19

Leaks

The whole inter-Allied and inter-service cooperation thing didn’t sit well with Rudy Fabian, who believed that too much swapping and sharing of information with other agencies only increased the risk of Ultra falling into the wrong hands. As the United States naval commander at Monterey, he exerted tight control over the intelligence generated there.

Some Central Bureau staff complained that Monterey, although it was a short walk across the park, might as well have been on the opposite side of the world, such was the lack of cooperation.

Two young American cryptanalysts, Hugh Erskine and Charles E. Girhard, newly arrived in Melbourne and working for Sinkov, visited Monterey Flats. After they returned to Cranleigh they discovered that General Akin already knew about their visit; consequently, he personally instructed them to stay away from Monterey in future.1

Central Bureau personnel were not alone in finding FRUMEL difficult to deal with. When an inspector-general from the US Seventh Fleet arrived at Monterey and tried to enter, the guard at the front door stopped him.

‘I cannot let you go in,’ the guard told the inspector-general. ‘I’ll call the commanding officer.’

The inspector-general turned and left, furious. He complained about his treatment to the chief of staff, who advised him to leave FRUMEL alone.2

Fabian had an agreement with MacArthur to deliver intelligence briefings in person, which he did at MacArthur’s headquarters. He had no respect for General MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Charles Willoughby, and refused to brief MacArthur if Willoughby was present. On one occasion, Fabian arrived with an important intercept, showed it to MacArthur, and then, as he passed Willoughby’s desk on the way out of the building, he stopped, lifted the top-secret document, and set it alight, dropping the ashes into Willoughby’s waste-paper bin before returning to Monterey.

Fabian became increasingly concerned that his operation was not as watertight as he hoped. He suspected that Eric Nave, in particular, was sharing information with other agencies behind his back. He was right about that. Nave was providing briefings to Australian military intelligence officials at nearby Victoria Barracks, as well as to Australian naval intelligence.3 Nave had the view that high-ranking intelligence personnel could be trusted, regardless of which service or department they belonged to — an attitude that had previously got him into trouble with Jack Newman.

Newman’s fears were not allayed by a security breach in the United States. On 7 June, the Chicago Tribune newspaper published a front-page article with the headline, ‘US Navy Knew in Advance All About Jap Fleet’.4 The article then gave details about how the United States navy knew about the Japanese plans for Midway well in advance, including their tactic of pretending that the target was the Aleutian Islands. Alarmingly, the article specifically mentioned code-breaking as the source.

Japanese intelligence agents never saw that edition of the Chicago Tribune, so the secret that JN-25 had been broken remained safe. Nonetheless, the response from the United States government was swift. The journalist who’d written the story, Stanley Johnson, was brought before a grand jury for treason, although in the end the jury decided not to indict.5 It could not have escaped Fabian’s attention that the journalist who almost destroyed all his achievements, and who jeopardised the entire code-breaking operation, was Australian.

And earlier in the year, Australia’s prime minister, John Curtin, himself made a similar slip-up, briefing journalists in April that the Allies knew about a build-up of Japanese warships in the Marshall Islands. This, too, was information that had been obtained by the painstaking, secret work at Monterey Flats in Melbourne and by their naval colleagues in Hawaii.6

Neither of those leaks came from Eric Nave, but Fabian became increasingly suspicious over time, and openly accused Nave of breaching security. He wanted Nave out of Monterey. An opportunity to do so was at hand, as the Allied nations negotiated a new intelligence arrangement.

In October 1942, Britain and America entered into a new secret agreement for cooperation in intelligence, the Holden agreement. This allowed for the increased sharing of information on Ultra, as well as a clearer division of responsibilities. Previously, both major Allied powers had been working on Japanese naval codes; now, under the Holden agreement, the United States took overall responsibility for naval codes, although with some continued British participation.7

FRUMEL was placed under the direct control of the United States navy, whereupon Fabian insisted that civilians no longer be employed. The only civilian on the ground floor was Newman’s personal assistant, Joan Duff, and she was transferred to a new intelligence unit dealing with radar and counter-radar called Section 22.

It has been noted by historian Ian Pfennigwerth that Rudy Fabian must have had friends in high places, because Eric Nave was personally named in the Holden agreement; it specifically stated that he could not work at FRUMEL. From a cryptanalytic perspective, this was a loss to FRUMEL, because Nave was actively engaged in the work on JN-25 until the day he was expelled from Monterey; however, security was an even higher priority for Fabian than code-breaking success.8 Professor Room also left FRUMEL, but for different reasons: he had been focussing on diplomatic cipher work, which was no longer a US navy responsibility, and he was also a civilian.

Sandford was quick to seize the opportunity to gain these two star recruits. He offered them both a job at Central Bureau, which had vacated Cranleigh and moved north to Brisbane a month earlier.

The diplomatic section at Monterey was also transferred to the Australian army, and moved from Monterey Flats in St Kilda to a site at Bonegilla. The Sydney professors, Arthur Dale Trendall and Dicky Lyons, stayed with the diplomatic section, which was renamed ‘Special D Section’. Professor Treweek, who had a good relationship with both Rudy Fabian and Jack Newman, remained with FRUMEL at Monterey Flats.

Nave was not the only individual at Monterey who was more inclined than Fabian to cooperate with other agencies.

Newman berated Sandford early in May about Central Bureau’s lack of success and for encroaching on signals intelligence that was the navy’s responsibility. ‘To be brutally candid’, Newman thundered in an official minute to Sandford, ‘a review of the Central Bureau reports to date reveals no real W/T intelligence, but shows that effort has been expended on matters that are incidental to Naval Y intelligence and are not within the province of Central Bureau or within is capabilities which are necessarily limited by shortness of experience.’9

It was a withering assessment, but Newman’s rudeness was largely theatrical, designed to curry Fabian’s trust and approval. He sent Sandford a very different minute in July:

Last time I wrote you a minute it was a very rude one. I would ask you to look back on that with a grain of salt, since I did it deliberately.

Now I would like to say (for what it is worth to you) that I think your outfit has got on to the right lines and is likely to make a good job of it.

Don’t forget, however, that the foundation on which your house is built is thoroughly trained and thoroughly reliable personnel — both analytical staff and ‘Y’ operators — and both officers and other ranks. In this regard it may be of interest that the recent change of major call signs at 1500 G.M.T. on 24th has been completely and accurately flogged out by a well-trained gun’s crew of four telegraphists W.R.A.N.S. within 23 hours.

Please do not look on this patronising epistle because that is the last impression I want to give. If however I can be of any help towards the general war effort I should be delighted to receive any private enquiries from you.

Best of good luck, and don’t put much trust in R.A.A.F. D/F bearings!

Yours Sincerely,

Jack B Newman10

This letter to Sandford, suggesting that they exchange information privately, was an offer to establish clandestine communications behind Fabian’s back. A sort of ‘black market’ in sigint material from FRUMEL to Central Bureau was established. There was no need to be secretive about the other direction because Central Bureau, in keeping with the terms of Simpson’s conference, freely provided anything to FRUMEL that was likely to be of use to them.

Newman’s public hostility toward Sandford must have worked, because Fabian never suspected that Newman was responsible for what he called ‘security breaches’. Eric Nave was the focus of his distrust.