elena_tiriel asked:
How did Gandalf manage this?He got leave of Denethor, how I do not know, to look at the secrets of our treasury, and I learned a little of him, when he would teach (and that was seldom).
The Two Towers, LoTR Book 4, Ch 6,
The Forbidden PoolDay 56
News from afar is seldom sooth"Ever you come seeking aid, Mithrandir." The Steward's tone was scornful. "What aid or comfort do you bring, that Gondor should bare its secrets to you?"
Gandalf checked his impatience that the enemies of the Enemy were thus divided, and spoke softly. "I bring tidings from other lands that may profit Gondor – and its lord."
Denethor shrugged coldly. "I know enough of such matters for our needs."
Gandalf spoke more softly still. If Sauron spied on Denethor's court, a little disinformation might serve two ends. "Yet perhaps you would learn more of one your father doted on as a son...."
Note: Aragorn says, after his encounter with Sauron through the Orthanc-stone at the Hornburg: "To know that I lived and walked the earth was a blow to his heart, I deem; for he knew it not till now." (
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 2,
The Passing of the Grey Company) Yet we're also told in
The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A,
Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion: The Stewards that "many believed that Denethor, who was subtle in mind and looked further and deeper than other men of his day, had discovered who this stranger Thorongil in truth was"; and, in
Unfinished Tales, Part 4, Ch 3,
The Palantíri, that "it seems fairly plain that he [Denethor] had at once turned to the Stone as soon as he came to power."
If Denethor did suspect that "Thorongil" was the Heir of Isildur, it seems to me likely that Sauron would have picked up on that and used it to manipulate Denethor long before he actually did so in the final days of the Siege of Gondor. I can therefore see a situation in which Gandalf, without realising quite what a direct "hotline" Sauron had into the Citadel, might spread some disinformation about the death of "Thorongil" to throw Sauron's spies off Aragorn's scent.