Not to defend the Tribune, but could spies or moles have accounted for that knowledge (in principle) just as effectively?
Cheers!
...and Merry Christmas!
Yes, of course - and IIRC the US did try to subtly promote that cover story. But it is so valuable to have your enemy be lax on signal intelligence that the idea that you are "reading his mail" must be minimized by all means possible.E.g., the British had a policy of never overtly acting on Ultra - there always had to be a cover story for whatever they did. If Ultra told them a German convoy was headed toward Rommel's supply port, they were not to simply send out the bombers - they were first to "accidentally" find the convoy with a recon flight, and only then send the bombers after it. In extremis, they got permission to violate that rule once - and then they promoted the story that a spy had tipped them off. But you just don't want to do that every day.
Again, the British had turned all the agents Germany had sent to England and were using them to send disinformation back to Germany. If a V-1 hit to the north of London, the double agents were ordered to indicate that it had landed to the south, in order to induce the Germans to "correct" their aim. But at the same time they were inducing the Germans to aim in a particular direction, the British refused to allow their agents to evacuate their own families from the area they were spoofing the Germans toward. To avoid the possibility of the Germans' getting wind of it.
You want to say nothing at all about sigint, one way or another. So it's a delicate situation when a newspaper insists on bringing the topic to the fore.