by Alastair Denniston- Code-breaking From Room 40 to Berkeley Street
Hall waited until 22 February to show the telegram to the Americans, presumably because he wanted to have a fully recovered text which would seem to have been acquired from an original text version, rather than through interception and decryption. On 23 February, Balfour handed the text of the Zimmermann Telegram to Walter Page, the US ambassador, and the following day, Page cabled President Wilson and the Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, and it reached Washington at 8.30 pm. His cable read:
Confidential for the President and Secretary of State Balfour has handed me the translation of a cypher message from Zimmermann, the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to the General Minster in Mexico, which was sent via Washington and relayed by Bernstorff on January 19th.
You can probably obtain a copy of the text relayed by Bernstorff from the cable office in Washington. The first group is the number of the telegram, 130, and the second is 13042, indicating the number of the code used. The last but two is 97556, which is Zimmermann’s signature.
I shall send you by mail a copy of the cypher text and of the decode into German, and meanwhile I give you the English translation as follows:
[Here follows the text as printed above.]
The receipt of this information has so greatly exercised the British Government that they have lost no time in communicating it to me to transmit to you in order that you may be able, without delay, to make such dispositions as may be necessary in view of the threatened invasion of our territory.
The following paragraph is strictly confidential.
Early in the war the British Government obtained possession of a copy of the German cypher code used in the above message and have made it their business to obtain copies of Bernstorff’s cypher messages to Mexico, amongst others, which are sent back to London and decyphered here. This accounts for their being able to decipher this message from the German Government to their representative in Mexico and also for the delay from January 19 until now in their receiving the information.
This system has hitherto been a jealously guarded secret and is only divulged now to you by the British Government in view of the circumstances and their friendly feelings towards the United States. They earnestly request that you will keep the source of your information and the British Government’s method of obtaining it profoundly secret, but they put no prohibition on the publication of the Zimmermann telegram itself.
The copies of this, and other telegrams, were not obtained in Washington, but were bought in Mexico.
I have thanked Balfour for the service his Government has rendered us and suggest that a private official message of thanks from our Government to his would be appreciated.
I am informed that this information has not yet been given to the Japanese Government but I think it is not unlikely that, when it reaches them, they will make a public statement on it in order to clear up their position regarding America and prove their good faith in their allies.
On 28 February, Page informed Hall that he was instructed to thank Balfour for the information and that the telegram would be revealed on 1 March. Later that day, Bell gave Hall three messages from 17 January from Bernstorff to German legations in South America. In Lansing’s absence, Frank Polk, a counsellor for the State Department, brought it to the attention of the President on 27 February. Wilson wanted to publish it immediately but Polk persuaded the President to await Lansing’s return. The following day, Polk obtained a copy of the original message filed by Bernstorff in Washington to the German Minister in Mexico City. Lansing then communicated a paraphrased version of the text of the Zimmermann Telegram to the Associated Press at 6.00 pm for release after 10.00 pm. On 1 March, the English text was published in the morning papers in the US and then discussed in Congress. Following questions about the telegram’s authenticity, Lansing cabled Page the same day as follows:
Some members of Congress are attempting to discredit Zimmermann message charging that message was furnished to this Government by one of the belligerents. This Government has not the slightest doubt as to its authenticity, but it would be of the greatest service if the British Government would permit you or someone in the Embassy to personally decode the original message we have secured from the telegraph office in Washington and then cable to Department German text. Assure Mr. Balfour that the Department hesitated to make this request but feels that this course will materially strengthen its position and make it possible for the Department to state that had secured the Zimmermann note from our own people.
The State Department had found the telegram in the Washington cable office and wanted to assure the American public that it possessed and deciphered it. On 1 March, Page wrote to the Secretary of State:
The question of our having a copy of the code has been taken up, but there appear to be serious difficulties. I am told actual code would be of no use to us as it was never used straight, but with a great number of variations which are known to only one or two experts here. They cannot be spared to go to America. If you will send me copies of B’s cypher telegrams the British authorities will gladly decipher them as quickly as possible, giving me copies as fast as deciphered. I could telegraph texts or summaries in matters of importance and send the others by pouch. Neither Spring Rae nor Gaunt knows anything about this matter.
It was eventually agreed that the Washington cable office version of the Zimmermann telegram would be deciphered in London by Edward Bell with the assistance of De Grey. Bell used the part solution of German diplomatic code 13040 to decode the first part of the message, partly to satisfy himself that the solution was genuine. He then handed over the tedious job of decoding the entire message to De Grey.74 On 2 March, Page sent the following message to Lansing:
Bell took the cipher text of the German messages contained in your 4494 of yesterday to the Admiralty and there, himself, deciphered it from the German code which is in the Admiralty’s possession. The first group, 130, indicates Bernstorff’s number of telegram number …The second group, 13042, indicates the code to be used in deciphering the cipher telegram. From the third group onwards, message reads as follows: [German text followed]. Punctuations are given as in German text. I am sending decode into German, group by group, by tomorrow’s pouch.
The text of the Zimmermann Telegram was given to the Associated Press’s Edwin M. Hood and appeared in the American press nationwide on 2 March. Not surprisingly, it caused a sensation in America. The German-American press said it was a fraud but a senator offered a resolution in the Senate asking the President to give assurances that it was genuine. He duly issued a statement through Lansing saying ‘I have the honour to state that the Government is in possession of evidence which establishes the fact that the note referred to is authentic and that the evidence was procured by this Government during the present week.’
The following day, Zimmermann admitted that the communication was authentic and Germany officially admitted that the telegram was genuine. His justification was that ‘it was not only the right but the duty of our Government to take precautions in time, in the event of a warlike conflict with the United States, in order to balance if possible the adhesion of our enemies to a new enemy. The German Minister in Mexico was therefore, in the middle of January, instructed, should the United States declare war, to offer the Mexican Government an alliance and arrange further details.’
On 21 March, Wilson recalled Congress and it met on 2 April. In his speech, the President commented that ‘the intrigues of the German Government had played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. It means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors; the intercepted Note to the German Minster at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.’ On 6 April, shortly after 13.00 hours, the American Congress declared the existence of a state of war with Germany. American reaction to the telegram is best summed up by a message from Gaunt to Hall on 6 March when the chairman declared that ‘the Zimmerman
n note was a forgery, and was practically unanimously supported by the whole bunch.’ Gaunt goes on to say that
I then told them that information has been conveyed to me by US authorities, that I was satisfied that the note was correct, and a little surprised that they should cross-examine me on it instead of accepting the word of their President. That carried the day completely. The above is an illustration of the way it was received over here, nineteen out of twenty men believed it was a forgery, and had not Zimmermann come out with his statement on Saturday, I think it would have done us a great deal of harm.
Hall now needed to ensure that the Germans did not discover the truth behind the exposing of the Zimmermann Telegram. To do so, a number of fanciful stories were put about and while they did not prevent the Germans from trying to discover the truth, they continued to use the same code, thus enabling Hall to follow their every move. A communication from Berlin to Mexico on 4 April 1917 confirmed the German view that no betrayal took place in Mexico and that the theft had taken place in Washington. The Germans continued to negotiate with Mexico, using the same compromised cipher and each deciphered telegram was passed by Hall to the American Embassy and then on to Washington. Once the US declared war, Mexico decided to remain neutral.
Hall’s brilliant plan had worked and all the countries involved assumed the Americans were responsible for the discovery and decoding of the Zimmermann Telegram. In fact, attacks on the British Government and its Intelligence Service appeared in the British press, saying that their secret service was inferior to that of the Americans. Page acknowledged Hall’s contribution in a note to the President on 17 March 1918, but really he was, without realising it, praising the efforts of Room 40, the inner workings of which he knew very little:
Hall is one genius that the war has developed. Neither in fiction nor in fact can you find any such man to match him. Of the wonderful things that I know he has done, there are several that it would take an exciting volume to tell. The man is a genius – a clear case of genius. All other secret service men are amateurs by comparison. If there be any life left me after this war and if Hall’s abnormal activity and ingenuity have not caused him to be translated, I wish to spend a week with him in some quite place and then spend a year in writing out what he will have told me. That’s the shortest cut to immortality for him and for me that has yet occurred to me. I shall never meet another man like him: that were too much to expect.
And (whether it becomes me to say so or not) Bell and I have his complete confidence and that fact entitles us to some special consideration in the esteem of our friends. For Hall can look through you and see the very muscular movements of your immortal soul while he is talking to you. Such eyes has the man! My Lord! I do study these men here most diligently who have this vast and appalling War-Job. These are most uncommon creatures among them – men about whom our great grandchildren will read in their school histories; but, of them all, the most extraordinary is this naval officer – of whom, probably, they’ll never hear. He locks up certain documents ‘not to be opened till 20 years after this date.’ I’ve made up my mind to live twenty years more. I shall be present at the opening of that safe.
Page had written to Hall on 24 October 1917 congratulating him on the award of his KCMG as had the advisor to the American President, Colonel House75 on 22 September 1917. The Zimmermann Telegram affair has been described as one of the greatest intelligence coups in history by some historians and linked to Hall’s name forever. According to the doyen of American cryptography, William Friedman: ‘Among the official cryptograms which have been intercepted and translated by governmental authorities other than those for whom they were intended, the most important of all time, either in war or peace, is undoubtedly the one deciphered by the British Naval Intelligence which is known to historians as the Zimmermann Telegram.’76
While AGD was not directly involved in work on the Zimmermann Telegram, as a senior member of Room 40 he was party to all stages of it. What a mentor Hall proved to be for AGD and he certainly served as an inspiration for his future career in intelligence. AGD was able to witness at first hand the master at work in deploying intelligence to best effect. He also saw the benefit of establishing trust with foreign intelligence officers. While the American Edward Bell played a crucial role in the Zimmermann Telegram affair, little has been written about it.77 Yet it was his relationship with British naval intelligence, supported by his superior in the State Department, Leland Harrison,78 which facilitated the successful deployment of the Zimmermann Telegram and was, arguably, the start of the special relationship between the US and Britain intelligence matters.
So who was Edward Bell? Born in New York City on 9 October 1892 into a well-established family, he attended Harvard University and became a close friend of one of his classmates, Franklin (later President) Roosevelt. The two men visited Britain during their junior year at Harvard and both graduated in 1904. After serving two years as vice and deputy consul general in Cairo, Bell joined the Foreign Service, serving in Tehran and Cuba. His post of Second Secretary in the US Embassy in London was obtained at his own request. Harrison had been obtaining copies of all of Bernstorff’s cables and would then get Bell to ask for them to be decoded by Hall’s ‘people’. As Bell built up a trusted relationship with Room 40, he dealt directly with the key codebreakers, including Serocold and Herschell and even Montgomery, generally considered to be Room 40’s whizz. Correspondence between Bell and Harrison79 demonstrates the clandestine nature of their relationship. For example, on 20 September 1917 Bell wrote to Harrison as follows:
My dear Harrison:
The Intelligence Department of the Admiralty are trying to keep in as close touch as possible with affairs in Mexico on account of the German intrigues there. Their interest is due in part of course to the fact that German intrigues anywhere require watching, and also because of the great importance to the British and Allied Mexico cause generally of keeping the Tampico oil wells safe.
Since Hohler left Mexico about a year ago the British Government has had practically no representative there, except some stray Consuls, and the Legation is, I believe in the hands of a Chargé des Affaires who has no diplomatic quality. The Foreign Office have apparently left Mexico out of their calculations for some time past and as a result none of the reports from diplomatic officers which would ordinarily be available for the Admiralty’s Intelligence Service now come from Mexico.
The Director of Intelligence at the Admiralty has assigned one of his officers to the duty of making a comprehensive study of Mexican affairs, and this officer has asked me if I could obtain information for him on the subject of which I attach a list. If you could at an early date let me have the information he desires I should be greatly obliged to you, as we are so much indebted to the Intelligence Department of the Admiralty that anything I can do to meet their wishes in return I am only too anxious to do.
The officer in question, with whom I had a talk yesterday, says they understand that some sort of an expedition in the nature of a raid against our territory is planning in Lower California, and that a good deal of gun-running is going on there in which Japanese and Austrians are implicated. The arms for this adventure will have to come from either Spain or South America, and there is an impression here that since the lifting of our embargo against the import of munitions of war into Mexico a good deal of arms and ammunition have come in from Spain to Vera Cruz on the ships of the Compania Transatlantico. German officers are also involved and the attempt may also extend to the Tampico district.
If you could let me have the information in question piece meal, if this is more convenient than sending it all at once, it would do equally well. In any case I hope you will be able to do as I request, and I don’t think the British Authorities have any desire to poach on our preserves. But as you are aware they get a great deal of information here and in Spain about what is going on in Mexico and they want to be in a position to check up their information intelligently.
&nbs
p; On 30 October 1917 he wrote:
My Dear Harrison:
I hasten to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your letter of October 15th in reply to mine of September 20th transmitting the Mexican questionnaire. I should be indeed grateful if you would let me have some information as soon as convenient for I am under such obligations to the Admiralty for services rendered to our Government that I must do everything I can to meet their wishes.
With reference to the last paragraph of your letter, the British authorities are not waiting to get information from us before giving us what they have regarding Mexico, as I think our telegrams No, 7242 of September 24th, 5 P.M., No. 7405 of October 12th, 11 A.M., and No. 7546 of October 27th, 4 P.M. will show. All the information contained in these telegrams came from the Admiralty.
Another interesting example is found in correspondence from Bell dated 15 February 1918 in which he enclosed a letter from an Irishman in New York to his brother, a priest in Dublin, which contains interesting information about the Irish situation and Irish organisations in the US. There are numerous examples of code words being used such as this exchange: Harrison from Bell on 14 January 1919: ‘My letter No. 22, January 6th. Charlie will arrive tomorrow night and has more golf balls for you. Please have him met.’ Harrison from American Mission in Paris to Bell on 18 January 1919: ‘Golf balls satisfactory and we can use them at once.’