Alfred McCormack

Colonel 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. Background Alfred T. 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. Career In 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. 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.) On July 1, 1944, he became Director of Intelligence for theMilitary 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.