Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1884-03-07
MIRE.TAPPING.
A Few Stories and instances of the
Present and During the War.

eSFdpler, through the newspapers,
stories of important messages being
divulged by operators. Nine out of
ten of such stories are without founda.
ton for several reasons, the principal
one of which is, operators, as class,
are alive to their responsibilities and
are honest. The percentage of dis
honest ones is very small indeed-sur-
prislngly SO, in fact considering the
number of men and women actively
Another reason is that all
really important messages are written
cipher and are untranslatable without
a key.
Operators have temptations enough
from INSCRIPTIONS people and brides
are offered to betray their trusts, but
they resist, and Ill the very few cases
on record of one proving weak, there
has always been a deserved punish
ment melted out to him in one way or
another.
Attempts have often been made TO
steal messages by outsiders, and these
have often been by tapping the
wires. A few years ago out in Kan
sas, tramp operator conceived the
brilliant plan of raising money by
means of
BOGUS MESSAGE.
The regularly employed operator
his proposal to write one and
ordered him out of the office. He secur-
ed an instrument and a few miles
from town climbed a pole and cut his
relay into the line. Then calling up
the town operator he sent him III the
regular way message addressed to
the town bank directing that his
trampship BE paid a hundred dollars.
There was nothing strange in this to
the receiving operator The tramp
used the signed letter of a distant
office and observed all the forms.
However, he was uabbed 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
quadruplex circuits. The presence
of foreign instrument on one of
these is instantly apparent. Wires
running into pool-rocms carry bur-
den of precious information to gam
blers on races if they can only get it
in advance. They have often tried
Last summer select coterie of them
in New York coaxed a pair of needy
and disreputable operators into an
elaborate scheme for beating the pools,
They were to tap the wires at 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 his suspicious into action, had
the sharpers arrested at the very
threshold of their glittering plan,
They said that if they could have
worked the scheme a week it would
have made them all rich. Now, l be-
lieve, pool-room wires, which are
among the most important in the
country, are patrolled by armed watch
ers. A very clever piece of wire tap
ping that has never been in print was
accomplished in this city. During the
war waged on the bucked-shops by
the Board of Trade and telegraph
companies, all their tickers were
taken out One of them got quota ions
from the market. How it did so was a
mystery, and would have remained so
but for it's accidental discovery. 1t
was done thus: A commission firm not
under the ban had branch office in
a hotel, a telegraph wire, and an
operator who called off quotations as
he received them. Near him was a
telephone. To the casual glance it was
not in circuit; the lever was down.
Really the lever was held up by peg,
and thus the phone repeated the UNI
conscious operators voice (and quite
unconscious he was of the part he
he played in the game TO listener
three bl, cks away, and lie 10 an
operator 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 detectives had vainly
sought to uncover. 1t was too clever
a piece of sharp practice to do any
thing with but hush up.
"Wire-tapping wax perfectly fair
and extensively practiced by the mill
tary telegraphers on both sides during
the war. Quite number of prosper
Gus merchants and citizens in this
city participated as army operators in
the numerous exciting attempts to
steal the enemy's dispatches While
destroying as much as possible of the
rebels property 1t was often rule
with the Union commanders to
LEAVE THEIR TELEGRAPH LINES
alone for this very purpose. The oper-
atorS of both armies We're on the alert
and used all the means ingenuity
would suggest to defeat each others
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
messages in transit over the wires and
published them in their newspapers
with appeals for TRANSACTIONS, never
could find its key.
"The Southern boys were very
wary. Many time loyal operator
after tapping a rebel wire was discov-
cred by his inability to answer their
signals, such as for instance, What's
your name?' A little banter and
daring at each other, and he would
descend after destroying the wire An
operator named Thomas, [ think it
was, stayed "a a tree-top forty eight
hours, in a bowling rain storm, listen
ing to Confederate dispatches passing
over the wires. The Union men, as |
said, learned more than the other side
did. The most successful instance of
wire cutting, however, was by Gen.
Lees operator. Castor. He managed
to tap Gen. Grants private wire to
Fort Monroe, at a point near Sarry
Court House. For three weeks
HE LISTENED UNDISCOVERED
TO cipher 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 at Washington, and
reported that 2. 500 cattle would be
landed at Coggin's point. Lees men
were on hand to meet them, in over
whelming force, and got the beef after
a fight with the boys in blue, and
Toasted and made merry on it for
forty days"