The Snowden affair calls to mind an earlier history of U.S. Intelligence efforts targeting communications. In the 1920's and 30's, the United States targeted foreign diplomatic and military communications. The early origins of the effort remain murky. The entire field of cryptography and cryptanalysis burgeoned after the introduction of radio communications. Intercepted radio message traffic provided intelligence analysts vast quantities of material to exploit. During World War I, the main target was Germany.
After WWI, for a time the effort continued using combined resources of the Army, Navy, State Department and Justice, under leadership of Herbert Yardley, who had headed the Army's communications intelligence effort during the Great War. This effort, known officially as the Cipher Bureau and unofficially as the American Black Chamber, continued until it was closed during the Hoover Administration in an apparent economy measure. Or, alternatively, it was closed as a result of Secretary of State Stimson's discomfort with the program. "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail," he declared.
Japan had been a major target of US communications intelligence which played a key role in US diplomatic success during the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. The Navy began its own effort at communications intelligence in 1926 (probably building on earlier efforts).
Here is an account of the Navy's efforts leading up to WWII.
Something to bear in mind is that US Government efforts to intercept, decode, translate and distribute foreign message traffic was in clear violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1934. These efforts, which played a key role in US operational success in both oceans during WWII, continued to violate US law until an exception was made by statute in 1978.
In the intervening decades, there were several instances of inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of US communications intelligence. Here is an account of what happened in 1942 concerning one such unauthorized disclosure concerning Midway:
The Battle of Midway
continued long after the combatants retired. Because of the
confusion that surrounded the nascent and relatively unfamiliar
U.S. Navy policies governing secrecy and need to know in 1942,
the Battle of Midway was refought in the newspapers and
courthouses of three major U.S. cities - New York, Chicago, and
Washington - for several weeks after the battle actually ended.
At issue was how the Navy knew of Japanese plans, how that
knowledge came into the possession of a newspaper reporter, and
how the government should handle a serious security violation. In
the end no one was ever formally punished for revealing to the
public the role communications intelligence played in the
Japanese defeat. Whether the Japanese ever discovered that U.S.
cryptologists had successfully penetrated their most secret
operational code, or even suspected the magnitude of the warning
provided by COMINT, remains a matter of conjecture to this day.
At the time, however, officials within OP-20-G were certain that
subsequent almost draconian corrections in Japanese
communications procedures and cryptography were traceable
directly to the following events.
On 17 May 1942, the
survivors of the Lexington
were en route to San Diego and San Francisco aboard the USS Barnett
and the USS Elliot.
(One account said that Admiral Fitch and Captain Sherman were
aboard the transport Chester.)
Anticipating their arrival in the United States, CINCPAC sent the
following message to Admiral Fletcher, CTF 17, with information
copies to COMINCH and the Commandants of the 11th and 12th Naval
Districts:
It is imperative that
all survivors Coral Sea action being returned Mainland be
instructed that they are to refrain from any mention of the
action upon their arrival west coast port. Com11 is requested
berth transports where debarkation can be conducted without
contact with newsmen. All personnel will probably require
reoutfitting. There will be no publicity regarding this
matter until Navy Department release. Barnett
and Elliot will
stop at San Diego to discharge excess personnel en route San
Francisco.
Despite these precautions
by CINCPAC, events aboard the Barnett
resulted in even more damaging revelations than those CINCPAC had
hoped to prevent. In ancillary actions, CINCPAC learned that
medical reports filed in Navy Bureau of Medicine channels
revealed the status of American carriers after the battle. In a
hasty message on 3 June 1942, CINCPAC notified COMINCH and
requested immediate action to suppress the errant reports. At 2050 on 8 June 1942, COMINCH sent the
following message to CINCPAC:
Contents of your
311221 May were published almost verbatim in several
newspapers yesterday. Article originated with correspondent
Stanley Johnson [sic] embarked on [USS] Barnett
until June 2d. While your despatch was addressed Task Force
Commanders it was sent in channel available to nearly all
ships which emphasizes need of care in using channels para.
Cominch investigating on Barnett
and at San Diego.
CINCPAC's message of
311221 May contained his final appreciation of the Japanese order
of battle prior to Midway.
True to his word, COMINCH
immediately convened several formal inquiry panels, which began
gathering depositions from witnesses. The panels inquired into
the circumstances aboard the Barnett,
which, in addition to most of the crew, carried the executive
officer of the Lexington,
Commander Morton T. Seligman, and a newspaper correspondent, Mr.
Stanley Johnston, back to the United States, and in Chicago in
the headquarters Colonel R.R. McCormick's newspaper, the Chicago
Tribune, where the story had originated. According to Admiral King's biographer, Thomas
B. Buell in Master of Seapower,
Admiral King "was in a white fury at his headquarters while
his staff frantically tried to discover the source of the
leak."
By 11 June all of the
principals had been interviewed. Those aboard the Barnett
were interviewed more than once. Out of this work emerged a very
unpleasant picture of official neglect and confusion concerning
the safeguarding of communications intelligence both on the Barnett
and in the newspapers. Because of the perception that newsmen
accompanying U.S. forces were sworn to secrecy, indictments of
the principal employees of the Chicago
Tribune were sought on 9 June, even before
the inquiries were completed. They were returned on 7 July by a
Chicago grand jury. At this point serious snags appeared at every
turn, and the matter lay in the hands of the grand jury and a
special prosecutor for several weeks while the navy added
depositions to a record that increasingly showed that Johnston, a
British subject, had, with the help or negligence of others,
betrayed the trust placed in him.
While many in the navy
focused on finding a suitable punishment for Johnston, COMINCH
issued another memorandum on 20 June 1942 similar to those he had
originated in March and April. It was sent to CINCLANT, CINCPAC,
and CDR- SWPACFORCE bearing the subject "Control of
Dissemination and Use of Radio Intelligence." Within the
navy this would prove to be the only remedial action to come out
of the Johnston case.
On 24 June the New York
newspaper PM published a story without attribution announcing
that the Justice Department did not plan to prosecute anyone,
either in the newspapers or in the U.S. Navy, as a result of their role in the revelations.
Ironically, three days later the navy discovered that Johnston's
own government had earlier declared him "unreliable" as
a correspondent.
It was the same government, however, that subsequently forged the
ultimate solution by addressing the correlation between the
Johnston revelations and safeguarding communications
intelligence.
On 14 July, the special
prosecutor, Mr. William D. Mitchell, transmitted his
comprehensive "Report on the Chicago
Tribune Case" to Attorney General
Francis Biddle and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. His
conclusion, after he had reviewed the law, the evidence, and the
circumstances surrounding the "leak," ended by
suggesting that "the game may not be worth the candle"
and that the national effort would be better served if the case
were dropped.
In the mind of the special
prosecutor, none of his major reasons for dropping the case
concerned the safeguarding of communications intelligence. Three
salient points concerning the merits of the government's case
were cited instead. All were related to the personal behavior of
the principals: "1) Johnston said (on 8 June) that he got
the information from a paper he found on his desk; 2) Two
officers testified seeing Seligman working at a table in his
quarters and that before him was a 'writing on Navy paper' giving
a list of Jap vessels divided into a 'striking force, support
force, etc.'; 3) If, as appears likely, some officer left a copy
of that dispatch lying around, it may fairly be said there was as
much carelessness on the ship as the Tribune
was guilty of, and the Jury may think so."
No further action was
taken until 15 August 1942, when the British Admiralty delegation
in Washington sent a letter to Admiral King expressing concern
that the Hearst revelations posed a danger to special
intelligence methods, that a trial would further compromise this
source, and that "preservation of this invaluable weapon
outweighs almost any other consideration." King's reply
reassured the British that the U.S. Navy would not do anything to
increase the harm already inflicted by the original news story. Five days later, the Chicago
Daily Tribune carried the front page story,
"U.S. Jury Clears Tribune." This story signaled the end
of the grand jury investigation, though no reasons were ever
given to the press by Mr. Mitchell, the special prosecutor.
What were the facts in the
strange case of Stanley Johnston? As noted above, CINCPAC 311221Z
May 42, was the message that passed CINCPAC's final appreciation
of the Japanese order of battle for the Battle of Midway to the
commanders of Task Forces 16 and 17, Admirals Spruance and
Fletcher, respectively. The message was passed in communications
channels available to other ships. Contrary to normal practices,
which expected communicators to ignore traffic not addressed to
their ship or commander, it was probably decoded by
communications officers from the Lexington
en route home from the loss of their ship at Coral Sea, who were
acting as watch standers aboard the transport USS Barnett
(AP11). Their reason for doing so may have been the presence of
the Lexington's
executive officer, Commander Morton Seligman. The message was
given to Commander Seligman, who, apparently under the impression
that he was authorized to do so, showed the message to Johnston,
who had been aboard the Lexington during the battle and was being
evacuated with the crew. Johnston and Seligman may have shared
the same quarters aboard the Barnett.
On 7 June 1942, five days
after Johnston's arrival in San Diego and one day after CINCPAC's
"POA Communique #3" appeared announcing "a
momentous U.S. victory," Johnston's story of U.S.
foreknowledge of Japanese forces and their plans appeared in the Chicago
Tribune and other newspapers in Washington
and New York.
The headlines that introduced the story on page 4A in the Washington
Times Herald for 7 June 1942 revealed
without a doubt that the author had been privy to secret material
concerning Japanese intentions and strategy: "U.S. KNEW ALL
ABOUT JAP FLEET. GUESSED THERE WOULD BE A FEINT AT ONE BASE, REAL
ATTACK AT ANOTHER."
Though he could not know
the extent of the duplicity involved, Walter Winchell, in his
column in the New York Daily Mirror,
characterized the Tribune
as having "tossed security out the window."
Understandably, Johnston's repeated denials that he had ever seen
CINCPAC's message were received with cynical disbelief in
Washington. Even his media superiors readily admitted they could
not otherwise account for the similarities.
On 8 June, following an
inconclusive meeting between high naval and newspaper officials,
Johnston and his editor in Washington, Arthur Henning, met
privately with Vice Admiral Russell Willson, Admiral King's chief
of staff. It was during this meeting, as noted by the special
prosecutor, that Johnston may have contradicted himself (Admiral
Willson was to say that Johnston "confessed") and
admitted seeing a list of Japanese vessels. With the concurrence of the secretary of the
navy and the president, Admiral King barred Seligman from
promotion forever. Seligman retired in 1944.
OP-20-G's assessment of
the damage done by the Johnston revelations took a long time to
develop primarily because the Japanese themselves were slow to
change their procedures. Nevertheless, OP-20-G maintained it was
no mere coincidence that within a few weeks of the Johnston
expose drastic changes were made in virtually all Japanese codes
and ciphers including the Japanese Fleet General-Purpose System,
which changed on 15 August, only two months into the current
cipher. Consistent with these changes, navy monitors also noted
the omission of message serial numbers beginning on 15 August and
a major change in the Japanese callsign system on 1 October 1942.
All of the Japanese
refinements were justifiably described by OP-20-G analysts as
serious threats to their capability to produce current
intelligence.
Thus, it is difficult to say at this point that a single event
occurred that prompted Admiral King to decide what course of
action he would take. It may have been OP-20-G's concern that a
jury trial would have even more painful consequences than those
already experienced, or Admiral Willson's reading of the meeting
he had had with Johnston, or the trauma of preparing highly
classified testimony to be given before a Chicago grand jury.
Clearly, Admiral King had decided not to implement the 7 July
grand jury indictment when he responded to the British letter in
August; and the evidence suggests, albeit weakly, that as early
as 20 June he had begun to regret even seeking the indictment.
Throughout the Johnston
affair, OP-20-G consistently sought a plausible cover story to
minimize the damage already done. They appealed to King for
future safeguards to prevent the loss of a vital advantage to the
navy. King's reiteration of his restrictions on distribution on
20 June, while perhaps not all that OP-20-G wanted, strongly
suggested that these appeals were heard.
Questions concerning the
appropriate applications of communications intelligence to
wartime emergencies of all types continued to arise. One problem
addressed in December 1942 affected how newspapermen and radio
broadcasters treated information they knew originated from enemy
communications. A new paragraph was prepared for insertion in the
"Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press" by
the secretaries of war and navy and sent to the director of
censorship for implementation:
ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS
To the end that the
enemy may not have information concerning any success the
U.S. may attain in deciphering his encoded or enciphered
communications, no mention should be made of available or
captured enemy codes or enemy ciphers, or about the
intelligence gained from intercepting and studying enemy
radio messages.
A prestigious trade
journal gave immediate approval to the addition while at the same
time registering the idea that after the war censorship should
not continue. After citing a post-Pearl Harbor report that
"monstrously exaggerated" U.S. losses as an example of
irresponsible behavior, the editorial concluded with some ideas
that are still relevant:
As between an ethical
professional requirement that a journalist hold nothing back
and a patriotic duty not to shoot one's own soldiers in the
back, we have found no difficulty in making a choice. Freedom
of the press does not carry with it a general license to
reveal our secret strengths and weaknesses to the enemy.
It was not until 1985 that
anyone from the Pacific COMINT centers received any formal
recognition for his contribution to either the Coral Sea or
Midway victories. In 1985, in response to a massive outpouring of
affection from his friends, Joseph Rochefort received the
Distinguished Service Medal posthumously from the secretary of
the navy. For the rest, their epitaph was most fittingly
expressed by a perfect stranger many years later:
History, with its
flickering lamp, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying
to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle
with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the
worth of all this? The only guide to man is his conscience.
The only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity
of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life
without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the
failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations,
but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march
always in the ranks of honour.
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