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Lecture No. 5 1st Draft 

For a half century following the close of' the Civil War, cryptology in the 

~~~ ~~~ ~ ...Lc.L'~ United States"-awoke at long lastJ!a a'?,out 1914, not refreshed, as did Rip Van 

Winkle, but weaker. This is perhaps understandable if' we take into account the 

fact that the United States was able to enjoy a long era of' peace, broken only 

ik w.dl«; ~ J ~ lfr!ltt? ••. 

briefly by re short war.,_.~ ~-~l'411sa, 91 l;i'6),,, For over three decades 

~~-ktartt.-n.o there 'fl'' RQ need f'or~'tU.a.t~ ~ ~ 

1 ceyptologic operations,except such as were required for~"Mlecommunications of' the Department of' State. The military and naval services apparIVG4 

ently" .felt that in time of' peace there 4(1 no need :for either cryptography or 

cryptanalysis, and since it looked as tb.ough the US was going to enjoy peace for 

.. 

. . a J 11•91 an indef'initel.y long time, those services,,, did not think it necessary or 

desirable" to engage in cryptologic studies • Of' course, the War Department and the 

Army still had their route ciphers and cipher disks; the Navy Depe,rtmant and the 

Navy had their disks for producing mcnoalphab4tic ciphers,; and the Department of 

,..,, State had a code more or less specifically designed :for its communications. Everything 

I 

on the international scene, so far as concerned the us, was quiet. Let Europe 

fight - it was not of' our way of' life or our af'f'iar. 

The long hibernating period was briefly broken by one episode that may interest 

you. r bad not planned to bring it to your attention in this brief history but 

ceilttain events in the very recent. past lead me to tell you about it. I refer here 

to the very small popular-vote majority by which Democratic candidate Kennedy won 

the Presidency over Republican candidate Nixon, and the consequent talk. about the 

possibility of an upset when the electoral college would convene to do its work. 

The very same sort of' situation occurred in the presidential election of' 1876, in 
which Democratic candidate Samuel. J. Tilden was pitted against Republican candidate 

Rutherford B. Hayes. On the bml.s of' early returns Tilden seemed to be easily the 

winner. Going to bed on election night, 8 November 1876, Bayes conceded to Tilden 

and the newspapers next morning in fact reported a Tilden victory. But a couple 

of days after the election it began to appear that perhaps Tilden's victory was 

not sure, and his supporters began maneuvers to try to make it certain by taking 

advantage of' our peculiar system of electing a president, peculiar because it is 

the electoral, not the popular, vote which determines who is to be president. 

Two days after the people bad voted it became clear that Tilden would have 1811. 

electoral votes 1 just one vote short of insuring victory 1 whereas Hayes would have 

only 163, thus needing 22 more. The Tilden supporters began a frantic campaign 

to get that one additional vote and they didn't hesitate to try bribery, a rather 

serious piece of business obvious~ requiring a good deal of secrecy. Of course, 

many telegrams bad to be exchanged between the Tilden headquarters in New York City 

and confidential agents sent to certain states where electoral votes could perhaps 

be purchased; telegrams also had to be exchanged among secret agents in the field. 

About 4oo telegrams were exchanged and about 200 of these were in cryptographic 

form. Because of communication difficulties two almost-consummated deals fell. 

through; a third deal failed because the electors were honest Republicans not 

susceptible to bribery. The existence of these telegrams remained unlmown for 

months. But.the outcane of' the election remained in doubt because four states, 

Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana and Oregon each sent two groups of electors, 

an event not foreseen and provided against in '1'he Constitution. A crises arose 

and the country seemed on the verge of another civil war. By an act of 29 January :t.877, 

2 

GONFIDENTlii\L 
... 

Congress created a special electoral canmiseion to settle the disputed eledDral 

votes in the fO\ll' states. The commission voted in favor of the Ha.yes electors in 

each case and Hayes entered the White House. But it was only sane months afterward 

that tbe telegrams to which I have referred were brought to light and a situation 

arose which Congress felt it had to look into. Sanehow or other, copies of the 

telegrams came into the possession of a Republican newspaper, The New York Tribune, 

1n the summer of 1878, and two members of its staff succeeded in solving those in 

cryptographic form. 

Those of you who are interested in the political aspects of this intriguing 

story will find excellent reading mateiial in various books dealing with it. Those 

of you who are interested only in its cryptologic aspects will fiDd excelle~t material 1D the following three documents: 

(1) "'!be Cipher Dispatches", The New York Tribune, Extra No. 44, 

New York, (14 January) 1879. 

(2) Hassard, John R. G., "Cryptography 1D Politics", The North American 

Review, Vol CXXVIII, No. 268, March l.879, pp 315-325. 

(3) U.S. House Miscellaneous Documents, Vol 5, 45#1 Congress, 3rd Session, 

l.878-79. 

The Congressional House Committee designated to conduct the investigation 

was named "The select Committee on alleged frauds 1n the Presidential Election of 

1876. 11 In the course of the investigatiou, the Conmittee called a Professor Edward 

S. Kolden, of the United States Naval Observatory in Washingtouw I think he was a 

' 

captain in the Navy and specialized in mathematics. Tbe Tribune had brought him 

into the picture and Prof/essor Holden solved the ciphers but on:cy after Mr. John 

R. G. Hassard, the cHef of The Tribune staff, and his colle~, Colonel William M. 

Grosvenor, also of that staff, bad reached a solution. 

3 

CONllFIDENTIAL-
.Professor Holden's testimony is of ccm.siderable interest. He·presented his 

solution of the nearly 200 cryptograms entered in evidence. His testimony is 

summarized in a letter dated 21 February 1879 and it sets forth all the cryptosystems 

used by both parties, together with their keys and full details of their applicaticm.. In that letter, Professor Bolden makes the follow statement: "Bt 

September 7, 1878, I was in possessicm. of a rule by which any key to the•ost 

difficult and 1.Dgenious of these (the transpositicm. cipher of' the Democrats)could. 

infallibly be found." Bolden worked out the transposition keys but 1D this he 

~s of course anticipated by the Tribune cryptanal.ysts. There were in all 10 

different keys, two for messages of 10 words, two for messages of 15 words, etc, 

up to q including two for messages of 30 words. Here is the ccmplete table of 

- keys: 

Leave one quarter page space 

You may be wondering why there are two transposition keys for each length of 

message fran 10 to 30 in multiples of 5. The two keys constituting a pair are 

related to each other, that is, they bear a relationship which cm.e of the Tribune 

cryptanalysts, Hassard, termed "corre'Btive", but which we now would call an 

"encipher-decipher" or "verse-inverse" relationship. Either sequence may be used 

to encipher, the other to decipher a message. For example, key III consists of the 

following: 8-4-1-7-13· .. etc, and the correlative, key rt, is 3-7-12-2-6 ... etc. A 

cipher message of 15 words can be deciphered either by (1) numbering its words consecutively and then assembling the words in the order 8-4-1-7-lJ, or by (2) writing 

the sequence 3-7-12-2-6 ••• above the words of the cipher message and then assembling 

the thus-numbered words according to the sequence 1-2-3-4-5 ••• Th.us, there were, 

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CONFiDENTIJt,L 
REF ID:A62840 

CONFIDENTIAL 

in reality, not ten different transposition keys but only five. In the case of 

each pair of keys one of them must have been the basic sequence, the other the 

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inverse of it. 

I suspect that the basic or "verse" sequences of numbers were not drawn up 

at random but vere derived from words or phrase"B}. and I suspect that the oddnumbered ones are the "verse". I have not had time to try to reconstruct them. 

Perhaps some of you may like to make the attempt. You will notice that in the oddnumbered keys, the positions of sequent digits reflect an underlying key word or 

phrase. 

In addition to transposition, this system involved the use of code words to 

represent certain words and the names of certain persons and places, and numerals. 

There were also a few nulls. Here is the entire vocabulary: 

Ieave ! page space 

Professor Holden adds some comments about this system 'Which are worth presenting: 

The essence of this ingenious and novel system consists in taking apart 

a sentence ·written in plain English (dismembering it, as it were) and again 

writing all the words in a new order, in which they make no sense. The problem of deciphering it consists in determining the order according to 'Which 

the words of the cipher should be written in order to produce the original 

message. 

There is one way, a.nd only one way, in 'Which the general problem can be 

solved, and that is to take two messages, A and B, of the same number of words, 

and to number the words in each; then to arrange message A with its words in 

an order 'Which will make sense, and to arrange the words of message B in the 

same order. There will be one order - and only one - in 'Which the t·wo messages ·will simultaneously make sense. This is the key. 

It appears that Professor Holden did not note the verse-inverse relation in 

each pair of sequences, or, if he did, he failed to mention it, as Hassard did in 

his article • 

There were enough messages to permit of establishing the meanings of the code 

words used, so that the plain terl of practically all the messages in this, the 

most complicated of the cryptosystems involved in this bizarre poliaical e1isode, 

became quite clear. 5 

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COp.q,FiDENTIAL 

Another system used by the conspirators enwloyed a 2-letter for one letter 

er 

substitution and was based upon a 10 X 10 check.board. Apparently neither Professor 

Holden nor the Tribune crypt~sts recognized the latter principle, nor did they 

find that the coordinates of the checkerboard em.ployed a key phrase, nor did they 

realize that the same checkerboard, with numerical coordinates, was used for the 

two-digit for one letter substitution. Here are two of the messages exchanged by 

the conspirators, one in the letter cipher, the other in the figure cipher: 

!eave t page space 

They are long enough for solution, if you wish to try to solve them and find the 

key phrase, which should amuse you by ii;s appropriateness. 

There aere several other systems involved, but I am going to have to pass 

them by because they hardly deserve attention 1n this brief history. I do, however, 

want to call your attention to the very close resemblance bet·ueen the wordtransposition ciphers characterized by Professor Holdan as "the mos1/difficult 

and ingenious" of the ciphers he..: solved, and the UOO'C route ciphers described in 

the preceeding lecture. Yet,. not only he but also the Tribune amateur crypta.nalysts 

solved those ciphers without too much difficulty, even though they were technica.lly 

more conwlex. I think their work confirms my ow appraisal of the weakness and 

futility of the route ciphers used by the USMl'C in the Civil War. 

, Iet us now go on with cryptologic history a~er this digression.into the 

realm of Wa.t may be called political cryptology. I do not know ·what the Department 

of mtate used for cryptographic communications in the years following the Civil 

War. Probably it was a small code, even an adaptation of some commercU.al code. 

Bui; in an article entitled "secret Writing", which appeared in Century Magazine, 

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CONFIDENTIAL 
REF ID:A62840 

CONFiDEN-a·nAL 

Vol LXXXV, November 1912, No. 1, a man named John B:. Haswell, apparently a code 

clerk in the Department, referred to a new code of the department in the following 

terms: 

The cipher of the Department of state is the most modern of' all in the 

service of the Government. It embraces the valuable features of its predecessors 

and the merits of the latest inventions. Being used for every species of' 

diplomatic correspondence, it is necessarily copious e.nd unrestricted in its 

capabilities, but et the same time it .U:s economic in its terms of expression. 

It is si.Dq')le and speedy in its operation, but so ingenious as to secure absolute secrecy. The construction of this cipher, like many ingenbus devices 

'Whose operations appear sim;ple to the eye but are difficult to explain in 

l1I'iting, l-roul.d actually require the key to be furnished for the purpose of 

an intelligible description of it. 

Only four years later a certain telegraph operator and code clerk of the state 

Department proved how vulnerable the ~artment's system of enciphered code really 

was. His name was Herbert 0. Yardley and many of you may know a bit about him 

because he was the author of a famous or infamous book (depending upon 'Whose side 

you're~ on) entitled The American Black Chamber, which was published by the BobbsMerrill Co. in 1931. So far as I know it is the only book which cannot legal.]¥ be 

reprinted in the United states because a special law passed in 1934 makes it a 

criminal offense to do so. That is quite a story in itself' but I cannot tell it 

now. So if you happen to own a copy of the first and only American edition, don't 

let it get a-wa;y from you, because you can only obtain another copy of it by a more 

or less "under the table" deal or may only be able to purchase an English edition 

by a simlar sort of deal. But to return to that State Department cryptosystem 

considered by Haswell "to secure absolute secrecy", here is the cover page of 

Yardley's 21-page typewritten an.a.2ysis. 

Ieave i- page space 

Yardley was quite wrong in thinking that his was the first successful attem,pt 

to solve a problem in enciphered code, for in Europe successf'ul. attem,pts on more 

complicated cases were often the rule and I imagine that British crypt-~sts 

7 

CONP-'IDENTIAL 
REF ID:A62840 

CONFIDENTIAL 

cou1d have a.nd perhaps did read State Department messages as a more or less routine 

matter. For in Europe, cryptanalytic studies were going on apace during the years 

of .American neglect of such studies. 

In our Navy the monoalphabetic ciphers continued in use until the middle of 

the eighties, 'When several naval officers were designated to prepare a more suitable 

system based upon a. code particul.arly for naval communications. The system they 

worked out involbved a very large codebook, 18" long, 12" wide and 2" thick, which 

had the official title The U.S. Navy Secret Code_, and an accompanying but separate 

cipher book alJllost as large and designated a.s The Book of Key Words. In addition 

to these two books was a third book called "General Geograph.ical Tables. The system 

was placed 1Dto effect cm 1 Dec•ber l.887. Abcut teD 19ara later a aev editim ot 

the third. 'book was placed into ettect. Later I vill ab.av 1'°" a moatt historic 

•aaage sent 1D tbat cllma7 s19t• or secret ccmmmicatim. 

ID our Artq 1D the midclle eighties, too, a code was also prepared, 11114 its 

. cmpoaitim aDd tormt bariq shed laurels upm those reapmaible tor it• praductim 

becauae it was mere~ a coaterteit ot "IN a c~cialq aTailable ._11 code 

. first publiab.ecl 1D 1870 tor use b7 the general public under tbe title Telell"!Rhic 

' 

cede to emure aecres7 1D tbe truaamiaaica ot telegr-, b7 Robert Slater, lecreta1r7 

or the Prencb. Atllllrtic Telegraph lo. .As to tbe uature of the code, I •ill quote 

trm Slater 'a own "Short explaDatica ot tbe llOd.e ot ua1Dg this work." 

It is a Dmbered Telegraphi,c Dicticaar7 or tbe EDglish laDguage, of' vbich 

eacb. word bears a diatillctive Ro. (tre11 00001 to 25000, vitb. ezact]¥ 100 vorda' 

per page), aDd tb.e method. ot uaiDg it 1a b7 an 1DtercbaDg:lllg between correspcmilleldle tbat a further lo. is to be added to or deducted trm tb.e number ill 

the code, or tbe •ard telegraphetl or written, to 1D4icate the real-varcl ill· 

tended, tlms a "SJllbolia" or "Dmm;r Word" ia telegraphed, tbe meaniag ot 

l<!''" • .i..:!!lwhich can mq be read 1D7 thoae wbo baYe tl'&e ke7 to the secret of b.ov ~ 

ahauld. 'be a4de4 to or declucte4 frCll the mmber ill tbe Code 1 Df' the "Duma,J Word." 

to t1Dd the vanl meant. 

8 
REF ID:A62840 

GONFIDENTIAL 

Here e bave a smteace ot 116 voria vith a E&Dillg vhicb ia quite Dll"q 

but I tbiDk you. vill gatl'ler its import. '!'he s;ystea as tbua tar deacribei is 

vbat ve aov call m aclclitive ar subtractar method. But 1D the detailed iDBtruct1caa Slater goea me step turtber aD4 •uueata tbat tutead of' telegraptLillg 

tbe cole Dllllbera reaultillg frm adclitim or aubtractim, tbe vords ataD.41.Dg 

almtgaide tbe s• (or dif'tereace) ot tJle •thelBtical operatim be aeat. 

Slater'• coile mat ban met vitb popular acclaia because b7 1906 it vu ill 

its fifth editim. YOll 97 like to see the title page of the aecClld acl1t1m 

(l.879), a CCJ.P1' ot vhicb 1a ill IQ' col.lectim. I Wish I bad a cop7 ot the nr:r 

firat ed.itim,but DOt even tbe Li'brar7 of Caagress baa me, tbat'a bow scarce 

it is. 'l'o get cm v1th tbe ator7, 1D 1885 tbe War Department publiabed a ca4e 

tor its uae amt tbe use ot the A.ray. •re 18 a picture of its title page. '!'be 

mly difference between it and tbe title pap of the 2Dd. e4itim ot Slater's Cole 

ia 1a the 1pell1Dg of the ward. aecrec7, as ym can eaa1.1¥ see 1D tlle picture I 

abaw :JOQ aext. It vould appear that Col. Gregor7 wa Just a bit deficient 1D 

imagination becuuse not only did he sim;ply borrow the basic idea of Slater's 

code but also when it came to preparing the rul.es for and examples of enciphering 

the code groups the colonel used the identical rules and wording and even the 

same type of transformations that are found in Slater's original. Iet me show 

, 

example of Slater's code side by side with the same example from Gregory's: 

\'I L-e.~ ;t 

---- CONFIDENTIAi • 

9 
REF ID:A62840 

CoNFIDENTIAL 

All the other methods and examples in the two codes are practically 

identical. Colonel Gregory gives credit to a civilian aide, in the following 

terms: "The labor of compiling the new vocabulary has been performed by 

Mr· W ·G • Spottswood. And Mr. Spottswood 1 s work consisted in casting out such 

words as ABALIENATE and ABANDC!IEE from Slater's list and replacing them with 

such words as ABA!I'EMENT and ABATIS. This sort of' work must indeed have been 

arduous. I'm sorry to appear to be so critical of 'lII3' predecessors in the 

construction of codes and code systems for War Department and Army usage, but 

I feel sure you will agree that more imagination and ingenuity could have been 

employed than were used by Messrs. Gregory and Spottswood. 

Col. Gregory prepared a confidential letter to Lieut. General Sheridan, 

"Commanding Army of' the U.S.", to explain the beauties of' the new code. Again 

because I'm afraid you won't place too much credence in what I'm telling you, 

the confidential letter from Col. Gregory to Lieut. General Sheridan is printed 

in +o+o in Appendix I, tb .. 'Which I have added Col. Gregory's 11 In.troduction11 

to the instructions f'or using the code. 

Believe it or not, this was the code that the Wa.r Department and the Army 

used during the Spanish-American War. It was apparently used w.Lth simple 

additive, because in a copy in my collection the additive is written on the 

inside of' the front cover. It was 777. In pages 41-42 of' The American Black 

Chamber the author throws an interesting sidelight on this code system.:.. 

The com;pliation of' codes and ciphers was, by General Orders 

fiie meant 4rnW' Regulations] ,, a Signal Corps :f'unction, but the ws G917'] revealed the unpreparedness of this department in the United 

states. How much sp is indicated by a talk I had w1 th a higher of'f'icer 

CONFIDENTIAL. 

10 
REF ID:A62840 

CONFIDEN ... flAL 

of the Signal Corps who had just been appointed a military attache 

to an Allied country. It was not intended that attaches should 

actually encode and decode their own telegrams, but as a part of 

an intelligence course they were required to have a superficial 

knowledge of both processes in order that they might appreciate 

the importance of certain precautions enforced in safeguarding our 

communications. 

When the new attache, a veteran of the old .Arm:f, appeared, 

I handed him a brochure and rapidly went over some of our methods 

of secret communications. To appreciate his attitude, the reader 

should midersta.dd that the so-called additive or subtractive method 

for garbling a code telegram (used during the Spanish-American War) 

is about as effective for maintaining secrecy as the sinq:lle substitution 

cipher ·which as children we read in Poe's The Gold Bug. 

He listened impatiently, then growled: "Tbat1 s a lot of nonsense. 

Whoever heard of going to all that trouble? During the Spanish-American 

War we didn't do all those things. We just added the figure 1898 to 

all our figure code words 1 and the Spaniards never did find out 

about it. 

Although The American Black Chamber abounds with exaggerations and distortions, 

'Wbat the author tells about the inadequacies of United States codes and ciphers 

in the years just before our entry into World War I are true enough and Fardley' s 

impatience and satires in this regard are mifort'lllle.tely fully warranted. 

We have noted how inadequately the Army and the War Department were equipped 

for cryptocommmiications in the decades 1890-1910. Iet us see how well equipped 

the Navy and the Navy Department were. For this purpose I have an excellent 

example and one of great historical significance and interest. You will recall 

my mention of the appointment of a board of Navy officers to prepare a suitable 

crY,ptosystem for the Navy and I told you about the large basic codebook and its 

accompany±ijg almost as large book for enciphering the code groups. For the 

story we go back to the time of President McKinley, whose election brought 

Theodore Roosevelt, a former member of the Civil Service Commission, back to 

Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Teddy was an ardent advocate 

of military and naval preparedness and frankly favored a strong foreig'il policy, 

looking forward, in fact, to the ultimate withdrawal. o! the European powers 

11 

CONfPSDENTIAL 
REF ID:A62840 

CONFIDe:r.-roAL 

from the Western Hemisphere. With vigor, he set to work to make the Navy ready. 

When the Battleship Maine was blown up in Ha.van.a harbor on 15 February 1898, 

Roosevelt sharpened his efforts. During a temporary absence of his chef, John 

D. Iong, he took it upon himself to instigate the preparations which he had in 

vain asked the Secretary to make. He ordered great quantities of coal and 

ammunition, directed the assembling of the Fleet and stirred the arsenals and 

navy yards into activity. On a Saturday afternoon, ten days after the Maine 

was blown up, and still in the absence of Secretary Iong, Teddy sat down and 

wrote out a cablegram to go to Commodore George Dewey. Here it is, with his 

bold signature at the bottom: 

Cablegram Ieave !- page space. 

That was the now historic message which alerted Dewy and 't¥hich resulted 

in our taking the Philippines from the Spanish,in the war which was declared 

ten days later on Spa.in. 

I don't know when that classification "Secret and Confidential" was crossed 

out but it must have been years later, for those three words appear in the 

plain text of the deciphered and decoded cablegram. Here is a. picture of the 

code cablegram as it was received in Hong Kong: 

Ieave i page space 

.And now I show you the deciphered and decoded text, which I produced 

1113'Self by comrtesy of the Chief of the Navy Security Group, who permitted me 

to consult and use the necessary books from Navy Security archives. To translate 

a message three steps are necessary. First, the cable words (the peculiar, 

outlandish words in line 2 - WASSERREIF, PAUSATURA, BADANADOS, CENTENNIAL, etcl) 

are sought in the cipher book, and their accompanying cable-word numbers set 

12 

CONFIDENTIAL 
REF ID:A62840 

. CONfFIOENTIAL 

down. WASSERREIF yields 99055; PAUSTURA. yields 62399, BADANADOS, 11005; 

CENTENNW.., 16820. The next step is to append the first digit of the second 

cable-word number to the la.st digit of the first cable-word number to make the 

latter a six-digit number. Thus 99055 becomes 990556. The six-digit code 

group number is then sought in the basic code book and its meaning is found 

to be "Secret and Confidential." The trD.Usfer of' demonstration of' a straightford, 

mathema.tical method of solving the Vigenere cipher 'WS.S published in Eerlin 

during the mid-period of the Ci v:Ll War in America.. If the book created an 

impression in Europe it was aJ.tagether llllspectacular; in America it remained 

unheard of' until after the advent of' the 20th Century~ Al.though Ka.siski's 

method is explained quite accurately in the first .American text on cryptology, 

Capt. Parker Hitt's Manual for the solution of military ciphers. (Fort Ieavenworth, 

Kansas: Army Service Schools Press, 1916), the name Ka.siski doesn't even appear 

in it. other books on cryptologic subjects appeared in Europe during this period 

among which the more important were the following: 

I.eave k page space 

Of the foregoing two deserve special mention. The first, by commo.nda.nt 

Ba.zerier, is a book notable not for its general contents, which a.re presented 

in a rather disorganized, illogical sequence, but for its presentation'of a 

cipher device invented by the author, the so-called cylindri"cal cipher device, 

a picture of which I now show you. But our own Thomas Jef'f'ersb:n:. anticipated 

Ba.zeries by a. cent~, and here a.re tl-10 slides describing Jefferson's "Wheel 

~her", copied from the original manuscript wnong the Jefferson Papers in the 

13 

C:ONFICJENTIALn 
.. • 

Library of Congress. The second book in the foregoing l.ist which is deserving 

of altration is the one by de Viaris, in ·which he presents methods for solving 

cryptograms prepared by the Ba.zeries cipher cylinder or Jefferson's Wheel 

Cypher. 

It was in the period during which books of the foregoing nature were ·written 

and published that the chanceries of European Governments operated so-called 

Black Chambers, organized for solving the secret communications of one another. 

Intercept was unnecessary bec"Qu:ie the governments owned o.nd operated the 

telegraph systems mid traffic could be obtained simply by making copies of 

messages arriving or departing from telegraph offices on in transit through 

them. This ·wa.s true in the case of every country in Europe with one very 

important exception: Great Britain. The story is highly interesting but I 

must condense it to a few sentences. 

In ~d from a.bout the year 154o on-"WOrd a. black chamber was in constant 

operation. It was one of two collabora'ting organizations ca.lled The Secret 

Post Office end The Office of Decipherer. 

In the former, letters were opened, copies of them were ma.de, the letters 

' 

replaced, the envelopes resealed, and if there were "WaX seals, duplicates were 

ma.de. Copies of letters in cipher ·were sent to the Offices of Decipherer for 

solution and the results sent to the Foreign Office. A famous mathematician, 

John Wallis, took part in the activities of the Office of Decipherer. But in 

1844 a scandal involving these two secret offices caused Parliament to close 

them dawn completely· so that from 1844 until 1914 there was no black chamber 

14 

~ONFIDENTIAla 
·.., REF ID :A62840 

CONP IDENTIAL 

at all in Britain. As a. consequence, when World War I broke out on the first 

of August 1914 England's bl.a.ck chamber had to start from scratch, but British 

brains a.nd ingenuity within a few months built a cryptologic organization 

• 

know as "Room 1'o O.B.", which contributed very greatly to the Allied victory 

.. in 1918. 

Perhaps the greo.test a.chievement of Room 1'o O.B. was an operation which 

just in the nick of time brought this country into World War I as an active 

belligera.nt on the Allied .side • The operation involved the interception and 

solution of what is know as the Zimmermmm Telegram, deservedly cnlled the 

most :im;portant single cryptogram in all history. On 8 September 1958 I gave 

an account of this cryptogram, its interception, its solution, and how the 

solution was handed over to the United States, bringing America into the war 

on the British side, ·without disclosing to the Germans just how the plain 

text was obtained, least of all that it had been obtained by interception and 

aolution by cryptanalysis. M.Y' talk, given under the auspices of the MSA 

Crypto-Mathematics Institute, w.s recorded ond is on file. It took two and 

a half hours and I didn't quite succeed in· telling the whole story, which 

you will find in great detail (except for some important technical data not 

yet available to the public) in a book entitled The Zimmermann Telegram, by 

Barbara Tuchman, (Da.te ) • Also, you should consult a book entitled 

Eyes of the Nav;yJ by Admira1 Sir William James, (Da.te ) • :Both books deal 

at length with the Zimmermmm Telegram and tell how astutely Sir William Reginald 

Ha.11, Director of British Naval Intelligence in World War I, managed the affair 

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so as to get the maximum possible advantage from the feat accomplished by the 

British Black Chamber. To summarize, as I must, this fascinating true ta.le 

of a crypta.nalytic conquest, let me first show you the telegram as it passed 

from Washington to Mexico City. 

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