Biography
Charles C. Crowley was a San Francisco private detective hired by the German Consulate under Consul-General Franz Bopp during World War I. Federal prosecutors alleged he was the consulate's principal field operative in plots to plant bombs aboard Canadian munitions ships docked in U.S. and Canadian ports and to disrupt Allied shipping more broadly. He was a co-defendant in the Hindu-German Conspiracy trial (November 20, 1917 - April 24, 1918, U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal.) and was convicted of conspiracy to violate U.S. neutrality. The coded messages he exchanged with Bopp were transmitted through clerk Margaret E. Cornell, who was also convicted. His mug shot was published in Butterick's Delineator (July 1918) in the Huns, Spies and Traitors gallery.
