Fighting to Lose

by John Bryden

  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 Unite
d 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.

  36. For the Government Code and Cipher School noticing the change, see PRO, HW3/155. For OKW/Chi being responsible creating and overseeing German military ciphers: CSDIC, Interim Report Trautmann and Schlottmann, 10 Oct. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 133, 65-37193-333. OKW/Chi was headquartered at 80 Tirpitzufer Strasse, next to the Abwehr’s offices. It was here that the explosives and small arms were hidden for the aborted Abwehr-inspired coup of 1939: “Lahousen,” III, PRO, KV2/173. OKW/Chi is short for OKW/Chiffre.

  37. The German Police decrypts in NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 1586 are duplicates from the British set check-marked on the distribution list as the “for file” copies.

  1. Mitchell, an “English businessman,” had been the security officer with the British Purchasing Commission in 1940 before transferring over to British Security Coordination: Montgomey Hyde, Room 3604 (New York: Dell, 1964), 78–79. As MI5 did not have an overseas security function, this means that he would have been an MI6 officer. Popov, Spy/Counterspy, 154, incorrectly remembered it being BSC’s John Pepper who took the briefcase through customs.

  2. Col. Sharp, MID, to Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, 15 Aug. 1941, NARA, RG65, FBI HQ file “Dusan M. Popov.” FBI documents cited in this chapter are from this file unless otherwise noted. Sharp wrote that Popov was reported to have given Mitchell a package while they shared the taxi and Ellis subsequently produced copies of some of the microdots at a meeting with the FBI on 14 Aug., so they can be assumed to have been in that package. See Note 4 below.

  3. Connelley to Director, 20 Aug. 1941; and C.H.C. to Foxworth, 21 Aug. 1941. This action by Popov must have caused the army/navy officers to wonder how he managed to get the cash through customs, leading them to back-check his arrival and discover the details about Mitchell: Sharp to G-2, 15 Aug. 1941.

  4. Foxworth, MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR, 14 Aug. 1941. Handwritten notations on this document indicate that it was specifically drawn to Hoover’s attention, and its attachment — a “questionnaire” — was forwarded to Hoover on 16 Aug., indicating the earliest that the FBI director would have seen it. It would have been a photographed or typed copy of the English-language version that was on two of the microdots Popov was carrying. Popov had done none of the things Ellis claimed of him.

  5. There is moderately strong evidence for this deduction. The secret “BSC History” that Stephenson had compiled in 1945, and which only finally became available in the 1990s, makes only bare mention of Popov and says nothing of Pearl Harbor or his questionnaire, which Stephenson surely would not have missed including had he known of it: Nigel West, introduction to, The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940–45, by William Stephenson (New York: Fromm International, 1999), 388–93. There is no mention in Montgomery Hyde, Room 3604, either. Indeed, Stephenson disclaimed the Popov/Pearl Harbor story that author William Stevenson wrote into his controversial autobiography of him, A Man Called Intrepid (1976): See Bill Macdonald, The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents (Surrey, BC: Timberholme, 1998), 148–50. Also, strangely, Ellis is referred to in the documents as “STOTT’s assistant,” rather than Stephenson’s, but STOTT is a code name derived from Ellis’s personal past. Stephenson is never mentioned by name.

  6. Connelley to Hoover, PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL, 20 Aug. 1941. This was a follow-up to his report of 19 Aug. and appears to have been done for the record, after Connelley and Hoover talked on the telephone.

  7. Connelley to Director, 19 Aug. 1941. It is curious that he used the verb “transmit,” for up to the time he left for the United States, Popov’s communication with Portugal had been by per
sonal visit or secret-ink letter. Ellis must have shown Connelley the text of some of these letters.

  8. Ibid., 6. See also, Carson to Foxworth, 21 Aug., and 23 Aug. 1941. Popov may have been instructed to say the thirty-eight thousand dollars was British money because it would have been subject to seizure under the recent law freezing Axis assets in the United States. It was an outright lie, however, to say that the spy was to draw directly from the account in the United States, and cashed cheques were to be traced. The actual scheme involved an equivalent amount being paid in England to a British double agent. Popov hid this fact, although the FBI eventually sorted out the truth: “A Brief Synopsis of the case,” Dusan M. Popov, 15 Jan. 1944, NARA, RG65, WWII, FBI HQ Files, Box 11(17). The sum in British funds was twenty thousand pounds: Liddell Diary, 3, 25 Aug. 1941.

  9. Connelley to Director, 19 Aug. 1941, Exhibit C and Exhibit D. These are white on black, presumably because they are photographs taken by a camera mounted on a microscope, a not uncommon piece of scientific equipment at the time. The FBI lab was soon to develop an apparatus for making direct enlargements and positive prints. Popov’s transmission frequencies were to be 13400 and 6950 kcs, requiring an aerial of twenty-five metres.

  10. Jeffrey, MI6, 194–5, 316.

  11. Peter Wright, Spycatcher (Toronto: Stoddart, 1987), 325–30. See also, H.A.R. Philby to Miss Paine, 25 Nov. 1946, with attachments and other documents pertaining to the interrogation of Richard Traugott Protze, PRO, KV2/1740. Protze disclosed that a Captain Ellis had handed over “extensive information about the organization of the English Secret Services.” It appears to have been a slip because he then said Ellis was a Russian and the information was only partly believed. Protze probably played a part in the Abwehr’s secret peace overtures to Stephens and Best in 1939 that led to the Venlo incident. It was in his territory. See Chapter 6.