Prescott Freese Dennett
Encyclopedia
Prescott Freese Dennett was one of 30 people indicted in 1942 in the Great Sedition Trial for sympathizing with the Axis powers, in his case Nazi Germany. The case resulted in mistrial on Dec. 7, 1944. Dennett spent the next few years petitioning unsuccessfully to reopen the trial so as to clear his name, the only one of the defendants to do so.

Dennett was born in Bangor, Maine
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...

 and attended Bangor High School and then Wheaton College
Wheaton College
Wheaton College may refer to:* Wheaton College , private Christian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois* Wheaton College , private, coeducational, liberal arts college in Norton, Massachusetts...

 in Illinois. Winning an essay contest at Wheaton, he transferred to the journalism school of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, where he was awarded a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship for travel in Europe. In 1939 he was a publicist in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 when he was paid by German agent George Sylvester Viereck
George Sylvester Viereck
George Sylvester Viereck was a German-American poet, writer, and propagandist.-Biography:...

 to front (as Treasurer) the "Make Europe Pay its War Debt Committee" and later the "Islands for War Debt Committee", both of which were aimed to prevent the American government from extending aid to war-time Britain and France. Dennett was at the center of an elaborate scheme by which isolationist Congressmen such as Hamilton Fish III
Hamilton Fish III
Hamilton Fish III was a soldier and politician from New York State...

 and Robert Rice Reynolds
Robert Rice Reynolds
Robert Rice Reynolds was a Democratic U.S. senator from North Carolina between 1932 and 1945. Almost from the outset of his Senate career, "Our Bob," as he was known among supporters back home, acquired distinction as a passionate isolationist and increasingly as an apologist for Nazi aggression...

 would make pro-German statements in the Congressional Record
Congressional Record
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...

, which would then be printed by Viereck and mailed around the country without postal charge using the Congressional franking privilege. Just before Federal agents raided Dennett's offices, he transferred a number of bags of illegally franked mail to Representative Fish's office, where they were subsequently discovered. Fish's chief aid George Hill was convicted of perjury in connection with the case.

Dennett was inducted into the army as a private in 1941, but was subpeoned by a grand jury in September, and then indicted in July, 1942 (by which time America had declared war on Germany) with 29 other defendants on sedition charges. Most of the others charged were confirmed Nazi (or Japanese) sympathizers or agents. Dennett claimed not to harbor such sympathies, but to have only been used by Viereke and his isolationist allies in Congress. When the case resulted in mistrial in 1944, Dennett alone petitioned for a new trial in order to clear his name. This was denied, and he continued to petition Congress after the war, eventually forming a "Justice for New Deal Victims Committee" in 1948.
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