SECRET ARMIES
76
O. Hastings of Delaware and Representative Chester C. Bolton
of Ohio, chairmen, respectively, of the two committees.
Several weeks before this announcement, the two committees
had employed Sidney Brooks, for years head of the research
bureau of the International Telephone and Telegraph Com
pany. Brooks, because of his position, was close in the confi
dences of Republican Senators and Congressmen. He heard
state secrets
and had
his fingers
on
the political pulse of the
country.
Shortly after he took charge of the joint committee for the
Senators and Congressmen, Brooks made a hurried visit to New
On March 4, 1934,
Room 830
he drove to the Hotel Edison and
where a man registered as "William
D. Goodales Los Angeles," was awaiting him. Mr. "Goodales"
was William Dudley Pelley, head of the Silver Shirts, who had
come to New York to confer with Brooks and Gulden. After
this conference the two went to Gulden s office where they had
a confidential talk that lasted over an hour during which an
agreement was made to merge the Order of 76 with the Silver
York.
ivent directly to
on their propaganda more effectively.
Brooks himself, on his mysterious visits to New York, went
to 17 Battery Place, which houses the German Consulate General.
At that address he visited one John E. Kelly. In a letter to Kelly
dated as far back as December 27, 1933, he wrote:
will be in
New York Friday to Monday and can be reached in the usual
Shirts so as to carry
"I
manner Gramercy
5-9193 (care Emerson)
."
Sidney Brooks also was a member of the secret Order of 76.
Before anyone could join he had to give, in his own handwriting
and sealed with
his
own
fingerprints, certain details of his life.
Brooks application for membership in this espionage group or
ganized with the help of a Nazi sent to this country, revealed that
he was the son of the Nazi agent, Colonel Edwin Emerson, and
that he was using his mother s maiden name so that connection
could not be traced too easily.