The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1884-04-10
WIRE-TAPPING.
A Few Stories and Instances of the
Present Spi During the War.

You often heard" said an old tele-
grapher. through the newspapers
stories of important messages being di-
vulged by operators. Nine out of ten
of such stories are without foundation
for several reasons, the principal one
OF which is operators, as class, are
alive to their responsibilities and are
honest. The percentage of dishonest
ones is very small indeed-surprisirg
so, in fact, considering the number of
men and women actively employed.
Another reason is that all really i'm
portant messages are written in cipher
and are untranslatable without a KEY.
Operators have temptations enough
from unscrupulous people and bribes
enough are offered them to betray their
trusts, but they resist, and in the very
few cases on record of one proving
weak, there has always been deserv-
ed punishment meted out to him in one
way or another.
Attempts have often been made to
have often been by tapping the wires.
A few years ago out in a Kansas town
tramp operator conceived the bril-
liant plan of raising money by means
of
A BOGUS MESSAGE.
The regularly employed operator re-
jected his proposal to write one and
ordered him out of the office. He Sc
cured an instrument and few miles
from town climbed pole and cut his
relay into the line. Then calling up
the town operator he sent him in the
regular way a message addressed to
the town bank directing that his tramp
ship be paid a hundred dollars. There
was nothing strange in this to the re-
ceiving operator. The tramp used the
signed letter of distant Office and OBJ
served all the forms. However, he was
nabbed before he got the money.
''Wires in cities and near them are
more difficult to tap for the reason that
many of them are duplex and quadru-
plex circuits. The presence of for
eign instrument on one of these is in
stantly apparent. Wires running into
pool-rooms carry burden of precious
information to gamblers on races if
they can only get it in advance. They
have often tried. Last summer a Sc
lect coterie of them in New York coax
ed pair of needy and disreputable
operators into an elaborate scheme for
beating the pools. They were to tap
the wires at a lonely point, take off the
dispatches, and act upon the advance
information;
A BONANZA SCHEME,
if the precautions of the COMPANY had
not unkindly interfered. The COM
pany's operator suspected something
was wrong for peculiar reasons COM
prehensible only to an operator, and
putting MS suspicious into action, had
the sharpers arrested at the very
threshold of their glittering plan. They
said if they could have worked the
scheme week it would have made
them all rich. Now, 1 believe, pool
room wires, which are among the most
important IN the country, are patrolled
by armed watchers. A very clever
piece of wire-tapping that has never
been in print was accomplished in this
city. During the war waged on the
bucket-shops by the board of trade and
telegraph companies all their tickers
were taken out. One of them got quo
tations from the market. How it did
so was mystery, and would have re-
manned so but for its accidental dis
covory. 1t was done thus: A commis-
sion firm not under the ban had a
branch office in a hotel, telegraph
wire, and an operator who called off
quotations as he received them Near
him was telephone. To the casual
glance it was not in circuit; the lever
was down. Really the lever was held
by peg, and thus the phone repeated
the unconscious operators voice (and
quite unconscious he was of the part
he played in the game) to listener
three blocks away. and he to an opera
tor who telegraphed it over a secret wire
to the bucket-shop. One morning the
peg was brushed out of the telephone,
and that ruined the dodge that detect
ives had vainly sought to uncover. 1t
was too clever piece of sharp practice
to do anything with but hush up.
"Wire-tapping was perfectly fair and
extensively praotieed by the military
telegrapherS on both sides during the
war. Quite a number of prosperous
merchants and citizens in this city par.
ticipated as army operators in the nu-
enemy's dispatches. While DESTROYING
as much as possible of tie rebels prop
erty it was often q rule with the union
commanders 20
LAVE THEIR TELEGRAPH LINES
alone for this very purpose. The op-
orators of both armies were on the
alert and used all the means ingenuity
would suggest to defeat each other S
stealing. The union men, however,
learned more than the confederates.
The federal army cipher code was so
perfect that the enemy, although they
captured by their operators many mes
sages in transit over the wires and pub
hshed them in their newspapers with
appeals for translations never could
find its kew.
"Ihe Southern boys were very wary.
Many time loyal operator after tap
ping rebel wire was discovered by
his inability to answer their signals,
such as, for instance, What's your
name?' A little banter and daring OF
each other, and he would descend after
destroying the wire. An operator with
Thomas, think it was, stayed in a
tree-top forty-eight hours in a bowling
rain-storm, listening to confederate
dispatches passing over the wires. The
union men, as l said, learned more
than the other side did. The most sue
cessful instance of wire-cutting, how
ever, was by General Lees operator,
Castor. He managed to tap General
Grants private wire to Fort Monroe.
at a point near Surry Court House.
For three weeks
HE LISTENED UNDISCOVERED
10 c..fpner messages, copying and for
warding them TO his commander, who,
of course, could not make them out
But CASTOR got one dispatch in plain
language-the only one that was sent
in all that time-and it proved great
thing for his side. 1t was from the
quartermaster in Washington, and re-
ported that $500 cattle would be land
ed at Coggins Point Lees men were
on hand TO meet them, in overwhelm-
ing force, and got the beef after a fight
with the boys in blue and feasted and
made merry on it for forty days. III