the Japanese Government" for $20,000 in an apparent effort to convince him that he was a double agent. He also made it a condition that he be given a head start to catch the zeppelin "Hindenburg" for Germany. Lewis promptly informed Capt. William D. Puleston, the Director of ONI, of the encounter.