Dr. Ignatz Theodor Griebl (born in 1899) was a prominent German-American physician and a recruiter for the German spy network in New York City.
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Early life
Ignatz T. Griebl was born in Bavaria, a southeastern state in Germany in 1899. He served in the German army as a First Lieutenant Artillery Officer during World War I but was injured during a battle at the Italian front. He later went on to study medicine at the University of Munich and immigrated to the United States of America in 1925. He first started a practice in Maine but subsequently moved to Yorkville, New York due to the large community of German-Americans in that region. His medical practice focused on obstetrics.
Espionage
Dr. Ignatz Griebl became head of the German spy network in New York, responsible for the recruitment of German spies into their network. In 1938, about three years after his immigration into the United States, an FBI Special Agent Leon G. Turrou ran an investigation that targeted Nazi German spies actively working within the United States. Part of his method of investigation was the use of polygraph tests on potential German espionage candidates. Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl was one of seven other subjects who were placed for the mandatory polygraph tests. According to notes, he was the most interesting subject of the test. After it was administered (on May 5, 1938), Dr. Griebl "made us relax all vigilance, all watchfulness over him." However, it was noticeable to the FBI agents that Dr. Griebl was worried and must have felt like he had given himself up.
5 days later, it was discovered that Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl had fled to Germany aboard the S.S. Bremen.