Fighting to Lose (58 page)

2. For a good collection of evidence that Churchill wanted to provoke Japan into war in order to get the United States into the fight with Germany, see Richard Lamb,
Churchill as War Leader
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991), 147–162.

3. However, during the 1930s there were tensions between Japan and the United States, caused by Japan’s aggression in China and also by American racism against Asiatics. See: Henry L. Stimson,
The Far Eastern Crisis
(New York: Harper & Bros., 1936); and James A.B. Scherer,
Japan Defies the World
(New York: Bobbs-Merril, 1938).

4. James Rusbridger and Eric Nave,
Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt Into WWII
(New York: Summit Books, 1991), 123. For background to the “inevitable clash,” see correspondence involving secretary of state for dominion affairs (UK) and secretary of state for external affairs (Canada), Dec. 1940 to Dec. 1941, regarding actions to be taken in the event of hostile moves by the Japanese: LAC, RG25, 2859, 1698-abcd-40. The same and similar documents can be found in the national archives of Australia and New Zealand.

5. The wording made it exclusively a
defensive
pact. The other two were not required to help if one was an aggressor.

6. Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 80. For a wartime sneer about the FBI’s failure to appreciate the significance of Popov’s questionnaire, see D.A. Wilson, Memo redouble agents to B1A, 26 Mar. 1943, NARA, RG65, WWII FBI HQ Files, “Dusan Popov.” The fact that this British document is in FBI files means the FBI obtained it. It must have deeply soured Hoover’s attitude to MI5.

7. Montagu,
Beyond Top Secret U
, 75. For the Robertson quote, see Philip Knightly,
The Second Oldest Profession
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1986), 150. He presumably obtained this from an interview.

8. Thomas Troy, “The British Assault on Hoover: The Tricycle Case,”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
3, No. 2 (1 Jan. 1989).

9. David Mure,
Master of Deception
(London: William Kimber, 1980), 170–77. Mure was a veteran of the security and intelligence services in the Middle East. His theory was that Soviet influence inside British Intelligence caused the warning to be ignored.

10. Hinsley,
BISWW
, I, 295–6; II, 4; and Rushbridger and Nave,
Betrayal at Pearl Harbor
, 80. For an example of BONIFACE covering SS messages, see Gluck to SS OGruf Martin, 16 Apr. 1945, copy to CSS with the notation “Boniface” on the margin in green ink, a hallmark of the MI6 chief: PRO, HW1/3713. The green ink indicates it was personally handled by Menzies (CSS) and sent on to Churchill. By this time BONIFACE had been largely supplanted by the code-word ULTRA but evidently was still being used by Menzies on decrypts to be directed to the prime minister: PRO, HW1/1-30.

11. See previous chapter.

12. Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 79; and Popov,
Spy/Counterspy
, 149, 153. Leaving “in a few days” and leaving 10 Aug. puts this meeting at 7 Aug. at the latest. It is pertinent to add that the MI6(V) representatives at Lisbon and Madrid operated independently of the MI6 station chiefs. The latter were not allowed to know anything about the management of the double agents: Kenneth Benton, “The ISOS years Madrid 1941–43,”
Journal of Contemporary History
30, No. 3 (July 1995). This accounts for how Philip Johns, the MI6 station chief for Portugal, could declare he knew nothing of TRICYCLE and the microdots.

13. The original German-language copy of the questionnaire is in PRO, KV2/849 after Doc. 204b. Jarvis would obviously have sent the English-language copy to MI6 as well, if for no other reason than that Popov would not have wanted to risk carrying it through customs at the Bermuda stop-over. He had it on microdots anyway.

14. The
Prince of Wales
sailed on 4 Aug., arriving at Placentia Bay on 9 Aug. and staying until 12 Aug.

15. As told by Pujol in Tomás Harris,
GARBO: The Spy Who Saved D-Day
(1945/2000), 11, 51–53, 61. Harris does not specifically say that Pujol managed to get officials at the British embassy in Lisbon to look at the questionnaire, but it seems safe to assume that he did since the PRO description of the GARBO file KV2/40 (photographed in 2006) begins at 15 Jul. 1941, which means the MI6 file on Pujol was first opened then. See also, the file list of start-dates for double agents — July for GARBO — presented to MI5’s 1943 internal counter-espionage symposium, PRO, KV4/170.

16. Testimony of Captain A.L.F. Safford, the navy’s chief cryptographer, alluding to a “positive proof” decrypt of 22 May and another of 24 Jul. from “a high authority in Japan”: Hart Inquiry, 29 Apr. 1944,
PHH
, 25 at 390. The actual decrypts have never surfaced, but Safford saw all MAGIC and the events of 1941 would have been fresh in his mind. He also reported that the president was in daily receipt of his “information” through Lieutenant Commander A.D. Kramer. As the war was still in progress at the time of this inquiry, witnesses were circumspect with respect to actually mentioning code- and cipher-breaking. The chairman, Admiral Hart, knew what Safford was talking about, however. He had been receiving MAGIC before the outbreak of hostilities. For Churchill on the telephone 25 Jul. with Roosevelt regarding a rendezvous, see Colville,
Fringes
, 419, 421.

17. Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson,
The New World 1939/46
:
A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission
, Vol. I (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 41–45. The National Defence Research Committee received a unanimous report, copy to U.S. Vice-President Henry Wallace, from the British MAUD Committee in mid-July urging that the separation of uranium isotope U-235 for military purposes be proceeded with urgently. For evidence that this likely was a topic of their talks, see Prime Minister to VCAS, 30 Aug. 1941: Winston Churchill,
The Second World War
, Vol. III,
The Grand Alliance
(New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1950), 814.

18. “Memorandum of trip to meet Winston Churchill,” 23 Aug. 1944, FDR Library, Safe Files, Box 1. The chiefs of staff discussions are mainly known from second-hand accounts, rather than documents.

19. Churchill,
Grand Alliance
, 443–44.

20. For these murder messages becoming available as of 21 Jul., see ZIP GPD 292 in special file labelled in longhand, “Executions in Russia 18.7.41 to 13.9.41,” PRO, HW16/45. These are excerpted pages on this subject transferred from PRO, HW19. Their existence was first noted in Hinsley,
BISWW
, II, 1981, 669–71. For a more recent overview, see Robert Hanyok, “Eavesdropping on Hell,”
www.nsa.gov/publications
.

21. For the categories of intelligence in the package air-dropped to Churchill, see document from PRO/PREM3/485/6 reproduced by Rusbridger and Nave,
Betrayal
, 114. The authors appear correct in defining BJ as specifically meaning British-Japanese. See BJs reproduced in Henry Clausen and Bruce Lee,
Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 353–93. See also, Liddell Diary for BJs, passim. For how the papers got to the ship: Churchill,
Grand Alliance
, 430. The first decrypt mentioning the SS killings in Russia was obtained in July; others followed immediately after he sailed.

22. ZIP/GPD 292/21.7.41; ZIP/GPD 309/6.8.41, PRO, HW16/45. Also found as duplicates in NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 1386. The nine decrypts in Box 1386 dated as having been received 7 Aug. could be the actual set that Churchill showed Roosevelt. The statement in Hanyok, “Eavesdropping,” 14 that these particular decrypts were obtained from GCHQ (successor to GC&CS) in the 1980s is not documented. Even if correct, the existence of these decrypts is proof they were seen by Menzies, and therefore by Churchill.

23. Winston S. Churchill,
The War Speeches
, Vol. II, Charles Eade, ed., (London: Cassell, 1952) 59–66. The speech was aired 24 Aug., five days after Churchill arrived back in London, and the most recent decrypts showed the killings were being done in batches of thousands. He presents it as his report on his meeting with Roosevelt and emphasizes American support for Britain in its struggle with Hitler. He also raises the prospect of the United States being drawn into war with Japan. This is proof Churchill knew the scope and extent of the executions by this date, even though the file — PRO, HW 1/1 — which purports to be a record of his daily ULTRA briefings, suggests that the first such decrypt he saw was dated 28 Aug. 1941. This cannot be true. Hanyok, “Eavesdropping,” 39–40, comes to this same conclusion.

24. It is highly likely that Roosevelt saw the sixteen-millimetre film of the atrocities taken by the Episcopal missionary John Magee and shown to both German and American officials, a copy going to Berlin and probably another to Washington. Roosevelt had a relationship with Magee (the latter officiated at Roosevelt’s funeral in 1945); and in 1938,
Life
published ten stills that shocked the world. That no actual record has surfaced of Roosevelt being aware of the massacre should be understood in the political context of the United States having ignored calls for sanctions against Japan.

25. Evidence that Roosevelt then told Churchill about the prospect of an atomic bomb can be found in the fact that within a fortnight of returning to England Churchill wrote to his Chiefs of Staff on the subject. Churchill,
Grand Alliance
, 814.

26. See Chapter 13.

27. EXHIBIT C, attachment to Connelley to Director, 19 Aug. 1941, NARA, RG65, FBI HQ file, “Dusan Popov.” This, along with EXHIBIT B — Popov’s wireless instructions in English — consist of white typing on a black background indicating they could be photographs of the actual microdots, which were tiny bits of negative film. The microdots themselves were photographs of the English-language original, the onion-skin copies of which Jarvis sent to London. The misspellings are on the original.

28.
Dictionary of Canadian English
(Toronto: Gage, 1962). “Oil tanks” for fuel or fuel-oil tanks and “munition dumps” for ammo or ammunition dumps do not conform to normal English, Canadian or American usage. Also, compared to the MI5 and FBI translations, this version has more punch, as one would expect from a journalist, and devotes a greater percentage of the space to Hawaii. The difference becomes obvious when the three versions are read together.

29. Up to this point in time, Roosevelt had seen plenty of intercepted Japanese messages mentioning U.S. warships in ports around the Pacific, or passing through the Panama Canal, but Popov’s questionnaire was the first concrete example of Japanese target-intelligence gathering. See the relevant decrypts:
Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack: Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack
,
Pursuant to S. Con. Res. 27, 79th Congress: A Concurrent Resolution to Investigate the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Events and Circumstances Relating Thereto, and Additional Views of Mr. Keefe, Together with Minority Views of Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Brewster
(
PHH
) (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1946), 12, Exhibits 1–2.

30. Edwin T. Layton,
And I Was There
(Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1985), 73. Kimmel received Grew’s dispatch along with ONI’s disclaimer: Kimmel,
Admiral Kimmel’s Story
, Henry Regnery, 1955, 87; and Stinnett,
Day of Deceit
, 30–32.

31. Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy in 1920 when Billy Mitchell began his famous campaign to demonstrate that capital ships were helplessly vulnerable to air attack. He proved his point in 1921 by bombing and sinking the target battleship
Ostfriesland
. That lesson, combined with the recent easy crippling of the
Bismarck
by British carrier-launched aircraft, and the destruction of the Italian Fleet at Taranto, would not have been lost on Roosevelt, or on Stark.

32. For a discussion of the “now worked out a plan,” see George Morgenstern,
Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War
(New York: Devin-Adair, 1947), 117–21, 138, 147, who cites testimony of Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells, who was present at the Atlantic Meeting. Morgenstern is an especially valuable commentator on the Pearl Harbor controversy.

33. Dominions Office (UK) to Government of Australia (copy to Canada), 12 Aug. 1941, LAC, RG25, 2859, 1698-A-40. It would be fascinating to find out whether and on what day this message was actually sent. The answer does not seem to be in the Canadian archives but it might be in those of Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand. For Churchill’s quote, see War Cabinet documents, Vol. XI, 1941, PRO, CAB65/19.

34. No. 9710, Group XIII/11, Berlin to Spain, RSS 238/27/8/41, PRO, HW19/12. The numbers 7580 and 7591 refer to Abwehr agents operating in France, presumably Vichy France, where the Americans would have had diplomatic representation.

35. The teletype line Madrid–Paris–Berlin was in operation until 1943, when it was disrupted by bombing: Interrogation of embassy radio operator, F. Baechle, 16 Aug, 1945, NARA, RG457, (190,07,01) Box 773. For the Canadians being able to intercept Madrid–Berlin, see MI8 to Defensor, 28 Aug. 1941; LAC, RG24, 12341, 4/int/2/2. It must have been in a simple hand cipher, likely of the transposition type, because GC&CS had not yet broken the Abwehr Enigma machine. This is proved by an analysis of the postwar collected Canaris wireless traffic where one finds on page 4 in the entry 17.12.41, No. 847, the parenthetical (ISK 546) standing for an earlier Enigma message. Other messages for July–August are numbered between 8 and 10,000 and, as they are obviously not in the ISK series, must be ISOS. The breakthrough on Abwehr Enigma appears to have occurred at the end of November.