Ernest G. Liebold

"[9] Liebold attended Detroit's Eastern High School and graduated from Gutchess Metropolitan Business College, and subsequently worked at a number of temporary positions as a stenographer and bookkeeper before being employed by the Peninsula Savings Bank in Highland Park, Michigan.

"[14] On July 13, 1918, the industrialist gave Liebold power-of-attorney for himself and his wife, Clara,[15] hence vesting him with the authority "to handle all of his personal financial transactions, correspondence, and contracts.

[23] On March 31, 1920, Pipp resigned as editor, in protest over the increasingly antisemitic editorial line of the newspaper:[24] starting in the early months of 1919, the Independent had indeed begun publishing articles condemning the 'noxious influence of the Jews,' mostly on Liebold's initiative.

"[3] The Independent contributed to the diffusion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian forgery describing a fictional Jewish plan for world domination.

[35][36] Declassified documents from the U.S. National Archives, cited by Max Wallace in his book The American Axis, show that Liebold was investigated by the United States Department of War's Military Intelligence Division in 1918 for being a suspected German spy, following an informant's tip.

In a December 10, 1917 letter, the informant reported that Liebold had been recently caught in his office showing the blueprints of the Liberty L-12 (an aircraft engine manufactured by the Ford Motor Company for the U.S. Army) to a reporter for the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung; in the same letter, the informant writes that it was Liebold himself who coordinated Henry Ford's 1915 pacifist campaign, which culminated in the ruinous Peace Ship expedition.

"[40] Liebold's alleged espionage activity has been the subject of debate among scholars: Wallace, for instance, endorses the hypothesis that he was actually a spy, while other historians, including Scott Nehmer and Victoria Saker Woeste, are not so quick to reach any such conclusion.