TheCodeBreakers
tables. Ambassadors may also have used it. Thus Ciano gloated in his
diary on September 30, 1941, shortly after the theft: "The military
intelligence service has come into possession of the American secret
code; everything that [U.S. Ambassador William] Phillips telegraphs is
read by our decoding offices. . . ."
Soon after the S.I.M. acquired the code, it gave a copy to Germany's
Abwehr. From that moment, the Axis powers —subject only to their
ability to strip the superencipher-ments—were enabled to peer into the
secret messages of the diplomats and the military attaches of a great
power that their enemies were seeking desperately to win over. And the
messages came from all over the world, not only from Axis capitals, but
also from Allied capitals where the American attaches had access to
some of the most intimate secrets of the Axis' foes. "I handed
Mackensen," Ciano noted on February 12, 1942, "the text of a telegram
annaabi.ee 
