Overview of 2018

This year I continued to research several cases of cryptologic history, I copied material from the US and UK national archives and I received reports from the NSA’s FOIA office. I also received some interesting files from friends of mine.

1). Original information was presented in the following essays:

Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluation of Office of Strategic Services ciphers

Staff Study on OSS Cryptographic Plan - January 1945

Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluation of Office of War Information ciphers

The IBM Codatype cipher machine

The Carlson-Goldsberry report - Compromise of State Department communications by the Finnish codebreakers in WWI

The Higgs memorandum - Compromise of State Department communications by the Finnish codebreakers in WWII

Cipher systems of the German Foreign Ministry

German solution of State Department A-1 Code in 1944

2). I posted a presentation of the book The Tanks of Operation Barbarossa and a Q&A with the author.

3). I uploaded the following files:

TICOM DF-196

TICOM DF-217

TICOM DF-174A

Entry 9032 finding aid

Reports on enemy successes against US cryptosystems

4). I updated the following essays:

The British Interdepartmental Cypher (added a pic of the ID codebook)

Rommel’s microwave link (added a link and info on patent US2211132A)

The Japanese FUJI diplomatic cipher 1941-43 (added info from TICOM DF-31B)

The Soviet K-37 ‘Crystal’ cipher machine (added info from TICOM DF-217)

The American M-209 cipher machine (added the paragraph ‘M-209 vs Enigma’)

Allen Dulles and the compromise of OSS codes in WWII (added information from the Higgs memorandum)

Compromise of State Department communications in WWII (added info and made corrections)

The compromise of the State Department’s strip cipher – Things that don’t add up… (made corrections)

State Department’s strip cipher – reuse of alphabet strips and key lists (added info and made corrections)

5). I added links to several interesting sources:

Army Security Agency operations in Early Cold War Germany

Article on Germans signals intelligence operations in occupied Yugoslavia

Candle in the Dark: COMINT and Soviet Industrial Secrets, 1946-1956

Essay by Frode Weierud on Inspectorate 7/VI cryptanalyst

Article on Chinese codes and ciphers

Analysis of the Czechoslovak STP cipher

TICOM report D-83 ‘Summary of Work Done on Typex Traffic by OKH/In 7/VI, 1939-1941’

Soviet cryptographer I.Ya.Verchenko

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Historical Cryptology HistoCrypt 2018

‘Experiences 1920-1939’

Cryptology files on Elizebeth Friedman and Coast Guard Unit 387

Interesting report on Luftwaffe operations 1941-43

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey - Operational Intelligence, Serial No. 431

USSBS interrogation reports

Greek civil war decrypts

Naval History and Heritage Command - Online Reading Room

Finding aid for recent NSA file transfer to National Archives

Overall this was a productive year and many important files were located. There remain a handful of reports that I’m waiting for to be declassified. Hopefully that will happen in 2019.