from Joost H. Schneider, a client, to the effect that F. A. Hyde, John A. Benson and Henry P. Dimond were engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the Government out of immense tracts of State school lands in California aixl Oregon by process of illegal filings, and that Schneider was willing to aid the Land Department officials in uncovering the frauds. After considerable delay, Binger Hermann, then Commissioner of the General Land Office, detailed Special Agent S. J. Holsinger to proceed to Tuscon and interview Schneider.
Acting under these instructions, Holsinger proceeded to Tuscon, where on November 6, 1902, he held his first interview with Schneider in the presence of Attorney Zabriskie. Several days were consumed in securing full details from Schneider, so that it was not until November 12, 1902, that Special Agent Holsinger was prepared to make his report to the Commissioner of the General Land Office. This he did from Phoenix, Arizona, on the date indicated, covering practically every feature of the conspiracy as described by Schneider.
In brief, the admissions of Schneider amounted to a confession that he had acted as the agent for Hyde and Benson in procuring "dummies" to locate the school lands in existing and proposed forest reserves of California and Oregon, with a view of their subsequent exchange with the Government for other lands. In this manner several hundred applications had been filed, many of which embraced the names of fictitious persons.
Holsinger transmitted his report to the General Land Office, and it was promptly pigeonholed by Commissioner Hermann, and probably would never have seen the light of day again had not a clerk unearthed it, and its contents become known to Secretary Hitchcock, months after it had been filed with the Commissioner. The Secretary of the Interior at once instituted an investigation, intrusting this feature of the case to Arthur B. Pugh, an attorney for the Interior Department. The latter proceeded to California accompanied by Special Agent Steece, of the General Land Office, and the two secured much damaging evidence against Hyde, Benson and others. Later William J. Burns, of the Treasury Department, was called into the case, and he spent several weeks in San Francisco and Oregon in unearthing the frauds, with the result that from the mass of evidence in the possession of the Government from these various sources, the indictment was returned.
When Burns returned to Washington from his preliminary investigation of the Hyde-Benson case, he asked the Chief Clerk, James T. Macey, of the General Land Office, for a confidential stenographer to write up his report. Macey sent Irvin Rittenhouse to him for a few days. His work was of such value to Burns that he was retained by him indefinitely. This was the early part of November, 1903. About December 28th or 29th, 1903, Secretary of the Interior E. A. Hitchcock received two anonymous letters from San Francisco concerningthe Hyde-Benson case. One was typewritten and the other pen printed. He turned them over to Burns and the latter brought them to the Land Office, where he showed them to Rittenhouse and asked him who he thought wrote them. Rittenhouse, who had been handling a lot of typewritten papers in connection with the case, noticed at once that the anonymous letter was written on a Blickensderfer typewriter and immediately called Burns' attention to the fact that all of Dimond's letters to the General Land Office, entering his appearance as attorney in the Hyde lieu selection cases, had been written with this type of machine, and that it was his opinion Dimond wrote the anonymous letters.
Several months later Rittenhouse accompanied Burns to San Francisco for the hearing before United States Commissioner E. H. Heacock on the question of the removal of the defendants Hyde and Dimond, Schneider having been arrested in Washington, D. C, and Benson in New York City. The hearing lasted about six or eight weeks, during March, April and May, 1904. Dimond had been on the stand in his own defense for about a week or ten days, under cross-examination by Mr. Heney, and his story was one that could not be shaken by the Government. It was vitally important that the Commissioner should hold
