Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century

337 Pages·2014·1.883 MB·English

by  Gannon, James

STEALING SECRETS,
TELLING LIES
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STEALING SECRETS,
TELLING LIES
How Spies and
Codebreakers
Helped Shape the
Twentieth Century
JAMES GANNON
Brassey’s
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2001by BraPssoetyo’sm, aInccB.ooks,Inc.
Published in the United States by Brassey’s. All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gannon, James.
Stealing secrets, telling lies : how spies and codebreakers helped shape the
twentieth century / James Gannon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57488-367-4
1. Espionage. 2. International relations. I. Title.
JF1525.I6 G36 2001
355.3'432—dc21
00-069888
ISBN1-57488-36IS7-B4N9(7a8lk-1. -p5a7p4e8r8)-367-1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American
National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Photograph of Klaus Fuchs; U.S. vs. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and Morton Sobel,
Criminal Case Number 114868; Records of U.S.Attorneys and Marshals, Office of the
U.S.Attorney for the Southern Judicial District of New York; National Arrchives and
Records Administration, Northeast Region, New York City.
Brassey’s, Inc.
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Kevin, Michael, and Amy
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C O N T E N T S
Preface ix
Introduction: Information, Please! 1
Part 1: THE GREAT WAR
1. Herr Zimmermann’s Fatal Blunder 11
Part 2: THE CIPHER WAR
2. The Enigma Demystified 27
3. The Longest Battle 59
4. Outfoxing the Desert Fox 72
5. Colossus 84
6. Who Broke Purple? 94
7. Masters of Deception 107
Part3: THE ESPIONAGE WAR
8. Learned Spies 133
9. “Lucy,” Man of Mystery 155
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part4: THE PACIFIC WAR
10. Infamy and Sacred Duty 177
11. “Our Man in Tokyo” 190
Part5: THE COLD WAR
12. The Spy Who Knew Everything 209
13. The Spy of the Century 222
14. Speak, Ciphers! 236
15. Exposing Comrade Bluster 250
16. Workers against the Workers’ State 273
Notes 289
Bibliography 306
Index 313
P R E F A C E
The seed for this book was planted in the late eighties when an Asian friend
then teaching political science at an American college urged me to consider
producing a documentary on the extent to which an anti-Asian bias in the State
Department made it impossible for the United States to avoid war with Japan.
The idea intrigued me. I still remember clearly the Sunday morning of Decem-
ber 7, 1941, when Ifirst heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Iwas a
ten-year-old playing pickup football near my boyhood home in Spokane. It
came as a shock nearly a half-century later, however, to learn the depth of my
ignorance about World War II. As Iread more about it, I began to zero in on
the impact of codebreaking on the war’s outcome. That subject, rather than
what might or might not have triggered the war, became my passion.
One book led to another and another. The story of codebreaking during
World War II took shape in my mind. Having spent much of my career as a tele-
vision news producer, I was thinking of it as a series of documentaries, but those
thoughts did not pan out. Along the way, I became intrigued with the story of
the Pearl Harbor spy, Takeo Yoshikawa, and was struck by the impact of this
casual, sybaritic, yet professional intelligence officer on a watershed event of the
twentieth century, whereas the great American cryptological achievement in
ix