Burn After Reading (28 page)

The theory seemed to be supported by at least circumstantial evidence. The flower of Japan's land forces, the much-vaunted Kwantung Army, was stationed in Manchuria, and its highly independent military politicians were said to be itching to take on the Russians in the Far East.

However, by June, 1941, Russia as a possible or probable target for Japan should have been ruled out. The United States had come into the possession of some astonishing hard intelligence. It was a report the director of the Japanese secret service in Manchukuo (like Terasaki, himself a mere Second Secretary at the Hsinkiang Embassy) had sent to his chief in the Foreign Ministry. Reflecting the consensus of the Kwantung Army's commanding generals, the man in Hsinkiang advised Tokyo to
take German claims about an imminent collapse of the Soviet Union with a grain of salt. “Geographical vastness,” he wrote, “abundance of human material resources, and the approach of winter all require careful consideration when predicting the outcome. Since Russia is now thoroughly communistic, the possibility of a counter-revolution to overthrow Stalin is very slight.”

He counseled that “Japan's viewpoint regarding war should be cautious watchful waiting”; and bluntly advised against “joining the offensive against Russia.” On the contrary, he suggested, Japan should concentrate on a definitive settlement of the “China affair” so that she might turn with her total resources against the United States.

How was it possible for such a delicate communication from one Japanese intelligence authority to another to fall into American hands? The answer lies in cryptoanalysis. The United States was again reading many of the diplomatic messages of Japan. Although hundreds of persons were involved in this activity, nothing about it leaked out that enlightened the Japanese. This was a remarkable feat of security, and completely misled the Japanese, despite the fact that in the cryptographic war nothing is taken for granted except that every country tries to break codes and ciphers.

With the progress of radio, wars had become, as Fletcher Pratt remarked, conflicts of cryptographers. “From the day in August of 1914 when German-controlled radio stations all over the world flashed out the message ‘A SON IS BORN,' the Imperial Army's code-phrase for ‘War,'” he wrote, “there was no great event that was not preceded by feverish activity in the code-rooms of the nations; and in many cases victory or defeat was underwritten in those code-rooms before it took place on the battlefield or across the seas.”

Cryptoanalysts, by the nature of their highly secretive work, form a mystic little band and live in almost complete seclusion. Describing his own time spent in Room 2646 of the Navy
Departaient, Admiral Zacharias wrote: “Hours went by without any of us saying a word, just sitting in front of piles of indexed sheets on which a mumbo jumbo of figures and letters was displayed in chaotic disorder, trying to solve the puzzle bit by bit like fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”

The raw material from which these men worked was, of course, supplied by the radio interception stations. Everything that was intercepted on an odd date of the month was handled by the Navy; on the even dates the Army received all the material. Each service would then decrypt the material (this work was often done by men who could not speak Japanese!), translate it, and prepare fourteen copies, which were shared with the other service, the White House, and the State Department.

By this means, an extraordinary flow of information of the highest quality was streaming upwards from the intelligence men to the policy makers. Once again it must be emphasized that intelligence officers can only supply information; they have not the power to act upon it. Moreover, I must repeat that the men who evaluate information are often puzzled by seemingly contradictory bits and pieces and, in their bureaucratic desire never to be wrong, will often make evasive and vague recommendations.

Finally, the man at the very top, President Roosevelt, was no Churchill with a burning interest in, and understanding of, intelligence. Could a Churchill in the White House have averted—or at least mitigated—the Pearl Harbor disaster? We can only speculate.…

At all events, on December 2, 1941, what should have been an iron-clad tipoff was intercepted. A message from Tokyo instructed the Embassy in Washington to begin the destruction of codes, a certain indication that Japan was preparing for war.

The message read: “No. 867.
Strictly Secret.
1. Among the telegraphic codes with which your office is equipped burn all but those now used with the machine and one copy each of ‘O' code (Oite) and abbreviating code (L). (Burn also the various other codes that you have in your custody. )

“2. Stop at once using one code machine unit and destroy it completely.

“3. When you have finished this, wire me back the one word ‘Haruna.'

“4. At the time and in the manner you deem most proper dispose of all files of messages coming and going and all other secret documents.

“5. Burn all the codes that Telegraphic Official Kosaka brought you. (Hence the necessity of getting in contact with Mexico mentioned in my No. 860 is no longer recognized.)”

The message went up the ladder of the U.S. government. There is no indication that anything was done about it.

Aside from the information obtained from such direct sources in which Japanese intentions were actually spelled out, crucial tactical and operational information was obtained by the various Radio Intelligence Units which monitored the traffic of the Japanese Navy. Up to that time, all attacks on the Japanese naval codes had been in vain, but even though American cryptographers could not read the verbatim contents of the Japanese naval messages, they could still make significant deductions from them. These were inferences drawn from analysis of Japanese radio traffic and from changes in its regular procedure, from deviations from norm.

The most important Unit was the one attached to Admiral Claude C. Bloch's 14th Naval District in Hawaii, headed by Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, one of the most remarkable personalities of the secret war. He was virtually unknown, even within the Navy, beyond a small circle of superiors and co-workers, although he was undoubtedly the Navy's foremost cryptographic expert. In addition, he was also a student of the Japanese language, thus able to make his own translations and evaluate for himself the various intercepts. He was stationed in Pearl Harbor.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the high quality of Rochefort's work was especially remarkable, in view of the fact that his equipment was obsolescent, that he was short on qualified
personnel, and that his electronic snooping had to be done over enormous distances. Energetic efforts to obtain more modern equipment failed, but this did not discourage Rochefort. In the summer of 1941, with the support of Admiral Bloch, he overhauled his equipment at Pearl Harbor and put up additional direction finder sets in the Midway and Palmyra Islands, using material which he had to swipe from the Pearl Harbor pool.

Much of the tactical and operational intelligence which Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton, the Fleet Intelligence Officer, handed up to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, was based on the output of Rochefort's unit. It was both voluminous and persuasive, and became increasingly so as Pearl Harbor day approached.

Throughout November, Rochefort kept in touch with the striking force of the Japanese by monitoring its traffic and drawing his conclusions from its hectic, erratic, and spasmodic nature. Frequent changes in call signals and other signs hinted at an elaborate maneuver and persuaded Rochefort that something big was in the air. His daily verbal reports to Bloch and his daily written summaries to Kimmel mirrored this conviction.

Around November 1, Rochefort first observed unusual, feverish, and ominous Japanese activities. Early in November, the Japanese introduced an entirely new set of calls for their units afloat. A series of high priority signals, sent from the main Yokosuka naval base to fleet commanders, was also discovered. On November 3, Communication Intelligence summarized its observations in these significant words: “General messages continue to emanate from Tokyo communications. Such an amount is unprecedented and the import of it is not understood. A mere call change does not account for activities of this nature. The impression is strong that these messages are periodic reports of a certain nature to the major commander.”

On December 1, Communication Intelligence indicated that the Japanese were to commence some kind of operation on a large scale. It was definitely established that a striking force was
on the move. “Summing up all reports,” Communication Intelligence concluded, “it is believed that the large fleet made up of Second, Third and First Fleet units has left Empire waters.”

Most ominous of all was the complete radio silence of Japan's aircraft carriers; consequently, they were listed as missing. It was this apparent disappearance of the carriers that made Kimmel most apprehensive. When his Fleet Intelligence Officer failed day after day to account for them, the admiral asked: “What, you don't know where the carriers are? Do you mean to say that they could be rounding Diamond Head [the southeast corner of Oahu on which Pearl Harbor is situated] and you wouldn't know it?”

“I hoped they would be sighted before now,” was all the Fleet Intelligence Officer could answer. Nothing was found out about those missing carriers, nothing, that is, until the morning of December 7.

Much has been made of the military and naval unprepared-ness that made that day so disastrous. However, this unreadiness was by no means confined to the military establishment and the policy makers. During those days, the Department of Justice was as much a part of America's first line of defense as was the Pacific Fleet. In a sense it
was
America's first line of defense. The armies and the navies were not in action as yet, but the spies were.

Before the war the responsibility to defend the United States from foreign espionage was widely scattered; no central counter-espionage agency existed to deal with the problem. It was mainly the job of the F.B.I., but both the Navy and the Army maintained their own counter-intelligence organizations. Though they had no power of arrest, they regarded themselves nevertheless as the senior guardians of military, naval, and industrial secrets.

After the outbreak of the war in Europe, on September 6, 1939, President Roosevelt issued a directive in which he designated the F.B.I. as the central Federal agency in “charge of investigative work in matters relating to espionage, sabotage, and
violations of the neutrality regulations.” Under his limited powers, Roosevelt could do no more. He could not give orders to law enforcement agencies maintained by the states, counties or municipalities, or by private industry. He could merely request them to pass on to the F.B.I. any information they dug up about subversion.

Despite the Presidential directive, confusion and conflict remained, enabling foreign agents to operate with something approaching impunity. Nowhere was the situation more deplorable than in Hawaii. In December, 1941, when the F.B.I. had a total of two thousand six hundred and two agents, Hoover assigned only nine of them to its field office in Honolulu. The Navy's District Intelligence Office, which functioned mainly as a counter-intelligence agency, had about a hundred officers, interpreters and translators. The Army was also engaged in counter-intelligence, but the number of people assigned to the function was negligible.

There was superficial co-operation between the various agencies, but under the surface bickering was rampant. Important operations were conducted at cross purposes. Surveillances had to be abandoned when agents of the various American security organs ran into one another. Promising projects were discontinued when rival agencies fought each other on petty jurisdictional matters.

In November, 1941, for instance, the F.B.I. tapped the telephone of the Japanese Consulate General in Honolulu, which was rightly suspected of being the general headquarters of Japanese espionage in Hawaii. That single tap was yielding substantial results when the F.B.I. was forced to discontinue it. Competitive agencies, Naval Intelligence and the Federal Communications Commission, found out about the tap and chased the Bureau away from it. Then a jurisdictional quarrel sprang up between the F.C.C. and Naval Intelligence. The dispute was finally settled by the withdrawal of both agencies from the scene, leaving the Consul General's hot wire uncovered on the very eve of Pearl Harbor.

Discouraged by this fratricidal war and unable to run the show as he wanted to, Hoover retired from energetic prosecution of the espionage war with Japan in Hawaii. In December, 1940, he told Robert L. Shivers, the Special Agent in charge of his Honolulu field office, that “the Bureau does not consider it advisable or desirable at this particular time for your office to assume the responsibility for the supervision of all Japanese espionage investigations in the Territory of Hawaii.”

The list of Japanese suspects which the Bureau kept up-to-date included seven hundred and seventy individuals, a formidable force in aggressive espionage. The F.B.I. knew who they were and what they were doing, but was able to do little, if anything, to render them harmless.

Among those suspects was a certain Tachibana, a commander in the Japanese Navy, sent to the United States on a semi-official detail as a language officer. In May, 1941, the Bureau came into the possession of conclusive evidence that Tachibana was an espionage agent. Hoover advised the State Department of the facts and inquired whether the Department would approve his arrest. On May 27, the Department notified the F.B.I. that there was no objection. The commander was taken into custody in Los Angeles.