Special Agent Byron S. Butcher
The true story of an American reporter turned secret agent in World War I.
of the Library of Congress, source: Agent of the Iron Cross by Bill Mills)
On the afternoon of September 13, 1914, General Álvaro Obregón was a man in trouble. The senior general of future president Venustiano Carranza, Obregón had been riding a train to Mexico City with a group of Pancho Villa’s generals at the height of the Mexican Revolution when Villa was informed about hostile acts that Carranza had taken against his forces. The murderous Villa flew into a rage and ordered his officers to stop Obregón’s train and divert it to Chihuahua where he was encamped. It was a foregone conclusion that when they arrived at Villa’s location, Obregón would be taken from the train and executed.
As the train approached Chihuahua, Obregón called American journalist Byron Butcher to his compartment and presented him with a suitcase containing thirty thousand pesos ($16,000).
“It is likely that after our arrival at the station, we will not see each other again,” said Obregón soberly. “I want to give you this money which does not belong to me — it belongs to the nation. I need you to deliver it to Mr. Francisco S. Elías, commercial agent of my government, so that he can account for it in entirety.”
Being handed a suitcase containing a fortune in banknotes for delivery to a distant businessman during the lawless days of the revolution was not something to be accepted lightly; the chances were great that Butcher would be robbed and murdered. That Obregón had delegated the assignment to Butcher was as much a testament to the newsman’s toughness as to his integrity. The two men had become close friends. Without hiding his emotion, Butcher uttered a few words of quiet encouragement to the imperiled general, shook his hand, and departed with the suitcase. Days later Obregón had managed to escape execution at the hands of Villa, and the thirty thousand pesos had been delivered to Mr. Elias.
Guarding the cash reserve of a Mexican general was just another passing exploit in the adventurous life of Byron S. Butcher.
Byron Samuel Butcher was born on November 10, 1885, in Burlington Junction, Missouri, just a few years after Jesse James had been killed in St. Louis. Following high school graduation, Butcher attended college for one year — a rare privilege in 1903 — before becoming an accountant with the Southern Pacific Railroad in Cochise, Arizona.
After seven years of bookkeeping with the railroad, Butcher discovered his true calling — journalism. He moved to northern Mexico and lived in the mining camps of Sonora, sending news from the mines to newspapers in lower Arizona.
Life in the mining camps was rough, but Butcher hung on for two years, acquiring a nose that would later be described as “slightly crooked.” News that a rich vein had been struck in a Mexican mine or that a site was producing a higher grade of ore was vitally important to mine owners, investors, and mine workers in the “Copper State,” and Butcher’s reporting was greatly valued.
In 1912 he joined the staff of the Douglas Dispatch (Arizona) as a reporter. It was an ideal time for a single young man fluent in Spanish, with experience living below the border, to join the newspaper. When the Mexican Revolution began, Butcher was promoted to war correspondent and assigned to cover the escalating conflict with the army of General Álvaro Obregón. Sometimes reporting on events, and at other times an active participant in the fighting, Butcher witnessed the battles of Naco, Nogales, and Agua Prieta and covered Obregón’s capture of Mexico City and his drive down the west coast of Mexico that ended in the defeat of Villa at Celaya.
After the years spent campaigning together, Butcher was a close friend and confidant of the influential general, able to gain access and personal interviews on any area of interest.
In July 1916, Butcher’s experience and connections in Mexico came to the attention of Robert L. Barnes, who had resigned from the Bureau of Investigation to become a major in the U.S. Army military intelligence branch. Butcher was hired as a special agent and assigned to the intelligence office at Nogales, Arizona. As a cover for his counterespionage activities (and a vehicle for exposing German schemes after their discovery), Butcher also became a correspondent for the International News Service, the Hearst organization’s news-gathering agency.
A press release announcing his new position described the lengths that he would go to gather information: “Mr. Butcher made a trip throughout Mexico for the International Service a couple of years ago, being gone eight months and traversing the entire republic.” Butcher ran a number of well-placed agents in Mexico and was not averse to crossing the border himself to get the “inside story” when necessary.
The results of Butcher’s efforts soon became clear in a series of articles that appeared in international newspapers exposing German secret operations in Mexico. In the story “German Secret Agent’s Trunk Is Seized by U.S. — Captain Schwierz, Who Escaped into Mexico, Now Military Instructor There,” Butcher suggested that agent Schwierz had revealed German military secrets during interrogation.
“Schwierz, following his arrest for violating embargo laws, escaped to Mexico where he is now. However, before his escape, he made a complete confession of all that he knew in regard to Germany’s aims in regard to a German-Mexican alliance and the intent to precipitate a war between Mexico and the United States. Schwierz is now a major instructor on the staff of the Mexican secretary of war. His headquarters are at Mexico City.”
A report about the Zimmerman Telegram titled “It Failed — But Mexican Plot Was Deep” advised readers: “The Rio Grande frontier has been a hot bed for German intrigue. Wiring from Nogales, Arizona, Byron S. Butcher, staff correspondent of the International News Service, declares that he has learned from unimpeachable authority there that the conquest of Mexico and the making of that country a German empire ruled by one of the Hohenzollerns was Germany’s ultimate object in the gigantic plot to stir strife on the American continent.” Full details of the Zimmerman plot were disclosed by correspondent Butcher.
The special agent’s sensational press releases were not missed by German agent Kurt Jahnke’s news-clipping service in Mexico City, and the byline “By Byron S. Butcher, Correspondent of the International News Service” left no doubt who was to blame. British intelligence circulated a false rumor that the secret diplomatic telegram had been stolen by an Allied agent in Mexico City. Butcher’s sensational account appearing in newspapers only a week after the contents of the Zimmerman note were revealed led Jahnke to believe that the American military intelligence officer was responsible for spoiling the plan — and placed Butcher at the top of the spymaster’s death list.
This excerpt is from Agent of the Iron Cross: The Race to Capture German Saboteur-Assassin Lothar Witzke during World War I by Bill Mills, published by Rowman & Littlefield, October 2023. Used with permission of the author.
