" Thatcher Man's 'Agent Odyssey' "

Eastern Arizona Courier
Published on Tuesday, March 14, 2000 11:00 PM MST

"After being suspected as a spy, Clarence Crandall became a spy catcher.  It began when the clean-cut young Mormon missionary from Thatcher learned that it was tough going in a Germany turning toward Fascism. Most folks who answered the door said they did not talk to strangers.

"This was the strangest of all proselytizing missions," said Clarence Crandall, who was lucky to get an echtdeutscher (native-speaking German) as a companion on the mission to spread the word from the Book of Mormon.

Within six months of Crandall's arrival in 1932, Adolph Hitler had taken over the German government and the cruel reign of the Nazis had begun: a regime that took its toll with tens of millions of lives lost.

The 21-year-old from Thatcher and his companion could not imagine the vastness of the coming war, but could feel the fear that the Nazis caused to the local people.

The missionaries switched tactics from the door-to-door approach, and started inviting local Germans to cottage meetings, hoping at least to convert a few people to Mormonism.

They were located in the heart of the industrial Ruhr near Dortmund, where many of the German munitions factories were located, and a place that would be bombed into the Stone Age during the coming years.

"In walks a local gendarme who wanted to know what we were doing," Crandall remembered.

"They went through our briefcases looking for anti-Nazi material."

Of course, all they found was Mormon literature, and left after the search without giving a citation.

Crandall and his German companion reasoned that since they had not been cited for anything illegal, they might as well have another meeting two weeks later.

"The house was surrounded by 50 brownshirts with guns," he said.

"They discovered I didn't have an Aufenhaltserlaubnis (residence permit), which was unnecessary, but it gave them an excuse to take me down to headquarters and interrogate me."

Crandall's interrogators were none other than the Geheimestaatspolizei, known as the Gestapo for short.

"They suspected I was an American spy," said Crandall, who later become one, working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

On the way home to Arizona in 1935, where his dad owned Crandall's Pharmacy in Safford, he stopped by Washington, D.C. and spoke to friends who advised him that the Great Depression was still on, there were few jobs, and he ought to put in applications with the federal government - which he did.

His brothers had taken over the pharmacy, and there was no place for Clarence in the family business.

Crandall was invited to be a speaker about his experiences in Nazi Germany right here in Safford: to the Rotary Club of Gila Valley and to the Safford Lions Club. The folks of Gila Valley were convinced that America was headed for war.

Crandall managed to get a temporary job with the Soil Conservation Service and later with the National Park Service at Petrified Forest in northern Arizona.

Out of the blue, he received a telegram from the FBI in Washington offering employment as a clerk.

Fluent in German, Crandall became important at the FBI while Nazi Germany tried to establish a "5th Column" in the United States - consisting of spies and saboteurs whose jobs were to reduce America's willingness and capability to make war.

For the next eight years, Crandall worked in an office right across the hall from legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

During that period, Crandall met Hoover a number of times because in addition to his translation duties, he led public tours through FBI Headquarters.

One time he shook Hoover's hand, and quoted Hoover as saying:

"If you ever give me a fishy handshake, I'll fire you."

Crandall said Hoover was a man who never smiled.

"He had a very austere countenance all the time. He made the agents feel he was all business."

During his first years, Crandall was the only translator at the FBI. He struggled to attend classes at George Washington University in addition to his FBI workload.

He was involved in the famous case of eight German saboteurs who landed by submarine; four in Florida and four in New York.

"One of them turned evidence for the government, and that was the undoing of the whole group," he said.

One of the organizations the Nazis used to gain influence was the German-American Bund, from which a good deal of materials were translated by Crandall.

Then one day while sitting at his desk, one of Mr. Hoover's assistants tapped Crandall on the shoulder.

"Clarence, you are now a Special Agent of the FBI."

Much more than a clerk, the young man from Thatcher had become part of a highly-disciplined fraternity of FBI agents under Hoover.

From July 5 until Oct. 10, 1943, Crandall attended the rigorous FBI agent training course in Quantico, Virginia.

"You were schooled in a very defined way about the Constitution and all of it's meanings," he said.

"There has been such a revolution in thought in the civil rights aspect of the Constitution - you would hardly recognize it - from then until today," he said.

"It all depends on the interpretation of the first 10 amendments of the Constitution," he said.

In 1943, he was sent to the port of Philadelphia to inspect arriving Portuguese ships for the possible infiltration of suspected German agents into the United States.

Crandall was grossed out by scenes of cockroaches several inches deep in the holds of those Portuguese ships, but is thankful for the colorful experience.

Later, he served in Chicago as part of the Internal Security Squad, working on cases involving espionage and sabotage. Much of Crandall's work is still classified, leaving him unable to talk about it, even in his Daley Estates retirement at the well-tempered age of 88.

After the war, following the detonation of the Atomic Bomb, Crandall worked in El Paso and Los Alamos, screening the many thousands of people who went to work in association with the atomic bomb project.

He spent eight years as a Special Agent in Santa Fe, and then got his wish to be transferred to Phoenix - and stayed there 29 years, doing undercover operations, and investigating white collar crime, fraud against the government, and civil rights violations.

"If you are a good actor, you are a good undercover type," he said.

Clarence and his wife, Jewel Mae Jacobson Crandall, true to their Mormon faith throughout the FBI years, have six children (three girls and three boys) 36 grandchildren, and just as of this writing, 40 great grandchildren.

"I look upon my FBI tenure as a fortuitous situation," says Crandall.

Crandall retired after 40 years of FBI service, two years after the 1972 death of his boss, J. Edgar Hoover. He lives in quiet retirement in Thatcher with his wife Jewel."