Lothar Witzke

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Lothar Witzke aka Pablo Waberski was a sailor in the Imperial German Navy from the light cruiser Dresden. He was interned in Valparaíso, Chile, but escaped and traveled to San Francisco and then to the East Coast of the United States. He later took part in the Black Tom Explosion in New York harbor on July 30, 1916.

He was arrested at 10 a.m. on February 1, 1918, in Nogales, Arizona after he crossed from Mexico. He claimed to be 'Pablo Waberski' returning to San Francisco. A 424 letter cryptogram was found sewn into the left upper sleeve of his jacket. Several months later this cryptogram was broken by the fledgling MI-8 and identified the bearer to the "Imperial Consular Authorities of the Republic of Mexico".^[1] He was convicted by a court martial and sentenced to death. Witzke was pardoned by President Calvin Coolidge November 22, 1923.

[edit] References

The Reader of Gentleman's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking, David Kahn, Yale University Press, 2006 (ISBN 978-0300098464)