Abstract
Much of the Comint success described in this book arose from the skilled exploitation of mistakes made by the enemy. Such mistakes were likely to be detected and eliminated if there was suspicion that codes and/or ciphers had been ‘compromised’. Discovery of a single major breach might even result in unrelated systems being made secure. This chapter describes examples of Allied security lapses involving the release of information that could have led to suspicions of this sort. These lapses caused consternation to the Allies but evidently had no other effect.
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Notes
- 1.
Gallehawk’s booklet was published by the Bletchley Park Trust as Report No. 11 in October 1998. Geoffrey Ballard described the experience of the Australian traffic analysis group in Crete at the time in his On Ultra Active Service.
- 2.
See the book Colossus: The Secret of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers by B. Jack Copeland and others, Oxford University Press, 2006. A chapter written by Stephen Budiansky (and available on his website) states on page 54: ‘In July 1941, as the German Panzers thundered into Russia, Tiltman’s group broke the hand cipher used by the German Police in the East and began to read the first hints of unimaginable horrors to come’.
In December 1942 Sir Anthony Eden told the House of Commons about ‘receiving reliable information of the barbarous and inhuman treatment to which Jews were being subjected.’ From the viewpoint of this book the use of reliable stands out.
- 3.
Quite a lot of material has been published on this incident:
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(1)
Hans-Joachim Krug and others: German-Japanese Naval Relations in WW2, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD, 2001 explains that in practice there was little rapid exchange of information between the two Axis navies;
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(2)
Edwin Layton, the fleet intelligence officer at Pearl Harbor, discusses the matter on page 418 of And I was There (1985). The book confirms that Comint was being sent to the NZ NID and that the capture, if handled promptly by the raider, could have resulted in great damage to the USN;
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(3)
Ian Gow and Y. Hirama: Anglo-Japanese Relationships III, Macmillan 2003, contains a paper by John Chapman entitled from Allies to Antagonists that covers the Automedon and Nankin incidents well;
-
(4)
John Chapman has published a translation of parts of the war diaries of the German Naval Attaché Admiral Paul Wenneker under the title The Price of Admiralty but unfortunately the text for July 1942 has been lost.
Perhaps here too the myth of JN-25 documentation being recovered from the sunken I-124 clouded the issue.
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(1)
- 4.
The origin of the use of ‘Hydro’ and then ‘Ultra’ is mentioned on page 155 of Patrick Beesly’s Very Special Admiral. The Australian file on the matter is Canberra NAA: A5954 2334/18 Circulation of messages received from secret sources.
- 5.
Canberra NAA file A5954 326/22.
- 6.
The late Mrs. H. Treweek recalled in 2004 that her late husband A. P. Treweek was once almost correctly informed on a St Kilda tram in Melbourne that ‘down there they break all the Japanese codes!’. This may well have represented a mixture of rumour and inspired guesswork. Similarly, anyone in Bletchley who cared to do so could observe hundreds of staff arriving for the overnight shift at BP and draw the obvious conclusion. Since a considerable volume of intercepted enemy messages was re-enciphered in Australia and broadcast to cryptological units overseas, enemy intelligence agencies using TA should have been able to deduce that something was going on without help from St Kilda trams! But apparently nothing came from this.
- 7.
The title of NAA Sydney file SP286/16 8 suggests that it holds records of these private press briefings but in fact it holds nothing much prior to 1944 and the 1944 material has little interest. However one written briefing document for Prime Minister Curtin from 30 October 1942 on the Solomon Islands has survived in the NAA. See file A5954 333/7 page 108. This was forwarded to Curtin in Perth by teleprinter for ‘a meeting with newspaper editors’.
Two relevant Australian books on this matter are:
Don Whitingdon, Strive to be Fair, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978.
Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall, Background Briefings—John Curtin’s War, National Library of Australia, 1997. This has summaries of Curtin’s briefings from 30 June 1942 onwards.
William Dunn in Pacific Microphone discusses how General MacArthur used the press.
The Google search engine when asked for ‘Grattan Curtin’ gives access to a a highly relevant paper based on a talk given by the senior contemporary journalist Michelle Grattan on John Curtin’s relationship with and use of the press.
The NAA file about instructing Ministers to be discreet in making public statements is A1196 3/501/15.
Another memorable WW2 indiscretion by a senior figure was that of General de Gaulle in a broadcast immediately after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Unlike Churchill and Roosevelt he said that this was the real invasion rather than possibly just a preliminary step. Apparently the German High Command did not believe de Gaulle.
- 8.
The correspondence about the appointment of Miss Wearne is in the Sydney NAA as SP286/16 8.
- 9.
In fact this story was deleted in a later edition of the paper with the same date. Despite what has been published elsewhere the Washington Post did not carry the story at all. Apparently no systematic search of the American press of that day has been carried out. The same piece of information is in the Blamey papers 3DRL/6643 in the War Memorial Research Centre. The date suggests that Blamey was informed at least 24 h after the readers of the Washington Evening Star.
General Blamey somewhat improperly retained selected messages containing Sigint or about it in his papers. These have considerable interest. One may also find there a letter from Brigadier John Rogers, the Australian Director of Military Intelligence, dated 13 October 1943. ‘In accordance with the promise given to overseas authorities could such memoranda as the attached be destroyed after perusal.’
- 10.
The paper The Compromise of US Naval Intelligence after the Battle of Midway by B. Nelson Macpherson, published in Intelligence and National Security, April 1987, quotes a ‘Magic Summary’ of 11 September 1942. It shows that the Japanese government asked its embassy in Lisbon for back copies of the Chicago Tribune and for American newspapers in general. Carrying out such a request would have at best been very time-consuming and expensive. An agent would have had to get a visa to travel to the United States, find transportation and then visit a major public library and take notes. Even if the FBI was not showing interest there would then be the finding of return transportation. At least the agent could have checked the Washington Evening Star at the same time, but only if attention had been drawn to it.
The Japanese embassy in Lisbon would have had even more difficulty in getting an agent to inspect back issues of the Brisbane Courier-Mail.
There is a related item in NAA Melbourne item MP1074/7, 1/9/1942 to 15/9/1942. It was a diplomatic message intercepted by the RAN on 11 September 1942, being a repeat of a message of 25 July. ‘In view of extreme importance of material contained in Times and other British and American newspapers and magazines, as these can no longer be obtained in Kuibysheve [the temporary capital of the USSR], can Kabul obtain them including other English language newspapers published in India for dispatch to Japan.’
Section 8.19 lists various steps needed for security. One of these is: Diligently monitor enemy documents, announcements and actions for evidence that your own systems are being read.
- 11.
Owen Dixon left a diary which Philip Ayres has used in his biography Owen Dixon, Melbourne University Press, 2003. Dixon was married to the sister of Walter Brooksbank, the senior civilian in the Naval Intelligence Department in Melbourne. However there is no evidence that he had any information from Brooksbank about Sigint.
- 12.
These quotations are from files AWM54 423/11/202 Part 1 pages KA26 and KA32 in the Australian War Memorial Research Centre.
- 13.
The Australian War Memorial file AWM54 423/11/202 Part 1 on page KA36 gives a message from another American admiral. ‘Our intelligence points to concentrations of Jap Flt at Truk later part of June but gives no indication of attack either Alaska, Midway or Hawaii. Obviously, however, you would not have redisposed your forces without good reason which it would be helpful for me to know.’ The NAA Melbourne file B6121 119 gives an interesting ‘good reason’ concocted a few days after the Battle.
Part of Note 5 of Chap. 21 bears duplication. The regulations on the use of Comint given in Sect. 1.17 included: ‘In general, if any action is to be taken based upon Ultra information, the local Commander is to ensure that such action cannot be traced back by the enemy to the reception of Ultra Intelligence alone. … No action may be taken against specific land or sea targets revealed by Ultra unless appropriate air or land reconnaissance has also been taken.’
As discussed in Note 34 of Chap. 9, the loss of the I-124 gave the IJN communications security people another misleading ‘good reason’.
Admiral Yamamoto, generally believed to have been responsible for the Pearl Harbor raid, was shot down in April 1943 by an ambush that patently needed prior knowledge of his flight plans. Rudolph Fabian of Frumel was against this exercise. The Oral History interview with him held by the American National Cryptological Museum records the sentence ‘It could have compromised the hell out of us.’
- 14.
Arthur McCollum played a key role in the USN 7th Fleet intelligence team in Brisbane. An oral history interview with him is in the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. See also pages 677–678 of D. Goren’s Communications Intelligence and the Freedom of the Press, in the Journal of Contemporary History vol 16 (1981) 663–690.
- 15.
The reference here is the interview with Duane Whitlock carried out for the National Security Agency and available from the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort George Meade, Maryland.
- 16.
The early Central Bureau minutes survive in NAA file SI/10.
- 17.
This comes from a collection of letters from CBB to General Akin in NAA file B5435 222.
- 18.
The NAA reference is SI/10. See page 218 in the digitised version.
- 19.
A small file of letters sent by Mr. Cameron survives in the Australian War Memorial Research Centre. The reference is AWM54 225/2/3.
However it is clear that 9 months later Mr. Cameron was not totally satisfied. He had the wit to see the point behind the regulation (same source as at end of previous note) ‘Names of enemy ships revealed by Ultra sources may never be quoted’.
According to Admiral Halsey’s 1947 Admiral Halsey’s Story, stories eventually appeared in the Australian newspapers to the effect that the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto had been initiated on the basis of Comint. ‘But the Japs evidently did not realize the implication.’
- 20.
The quote is from the Blamey papers (Note 9) 3DRL/6643, folder 2/65.
- 21.
Barbara Winter’s book The Intrigue Master on DNI Long gave the reference to the Cobra and Lagarto affairs.
- 22.
NAA Canberra item A816 35/301/146 is the file on the AWM Official History. British National Archives (TNA) has a file in the HW series on the deletion of references to Sigint from the Churchill memoirs.
- 23.
A few press cuttings survived in the Defence Department records and are now in the NAA Canberra as item A5954 560/4. William Friedman later collected various other leaks in a document now in RG457 in the College Park NARA.
- 24.
Amusingly the interview with Rudolph Fabian has the descriptions of the special tricks used with JN-25 blacked out. The full original text was finally declassified in 2006. A booklet The Quiet Heroes of the Southwest Pacific Theater edited by Sharon Maneki and published by the NSA in 1996 has considerable overlap with these oral histories. The oral history material is available in the National Cryptological Museum.
Mavis Batey’s book Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas (2009) mentions the failure of the British GCHQ to declassify WW2 vintage material, such as HW 43/33. See pages 1 and 223. This ‘Part I’ covers techniques used to break JN-25 systems, and presumably duplicates American material on public access in NARA RG38. The adjacent ‘Part II’ HW 43/34 was declassified in February 2013. It has 100 pages on the JN-25L53 system.
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Donovan, P., Mack, J. (2014). Security, Censorship and Leaks. In: Code Breaking in the Pacific. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08278-3_19
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