Opinion ID: 1474108
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: These Undisclosed Activities May Have Been a Part of an Undisclosed Agency.

Text: The instruction to the jury was that if they believed defendant willfully failed to state material facts, whether or not the activities were done pursuant to his agency, they should find him guilty. The discussion so far was necessary to justify the instruction in case the jury believed defendant was acting entirely on his own in respect of these undisclosed activities. The jury may have believed, however, that all or some of these activities were carried on by defendant in his capacity as an agent for foreign principals. To borrow from another field of law, it might be said that defendant was acting as an undisclosed agent as well as a known one. The failure to disclose activities done pursuant to an agency would be particularly pertinent under Item 12 where a registrant must set out his full agreement, oral or written, and we suppose, expressed or tacit. Also, again to make the Act feasible, the registrant should disclose what is done in behalf of his foreign principal even though it may extend beyond any agreement or contract, particularly when the foreign principal is paying at a rate high enough to include many extras; during the 18-month period involved, defendant received something like $65,000 from his three German principals. Of course the indictment might still focus upon Item 11 if it is believed that registrant's business as there used is meant to include both agency work and his own. Such a construction would mean some overlapping with Item 12. On the matter that these undisclosed political pursuits may have been a part of the undisclosed agency, we quote interesting excerpts from a letter by defendant to an associate of The German Library of Information, one of defendant's foreign principals. The letter, partly in the nature of a contract, was marked Agreed by the Associate, Mr. Schmitz: January 25, 1941. Dear Mr. Schmitz:    It is perfectly obvious, as you yourself pointed out, that I am entitled to four or five times the salary I receive at present.