• • • RE-~1'£ft5 9 4 4 6 

USCIB: 13.5/66 

e ~~ 20 May 1954 

M:e:ft'l!:r 

MEMORA.~1YOM FOR THE MEMBERS OF USCIB: 

Subject: Possible Compromise of CCl~INT Information. 

lo Enclosure 1 hereto is a copy of a manuscript submitted for 

review prior to publication. The author is a free lance writer who 

apparentl.y has never been in the Armed Forces nor had any official 

connection with CCMINT. The information in the manuscript, although 

inaccurate in many respects, is near enough to the truth in some respects 

to constitute a revelation of certain past progress and processes in 

the COMINT field., 

2o Enclosure 2 is an extract from the record of an interview 

with the above mentioned author. The interview was conducted in an 

effort to persuade him to withhold publication of his manuscript. 

Said effort appears to have been successful thus far. 

3o If the COMINT nature of Enclosure 1 is granted on the basis of 

the description of content set forth above, a full reading of it may 

not be worth the members' time. It might, nevertheless be worth the 

time of their principal staff assistants for CCMINT raatters. 

4. It is, however, earnestly recommended that each member take 

the time to read Enclosure 2 in its entirety. It is believed that in 

addition to being found amusing, Enclosure 2 will be found to emphasize 

the hard lesson that the only way to achieve security is to maintain 

absolute secrecy. Enclosure 2, whether or not completely true, 

constitutes an excellent example of the methods by which tmwise 

declassification, public pron0tu1cements, unguarded talk and a fertile 

imagination can be combined to produce a damaging aggregate. 

5. This matter has been under consideration by the National 

Security Agency, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the FBI, the 

Navy Member and the Ex:ecutive Secretary since last January. No 

information upon which to base action other than as indicated herein 

has been developedo 

Enclosures 

1. Manuscript 11'fne Pentagon's 

Favorite Magicians" by 

John Tiger. 

2. OSD Report of Interview dtd 

11 Mar 1954. 

USCIB: 13.5/66 

eclassifi ed and a ursuantto E .0. 1352 

24 
B.§~9446. 

SEiH'f 

THE PENTAGOM1 S FAVORITE MAGICIANS 

by 

John Tiger 

Enclosure 1 with USCIB 13.5/66 dtd 20 May 1954. 

SECRET 

Apt. 3N 

149 W. 105 St. 

NYC 25, NY 
FqWpfl'PTA5 9 4 4 6 ------- e 

You didn't read about it in the newspapers. Disturbed by Whitaker 

Chambers' pumpkin microfilms and alarmed by authoritative reports that the 

late President Roosevelt himself' felt enemy agents could easily crack the 

State Department's old fashioned ciphers, one of those inquisitive Senate 

Committees called on .Army Intelligence for an expert evaluation of Uncle 

Sam's present codes. The worried legislators wanted to talk to the top 

brain, a form.er civilian who became a colonel in 1942 and still wears those 

silver eagles. After considerable reflection and some wrangling, G-2 agreed 

to produce him for testimony in executive session. The public and all 

journalists must be barred. As he slipped into the Senate Office Building, 

armed guards politely but firmly explained to the indignant Capitol Hill 

press corps that there would be no stories, no pictures. Colonel x, the 

shadowy figure who guides the Pentagon's efficient code busters, was a top 

secret national military asset. 

He still is. Where did he come from in the black limousine? From an 

elegant girls finishing school in nearby Virginia, an establishment which had 

become even more exclusive when military intelligence bought it in 1942 and 

redecorated with barbed wire fences and machinegun posts. Whom did he work 

for? The Arirry' Security Agency, America's most hush-hush organization. It 

rarely gets into the papers. Its budget is never published, and even 

Congressmen don't talk about it. Few taxpayers have ever heard of it, but 

it is this secret unit which is working around the clock on decoding intercepted foreign messages. This information plays a vital part in guiding 

the decisions of the top-level National Security Council, in determining 

basic moves for the defense of the free world. 

SECRET 
RE[rJRriP9 4 4 6 

..,...,"-".I \.&..I I 

Colonel X has a splendid backgr~d for this important post. He was a 

"magician." He did some wonderful tricks, stunts that may have saved your 

lif'e. One of the key American secrets of the Second World War was Operation 

Magic, cover name assigned to the patient team of soldiers and civilian 

experts who broke the Japanese code. krrny intelligence was reading Nipponese 

messages long before December 7, 1941, and it was only poor communications 

between Washington and Hawaii which prevented a warning from reaching Pearl 

IIarbor in time. Hundreds of G-2 1 s quiz kids cursed, calcuJ.ated and considered 

enemy intercepts relayed to those closely guarded buildings in Arlington, Va.; 

they fought the silent battles. 

Dozens or special Security agents were protecting "Magic," and it was 

one of the best kept secrets of the war. Although G-21 the Office of Naval . 

Intelligence, and the free-wheeling cloak and dagger gang called the Office 

of Strategic se.rvices were supposed to cooperate closely, General "Wild Bill" 

Donovan's uninhibited o.s.s. lads hadn't heard that the· Army's "Magicians" had 

cracked the Japanese code. It was that secret. One dark night in 1944 in 

neutral Lisbon, an o.s.s squad slipped into the Nipponese Embassy and cooly 

cracked the safe containing the code book and other top secret documents. 

When word of this bold exploit reached Washington and Tokyo, men screamed and 

tore their hair in both capitals. The Japs were hysterical that their master 

code was in enemy hands. The weary men of "Magic" were enraged, ror now the 

war Lords of Nippon would devise a new code which might take months of skull 

splitting to break. Thousands of lives might be lost in the interim. 

Fortunately, the old fashioned military minds of the professional 

Japanese officers saved the day. Like all good soldiers, the Nipponese had 

been fully prepared for such an eventuality. 

SECRET 
MleR:El'P 

MAGIC - 3 

~F!ci~rpAS9446 ------· • 

Imperial Headquarters immediately sent out a new code to all units, transmitting it to outlying commands by radio in THE OLD CODE! The harried 

"Magicians" breathed a deep sigh of relief, as did the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

in the Pentagon, and went ahead reading the enemy messages. 

It was no cinch, for the Japanese used a four-digit book code. Each 

Nipponese headquarters had a copy of a special book in which there were 

numbers from 1 to 9999 and almost as many words. Each number signified a 

certain word. 446 might mean "mortar" or 1153 "dive bomber." Without the 

book you were lost. This was far different from the ciphers used by lower 

echelon Japanese field units, comparatively elemental systems which experienced 

technicians can break on the basis of established frequencies of recurrence for 

each letter of the alphabet. In English :for example, the letter "E" shows up 

most often. You can test this yourself on any paragraph or page of this 

magazine. Chee you determine the language being utilized, you can start testing by checking the frequency with which various letters, numbers or symbols 

appear in the messages and matching these results to the letters most colllll1on 

in that tongue. Experienced code men can soon detect "nulls" too, for one 

popular trick is to insert meaningless symbols to confuse enemy cryptographers. 

These were World War I techniques. 

The Japanese book code was a helluva lot nastier, and we can all thank 

our lucky stars and stripes that Uncle Sam had a small nucleus of trained men 

to handle it. Our specialists had come a long way since the famous Black 

Chamber, a competent group which also broke the Nipponese diplomatic code in 

the twenties before it was dissolved by a high minded Secretary of State who 

felt that it wasn't cricket to read your neighbors' mail. 

SE:CRET 
.SiClli:C 

MAGIC - 4 

~9446 

An old fashioned thoroughbred of good family, he was naively sincere in his 

conviction that gentlemen don't do that sort of thing. He'd forgotten the 

global intelligence network of our polite British cousins, a superbly quiet 

but efficient syetem which played a major part in construction of the far-

.flung empire. 

This refined restraint was tossed to the winds when pressing demands of 

World War II filled o.s.s., G-2, and even O.N.I. with a strange collection of 

assorted anthropologists, wrestlers, Wall Street lawyers, safe-crackers, 

mathematicians, demolition experts, geologists, forgers, newspapermen and other 

screwballs. Wenches in Washington, London, Algiers, Madrid, Stockholm, Istanbul, 

Karachi and a dozen other cities will no doubt concur with the findings of 

Hitler's espionage chief, the late Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of Abwehr 

Oberkomm.ando, that they were no gentlemen but they got things done. Of course, 

they had plenty of money and the right equipment. 

There were special costly machines for the code cracking tea.ms, secret 

devices designed by u. s. and European engineers. These gadgets clattered 

away day and night as the busy brains at .Arlington Hall sifted out messages 

intercepted by distant combat units. .America's strategists knew most of the 

enemy's moves in the Pacific in advance. Our planning for the decisive 

Battle of Midway, the Japanese Navy's last great threat to Hawaii and 

California, was based on a message decoded by the "Magicians." Information 

from the canny code-busters enabled our fighter planes to shoot down the 

transport carrying the top admiral of the Imperial Fleet right over a 

Nipponese air base in the South Pac~fic. 

By 1945, massed formations of B-29 1 s from Saipan, Guam and Tinian were 

smashing at the home islands of Japan daily and attack bombers from swift 

SECRE'f 
I • 

MAGIC - 5 

carrier task forces were swooping in frequently with punishing raids. It 

takes a lot of planning to put up a carrier strike or a big B-29 raid, and 

one vital factor is the weather. Thousands of airmen's lives were involved. 

We had to get accurate weather data, so small groups of hand picked 

meteorologists were flown. into Outer Mongolia to report their observations 

by radio. But a lot of the weather over Japan drifts across and down from 

Siberia, where our Soviet Allies have long maintained an extensive network 

of meteorological stations. As Uncle Sam bad already contributed tens of 

thousands of planes and trucks, gt.ms and ships, as well as vast quantities 

I 

of other supplies to help the Red Army, it was obvious that Big Joe would 

be glad to reciprocate by handing over this information. 

But it was no deal. The Russians thought of a hundred reasons not to 

play ball. They stalled and delayed for weeks. They just didn't trust us. 

They were suspicious. Maybe they remembered the u. S. military expedition 

which helped the anti-Bolsheviks in Siberia in 1919; perhaps they were simply 

afraid of the unknown capitalist world. In any case, they wouldn't play ball. 

American commanders exhausted their patience and finally called in our 

intelligence men. They discovered that weather data was broadcast to Soviet 

planes several times daily from airfields near Vladivostock. The solution 

was obvious but dangerous. U. s. code experts were secretly dropped into 

remote posts where they could intercept these messages, crack them, and relay 

the vital information to our air generals waiting to strike from the Mariannaso 

With the assistance 0£ these nervy and skillful code-busters, our brass knew 

what the weather would be over Tokyo before the Imperial Staff did. The 

anonymous men who cracked the Russian weather code made a healthy contribution 

to the successful bombing of Japan. 

SECRET 
SEG&ET 

MAGIC - 6 

~9446 -- _. .. ....,. 

A few months before the end of the war, the Soviet Military Mission in 

Washington notified the War Department that it had "learned" that we had broken 

the most important Japanese code. Elcactly how the Russians found out remains 

a mystery, although a stupid reporter for a Chicago daily had hinted as much 

in his story on the victory at Midway. There uas probably a certain amount · 

of loose talk in spite of the unceasing vigils of a hundred special security 

agents. I 1ve never gorgotten how a Harvard chemistry instructor casually told 

me about the A-bomb a year before it devastated Hiroshima. G-2 1 s alarm over 

the breach in 11Magic11 secrecy was mollified somewhat when the Red Army spokesmen announced that their experts had also found the true meanings of many 

numbers, and they offered to swap. Ten for ten. It sounded fair enough. 

Although the men of 11Magic11 had many hundreds of the numbers worked out, 

some of them via skillful interrogation of captured Nipponese code clerks, 

G-2 was naturally interested in getting as many as possible. It wouldn't cost 

us anything for the Russians were allies already committed to join the war on 

Japan, and we'd probably secure some useful stuff which might aid fighting men 

in the field. A secret rendezvous was fixed, and your able Uncle sent a colonel 

and a first louie with 100 numbers to barter. The Soviet delegation was two 

full colonels, complete with fur caps and red shoulderboards on their dress 

uniforms. The senior u. S, officer spoke first, After introducing himself 

and his aide, he read out ten numbers and their actual meaning in caJ.m firm 

tones. 

Then one of the Red Army colonels replied. He mentioned the will for 

peace and freedom of the great Soviet people, the common struggle against the 

Axis, and the mutual benefits of wholehearted cooperation. 

SECRET 
SEGRM' 

MAGIC - 7 

Arter this five minute preamble, he got down. to business. The G-2 colonel 

Wl"ote down the numbers supplied in exchange, then gave the Russians another 

ten. 

After each side had presented thirty numbers, the alert young lieutenant 

called his commanding officer aside and showed him the check list. Of the 

thirty given by the Russians, fourteen were already on our lists. More 

important, our cooperative Allies had supplied WRONG WORDS for eight of the 

fourteen! Whether it was a deliberate trick, a test to see what they could get 

away with, a bargaining device to buy cheaply, or just the result of poor 

intelligence work by the Soviets wasn't clear. But it was plain that the 

swap wouldn't profit Uncle Sam. Only Big Joe would be ahead. 

Barely concealing his disturbance and bitterness, the Yankee colonel 

announced that his aide had carelessly left the other papers back at the Pentagon 

so the meeting must be recessed. He would telephone the Russians to set a date 

for another exchange. When the master "Magicians" heard his report, they 

shrugged and ordered the barter deal to stop at once. These old pres knew that 

you can't trust anybody in the crazy, complex, cut-throat game of international 

espionage. It was unf'ortunate, but we just couldn't count on our dear Soviet 

chums. They wanted to play it cute. 'The G-2 colonel never called the Russian 

military mission, and he wasn't surprised that the Red Army officers didn't 

telephone to ask why. 

Uncle Sam's intelligence services and code-cracking teams were hit hard 

by the demobilization of skilled manpower in 1946, and o.s.s. was actually 

split. The research and analysis men were bundled off to the State Department, 

while operational agents found themselves attached to the new Strategic Services 

Unit of the Army. 

SECRET 
BB~ 

MAGIC - 8 

~9446 .., ...... ""'. ,., .... & 

It didn't work very well. By 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency was 

created to collect information and evaluate data gathered by G-2, O.N.I., 

A-2 (Air Force), and State Department experts at home and abroad. In the 

same year the Army Security Agency was established with a minimum. of noise. 

G.I.A., which is spiritual heir to hard-hitting o.s.s., and the other 

intelligence agencies lean heavily on the highly trained, enthusiastically 

anonymous code-busters - practical men who shun publicity like the bubonic 

plague. G-2 worked hard to keep "Magic" a secret, and refused to hire famous .. Black Chamber veterans lest enemy agents trail them to the hideout in Virginia. 

The security lid is on even tighter today, and it's going to stay that way. 

Little is known of the size of the Security Agency staff, for many employees 

are under strict orders to pretend that they work for other Pentagon uni ts. 

It 1 s at least a thousand men and women, soldiers and civilians, and perhaps 

two thousand would be closer. 

Quite a few of the code experts were drawn from "Magic", and they know 

their business. There can be little doubt that they're beating their heads 

and matching their wits against the Russian cryptographers today, hammering 

away at codes that Hitler's smartest intelligence teams barely dented. The 

Soviets have a simple system. They change their codes frequently. Red Army 

uni ts during World War II were supplied with loose-leaf books containing 

hundreds of different ciphers. Each day a number was broadcast, indicating 

which was to be used. Then when the next code was announced, yesterday's 

page was torn out and burned. This method is almost impossible to beat. 

It has never been revealed how G-2 broke the Japanese codes durlng the 

second World War. One report declared that a Nipponese coding machine was 

secretly duplicated, and another rumor intimated that there were .American 

spies high in government circles in Tokyo. 

SECRET" 
SiQRn 

MAGIC - 9 . There hasn't been a whisper about the techniques being used by the Army 

Security Agency today. On May 15, 1950 President Truman signed a law which 

provided penalties or ten years in federal penitentiary or $10,000 fine for 

revealing either that the u. S. has cracked a foreign code or information that 

wouJ.d permit a foreign government to read our coded messages. 

Behind this veil of law, lead and barbed wire, the fabulous "Magicians" 

are back at ivork, trying to pull critical rabbits out of that big black hat 

for the hard-boiled Joint Chiefs of Staff. But don 1 t ask the mysterious 

Colonel X how they do those incredible tricks. You know what magicians alwa;ys 

say, "It 1 s i2- secret!" 

SECRET 
11MR. BLANK: Will you tell us your full name and your address, 

Mr. Wager? 

MR. WAGER: Sure. Walter H. Wager. H. stands for Herman. 

And the address is Apartment 4-B at 420 Central Park Wes.t, New York City. 

MR. BLANK: The purpose of your being here today, Mr. 'Wager, 

is to discuss an article that you have written captioned 'The Pentagon's 

Favorite Magicians, by John Tiger.• 

MR. WAGER: That is a pen name which I use. 

MR. BLANK: Yes. Now, you sent this in through the mail with 

a letter requesting that it be reviewed for the purpose of determining 

whether it would comply with our rules, or if there is any violation of 

the statutes if this would be published, is that correct? 

MR. WAGER: Well, not only statutory violations, but I didn't 

want to do anything which would in any way embarrass the Depa.r'fiment of 

Defense on a policy level, or any other level; so not only for security 

clearance, but for factual accuracy and for policy reasons I submitted 

it for your opiri..ion and advice, and also for clearance. 11 

there not? 

*** 

"MR. BLANK: ... There is something in here about codes, is 

MR. WAGER: Sure, that is the subject of the entire article. 

MR. BLANK: Have you been studying that particular field? 

Enclosure 2 with USCIB 13.5/66 dtd 20 May 1954. 

- 1 -

SECRET 
MR. WAGER: Codes? No, I am a free-lance writer. I write 

about everything. The last article I wrote, for example, was Governor 

Dan Thornton, Will he be Next in Eisenhower's Cabinet? Then I wrote 

an article called New Hope for Broken Hearts on a book aboμt heart 

research and surgery.. I am no expert on codes or electronics. I am 

really not an expert on anything except free-lance writing and law. 

I have a legal background, but technically I am a bust. 11 

if-** 

"MR. BLANK: Suppose you were selling this story, "flVho would 

you sell it to? 

MR. WAGER: You see, I have an agent, and on any story 

which involves any substantial sum of money--and I regret to say moat 

of my articles have not thus far involved very substantial sums of 

money--! give it to the agent. 

Now, she just sold a book for me, for example, that involved 

$.3,000. So on anything like that, I give it to the agent. I sent this 

article to the agent in the belief that she would know what would be a 

logical market for this, since she is much more acquainted with the 

literary field than I and has had a lengthier and more extensive contact 

with magazines. 

I thought it might be suitable for magazines, say, like 

True~you ma:y be familiar with that--or Argosy, or Saga, or Real, or 

any one of these men 1s adventure magazines. I don 1t think you could 

sell this to the Ladies 1 Home Companion. It 1 s not their kind of thing. 

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Sf!i9fiE'f 

But I sent it to the agent and actually and happily she suggested I 

send it to you people for clearance. She said since the first 

sentence read you never read it in the newspapers, which is a literary 

trick, because I got most of this from newspaper clips and magazine 

articles, that I should submit it to you, because any editor who saw 

it said if he didn't read it in the newspapers, where did he find out 

about it, and is it O.K. with the Pentagon? 

My agent, by the vra:y, is Curtiss Brown and Company, Limited. 

They are a large literary agency in New York City. 

MR. BLANK: Do you have the clippings of the magazine 

articles from which this story was written? 

MR. WAGER: No, I don't have them all, but I could find out. 

Some of it comes from anecdotes people told me at the end of the war, 

but some of it comes from stuff--I rem.ember in 1950 there was an 

article in Colliers which was about magic, which I think is the guts 

of this story. There was a big two or three page article in Colliers. 

Then there have been other things on magic. There was a piece in the 

Ti.mes in 1950-when the new codes security legislation was up, the Times 

ran oh a whole series of articles mostly about the legislation, but 

occasionally something to indicate why the legislation was important. 

MR. BLANK: Do you have all those documents? 

MR. WAGER: I could find them for you, I suppose. 

I couldn't find the anecdotes people told me, because those haven't 

been printed; but most of this stuff--for example, the fact that during 

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SECRET 
SBGB!i'f 

World War II we had a code organization--code-breaking organization 

which functioned under the title of Operation .Magic--that I got from a 

magazine. The fact that it was at Arlington I got from a magazine or 

newspaper. The fact we had broken the Japanese code before Pearl 

Harbor I got from a published source. The fact that OSS didn't know 

magic had broken the Japanese code, I got from a published source. 

The fact that as a result of this ignorance OSS broke into the Japanese 

Embassy in Lisbon I got from a published source. The fact that the 

Japanese changed their code but in doing so transmitted the new code in 

the old code, that was an anecdote somebody who had been out in New 

Guinea or Australia told me that--I don't remember who that was, but I 

don't think that is a big hot issue now. 

Almost all of this--now there is one thing here about this 

alleged Colonel who testified, unidentified Colonel who testified, 

wouldn't let them take pictures of him, that was mentioned in the Times 

that a code expert had testified and pictures were prohibited. 

MR. BLANK: Where was that? 

MR. WAGER: New York Times. 

MR. BLANK: Where was this testimony? 

MR. WAGER: Oh, Senate, up on the Hill I think. 

MR. BLANK: Then you have all the documents'? 

MR. WAGER: I can get them for you. I can't get documents 

for the anecdotes, but for 80 percent of the article which is based 

upon published material." 

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SECRET 
''MR. WAGER: I can send you the citations. I can't tear a 

piece out of the Times for 1950, but I can go to the Times office in New 

York and go to the public library, which is where I did all this, you 

see. I didn't write this in any top secret bunker under the Potomac, or 

anything. I wrote this in a New York public library. I can get you all 

the citations. 

:f.ffi. BLANK: That would be fine. 

MR. WAGER: Yeah. 

MR. BLANK: Then when we have that we can find out how much 

of this inf orm.ation has been documented and --

MR. WAGER: Gee, I think you people would be right up on the 

ball and know exactly what has been published on codes. I should think 

you would keep a clip book, or something." 

*** 

"MR. WAGER: I see. Is there some specific thing in here that 

you find disturbing from a security point of view? 

MR. BLANK: Mr. Wager, I will tell you --

MR. WAGER: I wasn't in the anned forces, by the way. 

MR. BLANK: -- what the situation as I see it is: 

certainly there has been a £air amount of material published on this 

subject, in Life magazine, a lot what you say in the magic business, 

Colliers 

MR. WAGER: That is a source I never came across it even. 

- 5 -

SECRET 
SESii'l' 

MR. BLANK: Colliers carried it, too, but the article does, 

to my mind, two things, and I have looked at it pretty carefully from 

the point of view of trying to identify published material. 

MR. WAGER: Yes. 

MR. BLANK: On the one hand there are points in it which 

are in fact classified and which I have no evidence of them having been 

published. In the second place, as you yourself have said, the 

Government has been at some pains, as in the case of the mysterious 

Colonel X, not to publicize this kind of activity. 

MR. WAGER: Yes. 

MR. BLANK: And your article certainly is written from a 

point of view which is made for popular comsum.ption and would most 

certainly have the effect of publicizing it. 

MR. WAGER: Can I interrupt you for a second, Mr. Blank, and 

tell you what my agent said about this? 

MR. BLANK: Go ahead. 

MR. WAGER: She is a very experienced young lady in the 

magazine business. When I sent her the first draft of this article she 

looked at it and said, 'I can't sell this, this has been printed already, 

and you have such a minute amount of material here which is post-1945, 

that this sounds like a collection of old war anecdotes.• She said, 

'Take the tail end of your story1 --the tail end of my original draft 

was about this mysterious Colonel and the fact that the Army's security 

agency is doing code work now--she said, 'Take that and put it up in the 

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SECRE;'f 
~9446 

--""".a•&J& 

front so at least you will catch the reader with something which he 

hasn't read 20 times anyway.' 

She said, 'You have got to make this sound a little more 

sensational, because while you are a good writer, you don't really 

have anything terrible fresh here.' 

Now, Mr. Blank, if you can tell me what in here bothers 

you, I could probably tell you where I got every bit of it, because my 

memory is pretty good.11 

1

'MR. BLANK: If I tell you what is classified, I have 

violated security. 

MR. WAGER: I see. 

MR. BLANK: ... If you would like, we could go through the 

article. 

MR. WAGER: Sure. 

MR. BLANK: And you could perhaps indicate your sources. 

MR. WAGER: Exactly. 

MR. BLANK: If we go along on the whole paragraph by 

paragraph basis. 

MR. WAGER: I would like to do tpat. 

MR. BLANK: Why don't we? 

MR. WAGER: We will have to hunch up here, because I brought 

a copy which is not quite complete. As I said, the cat got to it. The 

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SBCRBT 
cat tore up the first page and the cat completely destroyed page 7. 

I think you have the only excellent copy in the world of page 7. 

Now, to begin, it says, 1Disturbed by Whitaker Chambers' 

pumpkin microfilms and alarmed by authoritative reports that the late 

President Roosevelt himself felt enemy agents could easily crack the 

State Department's old fashioned ciphers, one of those inquisitive 

Senate Committees called on Army Intelligence for an expert evaluation 

of Uncle Sam's present codes·.' 

Well, I used the word 'present' with a certain amount of 

liberality, because this is 1950 material. This appeared in the New 

York Times when I believe it was Mr. Burley who testified before the 

Senate that the President felt enentY agents could crack the State 

Department's cyphers. It was, I know, in 1950 when the Senate had 

these hearings and the new code protection legislation was passed. 

That is the legislation to which I ref er in the second paragraph from 

the end, 10n May 15, 1950 President Truman signed a law,' et cetera. 

O.K. 

Now, 'The worried legislators wanted to talk to the top 

brain, a .former civilian who became a colonel in 1942 and still wears 

those silver eagles.' 

Well, I used that also in a fairly liberal sense. It is 

obvious from the limited knowledge I have of Pentagon procedures the 

head of our code department is not going to be a colonel. He is 

going to be a general at least, but the story I read was that there 

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SECRET 
Si:CRXT 

-was a colonel who testified, so I made this colonel the top brain. 

From a literary point of view I think such liberties are permissible. 

This was published in the New York Times, that a Colonel did testify 

but that no pictures were permitted. 

And the rest of that paragraph is about how no pictures 

were permitted, so that is all the Times. 

Then it says, 'Where did he come from in the black limousine? 

From an elegant girls f.lliishing school in nearby Virginia, an establishment which had become even more exclusive when military intelligence 

bought it in 1942 and redecorated with barbed wire fences and machinegun 

posts. 1 

This has been published in the New York Tim.es at the end of 

the war in 1945 when they ran an article mentioning the establishment 

of Arlington Halls or Arlington Farms--I don't know which the name of 

it is. 

''Whom did he work for? The Anny Security Agency, 1 and then 

I go on to say, 'Few taxpayers have ever heard of it, but it is this 

secret unit which is working around the clock on decoding intercepted 

foreign messages. 1 

This I heard, I regret to say, at a cocktail party in 

Washington in 1945 -- a cocktail party or a lunch, or something. Somebody said, 'What is this ASA, Ar.my Security? Is that like the Social 

Security, or what?' And somebody, male or female, drunk or sober--

- .,. 9 -

SECRET 
I don't know--said, 'They are in the code business,' whereupon the 

conversation went on to something else, like, 1 Is Senator McCarthy here 

to stay?' Or 1Will the Washington Senators win this year? 1 

I didn't pay much attention to it, but I have a good memory, 

so when I was trying to dig out what is going on now, all I had to 

build an article on was the name of this outfit. I don't know if they 

are located in the basement of this building or Richmond, Virginia, or 

Denver, Colorado, or where they are, but I have the name. 

Then it says Colonel X was a magician, and I go on to 

mention magic. Now, this, I confess, is also a little literary 

imagination, because I assume he must have come from magic to be in 

this project since from my point of view magic is the offspring --

this ASA is the off spring of magic just like CIA is the off spring of 

oss. 

Then we go on with how the OSS people didn't know about 

magic and broke into the Japanese Embassy in Lisbon. That was in the 

Times or the Colliers piece--no, I think the Colliers piece. O.K. 

Then the raot that the Japanese sent out their new code and 

the old code, somebody told me -- somebody -- who? I don't know --

somebody who was in the Pacific, though. I mean, I didn't get that 

that is not 1949, this is something that was told to me at the end of 

the war when people came back and everybody was telling stories about 

1what I did to win the war. 1 

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Then this business about how the Japanese code functioned; 

that is the fact that it 1 s a four-digit number code. The same fellow 

told me that, that they used a numbered code, and I remember one thing 

about this fellow, he told me--whoever he was -- you see, I have been to 

three universities and I know people from all these universities, and 

it 1 s kind of hard to sort them out -- he told me that he never knew most 

of what the hell he was doing and that occasionally his colonel, whom he 

said had worked in Panama before the war -- yes, his colonel with some 

sort of a foreign-sounding name -- an American with a name of foreign 

extraction -- his colonel once came to him and said, 1Well, you have 

done a very good job here.' He didn't know what the hell he had done. 

He just had a jumble of numbers, but this person had been in either 

Australia or New Guinea with a -- it was apparently a small magic unit, 

signal intelligence, signal security -- was there some such title during 

the war? 

That is what this fellow did anyway, it was signal intelligence or signal security. 

Now, this business about the fact that you break codes by 

the recurrent letter frequency, that I got from the Colliers article; 

and the fact that 'nulls' are used I got from the Colliers article. 

Then this stuff about the !act we had a Black Chamber in the 

first world war was either in the Colliers article or in a book Another 

Black Chamber by Yardley. 

MR. BLANK: Yes. 

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• 

MR. WAGER: Yes. Then this stuff about all the mysterious 

miscellaneous types in OSS, that I know, because I know OSS people --

I knew some anyway. 

Then here is what apparently got Mr. Blank off on the thought 

that I am an electronic genius, 'There were special costly machines for 

the code cracking tea.ms, secret devices designed by U. s. and European 

engineers. ' 

Now, I read somewhere that parts of our code cracking or end 

coding machines--and I must confess I wouldn't know one from the other 

if it fell on me--parts of these machines or perhaps the whole machines 

were designed in Sweden. This was published. This was not told to me. 

So that is how I got U. S. and European. I gave our engineers a little 

credit, too, gratuitously. 

Then it says, 'These gaagets clattered away day and night'. 

Well, I assumed they are working three shifts--! wasn't there but 

then it says, •Our planning for the decisive Battle of Midway ••• was 

based on a message decoded'. That has been published. And then this 

information that our •code-busters enabled our fighter planes to shoot 

down the transport carrying the top admiral of the Imperial Fleet 1 , that 

has been published. 

Now we come to the business about the weather over Japan. 

This, I think, is probably what is bothering you. The fact that we 

dropped meteorologists into Outer Mongolia was done in a film called 

Operation Gobi. I refer you to the 20th Century Fox Corporation for 

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further details. I think they had Mr. Richard Widmark as the master 

mind there. 

Then I go on to say, 'the weather over Japan drifts across 

and down from Siberia, where our Soviet Allies have long maintained an 

extensive network of meteorological stations.• 

Now, this is what I think bothers you, where I say that we 

asked the Russians for the weather over Siberia and they wouldn't give 

it to us and we broke their weather code. 

It occurred. to me--it is very unlikely--but it occurred to 

me the Russians might be stupid enough to be still using the same 

weather code. If so, you wouldn't want this printed, obviously, to let 

them know we know their weather; but this was told to me and I remember 

where: this was told to me at a football game in 1946. 

I am a.graduate of Columbia College and we have what you 

call a homecoming reunion. I remember the game very clearly -- we lost 

to Cornell. It was a gray day and there was a mob of people. The 

back.field was jammed; and be.fore the .football game -- I don't know how 

your universities work -- we have a picnic and people gather around 

tables, not only from my class, but from classes back to 1898. I am 

class of 1944. 

Somebody told this business about we have broken the Russian 

weather code. Somebody else told the story he had been parachuted into 

Yugoslavia to work with Tito or into Italy to blow up bridges--now a 

gossip columnist, this kid, but I don't think he is the one that told 

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me about the other thing because the other thing involved the Pacific. 

I don't know who that was. But it was 1946. 

Then this business about how the Russians offered to swap 

material on the Japanese code with us, the same gw told me that. 

Now, you may not--I am sure you are not very happy about the 

fact people have talked about this stuff, but as I say here in the next 

paragraph or the article it was a Harvard chem.istr;y instructor who told 

me about the atan banb a year before it went off at Hiroshima. 

And I remember another incident which I didn't put in here. 

During the war when I was in law school I met a naval officer on a 

train, a warrant officer--no, they don't have that--a petty officer, 

and he told me about a scheme to use aircraft with television cameras 

in them so that an admiral at Pearl Harbor could watch a carrier strike 

on Tokyo. I didn't think about this ver;y much until three months later 

wh~ the war ended and I met an electronics officer whom I knew, and I 

said -- his name is Bob something, he had gone to college with me, he 

was at MIT at the naval electronics thing -- I said, 'You know, I heard 

about this television relay setup.• 

He had a fit. He had a real fit. He said, 'My God, that is 

Operation Gadillac 1 • 

I said, 'Well, you are very lucky the Japanese surrendered 

yesterday. 1 

He said, 'Who told you that?' 

I said, 'Somebody told me on a train, a petty officer.' 

Well, he was in a sweat. So people do talk about these things. 

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REF ID:A59446 

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Now, this business a.bout how we tried to barter numbers with 

the Russians, this was told to me, I presume to the best of '111¥ recollection, by the same g113 who told me about the Russian weather code. It is 

the only connection that comes to me. 

If this is classified -- all I can sa.y I am veey glad that 

nobody but JQ"Self and rq agent has ever seen this. M1' wife started to 

read the article. She read half a page and said ~t was the most boresome 

dribble she ever read and refused to read it any more. That is why she 

is rather disturbed because she doesn't know what is bothering you people. 

Then this whole business about the Russians giving us i'alse 

numbers was that one anecdote. 

Then the i'act that the OSS was changed into CIA, I think you 

can get in any newspaper, because that must have been where I got it. 

'lhen I go on to say, 'Little is known oi' the size or the 

. Security Agency Staff'. That is true. I went to the NeW York TiJnes 

index again and again and again. I couldn't find 8.J'l7thing about it. 

So the NeW York Times doesn •t know anything more about it. Readers• 

Guide didn't know about it. All the periodical indices didn't lmow about 

it. 

Then I am afraid here has been a real flight of fancy --

I say, 'It's at least a thousand men and women, soldiers and civilians' 

that is a guess on rq part. I have seen estimates that CIA ranges from 

five to fifteen thousand. 

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Then I say, 'Quite a few of the code experts were drawn from 

"Magic,"' -- that is vef7 logical. 'Ihat was just, shall we call, intelligence speculation on my part. 

Then this business about what the Russian codes are now, this 

was in a book, I think by a man called Kurt Singer. He has written 

about ten books on espionage. The last one got an awful review in the 

Times, Men on the Trojan Horse; but this was from one of his earlier 

books. 

About the Russians tearing pages, and this business about the 

Russians used loose-leaf books, this was told to me -- I remember who 

and where -- when I was at Northwestern Law School in 1948. We had a 

German Exchange student who had fonnerly been a Wehnnacht, a German 

radio sergeant, and he told that they had captured some of these tornout pages which were then useless because once they are torn out they 

never use them again. 

Now, if this bothers you, you could find out from the 

Northwestern Law School records what German exchange student they had 

in 148 or 19. He was sent to the United States by a Quaker organization, if I recall. I think that was it. 

Then I go on to say, 'There hasn't been a whisper about the 

techniques being used by the Arnry Security Agency today.' 

That, I presume, is a tribute to you gentlemen's diligence. 

Then, 'On May 15, 1950, President Truman signed a law' 

that is a result of my diligence in reading the New York Times. 

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REF ID:A59446 

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And the last paragraph is merely cuteness, where I say, 

'But don't ask the mysterious Colonel X how they do those incredible 

tricks. You know what magicians always say, 11 It 1 s a secrett"' 

It is. Nobody has published anything on it, and I don't 

know, either. That is it. It's the whole sad story. 

MR. BLANK: Here we are faced with this dilemma that, as 

I say, there is most certainly some material in the article which is 

classified. 

MR. WAGER: Tell me something, Mr. Blank. 

MR. BLANK: Yes, sir? 

MR. WAGER: I gather, first of all, nobody is supposed to 

know that the Army's security agency is breaking codes. And I gather 

you wouldn't want me to print that. I am not going to have much of 

an article left at that point, because I am going to have a collection 

leftover old World War II stories. 

But rather than get in trouble here--because I would like 

to do other articles sometimes, not about controversial items, but 

which may require help from the Pentagon--I am willing to drop that or, 

indeed, if you people feel it's absolutely necessary -- although I put 

in almost a week of my time researching this thing -- this being a 

free-lance writer, the only conunercial property I have is time and 

literary skill -- this means I am out a week. But certainly my concern 

for the national security is such that if you feel I ought to drop it --

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SEO:a:e'f 

I mean, upon due reflection -- I would drop it. I would even leave you . 

this only copy there is. But I would rather not. 

MR. BLANK: It is a shame. I think we certainly would have 

to advise you awfully strongly --

MR. WAGER: To drop it? 

MR. BLANK: To drop it. 

MR. WAGER: If you feel that way, and you are in the 

business, I will go along with that without a moment's hesitation. 

MR. BLANK: We certainly have the responsibility not to ask 

you to do a thing like that without having thought about it very carefully and having consulted people who have both the technieal knowledge 

and the sense of public relations, of not asking frivolously to drop a 

thing like that which represents a loss and an inconvenience to you. 

MR. WAGER: Well, I suppose from your point of view -- and 

I am not trying to be frivolous, either -- you'd rather nothing was 

ever published on how codes are broken, on how codes have been broken, 

what a code is, how to spell the word 'code' -- you'd rather this whole 

subject was kept out of the press. 

MR. BLANK: I think there are two issues, really. One is 

the perhaps more substantial one of there being inf onnation here which 

is classified and our being in the embarrassing situation of not being 

able to pinpoint it because by doing so we in fact reveal classified 

material to you; and the second thing is exactly the point that you 

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REF ID:A59446 

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have made very well in the article, that a good bit of effort has been 

put into trying not to publicise these kinds of activities. 

MR. WAGER: Ten years in jail, $10,000 fine, that is quite 

strong language there. I like it on this side of the bars myself, and 

I am certainly a patriotic American who wouldn't want to do anything 

which would in any way impede our national security or help any 

foreign or hostile powers. You suggest I drop it? 

MR. BLANK: I think it would be a worth-while thing 

certainly for the colllltry if the thing were not published. 

MR. WAGER: Let me wash my hands of it in grand style, Mr. 

Blank. There is one carbon. I will give it to you so that the cat 

or the maid or nobody will get at it. O.K.? Because, if it's this 

wann--and I shy away from the word 1hot,' I don't even want it around. 

I will write articles about the G@vernor of Colorado who is not a 

military asset, unless he happens to go in the National Guard. 

I mean, there are plenty of other things to write about. I just 

thought -- well, I don't know if you are familiar with the problems 

of a free-lance writer, I assume you are not, but you have got to 

write about sanething lively. 

MR. BLANK: Sure. 

MR. WAGER: And yet I am not going to write stories, 

'Is Kinsey ruining your Life?' I am not that kind of a writer. So 

when I went into the free-lance writing business--I have only been 

in it less than a year--first, I had to draw on what stuff I had in 

my head --

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REF ID:A59446 

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MR. BLANK: Surely. 

MR. WAGER: -- to start out with. Now I can do research on 

Dan Thoniton or just -- I did a piece on a gambler in Louisiana. Dandy 

Phil Castel, who is a member of Mr. Costello's illegal organization. 

MR. BLANK: Yes. 

MR. WAGER: That you can do by going through the Kefauver 

hearings and nobody minds. 

MR. BLANK: It 1 s fascinating. I often wondered about freelance writing, what equipment you have to have; I guess a lot of 

resourcefulness, isn't it? 

MR. WAGER: Good arches would help you. You have to go 

from library to library, look at microfilms, and a certain amol.lllt · of 

ingenuity. If it doesn't show up in the Times index, I know people on 

a couple of newspapers, and they let me look at their morgue clippings. 

So when Dandy Phil Castel, for example, didn't get very good coverage 

from the New York Times, I went to a boy I know on the New York Daily 

News, which is a sensational tabloid. They had a whole folder on that 

guy. He has been a gambler back as far as 1918. 

O.K., no codes this year. 

MR. BLANK: I am dreadfully sorry, and I think we certainly 

are grateful to you. 

MR. WAGER: There are two other things I wanted to ask you 

gentlemen. I have done my best to be cooperative with you. I have 

come down here at my own expense, and called you when you didn't 

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_, 

answer my letter about the appointment, and everything. This wouldn't 

embarrass me if I ever wanted a job with the Government or anything, 

would it? Because my background is in aviation. Some day I might 

want to go to work for the CAB. 

MR. BLANK: Mr. BLANK is the expert on that. 

MR. BLANK: Well, of course -

MR. BLANK: It would seem to me that you have been very 

cooperative. 

MR. BLANK: I doubt very much if any decision would be made 

based on this to either hire you or not to hire you. 

MR. WAGER: I see. 

MR. BLANK: It is a combination of your background, if your 

background were all right; I think you have evidenced a desire to be 

cooperative. 

MR. WAGER: Good. 

MR. BLANK: Which is in the record and certainly that can 

do you no hann. 

MR. WAGER: Oh, good, good." 

*** 

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