Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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On Christmas Day, 1930, Paul Hilken, a German-born shipping executive,
searched his Baltimore home one more time for proof of his role as paymaster for
German sabotage operations in America during World War I,1 a career that
involved financing the destruction of the “Black Tom” munitions depot at Jersey
City, New Jersey, in July 1916.2 Only six weeks previously, an international arbitral
tribunal had lambasted his testimony on the issue, branding him and another
confessed saboteur, Fred Herrmann, as “liars, not presumptive but proven.”3 Hilken
“desperately wanted vindication.”4 Then he found that magazine.
The magazine in question was a January 1917 issue of Blue Book, a monthly
compilation of feature articles, once popular on long train trips or voyages.
Concealed within Hilken’s copy was a message by fellow spy Fred Herrmann,
written in a combination of invisible ink (using lemon juice) and coded pinpricks.
The Herrmann message referred to the past attack on the “Jersey City Terminal”
(i.e., the Black Tom depot) and requested $25,000 to help finance another attack.5
Hilken had retrieved the message in 1917 by rubbing the page with a hot iron, and
in 1930, the text “could still be clearly read.”6 Hilken took the freshly discovered
Blue Book magazine to the American team responsible for the arbitral claim
against Germany. “[A]mazed and ecstatic,” they used it as their prime exhibit to
reopen the case.7
What followed was a milestone in arbitral history. By its 1933 decision in
what were known as the Sabotage Claims, the German-U.S. Mixed Claims
Commission held that it had “inherent power to reopen” a case based on newly