10/25/2017 1942 Tribune story implied Americans cracked Japanese code. Documents show why reporter not indicted - Chicago Tribune

1942 Tribune story implied Americans cracked Japanese code. Documents show why reporter not indicted

The Chicago Tribune's June 7, 1942, front page was led by a report on the that made evident the U.S. had cracked the Japanese naval code. (Chicago Tribune)

By Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas Chicago Tribune

OCTOBER 25, 2017, 7:39 AM

or 74 years, only members of a Chicago grand jury could definitively say why they declined to indict a F reporter responsible for a 1942 front page article that implied American cryptanalysts had cracked the Japanese military code.

Documents from the case were unsealed for a group of petitioners in late 2016 after a three-year court battle. On Wednesday, a number of carefully selected documents will be publicly available online for the first time on the National Security Archive’s website, said John Prados, editor of the postings.

The timing — just 10 days after the publication of “Stanley Johnston’s Blunder,” a novel by former journalist and historian Elliot Carlson — was merely coincidental, both men said. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-tribune-espionage-act-book-web-post-out-20171024-story.html 1/4 10/25/2017 1942 Tribune story implied Americans cracked Japanese code. Documents show why reporter not indicted - Chicago Tribune Carlson sued for the release of the grand jury documents with the help of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Prados testified as an expert.

Yet whether you dive into the documents in the comparatively short online post or consume all 242 pages of Carlson’s labor of love, you’re likely to come away with the same sense: The grand jury declined to indict Tribune war correspondent Stanley Johnston and the Tribune’s then-managing editor, J. Loy Maloney, because Adm. Ernest J. King, who Carlson called “the adult in the room,” didn’t want to risk even more media attention and the chance that Japanese leaders would change the code from the one the Americans had already cracked. Get 3 months for ONLY $1 “If Hurry!this had Sale gone ends on 10/31. to a public trial, there’sSUBSCRIBE no telling› how much publicity it would’ve received or how much chaos it would’ve caused,” Carlson said from his Maryland home Tuesday. “It was already turning into a media circus, and Adm. King didn’t want to risk it hitting the airwaves. They didn’t so much fear Japanese agents in America, but that somehow all the publicity of the trial would come to the attention of the Japanese and they would change the codes.”

Not such a spoiler alert: If you know your history, or if you make it to Page 242 of Carlson’s book, you’ll learn that the fear that drove the government to take the further than it had in its history was unfounded. The never dramatically changed its code, Carlson wrote. It started World War II using code JN-25(d). By the end of the war, though numerous changes were made, the Japanese never greatly strayed from the code, ending with JN-25(p).

“Did any of these shifts flow from, or have any connection with, the Chicago Tribune scandal of June-August 1942? They did not. IJN leaders never realized their code had been broken. If they had, they would certainly have replaced JN-25 with a totally different system. They would have had no other choice, but they never did,” Carlson concluded in the book.

On the phone, he said the Japanese navy did change parts of the code every few months, and each time the Japanese did, it would take a few weeks before Americans learned what all the changes meant.

“This game went on the entire war, but they never changed their basic code,” Carlson said.

In Prados’ words, “The continued utility of these penetrations depended on Japan not discovering the leaks, and not changing their codes. This made the Chicago Tribune affair a high-stakes national security matter from the beginning.”

As the Tribune Editorial Board pointed out in a September 2016 piece written when Carlson was still pursuing the sealed documents, World War II’s Battle of Midway involved cryptanalysts who worked tirelessly to break the codes used by the Japanese navy as the Japanese planned to seize Midway Island and use it as a steppingstone to seize the Hawaiian Islands.

Johnston, a war correspondent for the Tribune who was credentialed and vetted by the FBI, was working aboard a ship with U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Chester W. Nimitz. “The Navy and the Franklin D.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-tribune-espionage-act-book-web-post-out-20171024-story.html 2/4 10/25/2017 1942 Tribune story implied Americans cracked Japanese code. Documents show why reporter not indicted - Chicago Tribune Roosevelt administration privately knew, the details the Tribune had corresponded to a top secret dispatch” from Washington to Nimitz, Prados wrote.

Carlson said Nimitz was “very, very sloppy and careless” with his information and had even invited Johnston to stay in his personal suite aboard the ship.

“He had his own rules, which he himself then violated,” Carlson said of Nimitz. “The information from Washington should have been seen only by department heads, but when they came to his suite to get coffee and to socialize, he couldn’t resist reading parts of these messages.”

The 2016 editorial also addressed how Johnston may have gotten the information from Cmdr. Morton Seligman, who was even closer with Johnston than was Nimitz.

“Many historians think Morton Seligman, a U.S. Navy commander, intentionally or inadvertently leaked the info. A month earlier, during the Battle of the Coral Sea, Johnston had raced below deck to rescue badly burned sailors on Seligman's sinking carrier, the USS Lexington. On June 7, as the Navy's angry commander in chief Adm. Ernest King absorbed the Tribune's Midway report, he had on his desk a draft citation honoring Johnston for his heroism aboard the Lexington,” according to the editorial.

Prados and Carlson agree that Johnston likely should have known the censorship agreements made when stationed in a war zone — which the Pacific was at that time — meant the article should’ve been sent to Washington for approval. Carlson, in particular, feels Managing Editor Maloney skipped that step, in part because it was about midnight and they were going to print, and in part because they knew the government would likely kill the whole article.

“There was, as you say, a lot of blame to go around,” Carlson said.

Although naval officials should never have discussed such sensitive information in front of a reporter, Carlson feels Johnston probably should’ve restrained himself in gathering the information and then worked harder to reel in editors who added a Washington dateline to the piece and a line stating the information came from officials in Washington.

“It was very, very sensitive information — yet he copied it all down, went back to his hotel room and later showed his boss. And Maloney said, ‘This is just wonderful, fantastic stuff, write it up!’” Carlson said.

Carlson explained the agreement dictated that all copy written from a war zone meant that before publication, Tribune employees should’ve sent it to the naval censorship office to review and approve.

“It’s true that the Tribune was one of the more responsible publications, and they showed a high degree of concern about their stories, but in this one instance, they didn’t do it,” he said. “They knew that they could never get an answer in time for deadline, and if they waited a day, it no longer would be timely, and I think Maloney rationalized that the story wasn’t covered by the guidelines. He called the Washington bureau, and they assured him he was making the right call.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-tribune-espionage-act-book-web-post-out-20171024-story.html 3/4 10/25/2017 1942 Tribune story implied Americans cracked Japanese code. Documents show why reporter not indicted - Chicago Tribune Carlson said there was some gray area because the rules were about U.S. intelligence, not foreign intelligence.

“The Tribune editors and writers were breaking faith with their readers, and Johnston, I think, had already broken faith with the Navy,” he said.

Prados, who has spent decades as a proponent of open government documents and believes in the public’s right to access information through declassification and the Freedom of Information Act, was critical of the declassification process.

“The secrecy of this was needlessly protected for some time — for decades. It’s another example of the creakiness of security classification that seriously needs to be revamped,” he said.

Carlson said the first four days of grand jury testimony were essentially scene-setting details and the plan was for cryptanalysis officials from the Navy to arrive on the fifth day and present the meat of the argument: how Johnston’s actions could negatively affect the code breakers and what it could mean to the U.S. if they no longer could decipher the code because of a news article.

“(Adm.) King pulled a fast one on everybody by refusing to let his code breakers go to Chicago,” Carlson said. “He pulled them back, and that came as a shock to everyone. When they failed to show, the grand jury was astounded that they were being asked to indict people for charges which they didn’t understand the nature of. So once the jury didn’t have witnesses to tell them what the indictment was to be about, they threw up their hands and said, ‘We see nothing we can do.’”

Prados echoed those sentiments, using the naval term “torpedoed” to describe what King did to the proceedings. The government didn’t really have the option to attack Johnston or the Tribune after that, he said.

Prados’ piece, including all the now-public documents, can be found here. [email protected]

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Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune

This article is related to: Japan, Asia, World War II (1939-1945), Freedom of Information Act, Espionage Act of 1917

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