Lack of Coordination

In retrospect, some of the difficulties were due to shortcomings in the structure of Army Intelligence itself. It would therefore be unfair and biased to hold the Department of Foreign Affairs responsible for all the difficulties that the German Bureau and Procurement Office 1 were facing. Relations with the Justice and Police Department were not exactly smooth either.²³⁸

If an intelligence service is supposed to work efficiently, it depends on official bodies to cooperate with it, support it, and accept it.²³⁹ In his final activity report for N.S.1 during wartime duty, Waibel did not hide the fact that this was not always the case, observing:

[In fall 1939,] when everyone in the country was aware of the seriousness of the situation, it was easy to cooperate with any military and civilian authority. Over the years, however, some unpleasant differences emerged, and on several occasions Army Intelligence had to defend itself against a large number of attacks. Especially the Federal Police and Counterintelligence lacked understanding, forcing us to cover up our agent service and our communication with informants in Switzerland the same way we had to cover them up in foreign countries. The measures serving to cover our agents from the Federal Police and Counterintelligence took a lot of effort, time, and work. Nevertheless, fortunately on both bodies there were a few personalities who were exceptions to the rule, showing the necessary understanding for us.²⁴⁰

The sharp criticism of the Federal Police and Counterintelligence was undoubtedly due to the unpleasant error of judgment that had been made in the case of Mayr von Baldegg.²⁴¹

Army Intelligence worked closely, and generally well, with cantonal police authorities.²⁴² Relations were ideal in cantons where the head of the Political Police was at the same time in charge of an Army Intelligence’s outpost, such as in St. Gallen and temporarily in Basel and Zurich. N.S.1 was “sometimes on excellent terms, and sometimes on less good terms” with the customs administration; however, Waibel acknowledged that frictions were not due to a lack of goodwill but were almost inevitable because of what Army Intelligence considered too narrow an interpretation of rules and regulations. He added, “Gradually we were able to establish satisfactory relations with the border brigades and border police; at times we worked very well together.”²⁴³ According to Waibel, among the federal police authorities dealing with foreign nationals, Robert Jezler²⁴⁴ showed “a great deal of understanding” for N.S.1’s requests and needs.²⁴⁵

Coordination problems existed within Army Intelligence as well. Waibel considered that the various internal difficulties among Group Ib in the course of wartime duty were due to a lack of leadership by the Chief of Intelligence, explaining:

Maybe the real reason [for the difficulties] was the fact that every section of the Intelligence Service had to be as independent as possible in order to be able to carry out its work. All of us highly appreciated this great amount of freedom, but on the other hand we would have liked to have close coordination to counterbalance this freedom. The issue of how to lead the Intelligence Service might be one of the toughest challenges for any top military command because, as indicated, the initiative and eagerness of the subordinate bodies to take on their own responsibilities put a limit to the coordination efforts.²⁴⁶

Because he had the impression that Army Intelligence lacked coordination, as early as the end of 1942, in his annual report under the subheading “Experiences and Suggestions,” Alfred Ernst felt obliged to repeat “a very old request that [he] had expressed a long time ago,” stating: “It seems to me that the whole work in Group Id²⁴⁷ suffers from a lack of contact between the Chief and his staff as well as among the staff. The frequent personal incidents and frictions are due to this lack of contact, which has been the case since about June 1940.”²⁴⁸ Ernst therefore suggested that Masson hold meetings at least twice a week during which the staff could bring up any issue relating to Army Intelligence as a whole, adding, “This would be the only way to give everyone the opportunity to express their views and make sure that the Chief’s decisions and opinions are the result of the input and views of all officers who bear part of the responsibility.”²⁴⁹ Instead, Masson led Army Intelligence on a case-by-case basis by making most decisions following more or less coincidental meetings with individual staff members; in most cases, the expert in charge actually did not know anything about the decision and did not get any chance to defend his opinion. This leadership style was bound to create unclear situations, result in agreements and discussions that were held behind other people’s backs, and create a breeding ground for plots²⁵⁰ and disputes that seriously hampered the team spirit among Army Intelligence.²⁵¹ As early as 1942, Alfred Ernst assessed that “confidence [had] been seriously shaken”; he explained that open meetings with all concerned persons, as well as decisions by the Chief that were made with full knowledge of the facts and pointed the way ahead for everyone working for the Intelligence Service, were required in order to create “a spirit of friendship and cooperation in the service of a common cause; today this spirit does not exist at all.”²⁵²

The fact that the different activities were not better coordinated also had a direct effect on the work of the individual bodies of Army Intelligence. Both the procurement bodies and the evaluation bodies were at a disadvantage because most of the time Army Intelligence lacked a common, binding starting position. This starting position could have been established at internal briefings during which all information that the different sections had collected and interpreted could be processed. This lack of a common starting position occasionally resulted in conflicting views on the way in which an operation was progressing, the expected duration of the war, and even the way the war would end. The readers of the Army Intelligence bulletins were sometimes confused when, due to a lack of internal discussions, several conflicting, apparently contradictory, views were expressed in one and the same update.

Even though cooperation was facilitated through personal ties, for example between Alfred Ernst and Max Waibel, it is obvious that the tasks, authority, and responsibilities were not clearly defined nor differentiated, resulting in overlapping activities and rivalries that proved to be burdensome. In 1945, an investigating magistrate qualified the structure of Army Intelligence as “rather loose and somewhat unclear,” adding: “It is often not quite clear who issues orders, i.e. who reports to whom, and the responsibilities have been changed many times. Hence, some officers are not absolutely sure who their direct superior or subordinate is. What is more, in some instances not even Chief M[asson] is able to provide satisfactory answers.”²⁵³ On the other hand, due to this flexible structure the staff of Army Intelligence had the necessary freedom of action. In order to be able to take unconventional action, one accepted the inevitable flaws that are inherent in any improvised structure.²⁵⁴ The independent investigating magistrate who had the opportunity, during a hearing of evidence, to get a glimpse of Army Intelligence’s activities admitted that the staff successfully made use of this freedom of action, saying: “Since I am not an expert, I cannot assess the activities [of the Intelligence Service]; however, I must say that I am amazed by the amount of work that has been done and the results that have been achieved. My investigation has reinforced my impression that [the staff of] this service has been very hard-working and committed, but also clever, astute, resourceful, and nimble-minded.”²⁵⁵

American readers who are surprised to read about this unpleasant and quite detrimental squabbling among the Swiss intelligence agencies and the Department of Foreign Affairs and other Federal bodies may be interested to learn that the United States Office of Strategic Services encountered similar experiences throughout the war.²⁵⁶

Five months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated America’s entry into World War II, President Roosevelt had created an Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), soon to become the OSS, and put at its helm William J. Donovan, who had been known since his youth as “Wild Bill.” General Donovan had the “power to visualize an oak when he saw an acorn,” in the words of the OSS Psychological Staff. Under the General’s leadership, the OSS quickly grew and expanded—and aroused the resentment of other official bodies. From the moment that the COI was created, a host of predatory government agencies “forgot their internecine animosities and joined in an attempt to strangle this unwanted newcomer at birth.”²⁵⁷ The Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover viewed this newcomer to the clandestine world with a particularly suspicious eye. Although OSS relations with the FBI seemed to improve as the war progressed, Hoover remained hyper-vigilant about suspected encroachments.

As was the case in Switzerland, the OSS also had running bouts with the Department of State. The COI had just acquired a few temporary rooms in the State Department Annex in its very early days when Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s assistants started worrying about competition from the new agency. When COI requested access to some State files, Foreign Service officers nervously jibed that Donovan was “a man who could tell you the time if you loaned him your watch.”²⁵⁸ Officials at the State Department had every reason to feel concerned, as the improvised but brilliant achievements of Donovan’s officers sharply contrasted with the tradition-bound, sluggish actions of the Diplomatic Service. The disappointment Masson, Waibel, and Ernst experienced regarding the Swiss Foreign Service was shared in a similar manner by OSS members dealing with Foggy Bottom, finding the State Department hopelessly hamstrung by bureaucratic inertia and a “spirit of smug self-satisfaction.”²⁵⁹ In August 1941, the alarmed State Department signed an uneasy pact with COI, assigning some vague responsibility for intelligence collection and overseas propaganda to Donovan’s group—a concession accepted by Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. However, not all officials at State were happy with the agreement. In late 1941, Assistant Secretary of State Brickingridge Long wrote in his diary: “One of the most important things to be controlled is Donovan.” Four months later, in April 1942, he added that Donovan “has been a thorn in the side of a number of the regular agencies of the government for some time—including the Department of State—and more particularly recently in Welles’.”²⁶⁰

A second dispute involved the use of American diplomatic facilities by the OSS. The American Ambassador to Vichy, Admiral William Leahy, tried to impose restrictions on the espionage operations of OSS agents attached to the American consulates in southern France. “General Donovan accused me of interfering in his work,” recalls Leahy. “I told him the diplomatic service was my business.”²⁶¹ In all the neutral countries of Europe—Sweden, Spain, and Portugal in addition to Switzerland—the assignment of OSS officers to the American embassies under diplomatic cover met with strong resistance from the professional diplomats.²⁶² The State Department also objected to issuing passports to OSS officers. Mrs. Ruth Shipley, who ran the State Department’s passport division as her own personal empire, insisted that Donovan’s agents travel abroad with their passports clearly marked with “OSS.” It took considerable discussion at high levels to convince the State Department that Mrs. Shipley’s whims were seriously impeding espionage operations. Later in the war she struck back by interminably delaying, on “security” grounds, the passports of Japanese-Americans bound for OSS posts in the Far East.

In early 1941, before the formation of COI, lan Fleming (the future creator of “James Bond”), then a ranking officer in British Naval Intelligence, suggested to Donovan that he should select as intelligence officers men who had “absolute discretion, sobriety, devotion to duty, languages, and wide experience.” Their age, Fleming added, should be “about 40 to 50.”²⁶³ Donovan rejected Fleming’s advice. Instead, he promised President Franklin Roosevelt an international secret service staffed by young officers who were “calculatingly reckless,” with “disciplined daring” and “trained for aggressive action.”²⁶⁴ Those were the qualities with which the OSS men in Bern, Rome, Beijing, Bangkok, Paris, and Algiers were imbued. Their devotion and energy, fantasy and daring, had much in common with that of their Swiss counterparts. In Masson’s Intelligence Service, of course, nobody knew about the problems it shared with the OSS at the time, yet the American experiences put the Swiss incidents in perspective.