REF ID:A63404 

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"Not only have we been beaten in the decisive battl.es of this war, 

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but also we J.ost the communications war. We fel.t foolishly secure and 

fail.ed to take adequate measures to protect our own communications on one 

band, whil.e on the other hand, we fail.ed to succeed in breaking into the 

enemy's traffic. This is undoubtedly one of the major reasons for our 

J.osing battles and in turn one of the major contributing factors to our 

: J.osing the war. We f'ail.ed in communications." 

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Jmmi:Jbfrilil•P'*Ux&&"•wdlww~1Jftcf!~1mr1~"- • t ;\ • .+• • r, • ' • .. .'l, 

~ -recentl7-pablished-·1.:tr1:rapan-ey f'ormer Japanese JWii ·p 'It naval. 

w~ tptf'icers come out quite openl.y with statements attributing their defeat to poor 

COMSEC on their par'S and excell.ent American COMINT and COMSEC. For exampl.e, 

there is Captain Fuchida's book entitled Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, 

Chapter VIII, p. 131: 

"I:f' Admiral. Yamamoto and his staff' were vaguely disturbed by 

persistent bad weather and by lack of information concerning the doings 

of the enemy, they woul.d have been trul.y dismayed bad they known the 

actual enemy situation. Post-war American accounts make it clear that 

the United States Pacific Fleet knew of the Japanese plan to invade Midway 

even before our forces had started from home waters. As a result of some 
REF.ID:A63404 

' ~ -- . amazing achievements of American intelligence, the enemy bad succeeded 

; . . : 

in breaking the principal code then in use by the Japanese Navy. In this 

way the enemy was a~le to learn of our intentions almost as quickly as 

we bad determined them ourselves." 

(Here as an aside what Wenger told as to disbelief 1n decrypts.) 

Lest you in:fer that our side didn't meet with any COMSEC accidents, let me 

say that we had plenty of them. These were not attributable, however, to serious 

weaknesses in our COMSEC devices, machinesand procedures, but principally to 

( human failure to follow the rules implicitly or to weaknesses in the COMSEC 

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devices, ma.chines and procedures of some o:f our Allies. Take for instance the 

heavy losses that the United States Army Air Corps sustained in their air strikes 

on the Ploesti oil fields in southeastern Europe. We lost several hundred big 

· bombers within a relatively short time because of weaknesses in Russian communi-

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cations which let the German fighter co:mmailds know exactly when our bombers 

left and where they were going. When found out what the trouble was, it was 

too late. This incident leads me to say that when you :fight a war with allies 

their COMSEC weaknesses are bound to affect the security of your own forces; 

l something must be done to eliminate those weaknesses, even at the risk of 

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~ jeopardizing other important things. For instance, you may have to provide 

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'them with some of your own cryptoma.terial, in which case you lose control of the .. :' continued secrecy of that material. i .. ~ .... 

It is hardly necessary to tell you that with the advances ma.de in the 

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what we ~ C.i~ Device/ type M-~ Now, when Ila.Jar -r~- decided to j ~ --- ___ ...... 

/go ahead with this device, Mrs. Friedman and I were back at Riverbank, af'ter 

I had returned from the AEF. We didn't think the device was very secure and 

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said so, whereupon Maubo~gne issued a challenge, which was accepted. He sent 

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25 messages. We started in with our crew to try to solve the messages by 

1ining them all up and tryiog to guess words in them. It was no-go. We spent 

~a lot a!: time tr7iDI! to solve those messeges--and so did the crew a!: cr,pt-

\) r analysts in G-2. Ten years later I found the plain text of the set of 25 

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· cha.1lenge messages amoogst some old papers in the Office of' the Chief Signal 

1 Officer and then I knew why neither we nor G-2 solved them--look at them! And 

! we were expecting military text! In defense of' Mauborgne I' 11 say that it was 

not he who cooked those test messages up f'or the challenge--it was one of his 

assistants who thought -he'd put one over on us, which he did. ..... 'I iwl 

.c ... 1 ..!. . . . • • •- .. I ... 

weel1w>f1les~dlkill..,..llCp'~'E!Bihlllll•111•1m•m111•'*lilc*11-•:11w111191A•&•••m•ii•ll2l'Mml*llllhiaM•e111P111i'bNmm1J11-1S1••tnaw1J1•••*•ll'llill¥S 

,.. i.;, f. :-~ -: 

) When af'ter 

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some six or so 

/ months nobody had solved his challenge messages Mauborgne went ahead and got 

\ the thing out, and 1l!lppF'l!ru41• >tla1e~llt•ql*lii111illllll!&i:1111Aflll~lllR•'9'l¥ili'Pilq.qJR1R 

'---- were 

thousands of therr/ ma4e. 'l'bey we~used by the Army, the Navy, the Coast 

Guard, and the Treasury. t!ere • s a picture of the thi~"J A couple of years af'ter 

write-up of' something he'd 

the M-94 was put into service a friend showed me a i•emt'* · •d na •-

come across more or less accidentally in the Library of' Congress, among •Z · ' .....,.~the papers of Thomas Jefferson. M Ii•e Jef'f'erson was the first 

to invent the cipher cylinder principle, and he anticipated the Frenchman, 

~azeries, by a century. Here is the first page of his description of his 
REF ID:A63404 

device, which he called "The Wheel Cypher." Here is the second page. You see 

bis ca.J.culations, giving you at the bottom the number of permutations that his 

particular device a.f'fords--a whale of a large number because Jefferson proposed 

a set of 36 disks. 

In studying the degree of security provided by the M-94 both Army and Navy 

cryptologists soon came to the conclusion that security would be much increased 

~ti{~~ 

by the use of '1Q'ia91.e-·-<>r changeabl~ a.ip~bets. Among other versions JI had 

....... o..~ 

one which used metal rings on which we could mount slips of paper and fasten 

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them; thus we could change the alphabets as often as was felt necessary. Navy 

tried other versions. That was the beginning of the various ~ forms of 

strip cipher devices used by the Armed Forces, and later by the State Department 

and the Treasury Department. Here is a picture of the final Army ~-"'1'.)f' 

S°O. \ \ strip cipher device ~J You see the channels in which the alphabet strips were 

;Ir inse;~~~ :~::~ng to tbe "daily key: 'and :c:ording to the particuiar cry;pto-net 

to which your command belonged. I mean by this that not all the tra.f'fic would 

I > l • be in the same set-up Of strip~ or even.used the same strips. The idea was to 

cut down the amount of interceptible traffic in the same key_] The strip ciphers 

carried an enormous amount of tra.f'fic. 

Next we come to a ma.chine call~d the Kryha, invented by a German, in about 

the 

Ac~~-\-o~~~ year 1925. jfbe Kryb.8. was the last word in the way of mechanical crypto-

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graphs,~-timer-and Mr. Kryha. tried to interest various governments in 

/' .. ~ ~ ... ,',\,- ~ ~ JL.ri,~{~, ~"" ~ ~o-c.v.-~,~ 

his machine. 1--think I should explain i-l f'or those who have never seen ·1.t. 

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which was ever solved in that sort of a ma.chine, and by the way, I hope you 

if I say that the methods I had to devise at that time for the 

of rotor machines and rotors in cascade are practically the same today 

G.Cl'--"~~~ver·-th:trty-fiye--yeare a.go. Despite my solution we thought that 

the Hebern principle was still a good one and Navy went ahead with Mr. Hebern 

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l'1~· \O after he got out of prison. Here's a picture of' the last machine/\. built for the 

Navy. Hebern wanted to get paid for it naturally, but there was just one hitch--

the machine wouldn't work and when this was pointed out to him he said: "Show 

me where it says in the contract i'ti has to work", and when they couldn't, he 

was pa.id off'. The Navy then decided that they had had enough of Hebern and 

.w~: .. ~ went into research and development themselves) .!l!hey-he.d a laboratory~e~ablished 

in the Navy Yard, ~-a. very able young ma.n"Seiler, now a Captain in the··Navy, ...... _-...... ~ .... 

who did some excellent developmental worit': Years later the Hebern heirs brought 

suit in the United States Court of Claims against the United States for $50,000,000, 

~ ~~ ~! ~ ft.c...__ ........ ~ ~ o. ~k~ ~$io,~to. 

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~ it, libic.h-wmr .. about -a month-or--tw.a. . .ago, -a settlement was in prospect for~ 

• .a.bou:t-$31/J,f/JiHL - That's quite a- discount. I might say that a & ' Ac•tir••w 

lli'llgil!laJl~~·lldU"·•••WNl S ; there was very l.ittl.e col.laboration 

between the Army and the Navy cryptol.ogic organizations in those days before 

Pearl. Harbor. Each Service had its own secrets--which was real.l.y too bad, 

but the situation was mended later, as we wi1.1. have occasion to 1.earn. 

~-~~ ~I •m going to ~~ow ~a few al.ides of the Army devel.opments in,._ cryptoma.chines. This, after the a.ebacl.e I've tol.d you about, was the first shot that 

we in the Signal. Intel.l.igence Service in the Office of the Chief Signal. Officer, 

in Washington had at devel.oping a ma.Chine for the A:rm:y. It had a keyboard, a 

l.ight-bank, 

/ 5-rotors, and now an interesting feature--an external. keying mechanism. .._ 

» EAR-

" ; M++!IWttii I had come to the conclusion that internal control. mechanisms for 

){...J,~.) 

stepping rotors had a fundamental. weakness;~r felt that you must not make the 

rotors depend upon themsel.ves for the stepping, and I conceived the idea of 

having an external. key, for example, a teletype tape, which would step along 

and control. the stepping of the rotors in random fashion. These tapes were 

composed of a sequence of random characters so that the rotor stepping was 

quite erratic, and that was our first shot at it. I think the principl.e is 

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sti1.1. quite safe, especia11.y if the tapes aren't overburdened in usage. This 

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110.; ~~::.;:.:. :.::.::. n:.=:;,.-,::.:.;:,;:;,;:.=-,;,~. r~\:~ 

the keyboard, an el.ectromatic typewriter, etc. 

~·cm•a••••ata~ ,.. ...... KIP'IWi "HocclJw • vm.aM•••HHpt'iiM•gm••Miwlw 

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·REF rn :•Ao3 4-0 4 ..... ~ ...... 

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of' the very early models .. .., .... EEiiiiUiltm+'~ •••*4~ ~ 

We had boxes of about l~~ key tapes 

-~· 4••• w11M.4+a~ywasueci:::&uidX1EllmilllUle100ClitX~l!lUl8Jl.OtXIQ11bbfrom which you could make the selection for the day according to the keying 

document. llliliimri~JtlaiilixJtimJClllllrilmallxBllm"Dflilgxpill(fii* ~ • iij18llllt 

Pi ~l(.~J..11>AA P"-~~ ~ t' ~:f'-atal weakness, of course, was the/\.production and 1i'b8" distribution of 1rlbe 

tapes •. ·.!;Ch's l1a&-.qui.te...a..1:!eadache--aml~even wben. we used-specially heavy paper· for 

. ~-·~'CllP,,1IKRI~ 

1'.C.le-:1~rea .41-bey would break after they hatl.-gone through a number of ti.mes~ 

1til .. t18111!amq!llltilt~p!IODrll:llK:llllt~lltl!:~-....-._..1JflliilaS11JllQ~GIL&elli"tilil'tli!i!C !!IJ 

iiw ~n·~ximwaDM:J<Mw•3in .. n •'•i:t••••••*~:Ni ~sass; QI~ / .. 

/ 11Ui•M ~111m!di:Qlr.l!l.llllmlt4lllli::1&110~~ 1_.Jia-lwi . .about ·1? ··of--the-se ;,nuroractured by & 

.concern in New Jersey that was not particularly gifted in the typewriter art. 

The machines functioned all right but before even ten of them had been produced 

we had hit upon a new principle for the control of the rotor stepping. I tried 

my very best to get the Signal. Corps to change the developnent right there and 

then, and shif't to the new type of control. I was practically thrown out of the 

office of the chief of the division with the remark, "Go back to your den--

If we .al.ways· listeneil. 

you inventors are all alike. A new and better idea every day. •••••+b• ~·"" to you,.._ we 1d never get anything out. 11 ~ ~ \.-1> 

-~~·•rlilwb:pw • '' So we put the idea on ice, that is, in 

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17~·~ secrecy. I will switch now to the Navy-~I<:'I ECM, the electric cipher machine, 

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designed, developed and built by the Navy without any help from Mr. Bebern. It 

had a new type of control mechanism for rotor stepping, based upon the use of 

wires 

Bowder/ or flexible cables. They were tricky and gave rise to a lot of difficulty 

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ae.ue2.-t, YU':~,~ """'e. 

that we had to~lllllike an adaptor· for ""1~machine so that it could inter-communicate 

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with the British TYPEXJ and the British _had to' Jne:ker an aaaptor for their machine 

to inter-communicate with the ECM-SIG~ ~:·a--wtnn"l.T 'l'.ihiiece"'ffary expt!r.me, 

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

l--'bh±nk,~ the end of 1953 we ~ere able to convince the authorities that ... -... . 

. - . .; ........ - .. :.. .. . ~ - - it woul.d be all. right and finail.y the British were ailowed to have our machines 

it'w,,.~ until. they could complete their developments and be on their own. I think ~~ 

~ 'v-.~~\t ·~ ~ ~ to ~to~ -~'°- ~tbe .. p~U.o:.._rJ.z=- af)'C. l:C.'1 ·~\qh~~ .atil.l. have same of our machines but they're supposed to turn them back in due ~· 

course. I can expl.a:in the basic principle of the machine. Here are its 

essential elements: a set of five ciphering rotors here, and another set of 

1 I five control rotors here, making a set ar ten al.together. Since the rotors are 

, all interchangeable, there can be a great number of permutations from a primary 

s 

It 1 s greater than 10 ! because the rotors can be inserted \. set of ten rotors. 

l right-side up or upside down; in fact, the number is 20 x l.8 x l.6 ••• x 2. And 

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f if you have a set of 20 from which you can select 10, as is now the case, the •\ 

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~ number becomes very much greater. Now there are four inputs in this row of 

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1 control. rotors and their output governs the stepping Of the five cryptographic 

rotors in a very erratic manner. This set of five small rotors permutes the 

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. l o~tput of the control. rotors, adding an additional valuable keying element. 

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\_.G.._t A. We know of no case of solution of this machine and system throughout the 

war, and it is still in service aa a high-grade off-line machine. During its 

use in World War II there was one possible com.pro~ise -and-i.t raised quite a 

vr~ J.. W-.--J tt....:~:t.t'"~ h--e.. ~··-~..,. ~-t P~~ A_ u.~. ~ 

storm"'at--the·-time·;-.:'rhe 2ath Division -bivouacked for-the night in a small city. 

~"' ~ h~ -y;.,. ~- ~ .. ~~ ~ ~ ~"i5'tC-_ ~~ '*Q, ~O<l f\A.J.-"4~.Jr.11.'·.>.:-".f) M.....J... \Vl..~~&-29. n\...J- ;t.ful. ~h~,t\ v..')«{) fl'~~ ~~~~C. 

·v· ~ti.A ~lw~ \I\ 6 . .P-' ·re-·~ ~ ~ ~~•-N.:'-M.- - t.c.-... c:\.. "-Po,.;P'(J ~4"', 

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\in France and the vehicle 

1 stationed in front of the 

containing the cryptomaterial and the SIGABAs was 

place where the SigDal Officer and his entourage were 

quartered for the night. Unfortunately no guard was posted to safeguard the van. 

I In the morning that' vehicle was missing. Warning messages were sent instantly 

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\ to Washington and there was a great to-do. The Army blockaded all the roads, the 

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I !idea being to make sure that the truck wasn't being carried off by some German 

I outfit, but ~ing turned u,p. There was a possibility that the van had been 

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stolen by Frenchmen purely for the vehicle, in which case its contents would be 

of no interest.to them. Surely they'd get rid of that hot goods at the first 

1 opportunity, which would be to dump them in the nearest river. The Engineer 

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Corps diverted that river and sure enough all the cipher ma.chines and the crypto- ' - ... ___ .. __ --

material had been dumped into the river. \~episode .:.s--:ne-which caused the \. __________ ,._ ....... --,---·-..... _,.--~- .. !!"".... - ..... 

~ ~t),~.,&,,-,. . 

SigDal Officer to be tried by court martial, -ae o;we?e sevez't:d:-other" We had and ~ . 

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still have very strict rules indeed about safeguarding this gadget, and in 

mentioning this point I should say that we weren't worried by the thought that a." 

.. .. '\" . -- our messages could be read if the Germans would capture one. We were worried 

by the thought that they would learn how good it was and would copy it--thus 

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cutting off our COMINT. I can hardly refrain from telling you one of the funny 

.. things about our not giving the ma.chine to the British when they needed it so 

desperately. I mentioned the strict rules about safeguarding it--who could see 

the thing, who could service it, and so on, and we saw to it that these rules 

were strictly enforced. But there came a time in North Africa when all our 

maintenance men were knocked off and there was nobody to service the ma.chines. 

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le A\: 

However, a very skillful British~Officer, an electrical engineer was pressed 

into service and be maintained our SIGABAs there for a while. I"m sure you 

won't be astonished to learn that af'ter .l/E---Da.y~ when he got back to Londory'he 

t<~ RAi:" 

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built a machine based upon the ~M-SIGABA principle! 

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I want to show you next the cipher ma.chine which was used very extensive1y 

i4 by all the German Armed Forces in WorJ.d War II. This was a modification of' 

their commercial Enigma ma.chine but an important modification, introduced 

when Hitler came into power, at which time the commercial model was withdrawn 

from the market. I think 

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using circular key tapes of random characters.~ 

cipher mach1De. /~-the-V8.'J""'-t~Olle. ·Here is th \keyboard fur 

punching out the pl.ain-text message; here is an ordinary t;.pe transmitter, 

\ which took the plain-text tape and put the signa.l.s on the telegraph line; 

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but here there were two additional transmitters through whi~h key-tapes were 

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passed. These were composed of random-punched characters, "the tapes being 

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joined at their ends to form two circular tapes, and they Were of different , 

diameters. To begin with the A.T. & T. started out with 1one tape l,fJfJfJ 

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characters in length and the other 999, so you can see 'if the tapes start 

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I at an initial point, they would not return to the or~kinal pair of starting 

I points until the shorter tape bad ma.de 999 revolut;l.ons, the longer one l,llJllJllJ, 

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I, I that is, the interaction of the two tapes produced a key that was 9911J,llJllJllJ 

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interacting, one 

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characters in length. So there were three tape transmitters 

\ ____ :r_or_ the plain-text tape, two for the ke;y tape~ Great faith was placed in 

this machine but it was not put into use until the war was over. By that time 

I had come back from France, rejoined the Riverbank. Laboratories and accepted 

a challenge to solve this kind of cipher system. It's too long a story to go 

into right now but as a result of the solution the Army dropped the project. 

I think it was in a way ~ a.nd I ~uppos.e some "of the -responsibility -lies 

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Qil...lll:Y' shoulders~ because when we bad a need for teleprinter ciphering in the 

~ ....... .;c..u.i..,._ ~~-(I" 

early days of 194-2 we actually'f\went -:b8c"'i -to this ting. The big trouble of 

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these key tapes, and it is a 

course was the production and distribution of .. ... .... ' ... •• i 6 • .._ .... 

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problem 

... ..,.t-...,,. •••*"*4 d+eeee which is still with us~ ·Here's an early model 

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~'"'t of a machine for making key tapes. We improved such machines very greatly in 

the next yea:r or two, so that we coul.d produce hundreds of thousands of good 

tapes in a hurry. Our modern key-tape manufacturing appa:ratus uses a key 

generator for producing electronically the random impulses for punching the 

tapes. 

---... Next I show another commercial development for teleprinter ciphering, one 

by the I. T. & T. Co. , who employed Colonel Parker Hitt after he had retired 

from the Army in about 1925. The machine presumably was to incorporate a 

l very secure principle, since Colonel Hitt was well acquainted with cryptology. 

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But I am sorry to tell you that it wasn't a secure' principle that he employed • ... · 

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A demonstration equipment was installed in the State Department and the .Army 

-. ·~ crypta.nalysts were asked "to test its security. Some messages prepared by the 

State Department's Chief' of Communications were solved in a hurry. I had the 

.... 

unpleasant task of telling Colonel Hitt that I wasn't at liberty to tell him 

) what the trouble was. This was our fixed policy in the Office of the Chief 

) Signal Officer, and I think it was an understandable one. If we undertook to 

\ l tell all inventors what the trouble is with their inventions we would never 

l get anything else done but look into their successive modifications. We would 

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\thus bring them up-to-date in cryptanalysis, too, and this is certainly not 

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ladvis~ble as rega:rds the run-of-mine or would-be inventors of crypto-appa.ratus. 

This is a rotor machine, the SIGCUM, which the Army developed in 1942-43 

•••MxlJWwiwy:D••e•l"!)*•ll8•d•..,.-, l!IWf*lt•dtJ' ill itt •o• ,,._ 

and used very successfully to encipher teletype communications. It uses not 

:xlladiil:Z~ldw••wimxCllll!bDCddaiDwfi'i911~x~111-•eaz~ 

perforated tapes but rotors which step 

fllrX"+M •••p• Nabaai&XMihgu•ev•a4Mf&CLCllJRit'N4•afiil XM•-~I ••··~ 

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~~wU~;~e. 

in an erratic fashion but not as erratic as in the ECM-SIGABA." "fhe--SIOOUM6Dd. i:ta-aueeessors had weakne8'ses1 every once in a while, when we discovered 

new crYPtanaJ.ytic techniques, 

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' gee•tJ ' a I we found that SIGCUM bad weaknesses which couJ.d be 

exploited; whereupon 

t+ '4MJ • ' , • we wou1d proceed to tighten up things by changes in the 

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method of usage or the method of stepping the rotors, and so on." Here's· a 

~J{R. ~ }-1-1:.A.., J~~() ~A-...X- >°"""~~- .R:,v. .. ~.~ wt. l.o\)4..\JL. ~ -\.c ~pe,Ah.. 

~ o:f'-the--entire SIGCUM unit. with.-tbe. -tel.etype .. signal mixing- unit"'-:tluil 

~t,tVl. ~ ~"\k ~>..c-...o.l t~~., ~ "\}": ·~ h..c.W-~ .. 04' ~ K~-a,. 

~1 g s.a._t...lier.a-most-. of ·-Whi.ch -was unnecessary. --The mixing apparatus takes .-the 

.s;tsnal a .trom here and mixes ~t~m witb -the.llIGCTJM, then putting the enciphered 

Now we have to say a few words about certain -other-types of ciphering 

- ~~~,C.I.~~ -· ~ 

apparatus. For example, it is necessary to semf~weather zmws.~ situation maps, 

and other ..:t.n>es of maps J .. mpor:tant for successtμl mili1iary operation&; and so 

I.A <i4-\.. it was desirable to have a ma.chine which would.encipher and decipher facsimile. 

The generic name we gave to machines for ciphering facsimile was ~. Here 

I ~ 3 is one such machine that was developed by Army for the purpose, called SIGMEW. 

~~~.~~ We also had need for ma.chines~tbat would<lm.pose security p!'Otection-upon telephone 

conversations, ma.chines with the generic name ciphony equipments; here's the 

first shot at it--a development by the Bell Telephone Laboratories, called 

\~S- SIGJIP. It was a gyp in a way--it gave you much more feeling of security than 

was warranted by the circumstances. Conversations enciphered by means of that 

thing could be read very readily and we all knew this but it was only an interim 

piece of equipment. The Telephone Company proceeded with its work, in collaboration with engineers from the Signal Intelligence Service and the Signal Corps, 

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and a very high-grade "ciphony system which became known as SIGSALY was :f'inally 

~~\ii~~~ ~U-4~ ' 

devel.opedf\ Each terminal. cost over a mil.l.ion dol.l.ars and there were .a-.tota1 

.,,., seven of' them. jjMi111111elll*ll+liml•t••11•1&11elCJll•*•aiqlllil" •-rll6lm•2112•m••;-r':'ibft:reertt:wwuo-ends· o:r-the 

~J.ayi'A@i :meo-mnr.tsm..... ·-Thlr'SIGSALY turnea:· out to be extremel.y use:f'uJ.. 

1·... Now in addition to ci:f'ax and ciphony we tried to devel.op practical. cipher 

\ machines £or other purposes, such as recognition, ident1£ication, IFF, calJ.sign 

• machines, etc • This is a war-time calls ign machine developed by the U .s. Navy. 

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It was based upon an algebraic principle described in a paper in one of' the American 

mathematical. journals; it appeal.ed to me but I coul.d never get the Army to go 

in f'a.r cal.lsign changes in a big way. The Navy did, however, and this principle 

was incorporated in a call-sign ciphering ma.chine for Navy communications. A 

good ma.chine was devel.oped and I think it is still in service. 

Sooner or later--and I think the sooner the better--we will. have to have 

ciphering apparatus :f'or protecting telemetering signals, tel.evision signals, 

to have 

homing beacons, etc. --a. anything in the way of' a signal. is going to have/means 

- .... 

• and mechanisms for security protection. 

L.-.. - .. The professional cryptologist is aiway6 amused by th~ almost invariable - -. 

reference by the layman to "the German cod~", "the Japanese code", "the U .s. Noa-~ 

code, etc. To give an idea as to how fallacious such a notion is, I will. say 

~-

a&·-I "Said once before,... there are hundreds of systems in simultaneous use in the 
REF ID:A63404 

a.nd commission. Experience has proved that in the past it has been these 

errors and not so mu.ch technical weaknesses in the cryptosystems and ma.chines 

themselves that :tia.ve made solution on a. reguJ.ar be.sis possible. This sort of 

practical experience means that the keying procedures should be ma.de simpler, 

and, if possible, entirely automatic so far as concerns the human opera.tor and user 

of the ma.chine and system. Complexities ca.n be introduced, incorporated, or 

applied at NSA, where there are extremely wel1-tra.ined and experienced cryptoengineers and their helpers. 

You understand, I'm sure, tbat we depend for crypto-security not on 

keeping the construction or design of the ma.chines deep secrets. This means 

-t ~ \fv\.o,.t.~ that the machines must be based upon crypto-principles such that even ifAeepie~ 

Jiill!IOir;lllll!l'VfllJl.l!lllH2al:QHPRtxts:lWPJ ,...,.~··~ 32 SSLC:!Ji2CY: 

-Qf "\iQam fall into enemy hands, by capture or otherwise, without possession 

~~JbCIEll8CllllQ"9EICJC9tt!J!PCl~IWl~m.~tc11Etmt~UWl~~~W!J 

. ~ . ! - - ~ ~ ~t ... ci ·w.~o.~ ~.;& ·~b ) 

of the exact key for the day,,,.the period, orA.'fJhe messages- themsel.vee..1~ enemy 

(!d.u,. V\R.~ ~ ~ ~~°"""~-C.:.O . . ~ CA.~ R:9"?0ti l:ea:r• the contents Of the message~ or at least~for a very large 

--

number of ye~~ At the same time there is a real point in 

keeping the machine, apparatus, or system itself in a classified status as long 

as possible, because in the case of well-designed crypto-apparatus if you don't 

even know what the ma.chine looks like, or its general principles of ciphering, 

you can't even make a start at cryptanalysis, or, to be more accurate, it will 

take a considerable length of time and more or less involved study to ascertain 

what you must know before you can make an attack on the messages with some hope 

of success. In a nutshell, then, we keep the ma.chines in a classified status 

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REF ID:A63404 
REF ID:A63404 

as long as possible in order to delay the enemy's real attack on the traffic 

enciphered by the ma.chines. But, of course, there's the other reason I've 

already mentioned: to prevent a potential enemy from copying our ma.chines and 

turning our own weapons against us. 

Now let •s see pictures of some of the new apparatus, w~c~ wJ.l ~rrv.. ~ 

~---~ {v1 ;~ ..... For field use we now have in place of Converter M-2~9 a sma.1.l off-line 

}{\~ -1 

high security machine designated the ~·7 . .' It has a keyboard and prints 

the cipher te~t. For electric power it uses any 24-volt source. This machine 

is now the work-horse for tactical cryptocommunications, and, by the way, 

several thousands of them have been issued to our NATO allies. 

-- ·~ •· .&-~ •. I_....- , ~~,..o-.. •·"~· 

Here's a ma.chine designate« thEflKW-3)A It is an off-line teleprinter .. - cipher ma.chine but it has all the conveniences of an on-line ma.chine and 

eliminates' some of the weaknesses of the latter. The machine generates the 

key as well as the indicators for messages. All the operator has to do is to 

type the address, punch a starting key on the machine, and then proceed to 

type off the plain text of the messages, whereupon a cipher tape is produced, 

which can be put on any teleprinter circuit for transmission. At the receiving 

center the operator puts the cipher tape into a reading head, the start button 

is pushed, the message sets up its indicator and key, and the tape produced is 

the plain text of the original message. The KW-3 ~~~ ~ng the real work-horse 

of our Armed Forces high-command cryptocommunications. 

-4~-
_REF ID: A63404 

~ ~ ~~-:....0~~..J ~?, &.4 

Next I show the KW-37,designed for Navy Fox or broadcast transmissions,~a 

machine which embodies a teletype printer and uses an IBM ca.rd for keying 

~q~-- -- purposes. So far as the \-ic~~!on center aboar_J. )ship is concerned, the~ . "-----...... ,.-.·.~- ~l~ ,~~ .operators ieft.J..t. even see the cipher-the messages w:Pive)T in plain language_; 

'. /\ 

/:he ciphering is done elsewhere on the ship. This system is a synchronous one, 

meaning tbat both ends of the circuit a.re constantly and automatically kept 

in step; also, and related to this fact is the fact tbat the system is such that 

the intercepting enemy can•t tell when a message is being transmitted and when 

the circuit is idling, giving what we call "link security", a very important 

element in communication security. 

-· .. 

.. . 

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REF ID:A63404 

In what I've just showed you•J.1 notice the emphasis pl.aced on telephone 

security devices and systems, and on automatic teleprinting systems. The days 

of hand-operated devices is over, and those of semi-automatic off-line cryptographic 

ma.chines are drawing to a·close. And, last to be mentioned, NSA cryptoengineers are doing development work in civision systems--enciphered television--

. which will doubtless come into use within a few years. 

But with all these modern improvements I don't think the day has yet 

~ 

dawned when it cari be said that the human factors that make for crypto-insecurity 

have been altogether eliminated. Perhaps it's true that at the moment COMSEC 

technology can be said to be ahead of COMINT technology; but with ever-increasing 

speed of electronic analytic apparatus the gap can and perhaps will be closed, 

unless the COMSEC engineers keep pace with that apparatus. In short, it is the 

age-old battle between armor and armor-piercing projectiles. In the meantime, 

communicators must keep their guard up and enforce the rules supplied them for 

operating their crypto-equipments. 

t~ ..... ~~ 

In closing thi~ period let me remind you 1; i\''l.L "'Q 

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.• 
REF ID:A63404