TBR News March 20, 2014
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. March 20, 2014: “It is by no means a secret that the Arctic territories hold vast untapped reserves of oil and gas. They have increasingly been at the center of disputes between the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark as rising global temperatures have led to a massive reduction in sea ice and have thus made these energy reserves more accessible.
Russia has made claims to several Arctic shelf areas and plans to defend its bid at the United Nations, initially, or by a serious show of force if they are unable to secure this UN approval.
As the immense cover of the Arctic icecap has melted, commercial companies from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and, most especially, the United States — the five countries that have a border with the Arctic — have been frantically attempting to secure rights to drill for oil and natural gas in places that are now accessible.
The Russian Federation is claiming a large extended continental shelf as far as the North Pole based on the Lomonosov Ridge within their Arctic sector. Moscow believes the eastern Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.
As a significant amount of oil and gas are strongly believed in these areas, naturally American interests strongly object to Russian possession and these objections are finding reception in both the CIA and the White House (which is ever receptive to business needs.) Some years ago, the CIA’s Head of the Canada desk, on his own initiative, believed that the US should take physical control of Canada’s natural resources and for that reason, supported the Quebec libre movement with weapons, and tactical support. His hope, according to his papers, was that if Quebec broke away from the Confederation, Canada might well break up and if that happened, the United States could, at the least, get its hands on British Columbia with its physical attachment to Alaska and its untapped natural resources. And American conservatives could find allies in Alberta and the Arctic and help drive North American energy production, both fossil fuel and renewable, in ways that would make current arguments over the Keystone oil pipeline redundant.
Since the successful annexation by Putin of the Crimea, with its vital and highly desired naval base, the growing idea now being pushed in the top intelligence and political levels in Washington, is the creation of a domestic situation in Canada that would permit the US to annex it, all 4 million square miles of it, in toto, to the United States. This would result in American control of the northern part of Canada that abuts on the Arctic areas and to enable a massive American buildup desogmed to serve as a warning to Putin not to have Russia develop oil or gas in the Arctic. The present Canadian military forces are viewed as no threat to American putative military action. Instead, the United States is planning an “Arctic Commission” that would force the countries bordering on it to “universalize” the area with, of course, the “conservation-conscious” American and British oil companies having the sole right of “sensitive” drilling. Hyping this conservation angle is one of the developing aspects of the project. “Saave the Arctic seals!” is one considered project with full expected cooperation from American and Canadian conservation groups being currently cultivated and promised payment.
In furtherance of this annexation project, at a summit in Mexico last month celebrating the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and US and Mexican presidents Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto all urged “regional trade harmonisation” as a counterweight to China and Russia and agreed on a new fast-track border scheme for “trusted” travellers to move between the nations involved. This is designed solely to prevent both Russian and Chinese businessmen free access to the nations involved but also to prevent any inter-nation movement of political agitatiors whom President Obama said ought to be jailed for anti-democratic attitudes.
Being groomed for long-term service in Alaska, and possibly, with official Canadian permission (or without if necessary), in Canada, are elements of the 25th Infantry Division
The 25th Infantry Division (‘Electric Strawberry’)
Cmdr: MG Kurt Fuller 2012–present
1st Brigade Combat Team (Stryker) “Arctic Wolves” (under United States Army Alaska)
ua:
184th Military Intelligence Company
185th Military Intelligence Company
4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) “Spartan” (under United States Army Alaska)
1st Battalion (Attack Reconnaissance), 25th Aviation Regiment (AH-64) “Gunfighters”
Note: There will be more detailed information on this subject in the coming months. Ed
U.S.-Russia sanctions rhetoric shakes companies, investors
March 19, 2014
by David Alexander and Krista Hughes
Reuters
WASHINGTON – The potential for broader U.S. sanctions on Russia and Moscow’s threat of responding in kind are raising concerns among U.S. corporations and investors about the economic fallout from the crisis over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Rapped by critics for not taking a harsh enough line with Russia, the White House is mulling its next moves.
“We are prepared to impose further costs on Russia for its violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, meanwhile, promised “a broad range of responsive measures” that “won’t go unnoticed in Washington.”
At stake from the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War is goods trade between the two countries that was worth about $38 billion in 2013.
Machinery, vehicles and aircraft lead the list of U.S. exports to Russia, which in turn exports crude oil, iron, steel and platinum to the United States, among other things.
U.S. companies also have $14 billion in direct investment in Russia, with about half that amount coming the other way, and mutual fund and hedge fund investments in Russian companies, many of them state-owned, is much higher.
Oil major ExxonMobil and aircraft maker Boeing are two companies with strong links to Russia and involved in joint ventures with Russian partners.
Other U.S. companies active in Russia include Chevron Corp, General Electric Co, Caterpillar Inc, John Deere, Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co, PepsiCo Inc, Mars, Cargill Inc, and Kraft Foods.
Randall Stephenson, chairman of the Business Roundtable and chief executive officer of AT&T, told reporters this week that the Ukraine crisis was “obviously an area of concern” to members.
“Anybody doing business in Europe is watching the situation very, very closely,” Stephenson said.
The Roundtable is an association of chief executives of major U.S. corporations, from the defense industry and consumer manufacturers to the healthcare and technology sectors, many of which have global footprints.
Dozens of the group’s members had a chance to raise their concerns in meetings with top administration officials on Wednesday, at an event featuring Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Trade Representative Michael Froman.
But a Pentagon spokesman said the Ukraine crisis was not a major talking point, either in the secretary’s remarks or in the questions and answers afterward.
Hagel cited Western tensions with Russia as an example of the kind of security concerns the United States may have to address unexpectedly in the future, said Rear Admiral John Kirby.
CURTAILED TALKS ON TRADE TIES
The Obama administration has curtailed contacts with Russia since the Ukraine crisis blew up, and Froman this month halted his agency’s talks on deeper trade and investment ties with Moscow.
The United States and Russia had started talking about a bilateral investment treaty, and Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said in February the next step would be a meeting of trade experts.
The promise of more sanctions has generated some political posturing as well.
On Wednesday, five U.S. lawmakers, mostly from districts that are home to major U.S. defense contractors, urged Hagel to cut off taxpayer dollars to Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-arms dealer. The U.S. Defense Department has a contract to buy Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters from the company.
Some critics said the U.S. sanctions so far are too weak to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin, while others expressed concern about potential economic impact the sanctions and expected retaliation by Moscow could have on markets and trade.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, another Washington-based business group, called for close cooperation with Europe, whose annual trade with Russia is about 15 times larger than that of the United States.
“A go-it-alone approach by the United States could be both economically damaging and ineffective in accomplishing its goals,” said the chamber’s vice president, Myron Brilliant, who oversees international affairs for the group.
Russia joined the World Trade Organization in 2012 and so far has had no trade disputes with the United States, although U.S. trade officials in December raised concerns over vehicle fees, copyrights and a meat additive ban.
Risk of further volatility in Russia has U.S. securities regulators on alert as well.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has contacted public funds with investments in Russia to make sure they are properly managing risks and disclosing those holdings to investors, Reuters reported.
Regulators are focused on whether funds are being open with investors, and whether the funds are preparing about how they might respond to different scenarios or outcomes.
Russia’s currency, the rouble, hit a record low this week, and a rouble-denominated index of Russian stocks is down 12.3 percent for 2014 so far. The dollar-denominated RTS index is down 20 percent.
(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Susan Heavey and Anna Yukhananov in Washington, Lewis Krauskopf in New York and Thomas Grove in Moscow; Editing by Ros Krasny, Bernadette Baum, David Storey, Alden Bentley and Mohammad Zargham)
Russia gains vast new area twice the size of Crimea with ‘the energy riches of an Ali Baba’s cave’
Highly prized victory comes without a shot in anger after 13 year battle in the corridors of the United Nations.
March 16, 2014
The Siberian Times
The Siberian land mass is officially 52,000 square kilometres bigger after an enclave in the Sea of Okhotsk was recognised as part of Russia’s continental shelf. The decision comes from the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
‘This water area of the Sea of Okhotsk has many biological and natural resources, which have not considered as the main income source of the country’s economy and now we can consider and include it in our long-term plans,’ said Sergei Donskoy, Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology.
The underwater area is roughly the size of Holland and Belgium combined.
The treasure trove includes hydrocarbon resources exceeding one billion tonnes, believes Donskoy. He has described it in the past as ‘a real Ali Baba’s cave in terms of resources’, adding that access will long-term bring ‘enormous opportunities and prospects for the Russian economy’.
Moscow sent a request in 2001 for the entire continental shelf, including the Arctic shelf, which the UN rejected demanding more data and evidence that the enclave is the natural continuation of the Russian territory. The decision, released at the weekend, is a first step in a Russian campaign to claim huge new rights based on the Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges being extensions of the Siberian continental shelves.
If approved, Russia would gain 1.2 million square kilometres of Arctic territorial waters.
Is Putin the Irrational One?
March 18, 2014
by Patrick J. Buchanan,
Vladimir Putin seems to have lost touch with reality, Angela Merkel reportedly told Barack Obama after speaking with the Russian president. He is “in another world.”
“I agree with what Angela Merkel said … that he is in another world,” said Madeleine Albright, “It doesn’t make any sense.”
John Kerry made his contribution to the bonkers theory by implying that Putin was channeling Napoleon: “You don’t just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.”
Now that Putin has taken Crimea without firing a shot, and 95 percent of a Crimean electorate voted Sunday to reunite with Russia, do his decisions still appear irrational?
Was it not predictable that Russia, a great power that had just seen its neighbor yanked out of Russia’s orbit by a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev, would move to protect a strategic position on the Black Sea she has held for two centuries?
Zbigniew Brzezinski suggests that Putin is out to recreate the czarist empire. Others say Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union and Soviet Empire.
But why would Russia, today being bled in secessionist wars by Muslim terrorists in the North Caucasus provinces of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, want to invade and reannex giant Kazakhstan, or any other Muslim republic of the old USSR, which would ensure jihadist intervention and endless war?
If we Americans want out of Afghanistan, why would Putin want to go back into Uzbekistan? Why would he want to annex Western Ukraine where hatred of Russia dates back to the forced famine of the Stalin era?
To invade and occupy all of Ukraine would mean endless costs in blood and money for Moscow, the enmity of Europe, and the hostility of the United States. For what end would Russia, its population shrinking by half a million every year, want to put Russian soldiers back in Warsaw?
But if Putin is not a Russian imperialist out to re-establish Russian rule over non-Russian peoples, who and what is he?
In the estimation of this writer, Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern.
Consider the world Putin saw, from his vantage point, when he took power after the Boris Yeltsin decade.
He saw a Mother Russia that had been looted by oligarchs abetted by Western crony capitalists, including Americans. He saw millions of ethnic Russians left behind, stranded, from the Baltic states to Kazakhstan.
He saw a United States that had deceived Russia with its pledge not to move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army would move out, and then exploited Russia’s withdrawal to bring NATO onto her front porch.
Had the neocons gotten their way, not only the Warsaw Pact nations of Central and Eastern Europe, but five of 15 republics of the USSR, including Ukraine and Georgia, would have been brought into a NATO alliance created to contain and, if need be, fight Russia.
What benefits have we derived from having Estonia and Latvia as NATO allies that justify losing Russia as the friend and partner Ronald Reagan had made by the end of the Cold War?
We lost Russia, but got Rumania as an ally? Who is irrational here?
Cannot we Americans, who, with our Monroe Doctrine, declared the entire Western Hemisphere off limits to the European empires – “Stay on your side of the Atlantic!” – understand how a Russian nationalist like Putin might react to U.S. F-16s and ABMs in the eastern Baltic?
In 1999, we bombed Serbia for 78 days, ignoring the protests of a Russia that had gone to war for Serbia in 1914. We exploited a Security Council resolution authorizing us to go to the aid of endangered Libyans in Benghazi to launch a war and bring down the Libyan regime.
We have given military aid to Syrian rebels and called for the ouster of a Syrian regime that has been Russia’s ally for decades.
At the end of the Cold War, writes ex-ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, 80 percent of Russia’s people had a favorable opinion of the USA. A decade later, 80 percent of Russians were anti-American.
That was before Putin, whose approval is now at 72 percent because he is perceived as having stood up to the Americans and answered our Kiev coup with his Crimean counter coup.
America and Russia are on a collision course today over a matter – whose flag will fly over what parts of Ukraine – no Cold War president, from Truman to Reagan, would have considered any of our business.
If the people of Eastern Ukraine wish to formalize their historic, cultural and ethnic ties to Russia, and the people of Western Ukraine wish to sever all ties to Moscow and join the European Union, why not settle this politically, diplomatically and democratically, at a ballot box?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
United States cryptologic security failures in WWII
March 13, 2014
Signals intelligence and codebreaking played an important role in WWII. British and American codebreakers solved many important Axis crypto systems, such as the German Enigma machine and the Japanese Navy’s code JN25.
Historians have not only acknowledged these Allied successes but they’ve probably exaggerated their importance in the actual campaigns of the war.Unfortunately the work of the Axis codebreakers hasn’t received similar attention. As I’ve mentioned in my piece Acknowledging failures of crypto security all the participants suffered setbacks from weak/compromised codes and they all had some successes with enemy systems.
Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States did not have impenetrable codes. In the course of WWII all three suffered setbacks from their compromised communications.After having dealt with the British side let’s have a look at the Americans and their worst failures.
First it’s time for a short history lesson on the organizations responsible for making and breaking codes.Herbert Yardley, MI-8 and the American Black chamber
The first dedicated codebreaking unit of the US military was organized during WWI by Herbert Osborne Yardley. Yardley had worked as a telegrapher and then as a State Department code clerk. During WWI he demonstrated the insecurity of US diplomatic codes by solving, on his own, a message sent from Colonel House to President Woodrow Wilson. This attracted the attention of his superiors and Colonel Ralph H. Van Deman, head of the Military Intelligence Division, made him a first lieutenant and assigned him head of the MI-8 department, responsible for codes and ciphers. The MI-8 unit solved several foreign codes and their success led the War Department and the State Department to jointly fund Yardley’s activities in the postwar era. The codebreaking department was moved to New York and called the ‘Black chamber’. Their main effort in the 1920’s was against Japanese diplomatic codes and in this area they were able to prove their worth. Yardley’s group not only solved regular Japanese diplomatic traffic but scored a great victory during the Washington Naval Conference by discovering Japan’s minimum acceptable battleship requirements. This allowed the US diplomats to get the Japanese representatives to agree to a battleship ratio of 5-5-3 for USA-UK-Japan.
‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail’ and the Great DepressionYardley’s unit had performed well in the 1920’s but the new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson was shocked when he learned of the existence of the ‘Black chamber’ and famously stated ‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail’. Without government funds Yardley’s group disbanded in October 1929. It was at this time that the world experienced an economic downturn, called the Great Depression.
Finding himself without a job and with his investments having lost their worth Yardley was forced to write about his secret activities in order to get money. He wrote the history of the ‘Black chamber’ for the ‘Saturday Evening Post’ and later published the book ‘The American Black Chamber’ which became a best-seller not only in the US but around the world and especially in Japan.By publishing a summary of his codebreaking activities Yardley compromised the solution of foreign codes and in that sense hurt US national interests. Many foreign governments changed their codes after the publication of the book. The US government wanted to prosecute Yardley but since he hadn’t broken an existing law the Espionage Act was amended to prohibit the disclosure of foreign codes or anything sent in code.
US Army and Navy agencies
The decision by the US government to stop codebreaking activities and the limited funds available for military spending had a negative impact on the performance of US signals intelligence in the 1930’s.
Despite these problems two small groups under the Army and the Navy continued to work on the solution of foreign codes, with considerable success in the case of Japanese systems. In the field of crypto security the new systems introduced from the 1930’s up to 1941 were the M-138-A strip cipher and the SIGABA cipher machine.
SIS- Signal Intelligence Service
The US Army concentrated its cryptologic functions in the newly established Signal Intelligence Service, whose cipher research department was headed by William F. Friedman. The SIS was part of the Signal Corps and officially they were responsible only for preparing and testing the security of US Army codes. However in practice the military authorities were not willing to stop all codebreaking work so the department continued to attack foreign codes.The work of the SIS was made easier by the appointment of Major General Joseph O. Mauborgne as Chief Signal Officer in the period 1937-41. Mauborgne was no stranger to cryptology and while in office he expanded the SIS and made the unit report directly to him.
In the 1930’s Friedman hired a small group of young mathematicians (Rowlett, Sinkov, Kullback) and the department concentrated on mathematical research in order to solve foreign codes. Their main success up to the Pearl Harbor attack was the solution of the Purple cipher machine, used by Japan’s Foreign Ministry. This success enabled them to read the diplomatic messages sent from Tokyo to its embassies abroad.Their other great success was the development of the SIGABA cipher machine, a device that was vastly more secure than any other cipher machine of that time period.
Navy’s OP-20-GThe US Navy had its own cryptologic unit, the OP-20-G – Office of Chief Of Naval Operations (OPNAV), 20th Division of the Office of Naval Communications, G Section / Communications Security.
This unit was headed by Commander Laurence F. Safford and was responsible not only for codebreaking but also direction finding, traffic analysis and the production of codes for USN use.The naval codebreakers worked mostly on Japanese naval codes and they were able to solve these from the 1920’s up to 1940.
In the field of crypto security they adopted the Army’s idea for SIGABA and named their modified version ECM MARK II. In 1941 Army and Navy agreed to jointly produce the modified SIGABA/Converter M-134-C/ECM MARK II as their high level crypto system.Overview of US crypto systems in 1941
In the 1930’s the US cryptologic agencies were hampered in their operations by the lack of adequate resources. Still in that timeframe they were able to introduce the M-138-A strip cipher and the SIGABA. The M-138-A was quite hard to solve, provided it was used properly, while the SIGABA was the most secure cipher machine of WWII.The main problem for US crypto security was the continued use of a large number of outdated systems. Without the necessary funding both military and civilian authorities were forced to use old codes and ciphers, that were not only insecure from a security standpoint but were also suspected to have been physically compromised during their long time in service!
Military systemsUS Army and Navy used the M-94 cylinder even though it offered very limited security and had been introduced in 1921. The Army and USAAF would continue to rely on it even as late as 1943.
For administrative traffic the services used the War Department Telegraph Code 1919 edition – SIGRIM. This was a 5-letter codebook used without additional encipherment.Systems considered to be quite secure were the Military Intelligence Code and the War Department Confidential Code (both letter codes). They were enciphered with substitution tables.
Diplomatic systems
The State Department had a small unit responsible for the production of codes in the Division of Communications and Records. This unit was controlled by David Aden Salmon.
The basic cryptosystems were codebooks. These were the enciphered codes A1 (introduced in 1919), B1 (introduced in 1920), C1 (introduced in 1927) and D1 (introduced in 1928). The unenciphered Gray code (introduced in 1918) was used for low level traffic.In the late 1930’s two new systems were introduced, the Brown codebook and the M-138-A strip cipher. Although there was a survey proposing the introduction of cipher machines this idea was rejected for financial reasons.
Voice communications
The Bell Labs A-3 speech scrambler was used by the military authorities and on the civilian link Washington-London. Even though it wasn’t considered 100% secure it was the only speech privacy system in widespread use.Failures of crypto security during WWII
During WWII military high level communications were secure, thanks to the advanced SIGABA machine, however the other cryptologic systems used by the US military and civilian authorities had vulnerabilities and the Axis powers were able to compromise almost all of them. Notable cases
Fellers codeColonel Bonner Fellers, US military attaché in Cairo during 1940-2, sent back to Washington detailed reports concerning the conflict in North Africa. In his reports he mentioned morale, the transfer of British forces, evaluation of equipment and tactics, location of specific units and often gave accurate statistical data on the number of British tanks and planes by type and working order. In some cases his messages betrayed upcoming operations.
Fellers used the Military Intelligence Code No11, together with substitution tables. The Italian codebreakers had a unit called Sezione Prelevamento (Extraction Section). This unit entered embassies and consulates and copied cipher material. In 1941 they were able to enter the US embassy in Rome and they copied the MI Code No11. A copy was sent to their German Allies, specifically the German High Command’s deciphering department – OKW/Chi. The Germans got a copy of the substitution tables from their Hungarian allies and from December 1941 they were able to solve messages. Once the substitution tables changed they could solve the new ones since they had the codebook and they could take advantage of the standardized form of the reports. Messages were solved till 29 June 1942 and they provided Rommel with so much valuable information that he referred to Fellers as his ‘good source’.
A-3 speech scramblerThe Bell Labs A-3 speech scrambler was used by the military and on the civilian link Washington-London. Two different German teams solved this system and they were able to decode the conversations in real-time. Traffic was successfully recorded from late 1941 up to late 1944. Through this operation they got political, economic and military intelligence. Their greatest success was the interception, on 29 July 1943, of a conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill which revealed negotiations with the newly established Badoglio government in Italy. This convinced the Germans that the Italians were trying to exit the war and thus they stepped up their plans to occupy the whole country.
M-94 strip cipher
The strip cipher M-94 was the basic US military cryptosystem in the interwar period and continued to be used widely by the Army and USAAF even as late as mid 1943. As a system it offered limited security and in early 1942 the German Army’s codebreakers solved it. According to the war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI it was solved in May ’42 and traffic from several networks read till July 1943. In German reports the M-94 was called ACr2. Some of the networks read had the indicators CDAF, URSAL, USABU, SENOB as can be seen from the following report taken from the war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI, month of September 1942:
The M-94 was used for administrative traffic and by military units at the division level. It was replaced in 1943 by the M-209 cipher machine.M-209 cipher machine
The US authorities had the SIGABA for high level traffic but lacked a secure device for mid-level traffic. The Swedish inventor Boris Hagelin had developed a small enciphering device called the C-38, which was an improvement of his earlier design C-36 (sold in the 1930’s to the French Army). When he offered this device to the US government it was tested by the SIS and after minor modifications it was produced from 1942 till the end of the war as the M-209. Roughly 140.000 devices were built. The M-209 was used by the US Army at division level and by the USAAF for administrative traffic.Its first use in the field was during the Tunisia Campaign of 1942-43. According to the war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI the German Army’s codebreakers investigated this traffic in the first half of 1943, ascertained that it was a Hagelin type device and found ways of solving it by using two messages ‘in depth’ (enciphered with the same internal and external settings). By retrieving the internal settings they were able to decode the entire day’s traffic. Their designation for the M-209 was AM-1 (Amerikanische Maschine 1).
Reports based on decoded M-209 messages were first issued in July 1943, as can be seen from the following paragraph taken from the war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI, month of July ‘43:
The M-209 continued to be solved till March ’45, with the following list showing date/indicator/frequency/department that solved relative settings/ department that solved absolute settings/date solved.
It’s interesting to note that in 1944 the Germans even built a cryptanalytic device for speeding up the solution of M-209 messages.
Slidex
The Slidex code was a simple bigram substitution table. It was used extensively by the US forces in 1944 during the liberation of Western Europe. Slidex offered very limited security but was well liked by troops because it was easy to use.
The Germans had no problem in solving the messages and reconstructing the Slidex tables. In late 1944 their solution of Slidex traffic from military police units gave them an advantage during the battle of the Bulge. This episode shows that even the compromise of low level codes can sometimes have strategic consequences.However the limitations of Slidex had not gone undetected and in January ’45 the Signal Division recommended that Slidex be replaced within the U.S. forces.
War Department Telegraph Code
The War Department Telegraph Code was used for administrative traffic. The 1919 edition – SIGRIM was used at the start of the war till 1943-44 when the new version WDTC 1942 edition – SIGARM was introduced.
According to TICOM reports both versions were solved by the Germans. The war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI shows that a codebook A1 (later called AC1) was solved since 1942. It’s not clear to me whether this A1 code was the WDTC 1919 edition or the A1 also used by the State Department. The next version WDTC 1942 edition was called TELWA by the Germans due to its indicator. It was solved cryptanalytically, in part by taking advantage of a parity check in its values.
It doesn’t seem like TELWA survived the war. A US report from May ’45 said that it would be replaced by a new system and existing copies had to be destroyed.
ACAN – Army Command and Administrative Network
The radio network of the US military was called ACAN – Army Command and Administrative Network. During the war it was greatly expanded in order to cover the worldwide deployment of US forces and satisfy their needs for secure and reliable communications.
German radio intelligence agencies intercepted traffic of the ACAN network and were even able to follow the activation and deployment of military units from the US interior to the theatres of war.
In this case they took advantage of the limitations of commercial equipment used by ACAN. In the period 1941-43 the network had to be built up fast so some types of equipment that did not fully meet specifications were accepted. The Signal Corps wanted modern radio-teletype equipment of the Baudot type with automatic enciphering and deciphering capability but up to 1943 no device satisfied these requirements.
While new equipment was in development the Signal Corps had to make use of a commercial design. The IBM corporation sold the Radiotype a 6-unit teletype machine that was a commercial success. In 1942 the Signal Corps introduced the Radiotype in military networks and the official history ‘Signal Corps – The Test’ says:
‘The International Business Machines Corporation had worked out an imperfect solution involving equipment that the firm called radiotype, using, unfortunately, not the standard five-unit teletypewriter code but a special six-unit code. Like a narrow gauge railroad adjoining a standard line, this special code necessitated much hand labor at conversion points where standard teletypewriter texts had to be shifted onto radiotype circuits, and vice versa. Moreover, the standard automatic cipher machines could not function with the six-unit system. Notwithstanding these inconveniences, the Signal Corps early in the war began making use of radiotype, leased from IBM. It was another step in the right direction, toward automatic, high-speed, heavy-duty communications for the Army.’The same source says that the use of radiotype was extensive during the war: ‘Radiotype would continue to be used considerably. Not till September 1943 would the Signal Corps stop its procurement in favor of radioteletype and not until May 1945 would the Army take its last radiotype out of service (on the WAR-Accra circuit). Then the triumph of radioteletype would be complete.’
The main problem with Radiotype was that due to its 6-unit code it could not be connected to a standard cipher machine since these used the Baudot 5-code system. While it was used Radiotype allowed the Germans to intercept valuable traffic up to mid-late 1943 when the new SIGCUM and SIGTOT teletype devices were introduced.
Diplomatic and OSS systems
The State Department’s A1 and C1 codebooks were read by German codebreakers through cryptanalysis. The low level Gray code had been solved in the 1930s and the new Brown code was received from the Japanese in 1941 together with the A1.
The M-138-A strip cipher was the State Department’s high level system and it was used extensively in the period 1941-44. Although we still don’t know the full story the information available points to a serious compromise both of the circular traffic (Washington to all embassies) and special traffic (Washington to specific embassy) in the period 1941-44. In this area there was cooperation between Germany, Japan and Finland. The German success was made possible thanks to alphabet strips and key lists they received from the Japanese in 1941 and these were passed on by the Germans to their Finnish allies in 1942. The Finnish codebreakers solved several diplomatic links in that year and in 1943 started sharing their findings with the Japanese.German and Finnish codebreakers cooperated in the solution of the strips during the war, with visits of personnel to each country. The Axis codebreakers took advantage of mistakes in the use of the strip cipher by the State Department’s cipher unit.
Apart from diplomatic messages their success against the strip cipher also allowed them to read some OSS -Office of Strategic Services messages from the Bern station.
Naval Cypher No3Naval Cypher No3 was a British 4-figure code enciphered with subtractor tables. It was used in the Atlantic by the US, UK and Canadian Navies in their convoy operations and its compromise by the codebreakers of the B-Dienst led to heavy losses for the Allied merchant ships.
Since it was a Royal Navy system its failure should be attributed to the British side, however the Americans contributed by withholding their secure cipher machine. In theory the ECM MARK II could have been given to the Royal Navy to equip the units operating in the North Atlantic but this was not done for reasons of national security, since only US personnel were allowed to use this advanced machine and the US authorities did not want to divulge its operating principle even to their closest ally!
Other systems: The Germans easily solved several editions of the Division Field Code used by frontline troops, the Bomber code used by USAAF units during the combined bomber offensive, the Combined Assault Code used during naval landings and the Aircraft movement code used by the USAAF ferry service.
A more interesting case is the AN/GSQ-1 speech scrambler. One of these devices was retrieved from a crashed US fighter plane and the codebreakers of OKW/Chi were able to find a solution, although the chief cryptanalyst Huettenhain was doubtful of whether the key could have been solved in the few hours that the missions took place.
Responding to failures of crypto security
In the course of WWII US Army and Navy cryptologists worked hard to secure existing codes and design new ones. Special teams of codebreakers tried to solve US systems by every way possible. Based on their findings changes were made in operational procedures.The Army created dedicated radio units called SIAM – Signal Information and Monitoring, whose sole mission was to monitor the radio traffic of US units for violations of signal procedures and cipher security.
A case that shows how seriously cipher security was taken by the US was the Colmar incident. A truck carrying the SIGABA machine of the 28th Infantry division was lost in Colmar, France in February 1945. The vehicle had been stolen by someone while the crew where sleeping indoors. Immediately a huge search was organized to retrieve the vehicle and the cipher material and it was eventually found on 9 March ’45 in a wooded area but with the safe missing. During the same day a French unit found the safe submerged in the Gressen River. After the safe was examined it did not show any signs of being opened nor was material missing. In addition the rotors of the machine were set up in the correct arrangement for 5 February. Even though the examination showed that the material had not been compromised a decision was made to rewire the rotors for all the SIGABA machines in use!
Denying cases of compromiseBased on the information presented so far one would expect that any sign of compromised codes would have led to an exhaustive search for the truth. As with all things in life the reality was more complicated.
Although the Americans placed a high value on crypto security there were some embarrassing cases during the war where they obstinately refused to admit (and in some cases still do) that their systems were compromised.
Fellers code
In 1942 when the codebreakers of Bletchley Park decoded German Enigma messages from the ME theatre, they were surprised to find information that could only have come from the US diplomatic mission in Egypt. This convinced them that a cipher used between Washington-Cairo was being read by the Germans but they found it very, very hard to convince the Americans.
When the US authorities were informed of the affair they refused to believe that they were the source of the leak and instead suspected the Brits of having solved US codes. In his NSA interviews the legendary codebreaker Frank Rowlett says about this affair ‘G2’s reaction was as follows: This could not happen in G2. It could not be Fellers.’
The code was finally changed on 29 June 1942. According to Rowlett a SIGABA machine was sent to Egypt to replace the MI code.
State Department strip cipher
During WWII there was exchange of information on State Department codes between Germans, Finns and Japanese. The Finnish codebreakers had solved several links in 1942 and in early 1943 they shared their results with the Japanese. These messages were in turn decoded by the British codebreakers and clearly revealed the compromise of State Department systems.
What was the US response when they were told of this? Did they quickly institute several security changes? Let’s have a look:
The belief of the US officials that their systems were essentially secure meant the Germans and Finns would continue to solve the strip cipher till late 1944!Office of Strategic Services – Bern station
Several sources state that the messages of the OSS station in Berne were read during the war. It is possible that this only happened when they used State Department codes (for convenience) or when some of their reports of general political nature were given to the US embassy for transmission to the Secretary of State. It is definitely amusing that the Americans were warned twice to change their codes by none other than Admiral Canaris, head of the military intelligence service Abwehr (through the agent Halina Szymańska) and by General Walter Schellenberg of the Sicherheitsdienst.
The American response was: ‘Dulles made little secret of what he was doing, but he was good at separating valuable informants from Nazi plants, and his codes were never broken. He recognized Schellenberg’s ploy.’The Brits were smarter than that and their report ZIP/D-S/G.9 of 10th April 1943 says:
Conclusion
The USA entered WWII in 1941 with the secure cipher machine SIGABA, the M-138-A strip cipher that offered adequate security but was burdensome to use and a large number of outdated and insecure crypto systems. In the course of the war modern cipher machines were designed and built to replace the old systems and securely cover all types of traffic.In 1942 the M-209 device was used in the field and in 1943 the cipher teleprinters Converter M-228 – SIGCUM and SIGTOT were introduced in communications networks. In the summer of ’43 a new speech privacy device called SIGSALY became operational and the first system was used on the link Pentagon-London. At the end of the year the CCM – Combined Cipher Machine was used in the Atlantic and in 1944-45 the British relied on the CCM as much as they did on their own Typex.
By the end of war the US had several types of cipher machines in use, all offering a very high degree of security. Even older systems like the M-138-A and the codebooks were used in such a way that solution was very difficult if not impossible (daily change of key settings, use of one time pads).However the success of the US in securing its codes should not hide the failures of crypto security that took place during the war. Especially the Fellers case, the A-3 speech scrambler and the State Department’s strip cipher revealed to the enemy valuable intelligence. At the same time several cases of compromise took too long to resolve due to the belief of US officials that their codes were impregnable.
It’s up to historians to cover these historical events in more detail.
Sources: ‘The Codebreakers’, ‘Hitler’s spies’, NSA interviews of Frank Rowlett (NSA oral histories 1974 and 1976), various TICOM reports, ‘European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II’, Cryptologia article: ‘The Sigcum story: cryptographic failure, cryptologic success’, Cryptologia article: ‘The ECM MARK II: design, history, and cryptology’, SRH-366 ‘The history of Army strip cipher devices’, Cryptologia article: ‘The Slidex RT Code ‘, ‘Achievements of the Signal Security Agency in World War II’, ‘United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers: 1775-1938’, State Department history: ‘Division of cryptography’, War Diary of Inspectorate 7/VI, FMS P-038 ‘German radio intelligence’, ‘Delusions of intelligence’ USS PAMPANITO, British archives – HW 40/132 , Wikipedia