Loose Lips Sink Ships -- Or Administrations

The news coming from the Trump administration presents news events, on almost a daily basis, that are potential subjects for this website. However, this past week, one event proved irresistible -- the disclosure that the editor of The Atlantic magazine had been mistakenly invited to participate in a high-level government chat on the Signal application, a disclosure now known as Signalgate. I am not qualified to address whether the use of Signal as an encryption tool demonstrated negligence on the part of the Trump administration members. The only encryption we use at H,R,& R is to speak in Danish, which unfortunately leaves me in the dark almost as often as those from whom we are trying to shield our conversations. Nevertheless, in other respects, the scandal is hardly unusual. History is replete with examples of state secrets, or military ones, that were inadvertently disclosed. Fox News, among others, recently recounted the famous incident where Robert E. Lee’s invasion plans for the North in 1862, which were wrapped around a packet of cigars, were lost by a Confederate officer and recovered by Union soldiers. Although armed with these plans, George McClellan was only able to fight Lee to a draw at the battle of Antietam.

However, another scandal, remarkably similar in many respects as the one today, involving military secrets, politics, and a feud between a major newspaper figure and the President of the United States, occurred more recently and has gone, to my surprise, largely unmentioned in the press today. That scandal involved the disclosure in World War II, by the Chicago Tribune, that the United States had cracked the Japanese naval code prior to the Battle of Midway.

The Initial Stages of The Pacific War

Beginning with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the first 15 months of World War II in the Pacific theater were virtually an unmitigated success for Japan. The Japanese had not only occupied the Philippines and all of southeast Asia up to the Burmese-Indian border by April 1942, but they had also occupied what is now Indonesia, much of New Guinea, and several other islands near Australia. The Japanese plan was to capture Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea by an amphibious assault, and from there to prepare an invasion of Australia.

Japanese forces were dealt their first setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea, which occurred off the northeast coast of Australia. That battle is famous as the first involving competing fleets of aircraft carriers. Although the battle was a tactical defeat for the United States (the carrier Lexington was sunk and the Yorktown badly damaged), it was nevertheless a strategic reverse for the Japanese. Because of their own losses, they were unable to land their forces at Port Moresby and the invasion of Australia was forestalled. The battle would have further consequences for the Japanese, as it reduced the number of aircraft carriers available for their planned assault on Midway.

Preparations for Midway

Given the effectiveness of the United States’ aircraft carriers, the Japanese determined to eliminate them in one grand battle. Believing the carriers to be at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Admiralty determined to launch an assault on Midway Atoll, a group of islands almost equidistant from Asia and North America, and a strategic launching pad for an assault on Hawaii. The Japanese calculated that an attack on Midway would draw the American carrier fleet away from Pearl Harbor, leaving it vulnerable to destruction by the superior Japanese fleet.

Unbeknownst to the Japanese, American cryptographers had broken the Japanese naval code at or about the time of the Battle of the Coral Sea. The cryptoanalysis group at Pearl Harbor, known as HYPO, was led by Joseph Rochefort, a career naval officer who, despite never finishing high school, had risen from the rank of electrician to that of commander, one of the few officers in the pre-war Navy not to have attended Annapolis. Rochefort, and the Pacific Fleet intelligence officer, Edwin Layton, both determined that a Japanese attack was to take place in the central Pacific, in conjunction with a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands. HYPO had intercepted messages requesting maps of harbors in the Aleutians as well as those of Hawaii. Layton and Rochefort’s superiors in Washington did not believe that assessment, and thought that the Japanese would renew their thrust toward Port Moresby or somewhere else southward in the direction of Australia. To convince Washington, Rochefort and Layton suggested that the garrison at Midway send a message in the clear that its desalinization facility had broken down, as well as other messages in codes that they knew the Japanese had learned after their capture of Wake Island. When the Japanese alerted their ships that the target of their attack was short of water, the Americans knew that the target was Midway. HYPO’s intelligence was so good that it not only knew the target of the attack, but also the general location of where the Japanese force would be, as well as the date of the invasion.

The intelligence provided by HYPO proved to be decisive. Aware of the Japanese plans, American commanders were able to execute an ambush that resulted in the sinking of four Japanese aircraft carriers, at the loss of only one carrier, sunk after the main engagement by a Japanese submarine as it was towed back to port. The American victory is almost universally considered to be the turning point of the Pacific war. With the loss of four aircraft carriers and, as importantly, the loss of thousands of trained pilots and seamen, the Japanese were never to retake the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.

Midway’s Aftermath: The Disclosure of the Biggest Secret

On June 7, 1942, the Chicago Tribune reported the news of the victory at Midway, with a headline that inaccurately reported the extent of the United States victory: “Jap Fleet Smashed by U.S. 2 Carriers Sunk At Midway.” Under the banner was a second headline that revealed one of the government’s most closely held secrets: “NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA. Knew Dutch Harbor Was a Feint.” The article attributed the knowledge to “naval intelligence” and reported that the information had come from Washington.

The Chicago Tribune was no random newspaper. Its editor, Colonel Robert McCormick, was arguably Franklin Roosevelt’s most outspoken critic, making Jeffrey Goldberg’s antipathy toward the Trump administration pallid by comparison. McCormick’s name was at the top of a list, prepared by the White House, of newspapers critical of the President. McCormick was the largest single contributor to Alf Landon’s presidential campaign. Substitute “Communist” for “Fascist,” and McCormick’s rhetoric concerning Roosevelt would be virtually indistinguishable from that of today’s left with respect to President Trump. McCormick once printed an editorial with the headline “Only 97 days left to save your country,” a template for the calls by today’s Left to “Save Democracy.” Thereafter, telephone operators at the newspaper were instructed to greet every caller to the newspaper with that countdown before directing a call.

For his part, Roosevelt was equally contemptuous of McCormick. In a cable to Winston Churchill that presaged Donald Trump’s obsession with “fake news,” Roosevelt wrote: “[T]he Chicago Tribune prints lies and misrepresentations in lieu of news. . . You can readily see that I do not trust the Chicago Tribune farther than you can throw a ball.”

The Tribune had previously published military secrets in order to embarrass the Roosevelt administration. Days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the newspaper had published the nation’s secret war plans. The impact of that article was overwhelmed by the Japanese declaration of war, which effectively took the air out of McCormick’s campaign for isolationism.

As recounted in Conrad Black’s biography of Franklin Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom, Roosevelt’s reaction to the publication of America’s breaking the Japanese code was one of fury. He ordered Frank Knox, the Secretary of the Navy (and also once, as the former editor of the Chicago Daily News, a competitor of McCormick), to send Marines to occupy the Tribune Tower. He ordered his Attorney General, Francis Biddle, to charge the colonel with treason.

However, as the facts surrounding the leak came to light, the government had no basis to proceed with a treason charge. The leak was traced to a dispatch sent by the commander of the Pacific fleet, Chester Nimitz, to ships in the Pacific, which detailed the Japanese dispositions and identified the target as Midway.

The Navy subsequently learned that a reporter for the Tribune, Stanley Johnston, had been aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington during the Battle of the Coral Sea. When that ship sank, he had been rescued and placed aboard the Enterprise, and then brought back to the United States on a Navy transport. Johnston’s version of events changed over the course of time. Nevertheless, whether he just overheard officers talking, whether he saw the dispatch on the transport captain’s desk, or whether he saw the dispatch while rooming with an officer also rescued from the Lexington, it was determined that Johnston had somehow seen the dispatch while returning from the Coral Sea.

Unfortunately for the government, in the rush to accredit Johnston as a reporter immediately after Pearl Harbor, he had not been presented with a non-disclosure agreement which required all correspondents to submit their articles for censorship. Furthermore, he had revealed information about Japanese ships, not American. In short, Johnston had broken no laws. The government contemplated smearing Johnston with allegations, arising from work earlier in the war in Holland, that he had been a German agent. However, he had demonstrated heroism during the Battle of the Coral Sea and had been cleared by the British. Although a grand jury was convened, the Navy refused to allow any personnel to testify, both to preserve military secrets and to avoid embarrassment. Also, Secretary Knox did not have any strong interest in pursuing the charges, as McCormick had information that this “public servant” had been receiving a substantial consulting fee from his old newspaper in addition to his government salary. Accordingly, no indictment was ever brought.

The Aftermath

Notwithstanding the seriousness of the information disclosed after Midway compared to the information disclosed from the Signal chat, the repercussions from the latter have the potential to be more serious than from the former. The Navy’s greatest fear -- that the Japanese would recognize that their code had been broken and that they would change it -- never came to pass. The Japanese did change their code, but only with minor modifications. Navy intelligence was easily able to figure them out, and it was able to continue to decrypt Japanese communications. The Americans’ ability remained so good that they were able to identify and shoot down a plane in the South Pacific carrying the commander of the Japanese navy, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, based upon communications that detailed the Admiral’s route and dispositions. The Americans knew the cables referred to Yamamoto because they identified his communications officer by the cadence and idiosyncrasies of his typing on the encryption machine. Furthermore, the Navy suffered no embarrassment, because it was able to keep the true facts about its lax security a secret. Finally, although McCormick was a rabid opponent of Roosevelt, he had concerns about his own legal liability and little interest in damaging the nation.

In contrast, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, has attempted to create maximum embarrassment for the Trump administration. Furthermore, the lax security around the Signal chat has not been kept under wraps. Instead, it has been disclosed for all the world to see. Perhaps the biggest difference, however, is that the primary embarrassment with respect to Signalgate is not the lax security that allowed the contents of the chat to be publicized, but the contents themselves. The information disclosed by the Chicago Tribune demonstrated the remarkable competence of American intelligence. It is arguable whether the contents of the Signal chat reflect as well on the current administration.

Ultimately, the Chicago Tribune scandal faded into history. That is the likely outcome for Signalgate, but one can never be too sure.