FBI Stories: Arthur Duggan helped round up enemy agents.

There wasn’t a single case of enemy sabotage on the U.S. mainland during WWII, and one of the main reasons was that most of the enemy agents in the U. S. were picked up by FBI Agents within 10 days after the first bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor.

And Arthur P. Duggan of Littlefield was one of the special FBI agents who helped round up enemy spies involved in espionage.

Duggan got his law degree from the University of Texas in 1935 and started practicing law in Austin during the Depression. "Whew! Times were hard," Duggan said. When married in 1940, Duggan said it looked to him like there was going to be a war.

He had attended NMMI (New Mexico Military Institute) a couple of years and was entitled to enter the cavalry, army or navy as sergeant. "But the services weren’t remotely interested," Duggan said. "It wasn’t very attractive then to enter as a private." So he tried to get into the state department, but he said he didn’t speak their language with his slow West Texas drawl.

A neighbor of Duggan’s suggested FBI work. "Heck, the FBI knows a war is coming," he told Duggan.

"I really wasn’t interested in chasing stolen cars across state lines and running after white slave traffic," Duggan said. "But I was interested in the internal security of the United States. You don’t apply for FBI work, you have to be asked. I filled in the information and waited to see what would happen."

He began his work with the FBI on June 30, 1941, six months before the war broke out. At times his work was so secretive that he couldn’t even tell other FBI agents what he was doing. Agents didn’t even contact their field division, but sent their own messages directly to FBI headquarters in Washington.

Duggan was in the Newark, N. J. office on the Sunday Pearl Harbor was bombed. The next day the FBI started picking up key German people who had been under observation for weeks and oftentimes months before the war started.

German Huns (former German soldiers in WWI) working in oil refineries and other big plants that could go up in one big blast were picked up and taken to a center on Ellis Island for a hearing. If they were considered dangerous from an espionage point, they were kept in camps for the duration of the war.

A German who still retained his German citizenship and who had been in the Germany Army during the first war had been seen around the naval base at Charleston, S. C.

Duggan was told the man might be in Trenton, J. J. He and another agent went in to make the arrest. "We showed the suspect our cards and told him we had a warrant for his arrest. He went for his back pocket.

"When he went for his pocket we both pulled guns because we figured he was gong for one. Fortunately I didn’t pull the trigger. I sure would hate to shoot an unarmed man. Instead of pulling out a gun, he had reached for his handkerchief."

Another arrest Duggan took part in involved the German spy involved in espionage on whom the movie "House on 72^nd Street" was based.

"You can appreciate the fact that there was no enemy directed sabotage on the U. S. Mainland more when you know the extremes the Germans went to to sabotage the states," Duggan said.

When Duggan was in his New York office, a German submarine unloaded a sub full on Long Island. One was picked up early and he had to be kept in the New York office and watched each minute of every day and night until the rest were picked up and the FBI was ready to announce the arrests to the newspapers.

"Two agents watched him every second," Duggan said. "We even had to go to the bathroom with him. I had to babysit with him for a week. They were all convicted. They didn’t do one act of sabotage. They didn’t have a chance."

For the next year and a half, Duggan was involved in purely espionage work looking for enemy agents as a diplomatic legal attache to the Dominican Republic.

"The only safe way to get to the Dominican Republic was by plane" he said. German subs were very active in the Caribbean. Boats went in convoys with plenty of military vessels to protect them. While in the Dominican Republic, Duggan said he found a heck of a lot of communist activity, especially from the Spanish Communists.

"I learned one thing while there," Duggan said. "I don’t want to live under any kind of dictatorship. That one was far right instead of left. Dictatorship isn’t for me."

Duggan resigned from the FBI after the war was over. "I was really fired up on the internal security thing, and I’m happy I got to work on it," he said. Duggan resigned in October of 1945, but he had enough overtime to carry him through March of the next year. "Whew! The overtime was terrific."

Duggan received real experience in a hurry in his five years of practicing law in Austin. With the war behind him he said he was ready to come back to Littlefield. He opened his law office here in 1946.

Duggan first came to Littlefield in 1912 at the tender age of two. Since that time, the names of Littlefield and Duggan have been synonymous, for Arthur P. Duggan Sr. founded the city of Littlefield.