The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-05-26


 equipment to conduct the local monitoring in Brazil and Chile, the two most active centers.
 Two young Texas engineers-they would be Texans = were assigned to the job. They were Robert D. Link of Dallas, and John F. de Bardele- ben of Houston. De Bardeleben is now back in the U. s. as assistant supervisor of the primary monitor ing station in Kingsville, Tex. Link has remained in Brazil and is hail. ed as the father of Brazilian mon- itoring,"
 By long distance radio direction finding of the Radio Intelligence Di- vision it was known that one of the German stations was in the vicinity of Valparaiso, Chile. The job was to locate the exact house in which the transmitter was set up. This in- volved cruising the streets of Val- paraiso with mobile radio detection equipment and finally, by means of hand-sized device developed by RID engineers, locating the exact room from which the signals were sent.
 THE GERMANS EMPLOY A RUSE
 De Bardeleben got a calparaiso on March 19, 1942, on which day the Nazis operating clandestine sta- tion PYL got smart. They began staggering their schedules and mov- ing their equipment from place to place within a 10-mile radius. It took from May l5 to June 10 to de- termine that on alternate weeks they transmitted from the house of one Guillermo zeller. Avenida Ale mante 5508, Cerro Alegre. On June 25, Chilean police raided the house but found no radio. A telephone tap had been placed on the house, how ever, and when the raid was over, Teller called another suspect Nazi and said, Luckily they didn't search very good, especially in the basement"
 It took nine hours to get another warrant, but even then. when the Chilean police found a big crate in the basement they didn't open it. The station was, however, diSman- tied and hidden and the operator, one Peter Johannes Szeraws, disap- peared.
 In October the Chilean police de- cided to move anyway. They ar- rested Hans Blume, manager of Transradio in Valparaiso, haled him into court with the crate of appara- tus which De Bardeleben had To- cated in a grocery. It was disguised as a sewing machine, on a special cart which made it easy to move. De Bardeleben, as Inspector Tech nico de los Servicios Electricos," as- sembled the apparatus and put it into operation before the eyes of the 1 judge. The court convicted.
 LINK CLEANS UP IN BRAZIL
 Robert Link had similar experi- ences in Brazil. There had been three German stations operating as LIR, GEL, and CIT which were par ticularly bothersome in the spring of 194l. Around each was a separate ] group of German spies, co-ordinated 1 with German diplomatic offices and business houses.
 Link set up a Brazilian Monitor ing Service, trained Brazilian Army, Navy and Air Corps engineers in the technique of monitoring and direc- tion finding, and as a result saw scores of spies rounded up and their big transmitters seized. Those not caught decamped to Argentina, from which they still operate in the last safe haven for espionage in the hemisphere.
 U. s. officials concerned can't speak too highly of Latin American officials involved in these operations for the way they arrested spies and seized code books which made pos- sible the decoding of the Nazi secret radio transmissions.