William Kelly Posted December 24, 2008 Share Posted December 24, 2008 (edited) McCormack, Alfred – Colonel Alfred McCormack, a Wall Street lawyer in civilian life, was called into government service to analyze intelligence problems at the beginning of World War II. He served as deputy chief of the Special Branch until 1944, and then became Director of Intelligence in a reorganized Military Intelligence Service. "Not present secrecy, not merely secrecy until the battle is over, but permanent secrecy of this operation is what we should strive for" - Col. Alfred McCormack After World War II, McCormack served as the first head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. US Army Signals Intelligence in WWII, by James Leslie Gilbert – 1993 http://books.google.com/books?id=U3o-HDS0L3kC&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=Col.+Alfred+McCormack&source=web&ots=w_B7jYhUMA]&sig=FKi3IKVG6TwW8Y_ZLSBTWcAPhvw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result From: Battlefields of the Future: http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:kt40jBikLpQJ:www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/battle/chp7. html+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us Information Warfare: Impacts and Concerns by Col James W. McLendon, USAF It is not surprising that most information concerning deception activities remained classified for many years after the war and is only now coming to the attention of the public. It appears that most, if not all, of the information concerning tactical deception has been declassified. This is not the case with another stratagem used against the Germans, that of intercepting radio communications and using the Enigma machine to decipher the message transmissions. While previously classified documents concerning Ultra are now largely available to the public, a review of the primary sources reveals that many still contain blank pages that are marked "not releasable" while others contain portions that have been blanked out with no explanation. Thus, even though we know much more today than we did 15 years ago about these activities, public access remains unavailable for much of it. These continuing restrictions may well be the result of comments made on 15 April 1943 by Col. Alfred McCormack in a memorandum to Col Carter W. Clarke. McCormack, then "Mr McCormack," had earlier been appointed as special assistant to the secretary of war to study the uses of Ultra and establish procedures for making the best use of this source. At the time of the memorandum, McCormack was deputy chief of the Special Branch and worked for its chief, Colonel Clarke. The purpose of the Special Branch was to handle signals intelligence. McCormack's memorandum consists of 54 pages on the origin, functions, and problems of the Special Branch, Military Intelligence Service (MIS). In this memorandum, McCormack describes, in his view, Ultra security requirements as follows: One lapse of security is all that is necessary to dry up a radio intercept source. Therefore, both on the officer level and below, only persons of the greatest good sense and discretion should be employed on this work. This consideration is basic since intercept information involves a different kind of secrecy than does most other classified information. It will make no difference a year from now how much the enemy knows about our present troop dispositions, about the whereabouts of our naval forces or about other similar facts that now are clearly guarded secrets. But it will make a lot of difference one year from now—and possibly many years from now—whether the enemy has learned that in April 1942 we were reading his most secret codes. Not present secrecy, not merely secrecy until the battle is over, but permanent secrecy of this operation is what we should strive for.16 John Mendelsohn, ed., Covert Warfare: Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and Military Deception During the World War II Era 18 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), 1. Note: This book is the last in a series of 18 volumes on covert warfare edited by Mendelsohn. The content of the series is primarily composed of declassified documents residing in the National Archives. These documents included classifications up through TOP SECRET ULTRA. The quoted material in this paper from this series is usually taken from the copied material of the original documents. Sun Tzu, 66. See Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (New York: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1954). Mendelsohn, chap. 1, 1. Ibid., vol. 1, Ultra Magic and the Allies, chap. 8, "Origins, Functions, and Problems of the Special Branch, MIS," 27. http://intellit.muskingum.edu/cryptography_folder/friedman.html MacKinnon, Colin. "William Friedman's Bletchley Park Diary: A New Source for the History of Anglo-American Intelligence Cooperation." Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 4 (Dec. 2005): 654-669. In late April 1943, Friedman, Col. Alfred McCormack, and Lt. Col. Telford Taylor traveled to Great Britain to meet with British cryptologists. His diary of that visit, which lasted until 12 May 1943, "is a meticulous account of his activities during the mission." It was in the same period that the 1943 Travis-Strong Agreement was negotiated. and it appears the U.S. delegation was part of that process. http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:_-Zq7js7GDYJ:https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent csi/docs/v20i1a02p_0011.htm+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us ...the JCS plan, had draped the mantle of intelligence leadership on the one agency least able to do anything about it. It was his second step in the intelligence field, and both steps now led to much wandering in the wilderness. Second Beginning Initially, however, there was considerable enthusiasm in part of State. Undersecretary Dean Acheson, with Byrnes's approval, snapped up Smith's offer of the OSS research and analysis and presentation units and almost as quickly had a man-a peacetime lawyer from G-2, Col. Alfred McCormack-on the job the day OSS was abolished. Within two months, however, McCormack, an abrasive person, had encountered the stiff opposition of the potent political desk officers who wanted no intelligence office inserted in State between themselves and both the Secretary and the President. Initial enthusiasm was gone by Christmas, and by April 1946, so were McCormack and his new office. Meanwhile, McCormack had had to put the larger problem of organizing a government-wide system on a back burner, but the Army and Navy, rejoicing in the possession of their own plan and worrying about foreign tensions, would suffer no delay. First, the JCS plan had been incorporated in the Navy's so-called Eberstadt report, which envisioned a broad reorganization of the military-political structure for national security, and then personally and departmentally endorsed by Navy Secretary James F. Forrestal. Then, in the War Department, the plan was not only endorsed by Secretary Robert P. Patterson, but his Lovett Board also recommended a return to the idea of an independent budget for CIA. The Army preferred that, but the Navy was cool to the idea. Nevertheless, the military stood together. Eager for action, they disliked State's temporizing; they also wanted their plan implemented so the new agency could take over the R & A unit, which they disliked leaving in State. Hence, late in 1945, Forrestal and Patterson vigorously pushed the JCS plan at the White House, and McCormack felt the pressure. Embattled with his colleagues, he nevertheless had to take time to draft a plan with which to counter the military. All McCormack had to go on was that Budget report, the assistance of Budget staff, and some charts and supporting papers they had prepared. That report did have some excellent observations on the nature and diversity of intelligence, the importance and validity of intelligence as a function of government, and the great need for better coordination among its collectors and producers. Getting to practical matters, the report primarily stressed the need to develop strong departmental intelligence services and therefore recognized only a small residual need for a central research staff for the President and for such centralized operations as espionage. Hence the report recommended the establishment of two high-level committees of assistant secretaries, a joint secretariat, and a host of subcommittees. It was a complicated, interdepartmental system. While essentially self-coordination almost at its theoretical best, it was meant to be dominated by State, and not surprisingly it was adopted by McCormack as the heart of State's plan. http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:6VnSaiH8ukcJ:www.army.mil/cmh/books/Lineage/mi/ch5.htm+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us">http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:6VnSaiH8ukcJ:www.army.mil/cmh/books/Lineage/mi/ch5.htm+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us5://http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cach..."3"]5://http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cach..."3"]5://http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cach..."3"]5 World War II Military Intelligence at the Center Perhaps the most important organizational change within the MID/MIS organization was the development of an element charged with exploiting sensitive communications intelligence. This occurred as a result of the weaknesses in handling such sources at Pearl Harbor. The restrictions on dissemination that had been placed on the MAGIC intercepts had left Army intelligence oblivious to the Japanese threat. Immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, Secretary of War Stimson called upon a prominent Chicago lawyer, Alfred McCormack, to examine the implications of the problem. McCormack recommended the creation of a branch within the Military Intelligence Service to deal with the processing of communications intelligence. The Special Branch was established in May 1942 with Col. Carter W Clarke as its head and with McCormack, now commissioned as a colonel, as his deputy. To acquire the necessary highcaliber personnel to staff the new organization, McCormack drew heavily on lawyers from elite firms, who were given reserve commissions.8 8 A detailed history of the organization is contained in "History of the Special Branch, MIS, War Department, 1942-1944," Listening to the Enemy, pp. 171-94. http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:2uUUu98MgV4J:www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/frus-ie.txt+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us Colonel Alfred McCormack, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Research and Intelligence, took on the dual task of reassembling the OSS programs as Department of State entities and of providing advice on the interagency intelligence planning mandated by the President. McCormack sought to settle intelligence matters within the Department before dealing with the interagency plans (Document 39), but outspoken dissent and undermining efforts by others in the Department, in particular Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Donald S. Russell, complicated his tasks. Russell and the heads of the geographic bureaus, arguing that "intelligence is only as good as it is translated into action" by the geographic units, lobbied for a decentralized structure under their control (Documents 81 and 82), while McCormack favored a more centralized organization in the Department that would be "free of operations or policy involvements" and could serve other units of the Department as well as the geographic bureaus. (Document 83) Because it soon appeared that the whole Department was deadlocked on the intelligence issue, the military increasingly decided to take the lead on the issue. volume concludes with the publication of National Security Council Directives 1-14. (Documents 422-435) Extensive additional documents concerning all the topics presented in the printed volume are reproduced in the microfiche supplement. July 1996 http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:JBcXULZSHEEJ:www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Politics_B_CS. html+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=23&gl=us Former Nazis and collaborators combined with right-wing elements within the U.S. intelligence community to bring another sort of pressure to bear on the U.S. political scene. The flood of government and private money flowing into anti-Communist political warfare programs during the early 1950s created a cottage industry, of sorts, for informers, professional ex-Communists of varying degrees of reputability, and "information bureaus" specializing in the blacklisting of Americans viewed as politically suspect. One of the least known but most important of these entrepreneurs was John Valentine ("Frenchy") Grombach. He was, it will be recalled, the former military intelligence agent whose leaks to Congress had led to the purge of Colonel Alfred McCormack and McCormack's team of skeptical intelligence experts back in 1946 and 1947. During the late 1940s Grombach had become a businessman who specialized in selling political and economic intelligence derived in large part from old boy networks of German SS officers, former Hungarian Axis quislings, and Russian nationalist NTS men to the State Department, the CIA, and corporate customers in the United States and Western Europe. Grombach's espionage network operated through, and was partially financed by, the N. V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken corporation of the Netherlands and its American affiliate, Philips North America, according to records found in his CIC dossier. This was the same major electronics manufacturer that had provided a channel for his clandestine wartime operations. One of Grombach's most important assets, according to U.S. naval intelligence records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, was SS General Karl Wolff, a major war criminal who had gone into the arms trade in Europe after the war. A second primary component of Grombach's private intelligence apparatus was a large group of Hungarians loyal to the former royal privy councilor Tibor Eckhardt, according to Ray Ylitalo, who handled liaison with Grombach's undercover service for State Department intelligence. Grombach worked simultaneously under contract to the Department of State and the CIA. The ex-military intelligence man succeeded in creating "one of the most unusual organizations in the history of the federal government," according to CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick. "It was developed completely outside of the normal governmental structure, [but it] used all of the normal cover and communications facilities normally operated by intelligence organizations, and yet never was under any control from Washington." By the early 1950s the U.S. government was bankrolling Grombach's underground activities at more than $1 million annually, Kirkpatrick has said. Blowback - America's recruitment of Nazis, and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy by Christopher Simpson Collier / Macmillan, 1988 Edited December 24, 2008 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 (edited) McCormack, Alfred – Colonel Alfred McCormack, a Wall Street lawyer in civilian life, was called into government service to analyze intelligence problems at the beginning of World War II. He served as deputy chief of the Special Branch until 1944, and then became Director of Intelligence in a reorganized Military Intelligence Service. "Not present secrecy, not merely secrecy until the battle is over, but permanent secrecy of this operation is what we should strive for" - Col. Alfred McCormack After World War II, McCormack served as the first head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. US Army Signals Intelligence in WWII, by James Leslie Gilbert – 1993 http://books.google....num=8&ct=result From: Battlefields of the Future: http://64.233.169.13...es/battle/chp7. html+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us Information Warfare: Impacts and Concerns by Col James W. McLendon, USAF It is not surprising that most information concerning deception activities remained classified for many years after the war and is only now coming to the attention of the public. It appears that most, if not all, of the information concerning tactical deception has been declassified. This is not the case with another stratagem used against the Germans, that of intercepting radio communications and using the Enigma machine to decipher the message transmissions. While previously classified documents concerning Ultra are now largely available to the public, a review of the primary sources reveals that many still contain blank pages that are marked "not releasable" while others contain portions that have been blanked out with no explanation. Thus, even though we know much more today than we did 15 years ago about these activities, public access remains unavailable for much of it. These continuing restrictions may well be the result of comments made on 15 April 1943 by Col. Alfred McCormack in a memorandum to Col Carter W. Clarke. McCormack, then "Mr McCormack," had earlier been appointed as special assistant to the secretary of war to study the uses of Ultra and establish procedures for making the best use of this source. At the time of the memorandum, McCormack was deputy chief of the Special Branch and worked for its chief, Colonel Clarke. The purpose of the Special Branch was to handle signals intelligence. McCormack's memorandum consists of 54 pages on the origin, functions, and problems of the Special Branch, Military Intelligence Service (MIS). In this memorandum, McCormack describes, in his view, Ultra security requirements as follows: One lapse of security is all that is necessary to dry up a radio intercept source. Therefore, both on the officer level and below, only persons of the greatest good sense and discretion should be employed on this work. This consideration is basic since intercept information involves a different kind of secrecy than does most other classified information. It will make no difference a year from now how much the enemy knows about our present troop dispositions, about the whereabouts of our naval forces or about other similar facts that now are clearly guarded secrets. But it will make a lot of difference one year from now—and possibly many years from now—whether the enemy has learned that in April 1942 we were reading his most secret codes. Not present secrecy, not merely secrecy until the battle is over, but permanent secrecy of this operation is what we should strive for.16 John Mendelsohn, ed., Covert Warfare: Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and Military Deception During the World War II Era 18 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), 1. Note: This book is the last in a series of 18 volumes on covert warfare edited by Mendelsohn. The content of the series is primarily composed of declassified documents residing in the National Archives. These documents included classifications up through TOP SECRET ULTRA. The quoted material in this paper from this series is usually taken from the copied material of the original documents. Sun Tzu, 66. See Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (New York: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1954). Mendelsohn, chap. 1, 1. Ibid., vol. 1, Ultra Magic and the Allies, chap. 8, "Origins, Functions, and Problems of the Special Branch, MIS," 27. http://intellit.musk...r/friedman.html MacKinnon, Colin. "William Friedman's Bletchley Park Diary: A New Source for the History of Anglo-American Intelligence Cooperation." Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 4 (Dec. 2005): 654-669. In late April 1943, Friedman, Col. Alfred McCormack, and Lt. Col. Telford Taylor traveled to Great Britain to meet with British cryptologists. His diary of that visit, which lasted until 12 May 1943, "is a meticulous account of his activities during the mission." It was in the same period that the 1943 Travis-Strong Agreement was negotiated. and it appears the U.S. delegation was part of that process. http://64.233.169.13...telligence/kent csi/docs/v20i1a02p_0011.htm+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us ...the JCS plan, had draped the mantle of intelligence leadership on the one agency least able to do anything about it. It was his second step in the intelligence field, and both steps now led to much wandering in the wilderness. Second Beginning Initially, however, there was considerable enthusiasm in part of State. Undersecretary Dean Acheson, with Byrnes's approval, snapped up Smith's offer of the OSS research and analysis and presentation units and almost as quickly had a man-a peacetime lawyer from G-2, Col. Alfred McCormack-on the job the day OSS was abolished. Within two months, however, McCormack, an abrasive person, had encountered the stiff opposition of the potent political desk officers who wanted no intelligence office inserted in State between themselves and both the Secretary and the President. Initial enthusiasm was gone by Christmas, and by April 1946, so were McCormack and his new office. Meanwhile, McCormack had had to put the larger problem of organizing a government-wide system on a back burner, but the Army and Navy, rejoicing in the possession of their own plan and worrying about foreign tensions, would suffer no delay. First, the JCS plan had been incorporated in the Navy's so-called Eberstadt report, which envisioned a broad reorganization of the military-political structure for national security, and then personally and departmentally endorsed by Navy Secretary James F. Forrestal. Then, in the War Department, the plan was not only endorsed by Secretary Robert P. Patterson, but his Lovett Board also recommended a return to the idea of an independent budget for CIA. The Army preferred that, but the Navy was cool to the idea. Nevertheless, the military stood together. Eager for action, they disliked State's temporizing; they also wanted their plan implemented so the new agency could take over the R & A unit, which they disliked leaving in State. Hence, late in 1945, Forrestal and Patterson vigorously pushed the JCS plan at the White House, and McCormack felt the pressure. Embattled with his colleagues, he nevertheless had to take time to draft a plan with which to counter the military. All McCormack had to go on was that Budget report, the assistance of Budget staff, and some charts and supporting papers they had prepared. That report did have some excellent observations on the nature and diversity of intelligence, the importance and validity of intelligence as a function of government, and the great need for better coordination among its collectors and producers. Getting to practical matters, the report primarily stressed the need to develop strong departmental intelligence services and therefore recognized only a small residual need for a central research staff for the President and for such centralized operations as espionage. Hence the report recommended the establishment of two high-level committees of assistant secretaries, a joint secretariat, and a host of subcommittees. It was a complicated, interdepartmental system. While essentially self-coordination almost at its theoretical best, it was meant to be dominated by State, and not surprisingly it was adopted by McCormack as the heart of State's plan. http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:6VnSaiH8ukcJ:www.army.mil/cmh/books/Lineage/mi/ch5.htm+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us">http://64.233.169.13...clnk&cd=8&gl=us5://http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cach..."3"]5://http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cach..."3"]5://http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cach..."3"]5 World War II Military Intelligence at the Center Perhaps the most important organizational change within the MID/MIS organization was the development of an element charged with exploiting sensitive communications intelligence. This occurred as a result of the weaknesses in handling such sources at Pearl Harbor. The restrictions on dissemination that had been placed on the MAGIC intercepts had left Army intelligence oblivious to the Japanese threat. Immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, Secretary of War Stimson called upon a prominent Chicago lawyer, Alfred McCormack, to examine the implications of the problem. McCormack recommended the creation of a branch within the Military Intelligence Service to deal with the processing of communications intelligence. The Special Branch was established in May 1942 with Col. Carter W Clarke as its head and with McCormack, now commissioned as a colonel, as his deputy. To acquire the necessary highcaliber personnel to staff the new organization, McCormack drew heavily on lawyers from elite firms, who were given reserve commissions.8 8 A detailed history of the organization is contained in "History of the Special Branch, MIS, War Department, 1942-1944," Listening to the Enemy, pp. 171-94. http://64.233.169.13...clnk&cd=9&gl=us Colonel Alfred McCormack, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Research and Intelligence, took on the dual task of reassembling the OSS programs as Department of State entities and of providing advice on the interagency intelligence planning mandated by the President. McCormack sought to settle intelligence matters within the Department before dealing with the interagency plans (Document 39), but outspoken dissent and undermining efforts by others in the Department, in particular Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Donald S. Russell, complicated his tasks. Russell and the heads of the geographic bureaus, arguing that "intelligence is only as good as it is translated into action" by the geographic units, lobbied for a decentralized structure under their control (Documents 81 and 82), while McCormack favored a more centralized organization in the Department that would be "free of operations or policy involvements" and could serve other units of the Department as well as the geographic bureaus. (Document 83) Because it soon appeared that the whole Department was deadlocked on the intelligence issue, the military increasingly decided to take the lead on the issue. volume concludes with the publication of National Security Council Directives 1-14. (Documents 422-435) Extensive additional documents concerning all the topics presented in the printed volume are reproduced in the microfiche supplement. July 1996 http://64.233.169.13.../Politics_B_CS. html+Col.+Alfred+McCormack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=23&gl=us Former Nazis and collaborators combined with right-wing elements within the U.S. intelligence community to bring another sort of pressure to bear on the U.S. political scene. The flood of government and private money flowing into anti-Communist political warfare programs during the early 1950s created a cottage industry, of sorts, for informers, professional ex-Communists of varying degrees of reputability, and "information bureaus" specializing in the blacklisting of Americans viewed as politically suspect. One of the least known but most important of these entrepreneurs was John Valentine ("Frenchy") Grombach. He was, it will be recalled, the former military intelligence agent whose leaks to Congress had led to the purge of Colonel Alfred McCormack and McCormack's team of skeptical intelligence experts back in 1946 and 1947. During the late 1940s Grombach had become a businessman who specialized in selling political and economic intelligence derived in large part from old boy networks of German SS officers, former Hungarian Axis quislings, and Russian nationalist NTS men to the State Department, the CIA, and corporate customers in the United States and Western Europe. Grombach's espionage network operated through, and was partially financed by, the N. V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken corporation of the Netherlands and its American affiliate, Philips North America, according to records found in his CIC dossier. This was the same major electronics manufacturer that had provided a channel for his clandestine wartime operations. One of Grombach's most important assets, according to U.S. naval intelligence records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, was SS General Karl Wolff, a major war criminal who had gone into the arms trade in Europe after the war. A second primary component of Grombach's private intelligence apparatus was a large group of Hungarians loyal to the former royal privy councilor Tibor Eckhardt, according to Ray Ylitalo, who handled liaison with Grombach's undercover service for State Department intelligence. Grombach worked simultaneously under contract to the Department of State and the CIA. The ex-military intelligence man succeeded in creating "one of the most unusual organizations in the history of the federal government," according to CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick. "It was developed completely outside of the normal governmental structure, [but it] used all of the normal cover and communications facilities normally operated by intelligence organizations, and yet never was under any control from Washington." By the early 1950s the U.S. government was bankrolling Grombach's underground activities at more than $1 million annually, Kirkpatrick has said. Blowback - America's recruitment of Nazis, and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy by Christopher Simpson Collier / Macmillan, 1988 The following provides an interesting segue to Bill Kelly's piece on McCormack, Telford Taylor also mentions McCormack in his chapter in Codebreakers Edited by E. D. Hinsley and Alan Stripp.... http://www.telegraph...ney-Harris.html Whitney Harris [27 May 2010] Whitney Harris, who died on April 21 aged 97, was the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trial of leading figures in the Nazi regime, and among the first people outside that group to learn of the scale of the Holocaust. When the Allies began to contemplate bringing Hitler's henchmen to justice, Harris was stationed in London with the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. A lawyer in peacetime, he had become one of the few American experts on the workings of the complex German intelligence apparatus. In June 1945 Robert Jackson, the judge ordered by President Truman to establish a war-crimes tribunal, took offices in Mount Street, Mayfair, and Harris soon began to supply him with evidence. Once the military court had been set up by the four Allied Powers, Harris was given a typewriter and a German secretary and asked to prepare the case against an important but little-known defendant, Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, Kaltenbrunner had been appointed head of the RHSA, which controlled the Gestapo, various security agencies and the administration of the concentration camps. Harris also took charge of the prosecution of the Gestapo and the SD, the intelligence arm of the SS. In common with the dozens of other lawyers in the Allied team, Harris had at first little knowledge of the industrial scope of the crimes committed against civilians by the German state. The trial began only six months after the end of the conflict in Europe, and documents and witnesses were still coming to light as it started. Moreover, the charges focused not primarily on genocide but on responsibility for starting the war. Indeed, it was only by chance that, in late 1945, Harris came across evidence of the systemic murder of Jews. While questioning a senior SD officer, Otto Ohlendorf, about Kaltenbrunner's place in the chain of command, he happened to ask him what he had been doing in the Ukraine in 1941. Ohlendorf said that he had led an Einsatzgruppe, or special task force. To Harris's astonishment, he then calmly confessed that in a year it had killed about 90,000 people. Ohlendorf also gave the first details of vans equipped with gas being used to suffocate victims. The structure of the trial was somewhat haphazard. At the start, the defendants were prosecuted as a group, and it was not until January 1946 that Kaltenbrunner became the first of them to hear the case against him as an individual. Only in April, however, were witnesses called in his defence, one being the recently-captured commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss. Again, the significance of the camp's role in the Final Solution emerged largely as a by-product of Harris's interrogation in prison of Höss about Kaltenbrunner. Speaking with the detached air of a man who had simply been doing his duty, Höss told Harris that about 2.5 million people had perished at Auschwitz. Although historians now believe the total to have been about half that number, it was nevertheless a shocking admission, and did much to open eyes to the Nazis' plans for the Jewish race and other minorities such as gipsies. Kaltenbrunner was one of 12 defendants, among them Göring and Von Ribbentrop, condemned to death by the eight judges. Although Göring subsequently managed to commit suicide, the others were hanged in October 1946. At Jackson's request, their executions were witnessed on behalf of the prosecution by Harris, on whom the events at Nuremberg left an indelible impression. They stood, he said, "against the resignation of Man to the tyranny of evil leaders". Whitney Robson Harris was born in Seattle on August 12 1912. The son of a car dealer, he studied first at the University of Washington and, since jobs were hard to find during the Depression, decided to take a Law degree from Berkeley. Between 1936 and 1942 he practised with a small firm in Los Angeles. After Pearl Harbor, Harris joined the US Navy, rising to the rank of lieutenant-commander before being sent by the OSS to Britain to investigate war crimes in the European theatre. In late 1946 he became chief of the Legal Advice Branch of the US military government in Germany, and was in Berlin at the start of the Airlift. From 1948 until 1954 Harris taught Law at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where two colleagues from Nuremberg – Robert Storey and Telford Taylor – were also on the faculty. While there he published Tyranny on Trial (1954), the first general account and analysis of the evidence given to the Nuremberg court. Although he continued his legal career – initially as the first national executive director of the American Bar Association, then, from 1963, as counsel for the Southwestern Bell telephone company, and finally in private practice – Harris dedicated much of the rest of his long life to ensuring that the lessons of Nuremberg were not forgotten. In particular, he sought to build on the trial's main achievements: the acceptance of the concept of crimes against humanity and the recognition that obeying orders was no defence to such a charge. This he did by lobbying for the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Although it took half a century and the events in Yugoslavia and Rwanda to effect this, Harris was present at the conference in Rome in 1998 which finally established the tribunal at The Hague. In 2000 he went to Berlin to see Germany itself accede to the treaty. To his chagrin, however, the American government has thus far refused to ratify its membership of the ICC. For his work at Nuremberg, Whitney Harris was appointed to the Legion of Merit. Although almost boyishly handsome into old age, in recent years he had been suffering from cancer. His first wife, Jane, whom he married in 1964, died in 1999. He is survived by their son, and by his second wife, Anna, whom he married in 2000. Robert: SMU, Bletchley Park, [alumni....Telford Taylor, Colonel McCormack, Bill Bundy; Southwestern Bell......It really was a small world. Edited March 15, 2011 by Robert Howard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 excerpt of WC Testimony of Prof. Revilo Pendleton Oliver http://www.jfk-assas...l15/page730.php Mr. Jenner. Do you teach Latin and Greek, too, or have you? Mr. Oliver. Oh, that is classics. Mr. Jenner. I see. During the war did you have some special assignment militarily oriented or Government oriented ? Mr. Oliver. Yes; during the war I was on leave from the university for service with the War Department. Mr. Jenner. And without revealing any secrets, would you tell us the general nature of that? Mr. Oliver. The general nature of that was work that is supposedly secret in nature. I can only say I was with the War Department and that the offices in which I principally worked were located on Lee Boulevard* in Arlington, and not in the Pentagon. Mr. Jenner. Was this civilian oriented rather than army oriented? Mr. Oliver. I was a civilian expert. It was, however, an Army Establishment under the command of a general. Mr. Jenner. What was that, research work? Mr. Oliver. Yes; under the command of a brigadier general, I should say. Mr. Jenner. This research work, did that involve any work of investigating or inquiring into the commission of crimes or conspiracies, work of that nature? Mr. Oliver. Not actual investigation on my part. end FROM THE ARCHIVES CODETALKERS NOT WANTED Cryptologia, Jan 2005 by Kahn, David At the National Archives, I came across a sheaf of interesting documents about American Indian codetalkers. Some of the information they provided is widely known, like that about Philip Johnston, who almost single-handedly persuaded the Marines to use Navajos for secrecy in radiotéléphonie communications. One item reports on the World War I use of Choctaws. But some of the other items show that the Army, Navy, and Air Corps did not want American Indians as codetalkers, offering various objections. These documents offer a more rounded view of the use of native Americans than much of the literature and the film "Windtalkers" and help to explain why all services did not employ codetalkers. In the documents, Colonel McCormack, whose first name was Alfred, was the deputy director of the Military Intelligence Division's Special Branch, which edited solved messages for higher authority, including the president. Colonel, later Brigadier General, W. Preston Corderman commanded the Signal security Agency, the Army's central codebreaking organization. William F. Friedman, the spiritus rector of American Army cryptology, was its director of research. Who lawyer Carl Wheat was, or why he got involved, or why he was writing Friedman at his home instead of his office, are unknown to me. The documents come from the National Archives, Record Group 457 [Records of the National security Agency], Entry 9032, Box 949, Folder 55A: "Memoranda Use of American Indians as Communications Linguists 1943-1944." 8 September 1943 Memo for Colonel McCormack: 1. It is possible that this idea was "tried with little success in Word War I" but it is thought that official records would disclose that the idea was merely suggested and discarder as impractical and dangerous, not only from the standpoint of security but also from the standpoint of accuracy. 2. It is difficult at times for two intelligent and quite fluent speakers to understand each other on good commercial telephone circuits; when the circuits are only fair or bad, as they often are under adverse field conditions, then the quality of the signals becomes so poor that serious misunderstandings are very likely to arise. 3. The use of Indians for the purpose indicated will really mean that they would be employed in the capacity of interpreters serving as intermediaries between the unit commanders concerned. The danger of misunderstanding arising from this source, even in ordinary, every day life, is recognized; in military operations, where accuracy in, and proper understanding of technical terminology is important, they may have very serious consequences. 4. Add to the foregoing factors the fact that the vocabulary to any Indian dialect which might be selected will certainly be deficient in military and technical terms, forcing the use of the plain English terms, it is clear that security would be lessened. Or, if arbitrary designations were adopted for them, there would soon grow up a code - putting the matter back exactly where it was before, with a considerable loss in efficiency in communication. 5. So long as radiophone and telephone communications are in English unit commanders and security personal designated to monitor circuits can easily ascertain when and whether or not dangerous violations of security are occurring. If Indians were used, this would no longer be the case and unit commanders would be entirely dependent upon the good judgment of the personnel involved and their individual, personal appraisals or estimates of what may or may not be dangerous to say at a specific time over these circuits. 6. It would be better to employ present methods and personnel with a good code specifically adapted for the purpose. Recent development of a device called "Slidex" gives promise of yielding a good answer to the problem of safe and speedy radiophone communication for forward echelons. Samples of this device will be sent the New Caledonia and other commands as promptly as possible. W. Preston Corderman Colonel, Signal Corps Attached: /Msg. fm COMGENSOPAC /dtd. 6 Sept. 43 COPY ARMY WAR COLLEGE Washington, D. C. JWW; rw 29 September 1943 Col. S. P. Collins Acting Chief, Signal Security Branch, A. S. P., 300 Lee Blvd., Arlington, Virginia My dear Colonel Collins: With reference to paragraph 3, your 1st endorsement, dated September 23, 1943, as addressed to this office, I enclose a copy of an official document (23632.5) bearing on the use of Indian dialects for code purposes. This is the only document we have ever been able to locate in the official A. E. F. files on this subject. Very truly yours, /s/J. W. WRIGHT, J. W. WRIGHT, Colonel, Infantry end Re Revilo Oliver's testimony, there is also this interesting tidbit...... Mr. Jenner. You then go on to state what appears to be a statement of fact or you represent it to be. "In June of 1963 an experienced American military man made a careful analysis of the situation at that time, and in his highly confidential report concluded, on the basis of indications in Communist and crypto Communist sources, that the conspiracy's schedule called for a major incident to create national shock before Thanksgiving." Who is that experienced American military man to whom you had reference? ( Conferring with counsel. ) Mr. Oliver. The observer mentioned there is Col. Chesley Clark, retired. Mr. Jenner. Clark. Mr. Oliver. C-l-a-r-k, of the American Air Force. Mr. Jenner. Did he publish--this is a new name to me--- did he publish something on which you rely in making that statement? Mr. Oliver. This he told me not with a pledge that it was confidential, but with the implication that I would not disclose his name in a publication. I see no bar to disclosing it for the purpose of these hearings. If I may say, his estimates were made entirely from, what should we say, experience in psychological warfare and in reading the indications in the sequence of events and the form the propaganda was taking, and that the obviously had not, so far as I know, no inside information Mr. Jenner. This conversation or conversations that you had had with Colonel Clark, did it or they occur between the time of the assassination and the time of the publication of your article ? Mr. Oliver. No, before the assassination, I am sure. I would say perhaps--it is hard to recollect but I would say a month or 6 weeks before. Regarding R P Oliver, god bless his little Nazi, Jew hating soul, the Lee Boulevard Address was what caught my mind..... I found the following on wikipedia, but it does not provide a footnote citation.... During World War II, Oliver worked with distinction at the U.S. Army Signal Corps installation, Arlington Hall, in cryptanalysis. From 1942 until the autumn of 1945, he came to be in charge of a rapidly expanding department, and advanced from Analyst to Director of Research (eventually responsible for the work of about 175 persons). If you think about it, if the above is true it is by no means minutae, Oliver connected from everything to Willis Carto, William F. Buckley, the JBS, Robert Welch et cetera... Oliver's testimony even delves into Operation Judas and Radio Swan..... I am aware of an article Oliver wrote which accused FDR of advance knowledge of Pearl Harbor, but I have never seen proof that he worked in cryptanalsis at Arlington Hall.... He died on August 10, 1994, according to one website, by suicide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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