Fritz Laufer's bids for rescue “deals,” which he was indeed spreading among Jewish rescue workers upon his visits as a trusted American agent in Istanbul, and his contacts with the SD and the Gestapo, the latter being very probably one of his employers from the beginning in Prague, could have been easily seen in Jewish eyes as if they reflected some change on the Nazi side. But in Allied eyes a rescue “deal” involving the Jews of Hungary could be initiated by the Nazis to enhance sinister conspiracies such as using the Jews to drive a wedge between the Allies and their own citizens. Bring a disaster on FDR's head in an election year – around the uncertain results of the Normandy invasion – to make it seem as if he were fighting a “Jew's war,” and drive a wedge between the Western Allies and Stalin. This is how OSS-SI in Washington reacted to Brand's and Grosz's arrival in Istanbul, connecting them as “German double agents” to the precedent of one actual ransom deal authorized by the Nazis in occupied Hungary, that of the release of the rich Weiss family in exchange for its property (see cable 53647, REGIS in Washington to USTRAVIC, London; Copies sent to Director, Deputy Director, OSS, X-2, OSS, offices in the Middle East, Madrid, and Europe):