Fighting to Lose (60 page)

11. Hewlett and Anderson,
The New World
, 13–25.

12. Bush to Conant, 9 Oct. 1941; Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. Hewlett and Anderson,
The New World
, 45–46, 611.

13. ”Synopsis of Facts,” 4 Dec. 1944, 22, See: Max Fritz Ernst Rudloff, NARA, RG65, WWII FBI HQ File, 65-37233 (above). According to the cover sheet to this report, at least five copies were made and considering the novelty and importance of the content, especially the reference to microdots, one must have been sent to the White House, to the attention of the vice-president, Henry Wallace, if not directly to Roosevelt.

14. Arthur H. Compton,
Atomic Quest
(Oxford University Press, 1956), 61–64.

15. Robertson to Cowgill, 17 Sept. 1941. PRO, KV2/849. Liddell Diary, 14 Aug., 15 Nov. 1941.

16. Gwyer to B1A, 10 Oct. 1941; PRO, KV2/849. JHM was Marriott, the lawyer.

17. Liddell Diary, 3 Aug. 1941, PRO.

18. Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 3, 59, 85. Curry,
Security Service
, 252. MI5 took the proof to be the intercepted Abwehr wireless traffic (ISOS) that dealt with its double agents.

19. “Order of Battle GIS (Hamburg),” prepared for GSI(b) HQ 8 Corps. Dis., 20 Jan. 1946, 1; NARA, FBI HQ file, IWG Box 133, file 65-37193-EBF352.

20. NARA, T-77, 1529. Index file cards on A-2057 DELPHIN and F-2368 NOLL; NARA, T-77, 1549. The “F” before a number indicates someone whose job it was to find and recruit spies.

21. B1A TATE case summary, 15 June 1942; PRO, KV2/61, Doc. 300a. Only a handful remain of the hundreds of documents that were once in this file. Also see: KV2/1333.

22. Memo by Gwyer and Marriott, 17 Nov. 1941; PRO, KV2/451, 1360b.

23. See, for example, “Major Ritter’s Final Report of the SNOW Case (Translation) — Berlin 31/7/1941”; PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1360b, undated and unattributed but probably an attachment to Gwyer and Marriott, 17 Nov. 1941. This peculiar document is a fictitious scenario in which the MI5 officers who wrote it imagine how Major Ritter might have come to the conclusion that CHARLIE, GW, and TATE might not be compromised despite SNOW’s confession and the fact that Karl Richter had never reported back on his mission to contact TATE. It is useful in that it confirms that MI5 did not know Dicketts went to Germany a second time, and that Owens did not operate the SNOW transmitter.

24. Masterman, “Note on Memorandum, ‘Dr. Rantzau’s meeting with SNOW and CELERY in Lisbon,’” 26 Nov. 1941; PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1368b. It is in reply to the scenario analysis described in the previous note.

25. See Chapter 8, note 7.

26. “… during TATE’s illness in Nov. 1941 his transmitter was operated by one of our own men who had learnt successfully to imitate TATE’s style; since that date, although TATE continued to draft the messages in his own words and assist in encoding, he has never been allowed actually to operate himself.” B1A/JV memo “TATE,” 21/8/42. See also: R.T. Reed, “TATE,” 12 Nov. 1941. Both in KV2/61–62.

27. Montagu,
Beyond Top Secret U
, 69.

28. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 166.

29. Ibid., 164–66. See also Liddell Diary, 7 Nov. 1941, PRO. We only have Liddell’s word for it that Hinchley-Cooke did the persuading.

30. For the man who would have saved him: Captain R. Short, Note to File, 29 Nov. 1941, PRO, KV2/61. In his diary Liddell argued the opposite and attributed to Lord Swinton the position that a reprieve would be “detrimental to B1A.” Liddell Diary, 7 Nov. 1941.

31. Liddell Diary, 3, 15 Nov. 1941.

32. Liddell Diary, 1 Oct. 1941, PRO.

33. Montagu,
Top Secret U
, 78.

34. Popov,
Spy/Counterspy
, 190–91.

1. The Army Pearl Harbor Board and the Naval Court of Inquiry, both of which reported in early 1944, are the most honest sources of what happened for they were non-partisan politically and their questions were well-informed and well-aimed. The Naval Court found so severely against Admiral Stark — that “he failed to display the sound judgement expected of him” — that, had it been made public, the president would have had to fire him.
PHH
, 39 at 329.

2. Kimmel,
Kimmel’s Story
, 28–29; and Layton,
And I Was There
, 115. Likewise, a shortage of aircraft and aircrew precluded continuous, around-the-compass air reconnaisance out to the potential strike distance. Kimmel sensibly husbanded these resources on the expectation that ONI would warn him of an approaching threat. Ibid., 75, citing
PHH
.

3. The chief of the army and later the air force, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, felt that the discussions he was involved in were only “window dressing” to some “epoch-making” secret accord between the president and the prime minister: Layton,
And I Was There
, 133, citing Arnold’s wartime diary held by the Library of Congress.

4. Roberta Wohlstetter,
Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
, (Redwood City, CA: Stanford UP, 1962) 176–82. Wohlstetter notes conflicting testimony at the hearings into the Pearl Harbor attack, but provides proof that withholding MAGIC from the two commanders did, indeed, begin in Aug. and is skeptical that it had anything to do with security concerns that arose the previous May. As it would have had to have been a decision of both General Marshall and Admiral Stark, and they were aboard the USS
Augusta
by at least 4 Aug., and 2–3 Aug. was a weekend, it seems safe to conclude that they made the move after the conclusion of the Atlantic meeting on 12 Aug. See also, Layton,
And I Was There
, 91, 119, 137. He confirms Kimmel was cut off from all MAGIC after July.

5.
PHH
, 12, at 261. The (S) means it was intercepted at the navy’s Station SAIL at Seattle and forwarded to Washington. It, and the reply (following note) were also intercepted by Station CAST in the Philippines, Station Two at San Francisco, and Station Seven at Fort Hunt outside Washington: Stinnett,
Deceit
, 102–05. It was also taken down by the army at Fort Shafter, Hawaii: Rusbridger and Nave,
Betrayal
, 130–31.

6. Stinnett,
Deceit
, 104.

7. Compare the testimony reported in the Joint Committee Report on the Pearl Harbor Attack, 1946, (
PHH
) with the observations made in the attached minority report and the views of Frank B. Keefe. Later, Kimmel wrote: “These Japanese instructions and reports pointed to an attack by Japan on ships in Pearl Harbor. The information sought and obtained, with such painstaking detail, had no other conceivable usefulness from a military viewpoint”: Kimmel,
Kimmel’s Story
, 87. This is obvious even to a lay person. See also, Stinnett,
Day of Deceit
, 105; and Toland,
Infamy
, 58–60. Of the many decrypts of Japanese messages reporting on American warships in harbour in the Pacific, only those involving Pearl Harbor dealt with the berthing positions:
PHH
, passim.

8. Charles Willoughby,
MacArthur 1941–1951
(London: William Heinemann, 1956), 22, quoting a staff report of the period. The “grid system” is an allusion to the coded map-reference message mentioned above. Notice how he stresses that these reports were made “daily,” which suggests there were more bomb-plot messages than reported to the inquiries. “Cable” was common usage for telegram. Also from Willoughby: “As Pearl Harbor approached we got many of the intercepts of that period; there was a considerable time lag as they all came via Washington; we set up our own plant during the war and eventually cut the decoding time of all the local items.” Confirmed by Stinnett,
Day of Deceit
, 112. See also: Edward Drea,
MacArthur’s ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942–1945
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 11, citing several NARA, RG457 files.

9. Colonel Rufus Bratton, in charge of distributing the army decrypts, testified that he received the order from Marshall on or after Aug. 5:
PHH
, 9, at 4584. As by that date Marshall was aboard the
Augusta
, he must have issued the order immediately on his return to Washington. For the navy, see the testimony of Captain Alwin Kramer.
PHH
, 33, at 849.

10. Wohlstetter,
Pearl Harbor
, 176–80. Also, Kramer,
PHH
, 33, at 849. MAGIC decrypts were separately produced by both army and navy code breakers, pooled, and distributed by safe hand to a shared list of recipients, the army normally looking after those in the war and state departments and the navy, the navy and the White House. For the figure of “26 a day,” see
PHH
, 33, at 915. MAGIC summaries were resumed in Mar., 1942.

11. Layton,
And I Was There
, 167.

12. Clausen and Lee,
Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement
, 46; and Stinnett,
Deceit
, 169. Built-in “deniability” is a common ploy of elected leaders expecting to have to answer awkward questions. Roosevelt began receiving “raw intercepts” again on Nov. 12.

13. Timothy Wilford,
Pearl Harbor Redefined
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001), 8, citing Minoru Nomura, “Japan’s Plans for World War II,”
Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire
, 38 (1978): 210–17. Japan was 90 percent dependant on American oil.

14. The Government Code and Cipher School then had the capacity to break PURPLE and the Consular J-codes, including J……19: Rushridger and Nave,
Betrayal
, 136. Ian Pfennigwerth,
A Man of Intelligence: The Life of Captain Theodore Nave
(Kenthurst, NSW, Austalia: Rosenberg, 2006), 175–6, mentions the Australians breaking the J-19 “Winds Message” of Nov. 19 and Tokyo’s code-destruct orders on information supplied by Far East Combined Bureau, Britain’s regional cryptanalysis agency based in Singapore. Proof that the British were reading the same codes is the selection of decrypts Henry Clausen obtained from GC&CS in 1944 and reproduced in Clausen and Lee,
Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement
, 353–93. Also note that the British had wireless listening stations that could pick up signals sent by Mackay Radio and RCA in Honolulu, most notably Hartland Point in Nova Scotia (see Chapter 17). For example: Canadian Examination Unit decrypt, D-180: KITA to Foreign Minister, Tokio, Rec’d Oct. 28, 1941 (Author’s possession).

15. The South African prime minister, Jan Smuts, recognized the ships were being endangered. When they put in at Capetown, he cabled Churchill: “If the Japanese really are nippy there is an opening here for a first-class disaster.” Notice also that Churchill throughout the previous year had steadfastly refused to send to the Far East any tanks or modern aircraft and he knew that the Japanese were likely in possession of captured British documents indicating that Britain’s chiefs of staff considered Singapore impossible to defend: Richard Lamb,
Churchill as War Leader
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993), 151; and Rusbridger and Nave,
Betrayal
, 97–104.

16. “Information received from the Orient,” MID to ONI, FBI, etc., 3 Nov., 1941, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 229, 65-9748-17. The document is only marked CONFIDENTIAL, which suggests it was sent out routinely. I could find no reference to it in the Pearl Harbor histories I consulted.

17. Speech at Mansion House, 10 Nov. 1941. Eade, ed.,
War Speeches of the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill
, Vol. II.

18. Persico,
Roosevelt’s Secret War
, 141, citing William Donovan to Roosevelt, 13 Nov. 1941, in PSF, Roosevelt Library. This was a great find because one of the strongest and longest-running arguments against Roosevelt luring Japan into war to help Britain has been that he could not have counted on Hitler coming in on Japan’s side. Apparently, he could.

19. Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (UK) to Secretary of State for External Affairs (Canada), “For your Prime Minister,” Most Secret, 20 Nov. 1941, LAC, RG25, Box 5742, 28-C(s). This is a summary of Hull’s personal description of his meeting with Kurusu given to “His Majesty’s Minister” on Nov. 18.

20. Ibid. The same message was sent to Australia and New Zealand.

21. Wilford,
Pearl Harbor Redefined
, 11, citing OPNAV to CINPAC, no. 181705, 18 Nov. 1941, in “The Role of Radio Intelligence...”, NARA, RG457, SRH, 190/36/9/2 Entry 9002, Box 9. The Vacant Sea Order is also covered in Stinnett,
Day of Deceit
, 144–46, who cites the testimony of Rear-Admiral Richmond Turner of the navy’s war plans division (a primary recipient of MAGIC) before the 1944 Navy Hart inquiry: “We were prepared to divert (ship) traffic when we believed war was imminent. We sent the traffic down by the Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic.”

22.
PHH,
39 at 314.

23. Wohlstetter,
Pearl Harbor
242-46. Hull and Roosevelt knew the Japanese could not accept recognizing Chiang-Kai’shek because it would have been a huge loss of face both nationally and in the Far East. For the idea of Japan recognizing the Chinese leader emanating from Churchill, see Lamb,
Churchill
, 157, citing PRO FO 371/35957.