Fighting to Lose (33 page)

The connection GC&CS–MI6–Whitney–Donovan was a channel by which Roosevelt could receive British decrypts of the German police and SS reports on the massacres in Russia without any formal record being kept. Because a “special cipher” was used, no one in BSC could see the plain text of this traffic.22 This direct channel would also have bypassed the army/navy codebreakers, the FBI, and the State Department.

Meanwhile, on August 19, Felix Cowgill of MI6(V) sent the full German-language version of the Popov questionnaire to MI5’s Major Robertson. He did not mention there was an English-language version, so MI5 went ahead with its own translation.23 This translation was reproduced and published for the first time in Masterman’s
Double-Cross System
.

On August 28, the XX Committee discussed the questionnaire. The minutes of the meeting make no mention of its Hawaii/Pearl Harbor content.

On September 6, Menzies asked for a meeting of the Wireless Board. Without mentioning Popov specifically, he said he wanted to discuss how to handle the questionnaires of British double agents operating from the United States, proposing that questions relevant to Britain be dealt with by British officials in Washington rather than in London. The board met in Room 206 of the War Office on September 10.24

It will be helpful to recall at this point that the Wireless Board was an ad hoc committee of the three service directors of intelligence, plus Menzies of MI6, Liddell of MI5, and Sir Findlater Stewart, representing the civilian authorities. It did not officially exist within the chain of command, its members normally took no paper to or from meetings, only the chairman retained a copy of the minutes, and there was no formal reporting mechanism to the chiefs of staff, the War Office, or the Foreign Office. Each committee member was individually responsible for telling (or not telling) those above him what transpired in the meetings.

Three of the men who were there had definitely seen the whole questionnaire: Menzies, Cowgill, and Robertson.

The discussion turned to Menzies’s letter. Members approved his proposal. Cowgill then read out the answers to those parts of Popov’s questionnaire that were pertinent to the British. Liddell suggested that Popov had much promise as a double agent in America. Presumably Admiral Godfrey, the director of Naval Intelligence, was told about the information being sought on the Pacific Fleet. It would have been highly improper not to have disclosed that detail. Nevertheless, the minutes taken by Ewen Montagu make no mention of Hawaii or Pearl Harbor.25

Nothing went up to the chiefs of staff, or to the War Office, or to the Joint Intelligence Committee, or to the Foreign Office.26 The British did not forward the Hawaii portion of Popov’s questionnaire to the Americans because it never got outside the circle of MI5/MI6, the XX Committee, and the Wireless Board.

On December 17, when the oily water of the devastated Pacific Fleet still lapped the Hawaiian shore, this entry appeared in Liddell’s diary:

TRICYCLE’s questionnaire is now in our possession. It shows quite clearly that in August last the Germans were very anxious to get as full particulars as possible about Pearl Harbor.

There is something wrong here. The original copy of the German-language version of the questionnaire had been sent to Major Robertson on August 19, then translated by MI5 and discussed at the XX Committee on August 28. Its implications were debated by the Wireless Board on September 10, with Robertson, Montagu, Menzies, Cowgill, and Liddell present. The German original is still to be found in an MI5 file beside MI5’s original translation. There is no way the head of MI5’s B Division could honestly suggest that the questionnaire only “came into our possession” after the Pearl Harbor attack.27

Liddell’s diary was kept in a series of ring binders. It still is. Ring binders make it possible to take pages out and put pages in, anywhere, anytime, without a trace. The entry for December 17, 1941, cannot be authentic.

But who, then, wrote it? And why?

14

September–December 1941

Contrary to British accusations during and after the war, the FBI made a sincere effort to run Dusko Popov as a double agent. Within the first week of the FBI taking him over, Charles Ellis was asked to prepare his first invisible-ink letter reporting to the Germans that he had arrived safely.1 It was probably thought that Ellis had a better chance of composing it in proper Englishman’s English, even though he was an Aussie. Popov’s ink was ammonium chloride, easily developed by passing a warm iron over the paper.

For some time there was no response. Then, on October 25 and October 30, Popov received a letter and then a cable in open code indicating that he should proceed to Rio de Janeiro. This was in response to a suggestion by the FBI that he propose to meet with German agents in South America to turn over some photographs and notes he had made. So far, no spy in the United States had come forward to collect the questionnaire, and no one had offered to be his radio operator. On the other hand, the FBI had been tracking the activities of German agents in Brazil since the spring through decrypts of their wireless traffic supplied by the small cryptanalysis unit attached to the U.S. Coast Guard and by Canada’s Examination Unit.2

Next, a lengthy letter arrived from “Mady,” Popov’s supposed fifteen-year-old girlfriend in Portugal. Much of it seemed innocent chit-chat, but then:

My dear uncle … has been travelling abroad, but has returned now. He too sends you a lot of greetings because, as you well know, he is very fond of you. I was very anxious about Dicky, but he is really a nice chap. I got a letter from him some days ago. I would be glad if we could arrange to meet all of us together in some nice place.…3

When the FBI asked Popov who this “Dicky” might be, he quickly replied that it was “the name of one of the British intelligence officers in London who was acting as a German spy for that organization.”4 And so there was; except another person nicknamed “Dickie” was standing right there at Popov’s elbow. One can imagine Charles Ellis’s forehead beading with perspiration.

It may have been a threat, of course, but it also may have been an open-code instruction for Ellis to attend a meeting set up by his Abwehr contacts. It is known that Ellis flew to London on November 2.5 It is not known whether he went on to Portugal.

On November 16, Popov left Miami for Rio. Ten days later, the FBI had the satisfaction of reading the following intercept:

24 November 1941 CEL to ALD

No. 46. IVAN ten thousand deciphered. Receiving his news this evening. Regarding cable via B. Firstly, I can give IVAN apparatus 50 Watt. Secondly, in view of lost mail, shall IVAN send mail here in future? Can give him other cover addresses.

ALFREDO6

There were other similar messages intercepted. The FBI could be forgiven for thinking that Popov’s trip to South America was working out just fine.

The FBI had another German agent in its net late that autumn of 1941. Even as Popov was making arrangements to go to Brazil, another potential double agent was coming the other way.

It began the preceding July, just after the Spaniard, Juan Pujol Garcia, offered his questionnaire to the British in Lisbon and just before Popov set out for the United States with his. An Argentinian named Jorge Mosquera presented himself to the American embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, to declare that he had been recruited by the German secret service to go to the United States to spy. He had letters of reference from high Nazi officials, three microdot photographs of instructions, the names of individuals he was to contact in New York, and an earnest desire to betray his German masters.

According to his identity papers, he was born in Rosaria, Santa Fe Province, Argentina, in 1895. He said he was the youngest of ten children and that his father had been born in Spain. In 1924 he had moved to Germany where he ran a small import-export business until it was closed down due to the war.7 He spoke Spanish and German only. No English. He had been recruited by a man named Hans Blum of Ast Hamburg. On hearing all this, the FBI said he could carry on to the United States. Two FBI men were waiting for him when his ship docked in New York. It was November 18.

He was put up in a hotel, placed under blanket surveillance, and questioned intensely. The report on him that went to Hoover ran to forty-eight closely typed pages. The profile that emerged was typical of the double agents already acquired by the British.

As with Popov, and Arthur Owens before him, Mosquera’s cipher was of the simple transposition type, full of complications but easy to break. Like them, the keyword was derived from a book, in his case a Spanish one,
Los majos de Càdiz
; and like Owens, he had brought it with him. Also like the others, someone else was needed to operate his transmitter. He had failed the wireless telegraphy course at spy school, he explained.

His invisible ink was phony. Based on zinc and sulphur, it was more complicated than the one given Popov, but still practically useless. The description of how it was to be used filled two pages of the FBI’s report, which concluded by noting that only linen paper could be used with it, because the chemical solution reacted with wood pulp. It took no time for the lab to find a developer.

The contacts Mosquera was to make in the United States also turned out to be dead ends. Despite extensive investigation over many months, hidden cameras, microphones, and staged meetings with Mosquera, the persons whose names he had been given proved to be nothing more than naturalized German-Americans with normal sympathy for their homeland. They showed no sign that they were involved in espionage and appeared horrified when Mosquera hinted that he was.

Much, much later, the FBI was to learn that a Spanish-speaking Abwehr spy originally on loan to Franco was “in America” and usually travelled on an Argentinian passport.8 If this was Mosquera, the connection with the Spanish dictator would have made him one of Canaris’s especially trusted agents. At the time, however, the Bureau had no reason to be suspicious. Up to that point, the British had not shared the details of their own experiences in running double agents, and they had given the Americans the false impression that Popov had led to the uncovering of whole networks of spies.

The highlight of Mosquera’s recruitment was his microdots. The FBI had seen Popov’s only two months earlier; now here was another set, containing an even longer questionnaire — one focused on American aircraft production and new weapons technology. It included some novel items, including questions on poison gas, and this puzzling line: “Deduce artificially the uranium or other alloy which may be substituted therefore as an atom destructor.” The awkward English was due to Mosquera having translated the original German into Spanish for the microdots.

When he was asked to elaborate on this item, he reported having a conversation with his Hamburg spymaster (BLUM). The following is taken from a report by Foxworthy to his director in December:

BLUM further stated to MOSQUERA that he should not limit himself to the instructions on the microphotographs but should give attention to other details, especially details which pertain to experiments performed in the United States relative to the shattering of the atom.

BLUM stated that the German military authorities believed that a great future lies in the developing of high explosives derived through experiments pertaining to the shattering of the atom.

According to BLUM, if any success is gained in the shattering of the atom and high explosives produced as a result thereof, the future high explosive bombs would not have a gross weight in excess of one and one-half pounds. BLUM also stated that the nation which will be victorious in this war will be the one which accomplishes the task of shattering atoms and applying the results thereof.9