Seabourne reports available online

The Seabourne reports describe the organization and operations of the Luftwaffe’s signal intelligence agency in WWII. They were written in the postwar period by the US authorities.

Randy Rezabek of Ticom Archive has done us all a favor and uploaded some of the volumes. Enjoy!

Italian WWII signals intelligence reports in the US National Archives

Here is something for my Italian friends. There are some interesting files in the US National Archives and Records Administration, in collection RG 457, entry P-11. I don’t have the means to copy these documents by maybe someone else does. In that case here is what you need to know:

Box – number - title

23 - 5472N - lists of Captured Italian Documents -1943 -1945

51 - 7353N - PAl Instructions for the Use of the Italian Army Mnemonic Re-encipherment System "S" TICOM 755

51 - 7354N - PAJ Instructions for the Use of the Italian Army Grille Cipher System "K2" TICOM 756

51 - 7355N - PAJ Instructions for the Use of Secret System for Indicating Topographical Positions, TICOM 757

51 - 7356N - PAJ Explanation of the Italian System of Re-ciphering with Blocks of Subtractive Tables. Army. TICOM 758

51 - 7357N - PAJ Description of the Italian Army Cipher System ‘W’ TICOM 759

51 - 7358N - PAJ Additive Re-encipherment Systems -Italian, TICOM 760

114 - 10185 - 4 PAJ G-2 intelligence Report D-137: The Italian Republican Intelligence Service, TICOM

115 - 10767 - "Italian Communications Intelligence Organization". Report by Adm. Maugeri with U.S. Navy Introduction

140 - 42134N - PCH 99999 BB Cryptographic Codes and Ciphers: Italian Codes System Referred to As "E-2"

140 - 42135N - PCH 99999 Cryptographic Codes and Ciphers: Italian Code Referred to as "Cifrario Speciale"

142 - 45470 PCH CAMJ6 - Codes and Ciphers: Italy

167 - 47712A - Italian Cryptography

167 - 47709A - Interrogation Reports - Italian

If you do get these files please put them online so we can all read them!

NSA monitored the traffic of 35 world leaders

According to the Guardian new documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the NSA spied on the private communications of 35 world leaders. Surprisingly it seems that the Americans did not get much out of this operation:

But the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced "little reportable intelligence’’.

Book review - Red Storm Rising

Since author Tom Clancy passed away this month it is only fitting that I review one of his books.

Red Storm Rising was his second published book, way back in 1986. At that time the Soviet Union ruled over a large part of the planet and its military forces were equipped with modern equipment.  Although the ‘evil empire’ was close to collapse nobody knew it at the time.

 

After the defeat of the USA in the Vietnam War, the late 1970’s –early 1980’s saw a resurgence of Soviet influence in global politics. US president Ronald Reagan countered the Soviets by starting an arms race and by supporting anti-Soviet forces in Eastern Europe and in Afghanistan.

In that sense Clancy’s book is a product of the Reagan militarism of the 1980’s. The roles are clearly defined with the Soviets being evil and trying to conquer the world while the Americans are the force of democracy and freedom. The Soviets have numbers on their side, while the Americans have to rely on technology and initiative. It sounds a bit simplistic but I think that in this book it works out.

The story starts in the Soviet Union when a group of Afghan ‘freedom fighters’ attacks an important Soviet oil facility and manages to blow it up. The shortfall in oil production has catastrophic consequences for the already faltering Soviet economy and thus the Soviet leadership decides to conquer the Middle Eastern oil fields. Since this action will lead to a global war the KGB carries out an attack against the Kremlin that leads to the death of schoolchildren and pins the blame on a West German national. This gives them an excuse to attack West Germany for supposedly organizing this attack.

Initially the NATO forces are caught by surprise and suffer serious reverses. Soviet naval troops manage to occupy Iceland and the fighting in Germany is going badly for the Western side.

The Soviet goal in the Atlantic is to shut down the transfer of troops and munitions from the US to Europe. In order to achieve that goal they rely on long range bombers equipped with cruise missiles. Their first attack against a US convoy leads to heavy losses for the US side and even carriers are sunk. The Americans then respond by attacking the bomber bases and retake Iceland.

In Germany the fighting is costly for both sides but the NATO countries use their superior airforces to stop the Soviet attack and a surprise counterattack by the new M1 Abrams tanks breaches the Soviet front and dismantles their rear positions.

With their conventional attack defeated the Soviet leadership is ready to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. This disastrous scenario forces General Alekseyev (commander of the Soviet forces in the West) to take matters into his own hands and using a loyal division he storms the Politburo and arrests the communist leadership.

The book ends with both sides coming to the negotiating table but with NATO having the upper hand militarily.

It should be noted that although the Soviets are the bad guys they are not all evil. The communist politicians and the KGB are shown to be duplicitous and amoral but the military officers are brave, honorable and willing to sacrifice themselves in order to achieve victory.

One thing that can be held against Clancy is that in order for the good guys to win some weapon systems do things that they were not designed to do in real life! For example the US forces use the stealth aircraft F-117 (called F-19 in the book) to take out Soviet long range radar planes. The problem is that this plane was not designed for aerial warfare but for ground attack missions. In another part of the book the naval F-14 fighters use their long range missiles in order to shoot down Soviet bombers. First of all long range missiles of that era had a very poor record. In this specific case things would be even worse since the F-14’s did not use their radar for guidance but instead relied on the onboard optical system…

Overall this is an enjoyable novel, although a bit dated. You will get most out of it if you are already interested in the military equipment of that era.

Interesting documentary on Yom Kippur war

The Al Jazeera media organization released an excellent documentary on the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In the first episode at about 27:38, a Palestinian who took part in the conflict says something very interesting. On the first day of the war the Syrians captured an Israeli station on Mount Hermon. Once the facility was secured Soviet and East German personnel came and removed the equipment.

What kind of equipment could it be? Since it was a major Israeli signal intelligence outpost they were possibly cipher machines and specialized sigint equipment…

Well played comrades!

NKVD codes of WWII – part 2

I’ve given an overview of the cipher systems used by the Soviet NKVD organization and their exploitation by German codebreakers here.

Two of the most important systems were the ciphers used by the operational troops of the NKVD for communications from Regiment upwards.

From German reports it is possible to identify their original designation and the one given to them by the Germans. According to Alexis Dettmann, head of cryptanalysis at the German Army’s cryptanalytic centre in the East Intercept Control Station East - HLS Ost the high level systems were:

 

These enciphered codes were used on the links GUP NKVD-Front staff-Division-Brigade-Regiment.

A monthly report of Inspectorate 7/VI says that the main cipher system of the security and operational troops of the NKVD (Sicherungs u operative Truppen NKWD) had the original designation 039W and the German designation was R4 ZC 1100 (4 figure code with additive encipherment).

The replacement was 049W, introduced in September 1944 (with the exception of the 4th Ukrainian front). The German designation was R4 ZC 2750. This code was enciphered twice with numerical sequences. Despite this fact it was possible to solve messages due to mistakes in encipherment and stereotyped beginnings.

This information complements and supports the validity of TICOM report DF-112, written by Dettmann.

German report on solution of M-209 cipher machine

Some time ago I received this request by mr Mark Blair:

‘DF-120 (TICOM 2794) makes reference to another document, TICOM 2795 "Determination of the Absolute Setting of the AM-1 (M-209) by Using Two Messages with Different Indicators".

Do you know if that document has been declassified, and if it is available anywhere?’

I recently stumbled upon the answer:

This is TICOM report DF-105 ‘Determination of the absolute setting of the AM-1 (M-209) by using two messages with different indicators’.

I don’t have this file but anyone can request it from the NSA’s FOIA office. If you do get it please share!

More news on NSA/GCHQ global surveillance

Some recent stories:

Edward Snowden met with his father and a group of US intelligence officers in Moscow, was awarded Sam Adams award for Integrity in Intelligence

In Britain there will be an enquiry regarding the extent and scale of mass surveillance undertaken by that country’s spy agencies

Glenn Greenwald will leave The Guardian for a new media organization

New information regarding NSA email collection