I examined March file of comm. Series covering serial numbers 7540 to 8500 about thirty per day. JIG messages averaged perhaps twelve per day, usually two to four each German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swiss, scattering French, Italian, Turkish, Belgian, Persian and South American. Also included occasional Spanish Naval Attache messages between Berlin and Madrid sent down to Hope from Baker Peter called ‘XIP Series’ dealing chiefly with German naval supplies to Spanish Navy.
Also hastily examined two days output of Charlie Sugars each about important trade with Spain, and most important purchases of Roumanian and Hungarian oil by Italian companies such as AXSP (Axienda Generate Italiana Petrol) and Sterava Romana. Portuguese Charlie Sugar circulation about fifteen per day, Spanish forty, miscellaneous (comprising Hungarian, Roumanian, Bulgarian, Finnish and Japanese) one hundred per day. Cryptanalytic section five people headed by Hooker, whose routine job is to handle HISROWAK KRYHA traffic but also do other commercial ciphers; for example Italian 1STCAMXI cipher based on Mengrini code used Rome to Lisbon, German MELCHERS cipher used Bremen to Tientsin and Mukden, Italian commercial attaché cipher used by Angelone, and a cipher which lay on top of JIG OKURA book was pulled off and book was turned over to Berkeley Street for breaking.
The six thousand messages rejected by Hooker are sent to Information and Records branch of censorship which re-examines them and sends about five hundred per week to MEW.
Relations between Hope and MEW very close and MEW gives Hope lots of stuff to assist his work as follows: MEW weekly intelligence report classified secret ten to twelve single space legal size pages contains notes covering week’s developments, long term five hundred messages. Single messages rarely meaningful and it seems clear to me that either we must rely on British and accept their intelligence summaries based on this mass of material and other related material from other sources, or else we must start a very substantial operation of our own. It would be impossible for us to process or digest the Charlie Sugar series even with several assistants
May be twenty
AS Nr 4414
Date Completed May 28 1943
Time Completed 1600Z
SECRET
ARLINGTON HALL STATION
MESSAGE CENTER
INCOMING MESSAGE Date Filed JUNE 30, 1943
FROM: LONDON Time Filed 1945Z
TO: MILID WASHINGTON
NR: 5142
(TO STRONG FOR CORDEMAN FROM TAYLOR SGD PEABODY)
IRANIAN PRINCIPAL DIPLOMATIC BOOK HAS BEEN PHOTOGRAPHED AND WAS SENT TODAY TO BAKER PETER* FOR TRANSMITTAL TO WASHINGTON. HAVE BEEN DISCUSSING SMALLER ENEMIES AND WILL HAVE FURTHER INFORMATION NEXT WEEK.
REFERENCE FLORADORA AGREEMENT BERKELEY STREET HAS SENT OFF TWO BATCHES FOR YOU AND ARE SENDING SPECIALLY ABOUT EIGHT DUBLIN ITEMS AT MY REQUEST. THEY ARE INTERESTED TO KNOW HOW ARLINGTON IS COMING ON ITS SHARE OF BACK TRAFFIC, WHICH IS TO BE INTERCHANGED ON FORTNIGHTLY BASIS.
AS Nr 5830
Date Completed JULY 1, 1943
Time Completed 1300Z
SECRET
17. G- Section (Floradora).
The G Section is primarily ‘Floradora’. It started out as strictly an amateur show under the present section head, who is attractive 25-year old Patricia Hartley, whom Tiltman took at the beginning of the war fresh from Oxford and trained in his school. Assisting her in the central direction of crypt work are Lt. Filby, Librarian of one of the Cambridge libraries attached to Trinity College, and 2 civilian men who formerly worked for Barclay’s Bank In Germany. The total personnel of the section is 37, of whom 3 are registers of traffic, 17 are code clerks, who are proficient in German, and the 13 not included in the above figures are the following: Key breakers, Fett Erlien [sic Fetterlein], dean of crypt people and a permanent employee of great age, who was the leading figure in this work in Russia during the last war and has been with the British ever since, Adcock, Professor of Classics at Cambridge, and Trainor, another permanent employee; three who comprise the liaison section and do practically everything except break keys, depending where the heat is on; and 7 top-flight translators. Including a schoolmaster named Pallinger, and one Potter, who before the war was the German Foreign Office expert on diplomatic English.
18. Conversations with Denniston.
Certain gleanings from conversations with Denniston may be of interest to you, in case you are discussing with Arlington any of the problems involved in diplomatic and commercial.
First, as to Japan, Denniston says that if Arlington wants to divert any talent from present Japanese operations to turn them to JAC (?) he is prepared to take up the full slack and to transmit finished translations of all material here plus anything that Arlington wants to send him for that purpose.
Second, he expresses a desire to give Arlington traffic and information of every kind that has to do with winning the war, by which he means complete exchange of all enemy traffic and crypt information plus anything that Arlington wants to get out of the non-enemy field where, as in the case of Turkey, we have asked for it and stated reasons connected with the war effort.
Third, he agrees that in the crypt field each country wants to establish for itself a position of independence so that it can get and turn its efforts toward any class of traffic that may interest it.
Since in the European field the British have been in the game much longer than we, and can supply both traffic and solution information, he agrees that it is only fair for them to give Arlington the benefits of their experience and also traffic if they want it. The only lines that he appears to draw are these. He has express instructions from the Foreign Office which prevent him from giving cable traffic into or out of London. He is not enthusiastic about giving us traffic on areas which are considered by the British as their primary concern, such as various Near East areas, but nevertheless admits that we are now so committed in those areas in their war aspects that, if we ask for that solution information, he will have to furnish it though not including traffic to and from London by cable. As you know, the British have a cable running around Africa and of course have their own communications net over which they can permit the Shah of Persia or whoever else it may be to communicate with his representatives in London or elsewhere. Finally, he distinguishes between information as to solution methods and crypt documents (defined to mean code books and key tables obtained either by cryptography or by S.S. methods). While he is prepared to give everything that they know about methods of solution, so far as Arlington may now or hereafter want them, he does not want to commit himself to give crypt documents except where required for immediate jobs related to the war. It is not clear how much in this case he is influenced by the difficulty of copying some of the books that Arlington might want, though he stresses that point, and his facilities for copying are rather limited; and he mentions some instance of a year or so ago where he had some stuff copied for Arlington which was valuable only as library material and not for current use connected with the war.
In general, he would like to employ liaison on the intelligence side of those cases where liaison on the crypt side does not seem to him desirable. He is willing to let Taylor and another properly vested officer look at all material which is circulated by Berkeley Street, including all material into and out from London which is thus circulated. There is a limited class of material that his office sends to C instead of circulating, just as in the case of Park. He illustrates these by the case of some British diplomat ‘dropping a brick’ but very likely any case where, from the British standpoint, a delicate subject was involved would fall into this reserve class, and with an American officer reading the material it would only be natural that a new class of reserve material would arise, to wit, those that it might be unwise to let an American officer read. However, Denniston’s whole approach is very reasonable and he says he has great hopes that all mutual misunderstandings will be cleared up and the line of liaison straightened out. While the basis for his feeling is not yet entirely clear to us, it is plain that he has been
annoyed by the way Bailey and Maidment have handled the exchange problem, without consulting him as he thinks they should, and without giving his people any clear idea of just what the exchange is supposed to cover. Taylor found that Waterfield, the man in charge of traffic, had no list to guide him on material to be interchanged and that he was sending what the various geographical sections gave him. Taylor then went around to the geographical sections and found that they had no very precise idea of the problem and that the section heads were deciding what to send on their guess as to what might be wanted.
This situation needs clarification, and Denniston has said on several occasions that he did not like being unable to deal directly with Arlington on traffic exchange problems or on how exchanges should be handled. He also is very anxious to obtain good liaison with G-2 and has been going on the assumption that Taylor is to be quartered with him to function in that capacity. While there would be no point in trying to work out any revised traffic deal now, certainly not for us to try it, it appears to me that there is some value in pursuing discussions with Denniston along the above lines, so as to test his general ideas by specific cases, in order to carry back a fairly good idea of what sort of deals his authority permits him to make and what the general viewpoint here is on these various problems. His attitude, in my opinion, will permit all important intelligence problems along his alley to be solved satisfactorily, one way or another. Note also that Denniston, more than anybody else here, has turned his people over to us for questioning and given us a free run of his place.
TOP SECRET
ULTRA
* Arlington Hall Station was the headquarters of the US Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) cryptography activity during World War II
* Los Angeles
* Hirohashi, Japanese ambassador in Berlin and crony of Nazi high command.
* Kuibyshev - a town 500 miles east of Moscow where the Soviet government’s main government agencies relocated in late 1941
* Bletchley Park
CHAPTER NINE
AGD’s views on US/UK crypt co-operation 1943
TOP SECRET
Informal Memorandum by Cmdr. Denniston Outlining His Original Concept of the American Liaison
(Written In May 1943 and handed to Colonel Alfred McCormack)
It has occurred to me and others here that your visit provides a good opportunity to define the scope and limits of the liaison which we are trying to build up between G.C. & C.S. (Civil side) and Arlington Hall and G2 (Diplomatic and Commercial).
For my own personal part in this matter I have urged during and since my visit to Washington in August 1941 that Arlington’s greatest contribution to the war effort is the effective and operational reading of Japanese military cyphers and that G.C. & C.S. was and is prepared to fill any intelligence gap in diplomatic work which may result from a supreme effort on Japanese Military by Arlington. I wish to repeat this and I know I shall have the support of my superior officers.
Colonel McCormack’s letter to me on his arrival gave me great hope that mutual misunderstandings were going to be cleared up and that we should straighten out the line of liaison. I have arranged that you should see every section and every detail in order that you may be familiar with ‘our methods and appreciate our aims, which are, in short, to provide our several customers with all possible intelligence derived by cryptography from telegrams from enemy and neutral sources. When you know all our departments who are in any way affected by our liaison, e.g. (in England) Foreign Office, M.E.W. and the Service Departments, whose efforts may be influenced by the knowledge of our cooperation.
The bases of the liaison between A and B are:
(A) (i) Cryptographic documents, i.e. code books and key tables obtained either by cryptography or by S.S. methods.
(B) Raw material, i.e. telegrams obtained by W/T interception, by cable censorship or by S.S methods
(C) The translated versions of the raw material.
Note: In London it is not the duty of G.C. & C.S. to extract intelligence from these translations: that is left to the Intelligence Sections in the receiving Ministries with whom G.C. & C.S. is in close touch.
I. So far as enemy countries are concerned (Germany, Japan Italy) it should be our aim to make the liaison absolutely complete and I believe we are already achieving this. If either A or B requires a telegram in cypher or en clair, it is passed without delay. It might be noted that Arlington helped us into the Japanese purple:
The immediate problem is the prosecution of the war and I consider it would be to our mutual advantage if G2 had their representative in London (Lt. Col. Taylor) as a liaison officer to GC&CS (civil side). He should have the entry to our D & R and all section … As to the purely cryptographic part of the liaison, this should continue to be direct between Arlington Hall and the sections but Colonel Taylor would be available here to clear up questions hard to solve by letter or telegram.
A.G.D. 21/5/43
Coffee Series: In December of 1944 it was decided by the State Department that the American Ambassador In Paris, Mr. Jefferson Caffery, should also be given access to diplomatic Ultra, and the American representative In London, Major Littlefield, went over to Paris and put Mr. Caffery into the picture. Subsequently, Mr. Caffery was serviced by Capt. Kellogg, the American Ultra officer, stationed at Versailles. In order to facilitate Capt. Kellogg’s task, a series of messages, known as the Coffee Series, was instituted and dispatched to him by daily pouch. The American representative at Berkeley Street made the daily selections for the Coffee Series from the various British logs; he included in the series any diplomatic or commercial messages which bore on the situation in France or the Low Countries.
Bay Series: During the war the liaison officer selected from the various logs any messages containing information of a military character. His selections were telephoned to 3-US at Bletchley Park, who passed them in the form of signals to the interested commanders in the field. That series of signals was known as the Bay Series.
Stark Series: The liaison officer also read the various logs for messages containing political or economic information of interest to the various field commands, and selections made on that basis were incorporated by 3-US into the so-called Stark Series, which was forwarded to the top commander + G-2 at SHAEF (and to Mr. Murphy) and later to top commanders G-4 USFET and 21 Army Group by pouch.
Foreign Office Agreement on RES Series: As mentioned in a footnote above, at the time of the original liaison agreement the British reserved the right to continue withholding from circulation messages which they considered too hot for general distribution. Such items, which were consigned to a so-called Res (for reserved) Series, were not shown to the American representative. From time to time Col. Taylor urged on Cmdr. Denniston the desirability of abolishing the Res Series, or failing that, limiting it to the greatest possible extent. Finally, late in the summer of 1944, an agreement was reached between Gen. Carter Clarke, Deputy Chief of the Military Intelligence Service, G-2 and Mr. Peter Loxley of the British Foreign Office. By the terms of that agreement, which went into effect on 16 October retroactive to 1 September 1944, the only traffic reserved was to be London terminal traffic, since all other traffic could, at least theoretically, be intercepted by Washington, and since it was clear that duplication of effort in intercepting could be avoided only if the British agreed to exchange all non-terminal traffic. It was also agreed that all items which were designated for the Res Series were to be forwarded to the Foreign Office, and Mr. Loxley was to divide them into 4 categories, as follows:
(1) Items which could be ‘derestricted’ and released for general circulation.
(2) Items concerning military operations which, although not released for general circulation in London or in Washington, could be forwarded by the American liaison officer to Washington ‘for G-2 only’, with the understanding that
(3) undiplomatic remarks by British representatives abroad, etc. which the liaison officer was allowed to read in Mr.
Loxley’s office, but which he was honor bound not to copy or to summarize for Washington.
(4) Items which would continue to be unqualifiedly withheld.
In practice, the agreement proved to-be satisfactory. During the first year the number of items placed in category (4) averaged slightly over one a month, while the number in categories (2) and (3), although considerably larger, caused no serious inconvenience to Washington. The liaison officer called at the Foreign Office at least once a month to read the items in category (3) and to discuss the general development of the agreement. Relations with Mr. Loxley and (after his death in January of 1945) with Mr. Bromley were thoroughly pleasant at all- times. On at least two occasions the liaison officer queried the number of items placed in a given category, and the Foreign Office each time resolved the issue in favor of the Americans.
Future of the Liaison: After the end of the war in Europe certain of the liaison officer’s duties will be terminated, and at the close of the Japanese war the scope of the liaison was automatically curtailed.
CHAPTER TEN
How The Story Broke
My father never talked to us, his children, about his 30 secret years from the beginning of WW1 to the end of WW2. He was totally discreet. My mother must have known what was going on in his mind from his retirement in 1945 till her death in 1960, but whether they discussed the heights of his success and the depth of his bitterness at the way he was returned to London from BP in 1942, and then dropped out of Berkeley Street to retire on a pittance, no one knows. Though now he had more leisure it seems unlikely that he devoted much of that to reminiscence. When he died, a year after our mother, my sister and I found the typescript of his ‘The GC&CS between the wars’ (here reprinted as chapter 6) and realised that his title was an accurate one and he had written most of what posterity would want to know about British government diplomatic deciphering between 1919 and 1939. Its publication, by Christopher Andrew in 1986 in the first issue of Intelligence & National Security was the signal for a flow of books and reminiscences, chiefly of BP, the main ones of which are listed in the bibliography. But a different front opened up in 1974 with the publication of Group Captain Frederick Winterbotham’s The Ultra Secret.
Thirty Secret Years Page 18