THE CODEBREAKERS - EXCERPT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00499R000500080007-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 26, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Content Type: MISC

Approved For Release 2004/12/22 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000500080007-7
,re the
Il. .,,', i laas
,n rite scone
"resLnt, the
1Iuc1:. active il)
uong time; wailers of the
the German capitalist
member of the board of
ycstuffs Corporation, an
931 to 1939. After the
can Standard Oil trust
ustrie under which the
from the production of,
and in return willingly
c gasoline which, it was
ring up for war needs.
lean capitalist monopolies
cations not only of com-
existed, on the very eve
scnte< t )c , c iro< er interests in London, Co ogne and IJam '
war, between the Federation of British Industries and.
(,. , r,:ut Rcichs i ndustric group. 1n 1939, representatives of 0-
Monopolies issued a joint statement in Dusseldorf which saiu
in part that the purpose of the agreement was "to secure the fullest
p;,s,ible cooperation between the industrial systems of their re.spec-
tive countries." And this took place at a time when Hitler Ger-
ntany had swallowed Czechoslovakia l No wonder that the Lon-
don magazine Economist wrote in this connection : "Is there not
,omething in tltc Dusseldorf air that makes reasonable men lose
their seltses?"i
The well known Schroder Bank in which a leading part: was
played by the German steel trust Vcrcinigte Stahlwcrkc, which
was organized by Stinnes, Thyssen and other captains of Ruh;
industry and had its headquarters in New York and London,
furnishes a typical example of the close interweaving of American
;,nd German as well as British capital. Allen Dulles director of
plays at lead in role in the affairs of this bank. I he wel-known
Su Ivan & Cromwell law firm headed by John Foster Dulles,
now Mr. Marshall's chief adviser and closely connected with
Rockefeller's world oil trust, Standard Oil, as well as with the
Chase National Bank, the most powerful bank in America which
made enormous investments in German industry, played the leading
role in the New York headquarters of the Schroder Bank. In his
hook which appeared in New York in 1947, Richard Sasuly stresses
the fact that no sooner had inflation been checked in Germany in
the post-Versailles period and the reichsmark had gained strength
than a torrent of foreign loans rushed into Germany. Between
1924 and 1930 Germany's foreign debt increased by more than
thirty billion reichsmarks. With the help of foreign, chiefly
American, capital, German industry, especially the Vereinigte
Stahlwcrkc (a German firm), was extensively reconstructed and
modernized. Some loans were granted directly ;o 'ompanies 'which
played a leading part in rearmament.2
'Corwin D. Edwards, Economic and Political Aspects of International
Cartels, 1944.
'Richard Sasuly, 1. G. Farben, Boni and' Gaer, New York, 1947, p. 80.
Approved For Release 2004/12/22: CIA-RDP84-00499R000500080007-7
 Ap roved For Release 2004/12/22 : CIA-RDP84-00499800050 0&0007-7
604 THE COD B Z'
After everything had been sewn up, it public indiscretion threatened to rip
it open again. Representative Elmer J. Holland of Pennsylvania made it
speech about the episode on the floor of Congress on August 31 which was
carried far and wide by news stories. He was castigating the Tribune's "un-
thinking and wicked misuse of freedom of the press." "American boys will
die, Mr. Speaker, because of the help furnished our enemies" by the Tribune,
he declaimed. But in stating what this help was, he disclosed what; the Tribune
had not and trumpeted loud and clear what everyone was trying to hush up:
"that somehow our Navy had secured and broken the secret code of the
Japanese Navy."
Fortunately, the Japanese missed that one too.
Potentially the most explosive situation stewed in the cauldron of national
politics in the late summer of 1944. Republicans were preparing to run Thomas
C. Dewey for President. High among their issues was the charge that inexcus-
able administration laxity had permitted the Japanese attack at Pearl i-larbor
to succeed so cruelly; there were even hints that President Roosevelt had
deliberately invited the attack to get the country into "his" war over strong
isolationist sentiment. Buttressing the charge was the knowledge, circulating
secretly among many high officials, that the United States had cracked Japan-.
ese codes before Pearl Harbor. From this, many Republicans concluded that
the decrypted messages had warned Roosevelt of Pearl Harbor and that 11e,
with criminal negligence, had done nothing about it. This was false, but
evidence to the contrary was not available and many men believed it,
As the campaign warmed up, bits and hints about MAGIC began to appear
in political speeches. Representative Forest A. Harness of Indiana, for
example, told the House on September I 1 that "the Government had ]earned
very confidentially that instructions were sent out from the Japanese Gove n-
meat to all Japanese emissaries in this hemisphere to destroy the codes." he
chief of Army intelligence, Brigadier General Clayton L. Bissell, repo cd
these incidents to Marshall, who saw the danger of further revelations in the
heat of contention for the greatest office of all. Bissell suggested that Marshall
go to the President for help in squelching the talk. Marshall didn't think that -c9
would do, and slept on it. Next morning i hc' dictated a three-page, sinle-
sjced letter to the Republican.
capdidatc_pointing out the.cX,tl: me danger of
disclosing the MAGIC information. Because he felt that the success of his appeal
depended on Dewey's conviction that it was nonpolitical, he did not discuss
the matter with either the President or the Secretary of War, and he began his
letter, "I am writing you without the knowledge of any other person except
Admiral King (who concurs)."
An Army security officer, tall, slim Colonel Carter W. Clarke, flew out
West in a B-25 bomber to deliver the letter to Dewey, who had just given his
first campaign speech devoted entirely to an attack upon the national adminis-
tration. Clarke gave the sealed letter to Dewey on the afternoon of September
26 in a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Under "Top Secret" and "For Mr. Dewey's
eyes only,
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Approved For Release 2004/12/22 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000500080007-7