ABSTRACT
Five months having passed since Pound's arrival at Pisa and no word having been received from Washington, the American army in Italy began to worry about what to do with him. On 22 October a message was sent to the War Department saying that unless instructions were received soon they would release him. At this the bureaucratic machine began to move and in early November Pound read in Stars and Stripes that a number of Italian wireless technicians who had been present at his broadcasts were to be flown to the United States to testify as government witnesses at his trial. By now the case was being handled at the highest level and on 15 November the United States Attorney General, Tom C. Clark, wrote to the Secretary of War asking for Pound to be returned in the custody of the War Department, to arrive if possible in Washington, D.C., on 19 November. Next day a message from Washington to Italy said that he was to be taken ‘on highest priority on regular flight leaving Rome 17 November and arriving US 19 November’. He was to be ‘transported under military guards until relinquishment to federal authorities in US’ and it was important that the aircraft make its first landing in the United States at Boiling Field in the District of Columbia. This last was because in the case of crimes committed outside the United States jurisdiction was in the district to which the defendant was first brought. Delivery to Boiling Field would avoid complications and enable him to be tried immediately in Washington.
