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Alfred McCormackColonel Alfred McCormack, CBE (1901-1956), was a trained attorney of Cravath, Swaine & Moore who during and after World War II served in the US Military Intelligence Service, where he proved crucial in developing military analysis of cryptographic intercepts in Operation Magic.[1][2] BackgroundAlfred T.[2] McCormack was born on January 13, 1901, in Brooklyn, New York. In 1921, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and in 1925 received a law degree from Columbia University.[1][2] CareerIn 1926, McCormack clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone. Later that year, he joined a Wall Street law firm of Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine and Wood (whose name became Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1944), where he became a partner in 1935.[1][2] In June 1942, McCormack received a commission as colonel in the US Military Intelligence Service, known as the Military Intelligence Corps as part of the US Department of War's general staff. He became deputy chief of a special intelligence organization and worked closely with British intelligence on procedure and in exchanges of personnel, formation, and intelligence. (As part of the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, McCormack, Colonel Telford Taylor of Military Intelligence, and Lieutenant Colonel William Friedman visited Bletchley Park in April 1943, where they worked with Commander Edward Travis (RN), head of the British communications intelligence (COMINT) facility, and shared their solution to the Japanese Purple machine.[3]) On July 1, 1944, he became Director of Intelligence for the Military Intelligence Service. Discharged in October 1945, he became a special assistant to the Secretary of State as head of State's new Research and Intelligence Unit.[1] Crucially, "McCormack saw the folly of sending raw intercepts to busy decision-makers." He advocated that lawyers conduct cryptographic analysis.[2] In May 1942, McCormack established the Special Branch of MIS which specialised in COMINT.[citation needed] McCormack was involved in The Pond.[citation needed] McCormack opposed the use of Black. Among others, he suspected that the British were reading the dispatches in the American "Black" code, not the Germans. He concluded that was not the case, but considerable ill feeling had been aroused (Churchill had told Roosevelt in February 1942 that he had stopped British work on American diplomatic codes, a warning to tighten them up).[citation needed] McCormack resigned on April 23, 1946, in a memo to Dean Acheson, then acting Secretary of State, with the following explanation:
(In its obituary, the New York Times stated that McCormack had resigned in October 1946 "after a sharp difference in opinion over the organization of the department's intelligence functions."[1]) He returned to Cravath in 1946.[citation needed] In January 1952, McCormack reported to the Secretary of War "to study certain aspects of military intelligence."[1] Personal life and deathOn May 31, 1930, McCormack married Winifred Byron Smith and had three sons.[1] McCormack served as chair of the Board of Visitors for Columbia Law School. In his law practice, he "devoted much of his time to the affairs of the late Maj. Edwin H. Armstrong, prominent inventor in the radio field."[1] Alfred McCormack died age 55 on January 12, 1956, of cancer at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut.[1][2] Awards
LegacyColumbia Law School as a chair named the "Alfred McCormack Professor of Law" in his honor, whose recipients include Robert E. Scott[6] and E. Allan Farnsworth. The Redding Land Trust includes a "Col. Alfred McCormack Preserve" near Danbury, Connecticut.[7] See also
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