TITLE:. Hunt For Axis Agent Radios AUTHOR: George B. Sterling
VOLUME:
STUDIES IN
INTELLIGENCE
A collection ol articles on the historical, operational, doctrinal, and ihcorctlcal aspects ol intelligence.
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All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence arc ihose of
ihe authors They do noi necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Central Inielhgencc Agency or any other US Governrneni entity, past or present Nothing in ihe contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Govemmeni endorsement of an article's faciual stalcmenis and interpretations.
OFFtCIAl USE ONLY
Bow FCCt routine policing of the etherjxcarne fax WorlduKt-purposear-flung counter-etpionage operation.
. HUNT FOB AXIS AGENT RADIOS George E. Sterling
hope that this country, particularly Its intelligencehas become better organized toationalit vrashen the war. after slowlyfor two years from Europe toward VS. shores, suddenly exploded upon us at Pearl Harbor, thousands ot new kinds of things had to be undertaken to desperate haste and with t times disorderly improvisation. Many agencies were given mergency duUes for no better reason than that they were using equipment approximating what was needed for the war-time work. That they by and large discharged these oxtraordi-nary responsibilities well, at the same time helpingtoward the gradual readjustment of temporarilyfunctions. Is something in which all those who parUci- a ted can take pride.
The Federal Communications Commission, because itetwork of radio monitoring and direction-Qndlng stations to police the domestic airwaves, was given Its full share of duties not called for to Us Job description. Itescue service for planes lost In the black-out or bad weather, locating them by their radio signals and furnishing them their bearings; morelanes, many of which wouldhave been really lost, were given FCC emergency fixes before Army Air Force personnel were trained, with our help, to take over the Job. It monitored enemy commercial radio circuits and furnished the Board ot Economic Warfare with hundreds of leads useful in the preclusive buying program. To meet requirements of the Eastern, Gulf, and Westerncommands, the Commission's legal responsibility forunlicensed radio stations was extended toof the coast by radio patrols for signs of surreptl-
Axil Agent Rodit
communication with
intercepted foreign weather traffic for our air itored foreign radio broadcasts, setting up the organizaticr which now has become the Foreign Broadcast Informatiw Service, and published texts and analyses of broadcast new and propagandaariety of governmentrained OSS personnel In radio methods and procedures ara built equipment for their use.
earuarter the FCC's Radio Intelligent* Division, as the monitoring network was known, carried Uu full toad ot military radio intelligence in Alaska, where th Army was not able toadio intelligence compam until late2 andonitoring station in operandi only in the springt radio-patrolled the Alaskan coas by sea. It also participated at Army request in military in teUlgence elsewhere, most notably in Hawaii and on the wes coast. In San Francisco it set up an Intelligence Cent* where officers ot the military services were on duty aroun( the clock. It identified and tracked the radio-equipped bal loons which the Japanese launched against our west coast It discovered and established the locationazi weather station on Greenland, which the Coast Guard was then abl< to destroy. It trained the military personnel who eventually took over most of these duties, prepared instructional book lets and monitoring aids for them, and supervised their wort until they became competent enough to operate without help
The RID even participated from afar In the guerrilla move men Is in the Philippines. This activity began when one of our monitors pickedignal using the call, PK1JC, of ai amateur In the Dutch East Indies, where no amateurs couli operate. We fixed its origin in northern Luzon. FKUCessage coded, we determined,rewar Signal Corps cipher disk, giving the name and serial number of anAmerican soldier trying to establish contact witl MacArthur's headquarters. He requested acknowledgementignal from General Hectric's powerful KGEI transmit ter near San Francisco. The Signal Corps arranged for thl' acknowledgement and asked us to .continue^copying all hi; messages. Later, when the'Uuaomg"or transmitters by sub marine created quite heavy traffic from the Philippine guer
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rimary mordtorlng station athdro,was exclusively devoted, at Signal Corps request, to copying it and expediting it by private teletype circuitashington
PoUcmg the Domestic Ether
Although these spirited improvisations requested andby the military services lay tar outside theproper charter, the Communications Acthey were undertaken eagerly when required and relinquished later gracefully but with reluctance by our radio men and women anxious to contribute to the war effort in any way they could. Our people had enough oi their own proper work to do, tor after Pearl Harbor the regular Job of the Radio Intelligence Division tookew and grimmer aspect. It was nowuestion of tracking down maladjusted transmitters, unshielded diathermy apparatus, or even the illegalof pranksters, smugglers, and racetrack tipsters, but of sealing the country's leaky ether against loss of war secrets over the radio circuits of enemy agents. Hitherto, with commercial communications to foreign countries free of surveillance, spies in this country had had no need to risk secret transmitters; now these commercial facilities were closed or censored and the whole spectrum had to be patrolled for furtive whisperings in Morse cipher. The RID was under challenge to live up to its initials.
The Division's equipment, personnel, and physicalwere adequate to the task. During the state of national emergency that preceded Pearl Harbor the FCC had been au-
I thorized to begin an expansion of its radio detectionwhich were ultimately stabilized in twelve primarystations, about sixty subordinate monitoring posts, and about ninety mobile units distributed through the United
' States, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Alaska. The fixed stations and many of the mobile units were linked by instantaneous communications. They were organized into three majorbased on radio intelligence centers respectively in Washington, near San<ttanc*sco, and in Honolulu; but Inthe locationource of radio signals the threewere fused into one and directed from Washington.
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Agent Radio
Each primary station, in addition to its complex of rhombic and other antennae and Its receiving and recording equip ment, had at least one Ad cock directionarge rotat ing antenna sensitive to the direction of shortwave signals bounced off the ionosphere; this device bad been Invented in England, bnt was refined and improved by RID engineers. At short range, sayewimple loop antenna can pick up the ground-wave componentignal andIts direction; our disguised mobile units included these in their equipment And finally, for locating transmitters at really close quarters, we developed what weignal-strength meteran could cany In the pain of his hand whileuilding to determine whichignal came from.
In the routine day-and-night operationonitoringthe patrolman of the ether would cruise his beat, passing up and down the frequencies of the usable radio spectrum noting the landmarks of the regular fixed transmissions, recognizing the peculiar modulationnown transmitter or the characteristic fistamiliar operator, observing an Irregularity in operating procedure and pausing long enough to verify the call letters, ortrange signal andthe traffic for close examination, and then sometimes alerting the nation-wide net toix on the location of its source. Moreuch fixes would be made in an average month, requiring the taking ofndividual bearings. For although mathematically the intersection ol two bearingsix, therror that must in prac: tice be allowed in the angleearing, even when it isfor variations In propagation and site conditions,considerable at distances that may run to thousands of miles; and at least four bearings are needed for areliable long-range fix.
Radio Spies in the United States
With respect to Axis agents In the United States and its territories this close vigilance was almost purely prophylactic, and effective In its prophylaxis: out of respect for it enemy agents, as far as we ourselves were able to discover, made only two attempts during the entire war to establish radi< communications across our ethereal frontiers and in both cases
Axil Agent Radios
toingle message thrrnigh^Th^ stories of these4-two, although the; have been told from other viewpointsre worth summarizing here.
The first took place in the springong beforearbor had roused us to hunt for radio spies here in earnest. Our routine monitoring turned up an unidentified transmit-ter carrying on coded trafficistant station which usedthe call AOR. We asked the Army and the Navy if ite one of theirs. They had no knowledge of it; the Navy thought it mightt John, New Brunswick, station. But our direction finders showed it to be on Long Island, andorrespondent AOR near Hamburg, Germany. Weo the FBI.
The Bureau told us In confidence that it wasan agent radio, but under their control, aWilliam Scbold, had revealed that he was recruited by the Nazis and instructed to set It up. The FBI built andere manning the station for him, feeding Hamburg falsennocuous information and identifying its agent sources.eception continued for moreear under oururveillance, until at the end of3 Oermano whom the traffic had furnished leads were arrested.heir trial that fall, when the defense tried to maintainOR waserman station but an FBI entrapmentn the United States, RID engineer Albert Mcintoshharts showing the fix on Hamburg. His publicust have been one factor In the Oerman decision not togent transmitters in the United States.
They did try it once more, though, right after Pearl Bar-bor, apparently on local initiative, impromptu. In the general alert which followed that shocking Sunday morning weut several mobile monitoring units out cruising thengton streets. These were equipped not only with loopfinders butevice we called the watch-dog, an
* Wllhelm HoetU. one of the Oerman foreign Intelligence area chiefs, affirmed during his Interrogation by 3rd Army In June IMS that the Slcherbeitidlenst had not been able toingle wireless connection either In the United States or In England.
in Don WhlIcbcad'a The rBIStorv.
OTFRTTAl USF
Axis Agent Rodioi
frequencies. (It waa patented by two RID engineer! and later used by OSS and tben tbe wee hours ofDecemberne of these watch-dogs was triggered by signalsransatlantic frequency. At the same moment three thousand miles away our monitors in Portland, Oregon, heard themUA briefly and vainly calling acontrol center. Five other direction-finding stations were set to watch tbe frequency; andew hours later DA tried it again, they reported the bearings projected on the chart In Figurehis fix confirmed the uncertainof the watch-dog that the transmitter was in
Now three mobile units were given the scent, and they quickly narrowed down tbe location to the Oerman Embassy, as shown in Figuretroblem to pin-point the transmitter without entering the Embassy because thewas stretched between two buildings, with equal signal strength at each end and apparently lead-in wires to both buildings. This problem was solvedre-dawn conference with the FBI, who arranged. In cooperation with the Potomac Electric Powerhat we could go downanhole in the street and cut the power to each building separately in turn when UA began to call. In the end, however, because tbe State Department was afraid for our own diplomaticstill in Germany, we did not seize UA but simply set up two jammers to drown him out if be should try once more. He never did.
This beginning was the end for Axis radio agents within our borders; any German agents picked up by the FBIwere found to have been using secret ink or some other communications than radio to get information out of the country. And we learned that some Japanese agents whotheir headquarters' permission to setransmitter here were turned down on the grounds that the FCC would nab them as soon as they got on the air. Outside our own states and territories Itifferent story, one in which also the RID became intimately, concerned.
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Agent Rad:
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One day Inonitors at tbe secondary post to Miamitation losing Irregular procedures signing the callne not in conformity with those on commercial and other authorised circuits. It was forease (or investigation. Bearings fired Us tion near Lisbon, Portugal; and as it continued to call nightly withouteply. RID units were to be on the lookout for the answering station. After rronth monitors at the secondary posts to Pi and Albuquerque simultaneously picked up thetation signing CNA; bearings were taken which located transmitter In South Africa.
A few days later another station using theas intercepted, this time with tbe callt was also Lisbon, and the characteristics of its signal showed that out question BX7 was the same station which had previo signedpparently the control stationetwork.eek an answer with tbe call letters NPD was picked up our Rhode Island monitoring post. This station proved be in Portuguese West Africa.
The messages exchanged between the Lisbon controland the two out-stations in Africa were of course RID did notrypUnalysisbeing tbe responsibility of the FBI.Signal intelligence Service, and. on behalf of thethe Coast Guard; but in order to facilitate theof intercepted traffic we hadouplein cryptanalytlc work. These men attained askill and In some cases were able to furnish leadsdecipherment. The Lisbon cipher was one of thesewas an up-and-down transposition whose key lengthday to
The texts of tbe messages showed this network to be channel by which German agents In the neutral coun and colonies of Africa reported on the movements troops, and materiel and on political events. or example, ueJ3outh Africa station reported ship
Agent Radios
lags axid the concentration of Allied trocps^whlch latextook Madagascar. As translated from the Portuguese:
TWBNTYBLXTH. AMERICANS -NISHNAHA" AND "SOLONTO-SBAVT SAILED WITH ORE FOR NEW ORLEANS, ALSO EN GUSH "CITY OP H.ANGOLA" AND ENGLISH nSTPIEGO" FROM DURBAN ARRIVED WITH PASSENGERS. TROOPS STILL CONCENTRATED; TRYING TO LEARN DETAILS.
From Portuguese West Africa an agent with the code-name Armando sent similar information intermingled freely with operational reports. On
ARMANDO REPORTS ENGLISH CONSUL RECEIVED LONGTELEGRAM RE1-ATTVE ENFORCINO STRICTAGAINST ESPIONAGE. OFFICIALS CLAIM KB ENGLISH STILL COMMAND CAPE VERDE SUBMARINE CABLE. MANY MEN GO TO FREETOWN OWING APPROACH TEN CONVOY SHIPS, LARGE TROOPS, AMMUNITION AND TANKS.INFORMER DOES NOT KNOW IP THEY REMAIN LAGOS OR FREETOWN AND BATHURST
On January
WEST INDIA ARRIVED BATHURST FOURTEEN WITH PILOTS AIRCRAFT MECHANICS DISASSEMBLED TANKS ANTIAIRCRAFT MACHINE GUNS MUNITIONS LARGE QUANTITY GASOLINE CAMPAIGN TENTS. NEXT MONTH WE WILL HAVE REGULAR CONNECTION DAKAR THROUGH INTELLIGENT NATIVEAUTHORIZED TO ENTER COLONIAL SERVICE UNDER GOVERNOR TO HELP MY WORK. ARMANDO
On February 5:
CHIEF OP POLICE LIEUTENANT UNDERCOVER IMPRUDENTLY WORKS FOR ENGLISH. CONVENIENT TO OBTAIN HISLISBON. HE CAN DAMAGE US. ARMANDO
But the Germans were growing dissatisfied with Armando's work. The Lisbon station radioed nun on
SAID THEREO BE DISEMBARKMENT ENGLISH AMERICAN TROOPS DAKAR NEXT POTEEN DAYS. WHY NO REPORTS MOST URGENT.
On
DISEMBARKATION TROOPS FREETOWN NOT DAKAR. IVOU INVESTIGATE. NOT SATISFIED REPORTS WHICH! CALL FOR. HAVE RECEIVED BETTER REPORTS FROM OTHER
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Axil Agent Radiol
.nd most mdiscreetiy,arch* .sajftStft-;
SECURE EXPEDITIOUSLY RECENT REPORTS DAKAR FREE] TOWN RELIEVE CAROLINA OF HIS DUTIES. BEARER SHOULD DELIVER LETTERS PERSONALLY TO PORl TBR HOTEL DUAB UAOOKS VICTORIA STREET FOR Ml MERCKEI- WK ARE EXPERIMENTING CONTINUATION OR QANIMATION TWO MORE MONTHS. USE YOUR BEST REPORTi FOB MY VINDICATION.
The organization did not In (act last much longer thanj two more months, but it was not the Germans who term! nated it Revelations like this one enabled Allied tateUtgenc*-officers to clean out the Portuguese group in the
Nasi Agent Training and Procedures
Having thus demonstrated its capability in the European" theater, the RID was approached early2 by its BriUsl counterpart, the Radio Security Service,equesthe establishment of regular liaison and exchange of Inlorma tion. From then on to the end of tbe war weost harmonious and fruitful relationship whichuildretty complete picture of the German diplomats and espionage networks and their activities. The characteris tics of Individual transmitters and individual operators wen recorded and catalogued so that they could be recognizee when they were usedifferent circuit. Nearly all th< codes and ciphers were broken, and the great bulk of the clan destine traffic could be promptly read. During the mostperiod of the war in Europe the RID wasrequencies used in clandestine intra-Europcan circuits.
After the Lisbon net was closed down the Oermans had fivej major networks, with control centers in Berlin, Hamburg Bordeaux, Madrid, and Paris. The out-stations were located! in practically every European country, in Africa and the At lantic, and in the western hemisphere. The operators of thest out-stations were in general not skilled radiomen, we learned from captured spies, but agents who had been trained in radii and codes and ciphers.along with other trad ample photography and microfilm, secretnda school near Hamburg. Their radic
Axis Agent Radios
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training embraced the. use, of International Morse and tbe construction and operation of transmitters and receivers.
Student operators were required to achieve 'the modest transmitting speed of twelveinute (as compared, for example, with our Merchant Marine requirementhen they wouldive-minute sample transmissionevice which recorded graphically their speed, touch, and characteristic fist. On the basis of this graph they wereermanent transmitting speed and given another week's training at this speed Then agraph was made as each operator graduated, this one to be filedpecimen signature against which his laterwould be verified as genuine and not tbe deception of enemy counterespionage. This procedure was apparently adopted after tbe Germans learned that the FBI had fooled them with the Sebold station on Long Island
The agents were furnished portable transmitters andusually of the type builtuitcase, complete with antenna wire, tools, and all the accessories necessary for going Into Immediate operation. They were given preciseforirectional antenna which woulda maximum signal to their control center and ato eavesdroppers. Then they were dispatched to their posts by neutral ship, by submarine, by parachute, or over clandestine land routes.
The first sign of their safe arrival would be their callon the air; and this would signify their presence to us, too, for It is difficult to disguise an agent radio's call. At one time, when the control of one of the German nets passed from the Abwehr to the Gestapo, its transmitters adopted the call letters and frequencies of commercial stations in South America; but other characteristic procedures oftraffic still betrayed them, and this device was later abandoned.
Not being able to disguise their calls, the agent networksractice of changing call letters, usually every day, in an effort to spoil continuity for their pursuers. But very fewota which remained nonrepetitiveear, say, and we were able to work out In advance the call letters which many espionage transmitters would be using on any
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Agent Radio-
future day; sometimes we even caught the outstations making mistakes in their own system. Some worfce.istifferent calls which repeated Itself everj month. Some had two such lists, one for odd and one foi even months. One system was worked out with such littl forethoughtpy once had to call with the Internationa distress signal, SOS. This was one of the systems that deter mined call letters in connection with the cipher key for thonnection that sometimes led our part-time crypt analysts into the decipherment of messages.
One group, we learned from one of its indiscreet first mes sages sent blind, based its calls and transposition cipher or the Albatross edition of Axel Munthe's The Story of Saiook excluded by copyright arrangements from th British Empire and the United States,ifferent pag each day. The page to be used was determined by addingonstant number assigned each agent the number of th month and that of the day in question. The last line oi this page contained the calls to befirst three let ters, reversed, for the control center and the last three, re versed, for tbe out-station. An example of this procedun may be of interest.
Shortly before midnight, eastern standard time, on, one of our monitors at Laredo, Texas, copies the fol lowing slow hand-keyed message0 kilocycles.
WW EVT EVT. EVT.
rwKOK wonug rami dlvcp nabrs cartm nunc yekrx
dkxue vccxp exsem oeunm cmirl xrtfo cxqyx exjsv nxmah grsml zpems nqxxx etnix aaexv uxura foeab xueut afxej! ehten NMKXA xnzor ECSE1 oaine mrcvx sen sd pelxa hpre
We know from our analysis of previous messages that the call EVT is due to be used by an operator of the San Michele group whose assigned constant numberhecking, we add the month andwould be MarchyMeanturn to pagef the novel The last word on the page iso EV1 is right. The first word on the last line ishe control center will sign RTV
The message sent in the early hours ofas prob ably enciphered ono we go back tohown here opposite, for the key. Here the first line reads.ould
ONtY
Axil Agent Radios
i would have known .bow lo muwr hu fear, and would have brco the airongcr ol the twoI have been in later years more than ooee,ave stayedhandevolver in fear of life.
When will the anti-viviscctionsstt radii* that when they are asking (or total prohibition of experiment! on living animals they are asking for what It is impossible lo grant them? Pasteur's vaccintlioo against rabies hai reduced the mortality in thu terrible diacaaeinimum and Bchnng's anr>diphihenc aerum uvea the lives ofundred thousand children every year. Arc not these two facet alone cifBognt to make tbeac weU-nv mng lovert of animals understand thai diaoweren of new worlds like Pasteur, of new remedies against bitherfo iocunblelike Koch, Ehrlich and Behnng must be led to pursue their researches unhampered by restrktions and undisturbed by interference from outsiders. Those lo beree hand arc besides so few that tbey can be counted on one's fingers. For the rest no doubt most severe restrictions ihould be insisted upon, perhaps even loial prohibition.o further. One of the most weighty arguments against several of lb escon living anlinali is that their practical value is much reduced, owing lo ihe fundamem.il differenceathological and physiological point of view between ihe bodies of men and the bodies of animals. Bui why ihould these experiments be limited lo the bodies ofwhy should they not be carried out on the living body of man as well? Why should not the bom criminals, the chronic evil-doers, condemned to waste their remaining life in prison, usdeas and often dangerous to others and towhy should not these inveterate offender* against our Laws beeduction of their penal servitude if they were willing to submit under annttvetics to certain ejeneri-ments on their living bodies for tlie benefit of mankind? If ihe judge, before putting on the black cap, had in his power to offer the murderer tbe alternative between the gallows and penal servitude fornd so manyave Little doubt there would be no lack of candidates. Why should not Doctor Wo ran off, the practical value of his invention be
have known how to master his fear" etc We take the first nine letters and number them in sequence:
OFFICIAL
Agenf Radio
Substituting these figures in the first four groups, with null for any missing letters, we get
4 fl
5 fl x
4ettersth message fedhere areetters following, but th first group of fire ispecial mdicator lo^entifying th agent.
This is as far as the BID needed to go for its own purposed before turning the message over to the FBI- But the text could be worked out from the same page of the novel. La]lank message In lines of twenty letters each. Keep ing the columnsetters in rows ofake nim columns of eight letters each followed by eleveneven each. Write across the top the first twenty initial let ters of the line? onkipping indented lines. Ni these in alphabetical sequence, and then go down the col in the indicated order with the encrypted text. This ment gives the clear German text:
67 IS02SECB 8NULLE IN 8ACHTMEZxMEZ xVONDAMPFER xC AMPEAUF HOEHExRBC IFExREC IPEx OEM ELD ET x
In English:
TEXT SIXTY FROM VESTA TO STEIN. QUEEN MARTOFF RECIFE BY STEAMSHIP CAMPBIRO ONAT EIGHTEEN O'CLOCK MIDDLE EUROPEAN TIME.
The Latin AmericanI
The Queen Mary message, from an agent in Rio decameoment of climax in RlD's mostheater of counterespionage operations, Latin AmcricaTl There were in March2 six agent transmitters in Rio|
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alone, and three of them reported tbe^ecn Mary's anival. on the twelfth. The espionage messages were full of news about her until after she sailed onut these were the last messages most of the agents sent. By tbe time she was again In mld-AGantlcafely altered course, theauthorities had arrestedf the Oerman spies. The story behind this roundup is first of all an RID story.
Signs of the Nasi effort to create an espionage base in Latin America began to be apparent as early as the falln Octoberur primary station at Allegan,pickedtrange maritime signal using thecall BCNL. Other monitoring posts were alerted, andumber of similar calls were traced to ships in tbe Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. The PCC's Tampa office succeeded In identifying these vessels as small ones operatedirm called Cough Bros, and controlledoastalnear Belize in British Honduras.. Caribbean Defense Command, after developing evidence that this fleet was being used to refuel German submarines andanal Zone employee whoember of the ring and was able torap for nineteen others, including the ringleader, prominent British shippingGeorge Gough, in Belize.
Meanwhile inerman spy was sending outreports in private code over Chapultepec Radio, the same transmitter used for clandestine communication with Berlin during the first worldfter Pearl Harbor, when the use of code on commercial facilities was prohibited in Mexico, thisroperly registered amateur, resorted to bis own clandestine radio, but made the mistake offirst with the FBI's deception station on Long Island.
The concerted German drive to establish radio agent nets in this hemisphere, however, and our struggle against them, began in the springne of our monitors at MiLUs, Massachusetts, detected the faint signalstation that was trying to hide its transmissionransatlanticcircuit operating on the same frequency. It was repeating the call letters REW, but the signal sounded quite Uke that of AOR, the FBI-operated Sebold transmitter's re-
B.rdley'B The American Black Chamber
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usfr-owrr
OFFICIAL
Agon! Roc/id
Bpondejit. Other morutorlng stations, asked to help identifhe suspicious and noise-shrouded signal, discovered tha when REW paused totationifferent frequenc would start sending the call letters PYL. The two transmit ters put on the same performance at toe same houray, and for several days; they were apparently trying with] out success to communicate with each other. One of ou| monitors became so engrossed that he wanted to go on th air and help them out Our fires showed that REW was in) deed In Hamburg, and PYL In Valparaiso, Chile, an espionage station discovered before it could make contact with its bast
For the present, however, there was nothing thatone about agent radios. Jurisdictionisten in, and more and more of them began to appear, settin upalf dozen of the Latin American republics. Chil and Brazil held the principal concentrations at this tim< There were three main agent networks in Brazil, centeret on transmitters that we designated LTR, CEL. and CIT, frorr, the call signs they were using when first heard; theur decipherment example was LXR. Evidence of the damagfl] they could do began to mount
The German control stations, for example, sent exhaustiv lists of requirements for naval Information, asked PYL li Chile if it coulduitable man for us among student going to the United States for airomplimented agents as "exceptionally correct" in their reports on tech nlcal details of English and American cruisers' equipment! and assigned agents to investigate "USA parade and air base Colombia and Venezuela" and "air units Trinidad and Lesse Antilles and flights via those places to West Africa; airplan' types, movement,he agent radios sent back report like these:
JULY. NINE BOEINGS FLEW WITH AND AMERICANS. IN NEXT FEW FLOWN ACROSS. DETAILS FOLLOW.
ORE
JULY. LM REPORTSOCKHEED HUDSONSCROSS. ENGLISH REGISTRY ANDUSTRALIAN CREW. UOKINO CLIPPER LEFT NATAL ON SEVENTH ALLlfOj EDLY FOR BOLANO WITH IS LOCKHEED MECHANICS AND CREW.
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OCTOBER. BMM REPORTS CRAFT OF VARIOUS TYPES AND BOOO LEGEDLY LANDING CORPS BEING
7 AUGUST. USA STEAMER^ URUGUAY ON LASTjVOYAaE TO TOTTED STATES LEFT RIOUNE. WAS^ONVOYED BY BRITISH AUXILIARY CRUISER CARNARVON CASTLE TOTRIPAYS. CRUISER TRAVELEDAHEAD SOMETIMES ASTERN OF SS URUGUAY.
HUNDRED US AOt-SPECIAL TROOPS OP
In November PYLetwork courier as "daughter of Clarke, secretary in USA embassy Quitond ten days after Pearl Harbor an agent offered details on the torpedo safety nets with which ships were being equipped and also "absolutely safeho will send to bottom two or three large armed Englishithout an;falling on us. If we are interested payment only after sinking, nothing inhe control station In Germany of course approved: "Proposal for destruction of ships veryeports on plane production also now began in earnest:
1 JANUARY. CURTISS COLUMBUS FACTORY WTLL BEGIN MASS PRODUCTION SERIESINGIE SKATER STUKA FOR NAVY. ARMAMENT ONE CANNON FIVE MACHINEP WRIGHT. BUILT0 HP WRIOHT INSTAGE-C BEGUN INFACTORY AT BEGINNING DECEMBER. EMPLOYEES ALL CURTISS AIRCRAFT FACTORIES DECEMBER. PROPELLER PRODUCTION
Our Government finally took action. On Januaryhe Rio conference of foreign ministers of the Americanrecommended Immediate measures to eliminate the clandestine stations. An Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense was established with headquarters inand under its auspices we dispatched some of the best RID monitoring officers to the sue countries where we knew agent radios to be operating (Brazil, Chile, Mexico. Cuba, Martinique,heywo-foldthe hide-outs of known agent transmitters with mobile direction-finding equipment they took along, and to helpovernments of these countries eso&liah monitoringorks which could keep them free of radio spies in the future.
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this second purpose we sent men also tg^ta other- coun tries (HalU, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay) Forty men from eighteen Latin American republicshe same time brought here for training at our school Irl Laurel, Maryland.
The man we sent to Brazil was Robert D. Lime Hethe groundwork for that arrestdd spies afterMary left her dock in March. This roundupcleaned out the LXR and CIT organizations,an named Christiansen; they were neverSome members of the CEL net escaped to thebut two series of arrests after they ventured twiceto reactivate their transmitter put an end toBy mid-year Brazil was permanently cured of itsinfestation. Llnx stayed on to direct theof the monitoring service, and became known asof Brazilian
Although our men to Latin America worked quietly by themi selves as much as possible, the Oerman agents were notways unaware of what was going on. We heard one of them telling his control that he knew at least six Yankee direction, finders were beamed on him and he was going to cool off iri the woodshile. (Be cooled offentral Americann Chile, the PYL organization took the precaution oitand-by transmitter to assure continuity o: communication if one should be seized. OnY1essage informing Hamburg thathom the] had employed to operate the new transmitter, would be readj to get on the air the following day. Onlthough RLD had not yet received the decrypted text of this message our monitors picked up Pedro's test transmission with th* call GES and fixed bis location in Antofagasta.
The arrival of our man. John de Bardeleben, in Valparaiso on Marchas the signal for the main PYL transmlttei to go mobile. De Bardeleben spent weeks tracking its chang tog locations to the areaen-mile radius of Valpa, raiso. It developed that every second week,ission would be made from the house.at Avenidaerro AlegreT This house belonged to one'OuiUermciadio technician and Ucensed amateur who was ofteri
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in %he company of Hbjls Blame, rrmnager ofthebranch of the Oerman company Transradio. Inhortly before PYL was first beard trying to contactBlume had bought from tbe radio supply store Caseomplete set ot transmitter parts and two Balli-crafterap was now placed on the Zeller
The Chilean authorities were persuaded to raid the Zeller house onheir perfunctory search discovered no transmitter, but Zeller was Indiscreet enough to telephone afterwards to one of bis agent colleagues and report hisescape: "Lucky they didn't search very good, especially In theith some trouble and delay another search warrant was obtained, again to no avail; the officers didn't bother toox they noticed in the basement purporting toewing machine. PYX. went off the ah* after this, and nothing could be done until after many weeks De Bardeleben found the transmitter in itsbox storedrocery on Cerro Alegre. Finally, onost of the agents of tbe PYL organisation were arrested; but tbe man who actually operated the mainand operator Pedro at Antofagasta had disappeared.
Neutralist Argentina, which did not participate in the Emergency Advisory Committee,elicate diplomatic problem with respect to the elimination of clandestine enemy transmitters, and one of critical importance as the clean-up in Brazil and Chile made the Argentine the mam base for espionage activity In this hemisphere. Not only agent radios but the powerful Argentine commercial transmitters were carrying quantities of compromising information to Italy.and Germany, and we could only copy theirhundreds of messages daily. Many of these were at speeds too high for manual copy; we recorded them on tape and trained selected typists to put them into pagetrong memorandum from the TJS. Government on Januarynabled us to send two men to Argentina to try to do what we had done in Brazil and Chile, but our earlierwere not repeated here. The agent operations badmuch more sophisticated. While our men were taking bearingsignal the transmission would be cut off at
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OFFICIAL,
Agent Radiol
that ^location and picked up by another transmitter several, miles away. And the cooperation of Argentine officials unddhe Castillo and Ramlrez-Peron regimes was less than eager] They finally became so resentful of xjs. Government presj sures that we had to withdraw our men.
One spy who escaped In Chile, however, did not get as fai as Argentina.ear after the incomplete catch o) the PYL ring in Chile, monitors at three different RID post)ew station with the call PQZ, and all three were sun they recognized the fist of operator Pedro of the GES sta tion at Antofagasta. Bearings placed the transmitter ai Santiago, Chile.
De Bardeleben's successor in Chile, William Fellows, wa notified, and he picked up the signal the next time it camehe air. Working alone, be had to move around and take bear ings from different locations in order toix; but afte two more PQZ transmissions he had the housey considerable personal satisfaction the operatorraduate of the Hamburg spy school, who had the effron tery to use my own initials as his clandestine call, was arrestee and his equipment seized. With this postlude there ended except for the Argentine hold-out, the story of radiohe Americas.
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Original document.
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