Following his arrival in New York in February 1940, the FBI not
only obtained the names of those connected to the Ritter ring but
also began to record and film meetings that took place in Sebold’s
office. While more than 300 reports were collected—especially from
the ring’s most prized member, Fritz Duquesne—the material sent
to Hamburg was prepared by the FBI. In 1941, following increasing
complaints by Ritter to Sebold about garbled information and faulty
transmission, the FBI shut down the operation and arrested all 33
agents. At the trial, Sebold’s testimony helped secure the conviction
of the 14 who had pleaded not guilty. During the proceedings, pho-
tographers were not permitted to take his picture, and afterward he
received a new identity from the FBI. As a farmer in either Texas or
California, he faded into obscurity.SEDLNITZKY, JOSEF VON (1778–1855). A police minister who
supervised espionage activities in post-Napoleonic Austria, Josef von
Sedlnitzky was born in Tropplowitz (now Opavice, Czech Republic)
on 8 January 1778, the son of a Habsburg government official. After
he completed his law studies at the University of Vienna, his career
as an aspiring administrator included posts in Galicia, Moravia, and
Silesia. Appointed minister of police in May 1817, he had respon-
sibility for conducting espionage within the Habsburg monarchy as
well as abroad. While some of his agents were members of his min-
istry, most were from the main police force in Vienna. Occasionally
he relied on informants, such as the banker Baron Trecnh during the
Congress of Aachen in 1818 and, for some years, Abbé Prince Alteri
at the Papal Court. In addition, since close scrutiny of the Habsburg
mails was a general practice, Sedlnitzky registered complaints when-
ever new postal arrangements interfered with the official reading of
private correspondence (Chancellor Klemens von Metternich was
convinced that no other European government could match the ex-
pertise of the Habsburg interception system).
One of Sedlnitzky’s responsibilities involved keeping close surveil-
lance on numerous French expellees being sheltered in the Habsburg
lands as a security measure for the restored Bourbon monarchy. The
most notable of these was Joseph Fouché, Napoleon Bonaparte’s
powerful former minister of police, who had settled in Bohemia and
was the object of an elaborate police watch. Sedlnitzky’s early years
SEDLNITZKY, JOSEF VON • 413