From the Time Capsule: Lunch Conversations With Orson Welles

O.W.: Do you know why her plane went down? It was full of big-time American physicists, shot down by the Nazis. She was one of the only civilians on the plane. The plane was filled with bullet holes.
H.J.: It was shot down by who?

O.W.: Nazi agents in America. It’s a real thriller story.
H.J.: That’s preposterous.

O.W.: The people who know it, know it. It was greatly hushed up. The official story was that it ran into the mountain. ... No one wanted to admit that we had people in the middle of America who could shoot down a plane for the Nazis. Because then everybody would start denouncing anybody with a German grandmother. Which Roosevelt was very worried about. The First World War had only happened some twenty-odd years before. He’d seen the riots against ­Germans. And he was very anxious for nothing like that to be repeated. He was really scared about what would happen to the Japanese if all the rednecks got started.
H.J.: So his idea was to protect them? That’s why he rounded them up and put them in camps?

O.W.: Yes.
H.J.: You knew Roosevelt, right?
O.W.: Yes, I kept him up too late. He liked to stay up and talk, you see. He was free with me. I didn’t need to be ­manipulated. He didn’t need my vote. He used to say, “You and I are the two best actors in America.”