Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [70]
Furthermore, when von Auenrode briefed Popov on his American mission, he gave him a list of intelligence requirements. It included a detailed set of requests for intelligence about Hawaii, and several specific inquiries about Pearl Harbor. Of a ninety-seven-line questionnaire for the whole U.S. mission, thirty-five lines were devoted to Hawaii. There were questions about the precise positions of ammunition and mine depots, oil dumps, hangar locations, the submarine base, the anchorages. ‘You are to go to Hawaii,’ said von Auenrode, ‘and as soon as possible.’
According to Popov, everything then made sense – the Japanese interest in Taranto, the Air Attaché’s talk about a surprise attack, Jebsen’s heavy inference that it would be against the United States and, finally, the target: Pearl Harbor.
Popov promptly reported all this to British intelligence and, as his former case officer has confirmed, it was taken very seriously indeed. ‘I saw the questionnaire immediately,’ recalled Colonel Robertson. ‘I was terribly impressed with it, and I thought the first thing we should do was to send the Japanese information over to America …’
Control of Popov now shifted to MI-6, which instructed Popov to pass the intelligence to the Americans as soon as he arrived in New York. ‘They thought it preferable,’ he was to recall, ‘that I be the bearer of the tidings, since the Americans might want to question me at length to extract the last bit of juice.’
Popov arrived in New York aboard a Pan Am flying boat on August 12, 1941, and soon met with senior FBI officials, including one of Edgar’s Assistant Directors, Earl Connelley, and New York Agent in Charge Percy ‘Sam’ Foxworth. The file shows that he gave them their first sight of the microdot system, the new German intelligence technique by which long messages, photographically reduced to tiny dots, could be concealed in seemingly innocuous correspondence. Popov also delivered the Pearl Harbor questionnaire – in plain text as well as in microdot form.
Foxworth responded cautiously to the information about Pearl Harbor. ‘It all looks too precise,’ Popov quoted him as saying. ‘The questionnaire plus the other information spell out in detail exactly where, when, how and by whom we are to be attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap.’ The decisions on Popov and his mission, Foxworth added, would be made in Washington, by Mr Hoover.
In the partially censored FBI file – as made available for the first edition of this book – virtually all of Foxworth’s initial one-page report to Edgar about Popov is blanked out. So is the entire opening section of the twelve-page report made by Assistant Director Connelley. There is no way of knowing what was verbally reported to Edgar, since all concerned are dead. The record does show, however, that Edgar was kept personally advised about Popov. Three weeks after Popov’s arrival he scrawled a terse note to Foxworth: ‘Sam: see Connelley in N.Y. and get this Popov thing settled.’
In New York, Popov was by now distinctly unsettled. His regular FBI contact, Charles Lanman, had told him he was not to go to Hawaii, which the Germans expected him to do as soon as possible. Nor was he at this stage given any information to feed back to the Germans, to maintain credibility. ‘There must be a hitch,’ Lanman said, ‘somewhere between your people, the British Security Coordination, I mean, and our office in Washington … Mr Hoover will be here in New York in two weeks, and will see you then.’
The real reason for the delay, the files show, was that Edgar was heading off on his usual vacation with Clyde. Popov, meanwhile, decided to fill in the time with a trip to Florida, where the Germans had also asked him to snoop on U.S. military installations. He decided to take a woman friend along, a prospect that caused consternation at the FBI. Very probably acting on