THE CODEBREAKERS

by DAVID KAHN

  709 dictionaries and grammars: in Library of Congress.

  709 “All cryptographic material”: CED 1206.5a (2).

  709 AFKAG-2: AFR 5-38, $4b.

  709 courses of instruction, regulations: Department of Defense, Instruction 3135.1 (June 4, 1963).

  709 COMSEC functions: I have elaborated these by applying likely duties given in Opportunities Unlimited and A Challenging Future.

  709 amateur cryptologists: Solomon Kullback, interview, December 7, 1962.

  710 Agency will not promise not to use ideas: my experience.

  711 PCM: J. R. Pierce, Symbols, Signals and Noise: The Nature and Process of Communication (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 132, 138, 276.

  711 PCM scrambler: U.S. Patents 2,777,897, 3,071,649, for examples.

  711 KY-9: House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Deficiencies, Supplemental Appropriation Bill, 1962, Hearings, 87:1 (August 17, 1961) (GPO, 1961), 539-540. Subsequent references to hearings on supplemental appropriation bills will carry only the title of the hearings, Congress session, date, and page. “Voice scramble,” Army Navy Air Force Journal, XCIII (December 10, 1955), 8; Joseph Albright, “U.S. Unit Plans for All—Including Mig Attacks,” Newsday (February 22, 1963).

  712 speech compression and scramblers: Martin Weinstock, “The Army and Speech Compression,” in Proceedings of Seminar on Speech Compression and Processing, L. G. Hanscom Field, Bedford, Massachusetts, September 28-30, 1959 (Department of Commerce, Office of Technical Services). Good bibliography on speech compression and related problems in Paul G. Edwards and John Clapper, Jr., “Better Vocoders Are Coming,” IEEE Spectrum, I (September, 1964), 119-129.

  712 State Department: “Department of State Communications,” in Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, Administration of National Security, Hearings, 88:2 (April 8, 1964), 505-509, for growth of departmental communications, surplus cipher machines,

  712 15 times as much by machine: Department of the Army, [William F. Friedman], Basic Cryptography, Technical Manual 32-220, April, 1950 (GPO, 1950), $79b(5).

  712 “responsible for providing”: GOM, 1949, 97.

  712 Cryptography Staff: GOM, 1962-63, 83, 67; House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Departments of State and Justice, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations, Departments of State and Justice, The Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1962: Department of State, Hearings, 87:1 (March 14, 1961) (GPO, 1961), 505. Subsequent references to hearings in this series will carry only the subtitle (Department of State), Congress session, date, and page. Department of State, Biographic Register, 1959, for Parke.

  712 traffic volume: “Department of State Communications,” 505; Supplemental Appropriation Bill, 1962, 87:1 (August 17, 1961), 546.

  713 Cuban crisis: “Link to Moscow Delights Capital,” The New York Times (April 4, 1963), 1:7.

  713 “prepares and executes”: Department of State, 88:2 (February 5, 1964), 380.

  713 growth of Communications Security Division: Ibid., 377, 402. Department of State, 89:1 (February 22, 1965), 398-399; Department of State, 89:2 (February 16, 1966), 284.

  713 cryptanalyst qualifications: Civil Service Commission, Qualification Standards, Cryptanalyst Series, GS-1541.

  713 Goodman: Department of State, Biographical Register, 1963.

  714 program completed in 1965: Department of State, 89:1 (February 16, 1965), 3; Department of State, 89:2 (February 15, 1966), 4.

  714 HW-28: Department of State, 88:2 (February 5, 1964), 383-384, 407.

  714 KW-7:Ibid., 389, 396.

  714 KW-1 : Department of State, 87:2 (March 5, 1962), 549, 565-566.

  714 “for the purchase”: Department of State, 87:1 (March 14, 1961), 515.

  714 leased wires, dummy filler: “Electronic Coder Keeps U.S. Secrets” (May 6, 1954), 10:3-4; “Soviet Approves U.S. Message Link” (November 28, 1964), 9:2-3, both The New York Times.

  715 green operators: House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Communist Penetration of Communications Facilities—Part I, Hearings, 85:1 (July 18, 1957) (GPO, 1957), 1447, 1452, 1462.

  715 16,200,000 words—about three out of every five messages being in code: Department of State, 89:1 (February 16, 1965), 11, (February 22, 1965), 421.

  715 KY-3, KG-13, KY-8: Department of State, 88:2 (February 5, 1964), 386, 396, 400, 407.

  715 hot line agreement: Department of State, United States Treaties and Other International Agreements, XVI, Part 1, 1963 (GPO, 1964), 825-835.

  715 “In our negotiations”: Sampson, letter, April 13, 1964.

  716 ETCRRM II: Visible in U.S. Army Photographs SC 605685 and -6 of the American terminal; Standard Telefon og Kabelfabrik A/S, Cryptographie Equipment ETCRRM II and II-S (Oslo, no date); Joseph Tusso of I.T.T., interview, April 19, 1962, for $1,000.

  716 test messages: “Gromyko One-Ups U.S. Over ‘Hot Line’ Testing,” The New York Times (December 8, 1964), 23:5; “ ‘Hot Line’ Tested Every Hour,” New York Herald Tribune, European Edition (January 21, 1966).

  716 “to help reduce”: “U.S. and Soviet Sign ‘Hot Line’ Accord in Geneva,” The New York Times (June 21, 1963), 1:3-5.

  716 President’s communications: GOM, 201; “President’s Trip Big Logistics Job” (October 9, 1961), 19, “Where Kennedy Goes, There Goes White House” (June 28,1963), 3:5-7, both The New York Times; “The President Gets a New Car,” Popular Science Monthly (September, 1961), 90-91; “The Flying White House,” Look, XXVIII (June 2, 1964), 86-96 at 95; “Adenauer’s Phone Tapped, He Tells Bonn Parliament,” The New York Times (November 10, 1962), 1:6.

  717 warrant officers: Fletcher Knebel, “Face of Crisis,” Look, XXVI (January 2, 1962), 36-38; “Johnson Took Trip Without His Doctor or Code on Plane,” The New York Times (September 9, 1964), 31:3.

  717 “my most solemn”: “Text of McNamara’s Statement to Platform Group,” The New York Times (August 18, 1964), 18:2-6.

  717 reliability of strike message: CED 1301.10; “Radio to Cut Cost in Firing Missile” (December 14, 1960), “SAC Is Improving Link to Its Bases” (July 12, 1964), 40:3, both The New York Times: “Earth Wave Signals Now in the Works,” New York Daily News (October 10, 1960), 26.

  718 strike-order and fail-safe codes: Peter Wyden, “The Chances of Accidental War,” The Saturday Evening Post, CCXXXIV (June 3, 1961), 17-19, 60-63 at 61; Richard B. Stolley, “How It Feels to Hold the Nuclear Trigger,” Life, LVII (November 6, 1964), 34-41; “Code Guards Against War-by-Goof,” New York Mirror (March 1, 1960); “Pentagon Backs Tail-Safe’ Setup” (October 21, 1962), 69:1-8, “SAC’s Flying HQ in the Air 4 Years” (February 4, 1965), 11:4, both The New York Times.

  718 Johnson asserts overall control: “Johnson Pledges Full Safeguards on Nuclear Arms,” The New York Times (September 17, 1964), 1:8.

  718 missile monitoring: “2 Soviet Rockets Failed, U.S. Says,” The New York Times (February 11, 1960), 5:1.

  718 PROD’s eight sections: Martin-Mitchell stated that PROD had only five: ADVA, GENS, ACOM, ALLO, MPRO. They were wrong.

  719 listening net: Martin-Mitchell; “U.S. Listening Net Checks on Soviet” (February 8, 1959), 1:1, “U.S. Network Aided Rusk” (October 1, 1964), 2:4-6, both The New York Times; “Intelligence,” United Press International dispatch NX107, (February 9, 1959).

  719 electronic reconnaissance: Martin Mann, “Our Secret Radar War with Russia,” Popular Science Monthly (January, 1961), 66-69, 225-227; James H. Winchester, “The Soviets’ Little-Known ‘Wet War,’” Reader’s Digest, LXXX (April, 1962), 182-191; William L. White, The Little Toy Dog (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1962), 5-12, 131; Robert J. Schlesinger, Principles of Electronic Warfare (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961), ch. 4, 51-80; Harris, 327-350; John M. Carroll, Secrets of Electronic Espionage (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1966).

  720 satellite reconnaissance:
“Big Picture,” Newsweek (December 31, 1962), 36; Wise and Ross, 303-306; “Soviet Asserts U.S. Spies from Space” (June 10, 1964), 12:6-8, “Satellite Spying by Soviet Hinted” (September 14, 1963), 2:7, both The New York Times; Carroll, 187-196.

  721 “The Wizard War”: Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour, Book II, Ch. 4.

  722 ECM and ECCM: Counter measures, reprint from Aviation Week (November 18 and 25, 1957); Aerospace Electronics, reprinted from Space/ Aeronautics (April, 1960), with bibliography; The Navigator, VII (January, 1961); Schlesinger, especially chs. 1, 2, 7; Carroll, passim.

  724 voice interception: for a sample recording, released by the United States to prove Soviet downing of a U.S.A.F. C-130 that had “strayed” into Soviet Armenia, see “Documents on U.S. Plane’s Disappearance over Soviet Union,” The New York Times (February 6, 1959), 2:2-6. Officials refused to say how the recording had been made. Martin-Mitchell said that the plane was doing electronic reconnaissance.

  726 computers: NSA has been reported to have the Whirlwind computer; this is not so.

  727 “Black Book”: Stewart Alsop, “The Battle for Secret Power,” 17.

  728 forty nations: Martin-Mitchell.

  728 “Italy, Turkey…”: “Two Code Clerks Defect to Soviet; Score U.S. ‘Spying,’ ” The New York Times (September 6, 1960), 1:7-8.

  729 Suez: “Briton Says U.S. Solved Secret Codes of Allies,” The New York Times (November 23, 1956); George Wigg, letter, January 2, 1957; Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 168; Wise and Ross, 118, for John Foster Dulles quote; Proceedings of the House of Commons (Hansard’s) (November 29, 1956), column 576.

  730 Rowlett award: The White House, Press Release, March 2, 1966; “Johnson Salutes (Sh!) Code Expert,” The New York Times (March 3, 1966), 35.

  730 Britain: Great Britain, The British Imperial Calendar and Civil Service List, 1964 (London: H.M.’s Stationery Office, 1964), columns 322, 326; Who’s Who, 1964 for Sir Eric Jones, Sir Clive Lochnis, Leonard J. Hooper, Brig. John H. Tiltman.

  731 “One of the primary,” “provide full protection”: CED 1301.10d, CED 3204.8a. Other goals at CED 1301.6, -.7, –.8.

  Chapter 20 THE ANATOMY OF CRYPTOLOGY

  I am grateful to Claude Shannon and to David Slepian for reading an early draft of the parts of this chapter on information theory and making helpful suggestions.

  737 “It would not be”: A. Adrian Albert, “Some Mathematical Aspects of Cryptography,” unpublished paper delivered before the American Mathematical Association, November 22, 1941.

  737 “The transformations are”: Maurits de Vries, “Concealment of Information,” Synthèse, IX (1953), 326-336 at 330.

  739 stability of letter frequency: for an explanation of this—based on de Saussure’s axiom of the independence of sound and meaning—see G. Herdan, Quantitative Linguistics (London: Butterworths, 1964), 5-11.

  740 Gadsby: Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby, A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter E (Los Angeles: Wetzel Publishing Co., 1939), 5, 19.

  740 lipograms: J. R. Pierce, Symbols, Signals and Noise (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 48; C. C. Bombaugh, Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature, ed. Martin Gardner (New York: Dover Publications, 1961), 25-26. For language oddities in general, see Dmitri A. Borgmann, Language on Vacation (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965).

  740 typewriter: Bruce Bliven, Jr., The Wonderful Writing Machine (New York: Random House, 1954), 145-148; Bruce Bliven, Jr., “The Wonderful Writing Machine,” Collier’s, CXXXIII (May 14, 1954), 102-105; “Faster Typewriter,” Time, XXXIII (March 20, 1939), 39; Roy T. Griffith, “The Minimotion Typewriter Keyboard,” Journal of the Franklin Institute, CCXLVIII (November, 1949), 399-436.

  741 Morse: Edward L. Morse, “The Dot-and-Dash Alphabet,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, LXXXIII (March, 1912), 695-706; Wolfe, I, ch. 1, 3-6; Frank G. Halstead, “The Genesis and Speed of the Telegraph Codes,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, XCIII (November 30, 1959), 448-458.

  743 Kaeding: Haufigkeitswörterbuch der deutschen Sprach (Berlin: Mittler & Sohn, 1898), 643.

  743 Shannon: Who’s Who in America, 1964-1965’, press release, M.I.T., February 4, 1957; Shannon, telephone interview, November 27, 1961; David Slepian, interview, October 28, 1962.

  744 Shannon’s papers: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”; Bell System Technical Journal, XXVII (July, 1948), 479-523, (October, 1948), 623-656, reprinted in Bell Telephone System Technical Publications as Monograph B-1598; “Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems,” Bell System Technical Journal, XXVIII (October, 1949), 656-715, reprinted in Bell Telephone System Technical Publications as Monograph 1727.

  744 information theory in general: Pierce; Francis Bello, “The Information Theory,” Fortune (December, 1953), 136-158; Claude E. Shannon, “Information Theory,” Encyclopaedia Britannica; David Slepian, “Information Theory,” Collier’s Encyclopedia. An example of the theory’s use in history is Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor, which fruitfully uses the concepts “signal” and “noise” to help explain the catastrophe.

  744 redundancy: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” Colin Cherry, On Human Communication (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1957), 115-120, 180-187; George A. Miller, Language and Communication (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), chs. 4 and 5. The latter are extremely valuable books.

  745 four-letter language: adapted from G. T. Guilbaud, What Is Cybernetics?, trans. by Valerie MacKay (New York: Grove Press (Evergreen), 1960), 102.

  745 “Two extremes of redundancy”: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” §7.

  745 Dewey’s count: Relative Frequency of English Speech Sounds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923), 17-19.

  746 voiced stops: George K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (Cambridge, Mass.: Addision-Wesley Press, 1949), 99-107; Miller, 86-88.

  746 English 75 per cent redundant: Claude E. Shannon, “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English,” Bell System Technical Journal, XXX (January, 1951), 50-64, reprinted in Bell Telephone System Technical Publications as Monograph 1819, at 50.

  747 nonredundant language: John Locke discusses the impossibility of something approaching this in Essay on Human Understanding, Book III, ch. i, §3 and ch. iii, §§2-4; Jonathan Swift, in Voyage to Laputa, ch. iii, describes a word-frame in the Grand Academy of Lagado that produces something like it.

  748 matching of cryptogram and plaintext frequency counts: for a mathematical demonstration of the validity of the process, see Gustav Herdan, The Advanced Theory of Language as Choice and Chance (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1966), 182-185.

  748 “in … the majority of ciphers”: Shannon, “Secrecy Systems,” §12.

  749 puzzle cryptogram: Prosper Buranelli and others, The Cryptogram Book (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1928), No. 168.

  749 “with a transducer”: Shannon, “Secrecy Systems,” §17.

  749 “The fact that the vowels”: Ibid., §19.

  750 Masons: King Solomon and His Followers (Brooklyn: Allen Publishing Co., 1908), 20.

  750 unicity distance: “Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems,” §§14-16. Shannon was examining when a solution is valid; interestingly, Rene Descartes used the cryptanalyst’s feeling of certainty when he reaches a solution to help prove a point of his philosophy in his Principles, IV, §205 (1644), in Œuvres et Lettres, ed. André Bridoux, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), 530-531.

  750 Melchior: Ib Melchior, “A Hamlet Enigma at Elsinore,” Life, XXXVII (August 9, 1954), 81-92; “Hamlet Enigma Again,” Life, XXXVII (August 30, 1954), 4. John Sack devastatingly parodies the Melchior “solution” in “My Solution of the Grant’s Tomb Cipher,” The New Yorker, XXX (September 18, 1954), 35-36.

  750 codeword for Paris: Givierge, “Problems of Code,” in Articles, 24.

  751 “From the point of view”: Shannon, “Secrecy Systems,” §11.

 
752 Helstrom: letter, March 24, 1961.

  752 game theory: Shannon, “Secrecy Systems,” §21.

  752 best code in Congo: Cathal Og O’Shannon, “Grievances of the Irish in Congo,” The [Dublin] Irish Times (September 6, 1960).

  753 “complete examination”: de Vries, 329.

  753 “Of each such system”: [William F. Friedman], Basic Cryptography, Department of the Army Technical Manual 32-220 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), §17.

  753 practical requirements: Ibid., §18.

  754 factors affecting cryptanalysis time: Ibid., §16.

  754 “cipher brains”: Yardley, 39. He was referring to Manly.

  755 pattern recognition: Cherry, ch. 7; Oliver D. Selfridge, “Pattern Recognition and Learning” in Information Theory: Papers Read at a Symposium on “Information Theory,” ed. Colin Cherry (London: Butterworths, 1956), 345-353.

  755 Freud: “Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex” in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, ed. A. A. Brill, Modern Library Giant 39 (New York: Random House, 1938), 594-595; see also Psychological Abstracts, XXIV (1950), No. 6119. I am grateful to Dr. Hanna Marlens for general guidance in this field and to Dr. Pierre A. Bensoussan for reading this section.

  755 Reik: letter, March 22, 1961.

  755 Fromm: letter, April 14, 1961.

  755 Menninger: letter, December 20, 1961.

  755 Macfarlane: interview, October 3, 1964.

  756 psychological study of secrets: Psychological Abstracts, X (1936), No. 4450, English translation at XXV (1951), No. 7298. See also Ibid., XXIX (1955), No. 495, and Raoul de la Grasserie, De l’Instinct Cryptologique et de l’Instinct Phanérique (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1911).

  756 Jones: Free Associations: Memoirs of a Psychoanalyst (New York: Basic Books, 1959), 43.

  756 Huxley: ch. 5.

  758 hypocrisy: The basic hypocrisy is, of course, doing the communication intelligence and pretending or claiming that one is not doing it. A more subtle example appears in the Radio Regulations of the International Telecommunications Union, drawn up at the International Radiocommunication Conference at Atlantic City in 1947. The signatory nations here appear to be safeguarding the privacy of international radio communications, but, in fact, by a weaseling insertion of the term “authorize,” give themselves a license to invade that privacy. Ch. IX, Art. 21, “Secrecy,” reads: “[§485] The administrations bind themselves to take the necessary measures to prohibit and prevent: [§486] a) the unauthorized interception of radiocommunications not intended for the general use of the public; [§487] b) the divulgence of the contents, simple disclosure of the existence, publication or any use whatsoever, without authorization, of information of any nature whatever obtained by the interception of the radiocommunications mentioned in 486.” The signatories include the major powers of the earth, including the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Signing for Italy was radio expert and cryptologist Luigi Sacco.