Free The Codebreakers: The True Story of the Secret Intelligence Team That Changed the Course of the First World War by James Wyllie, Michael McKinley

diplomatic cable traffic handed over to MI1(b).
    Hay was also determined to rejuvenate MI1(b)’s relationship with Room 40. During the early months of the war, as both organisations were finding their feet, they worked in relative harmony. Alastair Denniston, one of Room 40’s first recruits, remembered how work on the ciphers continued in the Admiralty and the War Office by day, while the night watch worked in the War Office. However, this cordial
esprit de corps
soon broke down, as the long-held rivalry between the Admiralty and the War Office reasserted itself. As a result, ‘a definite breach’ occurred, and from then on the two sets of codebreakers worked in isolation.
    Hay immediately recognised the need for them to cooperate and informally approached Blinker Hall. Never one to let institutional loyalty interfere with beating the Germans, Hall was happy to oblige, especially as Room 40 had also begun to deal with the Germans’ diplomatic communications, thanks to a bizarre chain of events in the Middle East.

Chapter 5
SPIES IN AMERICA
    When the Ottoman Empire entered the war in 1914, it brought with it hundreds of thousands of Muslims, the holiest sites in Islam and the supreme leader of the faith, the Sultan-Caliph Mehmed Rashad V. The Germans sensed an opportunity to destabilise the British Empire by appealing to its millions of Muslim subjects in India, North Africa and the Far East and rallying them to their standard.
    A major step in that direction was taken when the Sultan-Caliph declared a jihad against the British in November 1914. An intensive propaganda campaign was launched by German agents, underground networks were established in Egypt, and a small, dedicated team was dispatched to foment uprisings in Persia (Iran), notionally independent but jointly controlled by Britain and Russia, and Afghanistan.
    One of these insurrectionists was Wilhelm Wassmuss. The nearest German equivalent to Lawrence of Arabia, Wassmuss was a career diplomat, fluent in Persian and Arabic, who adopted the lifestyle of the desert tribes. An advocate of guerrilla warfare, he was single-handedly responsible for leading the British a merry dance in southern Persia: stirring up locals, capturing several towns, blowing up oil pipelines and taking hostages. An irritant rather than a major threat, Wassmuss inadvertently gifted Room 40 the code books that would ultimately transform Allied fortunes.
    By the spring of 1915, the British were hot on his heels, but Wassmuss always managed to keep one step ahead, twice escaping the somewhat lacklustre efforts of local pro-British officials to hold him prisoner. At this point, history and myth collide. According to one account of events, when Wassmuss eluded his captors he left behind a chest containing secret papers, amongst them two versions of the German diplomatic code book, numbered 89734 and 3512. The British seized the trunk and it made its way to the India Office in London (Persia was under the jurisdiction of the Raj). Alternatively, the British, annoyed that Wassmuss had got away, arrested the German consul in the Persian Gulf for collaborating with him. During a search of the consul’s office safe they came across the code books. Not appreciating their potential value, they sent them back to London.
    By chance, Blinker Hall bumped into a young naval officer who told him about the Wassmuss affair. He wasted no time getting the books out of storage. Alistair Denniston remembered how one day in April Hall ‘produced a fresh line of goods – a treasure trove in Persia’.
    Hall immediately formed a diplomatic section that was independent from the rest of Room 40, giving him sole control of its activities. He headhunted George Young, a very experienced Foreign Office official who’d worked in Washington, Athens and Constantinople, and was based in Lisbon at the outbreak of war, and placed him in charge. To make up the rest of the team, he pinched Nigel de Grey and the Reverend