Declassified and approve~~le~~§~~A 0-~9-2013 pursuant to E .0. 1352a 

1 February 1955 

FROM: John W. Tukey 

TO: William F. Friedman 

SUBJ: Explication of recommendations of the Technological Capabilities Panel(~ 

1. This memorandum reports nu personal understanding of specific 

) interpretations of certain ratlier general recommendations in the ~p report. 

It should not be ta.ken as necessarily representing the views of the 

whole Panel or of its intelligence subcommittee, al.though I feel personally 

that i~ represents ~ome of the details on which the general recommendations 

were based. 

2. There is a general recommendation (recommendation 1 of the 

intel.ligence section of' Part II) concerning automatic downgrading of 

the security classification of certain intelligence as war starts. In 

the field of communications intelligence this seems to me to apply to 

' 

muc:Q of the material covered by paragraph 2 of Annexure Bl to revised Appendix 

B of the basic agreement between ISIB and USCIB. This material is rated 

as "Suitable for Categgry l;" in the 3rd enclosure to USCIB pa.per 13.7/35 and, 

with minor exceptions, is currently carried in Category II. The procedure 

specified in paragraph 35e of Revised Append.ix B does not, in my opinion, 

meet the recommendation concerning automatic downgrading, since no 

procedure has been clearly established in advance ma.king such downgrading 

an automatic consequence of specific operational preparations fo.r war. 

The fact that a special codeword and subcategory iiii.ght have to be introduced 

in order to make automatic downgrading feasible is recognized, and was 

recognized when the TCP recommendations were prepared • 

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3. The general recommendation on wider and deeper use of the principles 

.1 

of information retriev .. in the intelligence cqmmunity bas specific 

application to at least two areas in communications intelligence. I believe 

that considerable study of the two following possibilities would be very 

worthwhile I 

(1) The use of automatic ma.chines to scan plain-text messages for 

names, addresses, subjects, etc., thus permitting decentralization of 

this sorting operation, with a consequent reduction in the. amount of. 

such traffic which must be sent back to the United States by· electrical means, 

(2) An overall examination of the procedure for the surveillance 

of such USSR communications systems as the air warning net, loo~ing to~d 

a decrease in volume both of traffic requiring electrical communication and of 

traffic requiring scaiming by an analyst. The reduction in volume of air 

warning traffic, for example, might involve the initial electrical transmission 

of only the. 1st, 21st, 4lst, ••• line {message) concerning a given "raid" 

from a gi~n source. In this case, reduction in the volume passing over the 

analysts' desks tor surveillance should lead to the application of more 

analyst's time to analysis and summarization. In both cases, reduction .in 

traffic volume requiring electrical communication would decrease the vulner-. 

ability. of these important intelligence sources to enenw jamming. 
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