Cryptologic Quarterly, #36

Cryptologic Quarterly #36, 2017-3
Images used for educational purposes only.

Cover: “Center, the seal of the Center for Cryptologic History. The lightning bolts represent electronics; the key, locking and unlocking information; the quill, writing history; and the torch, knowledge/illumination. Clockwise from upper left: Li Hongzhang, Viceroy of Zhili; Ann Caracristi; the Antietam battlefield, 1862; and Col. Teddy Roosevelt in his “Rough Rider” 1st US Volunteer Cavalry uniform.”

What CCH Can Do for You: Make History Relevant!
… by John A. Tokar
Decryption in Progress: The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895
… by Gregory J. Nedved
A Nineteenth-Century SIGINT Success
… by Richard S. Greeley, Jr
The Cryptologist’s War: How World War I Helped Weave the “Cloak” of Cryptologic Secrecy
… by Betsy Rohaly Smoot
Ann’s War: One Woman’s Journey to the Codebreaking Victory over Japan
… by David J. Sherman
Best-Laid Plans: Establishing the Armed Forces Security Agency Legal Counsel
… by Edward A. Scott

Family Album
Before the Dawn: Life at a Remote SIGINT Site during the Cold War

What CCH Can Do for You: Make History Relevant!
This is John Tokar’s “greeting speech” as he prepares to take over as Chief of the Center for Cryptologic History from 14-year veteran Dr. William “Bill” Williams. The focus of the article is on how understanding the history of a region or a conflict can help leaders make better plans for the future.

Decryption in Progress: The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895
Looking at Japan’s cryptological level during the conflict with China. The article starts with the background on the Sino-Japanese war, then mentions the Nagasaki Incident, where Chinese soldiers taking an unauthorized day leave in Nagasaki got into a fight with Japanese police. Although most reports concentrate on the deaths and injuries on both sides, more importantly for us was that during the melee one of the sailors dropped what looked like a dictionary, which was then turned over to Japanese Intelligence officials. Not knowing if it was a codebook, or how high-level, but having a suspicion it was used by the Chinese foreign relations department, Japanese Intelligence sent “a medium-length diplomatic message” to the Chinese envoy to Japan, who then had it encoded and forwarded to China.

(Example commercial telegraph code book)

The ploy worked, as the original message was encrypted almost word-for-word, allowing the Japanese to fill in gaps in the codebook, and figure out how the system worked. However. Nedved’s contention is that this success didn’t significantly help the Japanese at all. Tactically, the Chinese armies mainly used messengers, and rarely telegraphy, to communicate with the rear lines, and had almost no battlefield code systems. Pre-war planning may have been aided by having spies in the Chinese government, and diplomatically, during the negotiations over the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan was in the victor’s seat for making demands.

The bottom line is that documentation on both Japan’s and China’s codemaking and codebreaking abilities from the late 1800’s is limited, and very little had been translated properly into English at the time the article was written. While the popular view was that Japan’s codebreakers contributed to their military and diplomatic successes, Nedved tends to disagree.

A Nineteenth-Century SIGINT Success
This is kind of a puff piece written by a distant relative of Brigadier General Adolphus Washington Greely, who’d been the Chief Signal Officer during the Spanish-American War. The point is that Greely had advocated setting up spy offices at the transatlantic cable “chokepoint” in Key West, Florida, to attempt to intercept and control cable traffic between Spanish forces in Cuba, the fleet coming in from Spain, and the Spanish government. It was learned that the fleet had stopped at Curacao to reload coal for their steam engines, and would be continuing up to Santiago de Cuba. The U.S. Army and Navy forces were able to rout Spanish land forces, and sink the Spanish ships.

Richard S. Greeley, Jr., pushes his contention further in claiming that one of the side results of these fights was that Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were victorious in the Battle of San Juan Hill, which gave him the notoriety that allowed him to just barely win the race for New York Governor. However, he was just a little too law and order, and his fellow Republicans convinced President McKinley to put “him on the ticket as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in the election of 1900” to get him out of the way. Then McKinley was assassinated, and Teddy “became our 26th president and the youngest person to assume the presidency.” Thus, if Greely hadn’t used SIGINT to discover where the Spanish fleet was, the Battle of San Juan Hill never would have happened, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t have become Governor, and Mount Rushmore would look very different today.

The Cryptologist’s War: How World War I Helped Weave the “Cloak” of Cryptologic Secrecy
This is the earlier version of Chapter 15 – The Cloak of Secrecy, from Betsy Smoot’s From the Ground Up.

Ann’s War: One Woman’s Journey to the Codebreaking Victory over Japan
Previously reviewed.

Best-Laid Plans: Establishing the Armed Forces Security Agency Legal Counsel
Showing how the efforts to establish a legal counsel for the AFSA led to the current system in the NSA.

Quote: “Hindsight leads us to believe that a centralized functional division at the chief of staff level would have coordinated legal matters more effectively than a staff legal officer could. This became a moot point when AFSA became the National Security Agency on October 24, 1952, with the signing of the “Truman Memorandum.” A general counsel was in place by 1953.”

Family Album
Before the Dawn: Life at a Remote SIGINT Site during the Cold War
Presenting a few photos taken by Russ Breighner, a retired Russian linguist for the US Air Force (USAF), when he served in a detachment of the 6981st RGM based on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, 1958-59.

(Jeep)

(After the fall)