Before he finished talking, FBI agents had staked out Burger’s hotel room. Burger led them to a clothing store, where he met Quirin and Heinck and the agents arrested all three men. Burger told the FBI he was in on Dasch’s surrender and intended to cooperate fully.

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So much for the first team.

On June 22, Hoover proudly wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the FBI “had already apprehended all members of the group which landed on Long Island,” adding that he expected to have the rest in custody soon. He failed to mention that without Dasch’s unexpected surrender and confession the FBI might never have found the saboteurs. Roosevelt could have drawn only one conclusion from Hoover’s memo: that Hoover and his men had succeeded in tracking down the spies on their own.

The FBI had a little more trouble rounding up the second team, since Dasch knew only that both groups were supposed to meet in Cincinnati on July 4. The only help he could offer was the handkerchief that listed German contacts in America, written in invisible ink. Dasch could not remember how to bring out the script, but the FBI lab figured it out. Agents were then dispatched to watch all the contacts.

Edward Kerling, who was traveling with Werner Thiel, had gone to New York by way of Cincinnati. There, he had contacted a trustworthy friend, Helmut Leiner, one of the names on the handkerchief. Leiner arranged for Kerling to see his mistress. Kerling told her a little of what he was doing, and she agreed to travel with him.

Within a couple of days of Dasch’s surrender, FBI agents spotted Kerling talking to Leiner. They followed Kerling to a bar, where he met Werner Thiel. Both men were arrested shortly afterward–two down and two to go.

The youngest member of the team, Herbert Haupt, had gone back to his parents in Chicago and told them everything. He used some of his sabotage money to buy a new car, and he proposed to his girlfriend, who had had a miscarriage. Then he dropped into the local FBI office to clear up his draft problems. He explained that he had been away when he should have registered and had since reported to his draft board.

The FBI seemed to accept the explanation, but when Haupt left the office, agents followed him. They trailed him for three days in hopes he would lead them to Neubauer. When that did not happen, they arrested him, and he told them where they could find the last member of his team.

Hermann Neubauer, who was staying at the Sheridan Plaza hotel, had gotten so lonely that he visited a couple he barely knew–friends of his wife. He told them he had come to America aboard a German submarine on assignment from the German government, and he left his money in their care. Meanwhile, he spent most of his time in movie theaters. When he got back to his hotel Saturday night after a film, FBI agents were waiting for him.

Only after all his colleagues were in jail did the FBI officially arrest George Dasch. To his great dismay, they considered him just as guilty as the others. Dasch begged to be jailed with his colleagues, so they would not realize he had turned them in. Hoover, who did not want Germany or even the president of the United States to know how the saboteurs had been captured, was only too happy to comply.

On Saturday, June 27, exactly two weeks after Dasch and his team had landed at Amagansett, Hoover wrote Roosevelt to tell him all eight German agents had been caught. “On June 20, 1942,” he said, “Robert Quirin, Heinrich Heinck and Ernest Peter Burger were apprehended in New York City by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The leader of the group, George John Dasch, was apprehended by Special Agents of the FBI on June 22, 1942, at New York City.” Actually, of course, Dasch had surrendered to the FBI in Washington four days earlier. It was his surrender that led to the other arrests, not the other way around.

After the news of the arrests broke, Roosevelt got dozens of letters and telegrams urging that Hoover get the Medal of Honor. The president settled for a congratulatory statement.

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