War Over the Steppes - The Air Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941-45

The war between Nazi German and the Soviet Union was the largest land campaign of WWII and it involved millions of troops and tens of thousands of tanks and warplanes.

In the East the Luftwaffe played a vital role by establishing air superiority, supporting the ground troops at the front, bombing important targets deep behind enemy lines and keeping the enemy under constant observation with its recon planes.

The Red Air force suffered great losses in 1941-42 but in the period 1943-45 it was rebuilt and it managed to play an important role in the actual fighting.

Until recently studies of the air war in the Eastern front were hampered by the lack of adequate sources for both participants. Authors either had to rely on the surviving Luftwaffe records, which meant they would have to use German estimates of Soviet strength and losses instead of the actual data, or they were forced to use the official Soviet post war histories, which downplayed Soviet defeats and exaggerated German strength and losses.

Author E. R. Hooton has written several books on the Luftwaffe, specifically ‘Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe’, ‘Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe’ and ‘The Luftwaffe: A Complete History 1933-1945’.

Hooton’s books are different from other similar works due to their emphasis on statistical analysis of the Luftwaffe operations.

His new book ‘War over the Steppes: The air campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941–45’ covers the air war in the Eastern front and the main battles between the Luftwaffe and the Red Air force.

The book has the following chapters:

1. From friends to foes: Russian and German air power 1924 to 1941.

2. Invasion and retreat: June 1941 to April 1942.

3. The tide turns: May 1942 to February 1943.

4. The Russian advance: March 1943 to April 1944.

5. Red Star triumphant: May 1944 to May 1945.

The main strength of the book is the addition of detailed tables on the strength, loss and sortie statistics for both sides. After the fall of the Soviet Union the government archives were opened to researchers and new material on WWII has became widely available. Hooton was able to take this data and incorporate it into his book, thus offering detailed and most of all reliable information for both air forces.  

I consider this book to be on the same level as ‘Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943’, meaning it is essential reading for anyone interested in military aviation history. 

British Tank Production and the War Economy, 1934-1945

All the major powers of WWII used tanks and especially in North Africa and in Europe they played an important role in the actual combat operations. Some of these tanks like the German Tiger were famous for their combat record, while others like the Soviet T-34 and American M4 Sherman were produced in huge numbers.

However both during the war and afterwards British tanks were criticized for being inferior. The design and combat performance of British WWII tanks is a subject that has received attention by historians and several authors like Correlli Barnett, David Fletcher and Peter Beale are critical of British tanks.

The new book ‘British Tank Production and the War Economy, 1934-1945’ by Benjamin Coombs covers the administrative and production history of the British tank program in WWII and its greatest strength is that it tries to explain why certain decisions were made and what effects they had regarding production numbers, tank quality and combat performance.

The book has the following chapters:

Introduction

1. Government and Industry during Disarmament and Rearmament

2. Government and Industry during Wartime

3. General Staff Requirements and Industrial Capabilities

4. The Tank Workforce and Industrial Output

5. Overcoming Production Problems and Delays

6. Influence of North America upon the British Tank Industry

Conclusion

A great review is available at amazon.co.uk by user ‘VinceReeves’ so I’ll repeat it here:

‘This is a long-needed objective view of British tank production during World War II that finally manages to eschew the hysteria and nonsense that generally attends this subject. Coombs chronicles the evolution of tank design, and the shifting priorities of production with authority and objectivity, and demonstrates how much misunderstanding has attended the controversies over real and perceived quality issues and inefficient tank production. 

Basically, British tank production underwent three stages during the war; an early stage in which tank production was downgraded in favour of more vital air defence work, a second stage in which quality was sacrificed to boost quantity production to rectify numerical deficiencies, and finally a mature third stage in which quality was emphasised, and British tanks became more effective and reliable.

Coombs makes sense of what appear to be irrational decisions to continue the manufacture of obsolete tanks long after they were required - more often than not this was undertaken to keep production facilities and skilled labour within the tank programme so that they would be available when newer tanks were ready for introduction.’

If you are interested in military history and you want to learn more about the British tank program then this book is a valuable resource.

For me the value of the book is that it helps explain German victories in N.Africa in 1941-42. The Germans benefited by fighting against an opponent whose tanks constantly broke down. In the period 1943-45 the British tanks became more reliable because a determined effort was made to thoroughly check and fix flaws and a high priority was assigned to spare parts production.

Book review – ‘TICOM: The Hunt for Hitler’s Codebreakers’

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. These operations remained hidden from the public till the 1970’s, when several books finally acknowledged the Allied codebreaking successes.

Since then countless books have been written about the Allied codebreakers, their successes and their contribution to the overall war effort.

Information about the similar successes of the Axis codebreakers is much harder to find since the relevant material only started to be declassified in the 2000’s.

The material that has been declassified reveals that at the end of the war in Europe the US and UK authorities were interested in finding out as much as possible about the operations and successes of the German codebreaking organizations. For this reason the TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) project was created. The goal was to send small teams into Germany in order to capture the German codebreakers and their archives.

A new book has been published that covers the operations and findings of the TICOM teams sent to Germany at the end of WWII. ‘TICOM: the Hunt for Hitler’s Codebreakers’ by Randy Rezabek is available in both paperback and e-book format.

The book starts in 1944, when the Anglo-Americans expecting the war to end soon had started planning for the capture of enemy sigint personnel and archives.  The joint US-UK effort was codenamed TICOM and six teams were formed to go into Germany and search for the German signal intelligence personnel and archives.

The operations of the individual TICOM teams are covered in the following chapters. Travelling through a war ravaged Germany they had to improvise and take risks in order to locate their targets. The teams managed to retrieve important enemy personnel and files, including the entire codebreaking unit of the German Foreign Ministry. Other great successes were the capture of a ‘Kurier’ burst-radio communications device in Northern Germany, multichannel radio-teletype demodulators found buried in a camp in Rosenheim and the retrieval of the OKW/Chi archive, found in metal boxes at the bottom of lake Schliersee in Bavaria.

The author not only describes the operations of the TICOM teams but also explains the organization, personalities and achievements of the German codebreakers.

The book contains maps and several rare photographs of personnel and material from that era. There is also an appendix with an overview of the different codes and ciphers used in WWII.

Q&A with Randy Rezabek

The author was kind enough to answer some of my questions.

1). How did you become interested in WWII cryptologic history and why did you decide to write a book about the TICOM operation?

Many years ago (35+) I was saving in the Navy and was stationed at a Naval Security Group intercept site running the local photo lab. I had a clearance and learned a bit through osmosis, but it wasn’t until I read Bamford’s book The Puzzle Palace that things became clear about what we were up to. I maintained an interest in things Sigint even though life moved on in different directions.

About 2010 I was diagnosed with MS and that created physical limitations on many of my activities, so I focused on TICOM as a pastime that could focus on.

I first learned about TICOM through another Bamford book Body of Secrets, also the account in The Ultra Americans by Parrish. I found the whole topic fascinating but little researched in the literature. Since then I have acquired a personal library of 150 or so volumes on Signit, intelligence and military communications.

Since nobody else had written a book on TICOM I thought that was a worthwhile goal.

2). How hard was it to find information about the TICOM teams and the information they gathered?

About the time I got serious about this I started doing follow ups with NSA and NARA. It was around this time that TICOM documentation started being released. It was a very slow process, especially with the NSA FOIA requests, they often took years, and by the time they replied the requested documentation had been released to NARA anyway. The release of “European Axis Signal Intelligence…” was a great boon to researchers. In addition to the overview, I compiled a list of 150 or so TICOM reports that were cited in the footnotes, this gave me a guide on what to look for. I also hooked up with some other researchers in the field, such as Ralph Erskine, Frode Weierud and you. I made the acquaintance with David Kahn, who was a great inspiration, and met and corresponded with Stephen Budiansky, all have helped me find sources and sharpened my knowledge.

Otherwise it was a matter of patience watching the slow drip, drip of releases over the years. NARA was a great help, when I started out there was no use of the Term TICOM in the descriptors. But by 2012 they had reorganize lot of the catalog and put the newer TICOM stuff into their own entries.

3). You said in the book that the reasons why TICOM remained classified into the 21st century is perhaps its greatest secret. Do you think it was simple bureaucratic inertia or something else?

At this point I think it was inertia. After the end of the cold war there was no real need to keep it secret from a security viewpoint. Human sources were long retired or dead, technologies and techniques were long superseded, and the use of captured German intelligence information against the Soviets would be obvious to even the most clueless observer.. But the law says a secret is a secret until properly declassified, even if everyone knows about it. And declassification is a laborious process with little priority: as I say in the book “nobody in the NSA ever got fired for not revealing a secret.”

4). Are you going to write more books on the subject?

At this point I think I have pretty well exhausted the topic. I tried to include as many details as possible in it to provide a guide to future researchers. If something comes out in future released that alter the story then I may do a follow up article or two. However, publishers don’t see enough profit in the story to bother, that why I had to publish it myself.

War By Numbers

Christopher A. Lawrence of the Dupuy Institute has published the book ‘War by Numbers Understanding Conventional Combat’.

Available from Potomac books and Amazon.

War by Numbers assesses the nature of conventional warfare through the analysis of historical combat. Christopher A. Lawrence (President and Executive Director of The Dupuy Institute) establishes what we know about conventional combat and why we know it. By demonstrating the impact a variety of factors have on combat he moves such analysis beyond the work of Carl von Clausewitz and into modern data and interpretation.

Using vast data sets, Lawrence examines force ratios, the human factor in case studies from World War II and beyond, the combat value of superior situational awareness, and the effects of dispersion, among other elements. Lawrence challenges existing interpretations of conventional warfare and shows how such combat should be conducted in the future, simultaneously broadening our understanding of what it means to fight wars by the numbers.

Table of contents

Preface                                                                                          ix

Acknowledgments                                                                         xi

Abbreviations                                                                                xiii

Understanding War                                                                        1

Force Ratios                                                                                   8

Attacker versus Defender                                                             14

Human Factors                                                                             16

Measuring Human Factors in Combat: Italy 1943-1944               19

Measuring Human Factors in Combat: Ardennes and Kursk       32

Measuring Human Factors in Combat: Modern Wars                  49

Outcome of Battles                                                                       60

Exchange Ratios                                                                          72

The Combat Value of Superior Situational Awareness                79

The Combat Value of Surprise                                                   121

The Nature of Lower Levels of Combat                                      146

The Effects of Dispersion on Combat                                         163

Advance Rates                                                                            174

Casualties                                                                                   181

Urban Legends                                                                           206

The Use of Case Studies                                                            265

Modeling Warfare                                                                        285

Validation of the TNDM                                                               299

Conclusions                                                                                 325

Appendix I: Dupuy’s Timeless Verities of Combat                       329

Appendix II: Dupuy’s Combat Advance Rate Verities                  335

Appendix III: Dupuy’s Combat Attrition Verities                            339

Notes                                                                                            345

Bibliography                                                                                  369

Working on the Dark Side of the Moon: Life Inside the National Security Agency

A new book on the NSA has been published recently. The book in question is ‘Working on the Dark Side of the Moon: Life Inside the National Security Agency’ by Thomas Reed Willemain.

Maitland, FL (May 19, 2017) –Working on the Dark Side of the Moon provides the first, ground-level look inside the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) and a shadowy think tank affiliated with it. The author, a software entrepreneur and statistics professor, volunteered for a year-long sabbatical tour of duty in the NSA. He ended up spending several years moving between the business and academic worlds and the secret world. This book records his impressions of people and places never before described in such intimate detail.

A deeply personal account of the years spent within the most secretive organization in the world, Working on the Dark Side of the Moon explores the range of emotions an outsider experiences while crossing over to the “inside.” It also shows the positive side of an Agency whose secrecy hides dedicated men and women devoted to protecting the country while honoring the Constitution.

Willemain writes, "The very secrecy that enables NSA to be effective also cripples its ability to explain its positive contributions. Into this void are projected grossly distorted views of what NSA does and what NSA people are like. This book puts a human face on the people who work in this secret world: their character, motivations, frustrations, sense of humor. Readers can develop a more balanced and nuanced view of NSA and its people."

About the Author

Dr. Thomas Reed Willemain served as an Expert Statistical Consultant to the National Security Agency (NSA) at Ft. Meade, MD and as a member of the Adjunct Research Staff at an affiliated think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses Center for Computing Sciences (IDA/CCS). He is Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, having previously held faculty positions at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also co-founder and Senior Vice President/Research at Smart Software, Inc. He is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, the Military Operations Research Society, the American Statistical Association, and several other professional organizations. Willemain received the BSE degree (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Princeton University and the MS and PhD degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His other books include: Statistical Methods for Planners, Emergency Medical Systems Analysis (with R. C. Larson), and 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics in statistics, operations research, health care and other topics.

Q&A with Thomas Reed Willemain

The author was kind enough to answer some of my questions.

1). Can you give an overview of your career prior to working for the NSA?

I’ve had overlapping careers:  About 40 years as an academic, and about 30 years as a software entrepreneur. I have been a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I am now Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering at RPI. I am also co-founder and Senior Vice President/Research at Smart Software, Inc. in Boston. A common thread has been the study of statistics, forecasting -- anything involving randomness.

2). How/why did you consider working for the NSA?

I was looking for a challenging and useful sabbatical leave. I’d previously spent a sabbatical leave at the Federal Aviation Administration and made some contributions there, even though I’d not had any formal background in aviation. I was wary of applying to NSA, since I was not in synch with the Bush administration. But I wanted another period of public service. I also knew that there would be no more intriguing place for a statistician to work. And I suspected, correctly, that when I came back to RPI I would have more to contribute to my students. That turned out to be correct, in that my courses were richer (and more computational) afterwards.

3). What did you expect working at the NSA would be like and were your expectations accurate or not?

I was very wrong about some things. One was politics, or the lack thereof. I mentioned my misgivings about President Bush. The woman who handled the sabbatical program was very diplomatic and not put off by my questions. When I finally met her in person, it turned out that she was a lesbian with an “Anybody but Bush” bumper sticker on her car – not at all fitting my stereotype of an NSA person. During the McCain-Obama election campaign, the bumper stickers in the vast parking lots were about 50:50, and there was no whiff of politics inside the wire. The only person who talked (incessantly) about the election was somebody from another country embedded with us. I did expect a high level of expertise, and that was definitely true.

Something I should have expected but did not was how radically different the culture was from my university life. I was going back and forth between “inside” and “outside”. The academic culture encourages the question “Hey, what are you working on?” I had to learn to not ask that question on the inside unless it was behind a locked door, and not always then.

Now, the NSA is a big place. And one of the people described in my book pointed out that I was in the Research Directorate, which is more like a playground for uber-geeks than most of the rest of the Agency, where a mix of civilians and service members grind out massive amounts of work every day. So my book must present a partial picture of “Life inside the National Security Agency”. I may have been the proverbial blind man feeling the best part of the proverbial elephant.

4). Why did you decide to write a book about your experiences working for the NSA and was it difficult to gain approval from the agency?

I’ll be 70 years old soon, and I found myself slowing down on the math side of things, so I looked for another way to contribute. I had a plan to begin substituting my words for my equations, and writing the book would be a good way to test the feasibility of that plan. But I was also motivated by a desire to continue serving as best I could. Most every depiction of NSA in the media has been negative, and distorted stereotypes about the people and the Agency are rampant. I wanted to offset that with an insider’s look at the reality. The Snowden affair in particular prompted me to try to offset that. It turned out that, without knowing what I was contributing to, some of my technical work helped the Agency offset some of the damage Snowden did. The book let me do more on that front.

Getting the book cleared through NSA’s pre-publication review was a slow-motion crucifixion. It delayed the book by five months and blacked out about 15% of the book. There was some lying and bullying involved. Call it a character-building moment. I wrote about the process in the LawFare blog and discussed it with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who were already reviewing the pre-pub process. The basic problem is that the process knows only one word: “No”. I tried to get the strategic communications people involved so there would be someone to say “Yes” to the idea of permitting a pro-Agency book to be published, but so far no luck. The Agency claimed, with perhaps dubious legality, that anybody described in my book, though anonymously, could require me to remove them from the book. If they had all done so, there would have been no book. But only one insisted that she be removed. She is now a large black rectangle.

5). What new information is available from your book compared to previous studies of the NSA?

I’m fairly certain that this is the only grunt-level memoir of service in the NSA. There are a few faux-memoirs that are works of fiction. Folks at the top levels have written books (e.g., Michael Hayden), but daily life below the top has been, well, rather like the dark side of the moon. There have been policy-oriented and history-oriented books about NSA, but not people-oriented books. So what it feels like to work there has been mysterious. Much of my book is centered on descriptions of about 40 people that I worked with, and the book is about their stories as much as mine. I also paid a lot of attention to comparing life inside against life outside, especially regarding the intellectual and administrative climates (including personnel evaluation systems). There are not many “insider/outsider” stories to tell, and mine is the only one in print.

Actually, part way through my time inside, several of us academics were “traded” to NSA-affiliated think tanks. So my book is also the first to expose the inner workings of the Institute for Defense Analyses Center for Computing Sciences. That must be the world’s most comfortable SCIF, and it’s full of sharp, colorful characters. I think the director of IDA/CCS was even more opposed to publication of my book than the NSA itself, even though my book might be very helpful to recruiting people to take my place there.

6). What is your opinion on the recent Snowden revelations regarding the NSA interception of US civilian communications?

I have mixed feeling about Snowden, mostly negative. Perhaps some of his motivation was idealistic. But what he did was very damaging to the tracking of foreign targets, so he definitely belongs in jail. He also appears to be a narcissistic liar. He permitted a persona to be presented in the movie “Snowden” that was just not true. As I watched the movie, I kept thinking “That’s not true. And that’s not true. And that doesn’t really happen.” For instance, I write about my struggles to pass the repeated exams I had to take to certify that I knew about the practical implementation of the Fourth Amendment prohibitions as applied to foreign intelligence. The public should know how seriously the Agency regards those things. It is certain that something as powerful as the NSA bears constant watching, but facts ought to be the basis for judgment.

Book review – ‘Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union’

Stephen Budiansky, author of ‘Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II’ and ‘Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare’ has published a new book, this time dealing with the Cold War operations of the NSA and the efforts to solve Soviet high level cryptosystems.

‘Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union’ is a history of the National Security Agency with an emphasis on the work done on Soviet cryptosystems.

The book starts in 1943, when US codebreakers were solving several important Axis cryptosystems (such as the German Enigma and the Japanese PURPLE cipher machines). At the time Soviet diplomatic traffic was being collected but it was only sorted not actively attacked. During the year a small group was formed to study this material and make an attempt at solution.

In theory the Soviet authorities used codebooks enciphered with one time pad which meant that their messages should have been unbreakable. However the ‘Russian problem’ group was able to make a stunning discovery. It turned out that there were cases of additive pad reuse, which meant that some messages could be decoded.

This was the start of the famous VENONA project and thanks to the decoded messages of the Soviet intelligence agencies it was possible to identify a large number of Soviet agents and communist sympathizers.

NSA and GCHQ continued to solve important Soviet systems in the period 1945-48, such as the cipher machines Coleridge, Longfellow, Pagoda and a modified version of the Hagelin B-211. They were also able to intercept the Soviet civilian network thanks to German equipment, captured in the last days of the war.

Operations came to a standstill in 1948 when after being warned by one of their agents the Soviets introduced new secure cipher procedures. From then on NSA would continue its efforts against Soviet high level cryptosystems but with little to no success and this despite devoting most of its resources to the Soviet problem.

The author looks into the efforts of the NSA to solve Soviet high level cryptosystems, the investments in new technologies such as high speed computers, the crisis resulting from repeated failures and the huge resources devoted to the Soviet problem (at the expense of other targets). In the end the failure to solve Soviet ciphers using the ‘standard’ methods meant that more resources had to be directed to ELINT satellites, ‘bugs’ and traffic analysis. It was only in the late 1970’s that a combination of new supercomputers (built by the Cray corporation) and mathematical research (from the Institute for Defense Analyses) that allowed the NSA to solve Soviet high level ciphers.

Overall the book covers NSA operations from WWII till the end of the Cold War and looks into all aspects of the agency’s work, their codebreaking successes, the relationship with the CIA, their investment into high speed computers, operations in Korea and Vietnam and even the organizational and security problems of running an organization of such size.

There are also five appendixes with short explanations of enciphered codebooks, the Soviet cipher teleprinter (from TICOM sources), cryptanalysis of the Hagelin machines, Turing’s deciban method and Friedman’s Index of Coincidence.

Considering the information presented in the book it is a valuable contribution to Cold War cryptologic history.

Q&A with Stephen Budiansky

The author was kind enough to answer some of my questions. 

1). You’ve written several books on signals intelligence and codebreaking. How did you become interested in this subject and how did you go from writing ‘Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II’ to ‘Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare’ and now ‘Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union’?

I think what first drew me to the subject, and what has been the common theme of all of these books of mine that you mention, is my abiding interest in the intersection of science and warfare. Since World War II, science has dominated warfare, and it’s simply impossible to understand modern military history without the technical story of scientific developments that have shaped conflicts, weapons, and strategy and tactics. It also involves an often fascinating intersection of very different cultures and personalities.

2). There are only a few books that cover the Cold War operations of the NSA. What new information have you discovered for your latest book that set it apart from previous efforts? How hard is it to research cryptologic history compared to social, economic or standard military history? 

NSA has been regularly releasing and declassifying documents from the post-World War II period. It’s admittedly slim pickings, and a very frustrating process. I did file several Mandatory Declassification Review requests with NSA in the course of my research and actually received several of the important reports I was seeking to have declassified—only to find that NSA’s declassifiers had redacted so much from the documents that they needn’t have bothered even pretending they were releasing anything: so much was chopped out that there was literally nothing of significant historical information left by the time they were done. 

And we’re talking about information that is as much as 70 years old, involving for example Soviet rotor cipher machines from 1947. You can buy a Soviet “Fialka” machine on the collectors’ market these days, but NSA still refuses to acknowledge that such a thing even exists, much less anything about its cryptanalysis.

That said, there are a few significant things that have come out recently, notably in the William Friedman Papers released (or partially released I should say — these too were subjected to the usual heavy-handed redaction censorship) last year.

But the main thing I tried to do which I think is different from earlier books was to pull the clues from disparate sources together, provide essential context, and try as much as possible to synthesize the technical story of cryptanalysis in the Cold War, as I did for World War II in my earlier book “Battle of Wits.” There’s a lot that one can figure out from context, correlating sources, and applying a basic knowledge of cryptology

3). During the Cold War the NSA’s budget and manpower rivaled those of the largest companies in the world. Do you think that this investment paid off for the US government? How can one evaluate the operations of an agency that works in secret?

I’ve repeatedly argued that NSA would be much better off if they were more open. It’s very difficult to get them to reveal their successes, and the result is exactly the problem you note: Why should the American public continue to support these agencies and their activities if they can’t know what they’re getting for the investment? The public tends to hear about NSA when there’s a failure or a scandal. 

That said, I do think NSA’s greatest success in the Cold War was preventing us all from being blown to bits in World War III. That’s a negative argument which you can't prove of course. But until the advent of real-time photoreconnaissance satellites in the 1970s and 80s, SIGINT was the primary source of early warning of Soviet military activity and in particular was the only real source of strategic warning of Soviet preparations that would precede a nuclear attack. The reassurance that NSA’s surveillance gave US leaders that the Soviets could not launch a first strike without us having significant warning greatly reduced the hair trigger of the Cold War nuclear standoff. And we specifically know, as I note in the book, that during some key crises in the Cold War—such as the Suez Crisis in 1956—the information NSA provided was crucial in convincing US leaders that Soviet threats of military intervention were a bluff, not backed up by any actual movement or mobilization of its forces, which greatly helped to defuse those crises. It’s not hard to imagine an escalation that could quickly have gotten out of hand had we been in the dark and left to guess what the Soviets were up to.

4). What are your thoughts on the recent Snowden revelations regarding the NSA interception of US civilian communications?

I think they show NSA to be very much a creature of its history. The problems that the Snowden revelations point to regarding NSA’s efforts to “get everything,” to exaggerate the effectiveness of its bulk collection activities, its willingness to press a maximal and at times highly dubious view of its legal authorities, and to misrepresent the truth when confronted with embarrassing facts, are strikingly similar to the mindset and institutional culture of the agency (and its predecessors) going back as early as World War II.

5). What areas of intelligence history do you find most interesting and what topics do you plan to research for future books?

I feel in a way that intelligence history is at a real crisis point. We’ve beaten to death World War II—I mean how many books about breaking the Enigma or Operation Zig Zag do we need? — and the completely broken system of official declassification of post–World War II documents has left intelligence historians with precious little to work on. Until some fundamental change occurs—and it has to come from the top, because the entire FOIA and declassification process is the *problem*, not the solution—I think I’m going to head for another field entirely, if I decide to write another book. I’m a bit worn out from reading documents with every other word crossed out!

C.G.McKay’s website ‘Intelligence Past’

Craig McKay, author of ‘From Information to Intrigue’, ‘Swedish Signal Intelligence’ and contributor to journals such as Intelligence and National Security, Journal of Intelligence History and Cryptologia has started a new website dealing with intelligence history. He has already added several essays on interesting cases plus he has uncovered the identity of the mysterious Polish agent 594.

If you’re interested in intelligence history you should check out his site Intelligence Past.

Q&A with Craig McKay:

Craig was kind enough to answer some of my questions.

1). How did you become interested in WWII intelligence history and what was the process that led to the publication of two books on the subject?

Part of the reason, I gave on my site, namely growing up at a time when the two great wars of the twentieth century were very much part of living memory. But why, you may still ask, study intelligence, rather than say the history of weapon development, another interesting and perhaps more important subject? I suppose the answer lies somewhere in our psyche. A clue might be the following anecdote. As an insufferable sixteen-year-old, I acquired the atrocious habit of writing down various observations in aphoristic form. One of them was: “But surely, in some sense, the perfect actor is still undiscovered.” Anybody who says something like that, is more or less fated to become interested in the
world of secret intelligence!   With regard to my books, these merely reflected my own location in Sweden. I was there, I was interested in the history of intelligence and discovered that apart from journalistic accounts, not much serious work had been done. My interest in SIGINT, cyphers and such things, however, had another origin. I had worked in the field of mathematical logic under Professor R.L.Goodstein. At that time, logic and the foundations of mathematics were peripheral subjects in the British mathematical curriculum. Computing was mainly still numerical analysis.  I recall giving a lecture on Turing machines about 1964 when few professional mathematicians in Britain had heard of his work, far less took an active interest in the subject. It sounds quite extraordinary now but so it was. Of course, no one spoke about his war work. Turing was only one of the mathematical logicians involved in wartime cypher work. There were others such as Turing 's pupil Robin Gandy, Hasenjaeger in Germany, Quine and Rosser in the US.

2). Why did you decide to start the ‘Intelligence Past’ website and what are your goals for it?  

My motivation was, I confess, entirely egotistical: to get my various bits and pieces on the history of secret intelligence out on the web rather than let them perish instantaneously with me. What other people do with them is entirely up to them. It would be nice when I am still around, if some braver souls were encouraged to post their own pieces on the site. Let’s see what happens. 

3). What areas of intelligence history do you find most interesting and what are you currently researching?

Because of my own history- virtually a lifetime in Sweden to which I remain greatly attached, I have tended  to limit my own interests in two ways (i) geostrategically I focus on Northern Europe and (ii) thematically I am also very interested in the interaction between neutrality and intelligence. About the latter, I say a bit in the first few pages of my book ‘From Information to Intrigue’. At the moment, I have been looking at old puzzles connected with Polish intelligence such as Major Choynacki`s wartime agent network.  The Poles are most extraordinary people. Their troubled history, sandwiched between Germany and Russia, has made them masters of the dark conspiratorial arts. There are naturally many other things which I think about as diligent readers of my site will discover.

4). Which unsolved cases from WWII do you think researchers should try to investigate further?

There is no shortage of questions, that’s for sure! Here’s a few straight from the top of my head.

(1) Why were the Russian organs so concerned with Raoul Wallenberg?  Lots has been written (some by me) but we are still in the dark. 

(2) Why did the Soviet authorities expel the Swedish Minister and his Military Attache during the war? Was it mere tit-for-tat for Swedish action against Soviet espionage in Sweden?  I would be interested to know if it was partly due to certain statements about these Swedish diplomats in Japanese diplomatic traffic that the Soviet Union is known to have read. The Swedish Minister (Assarsson) was a garrulous fellow who occasionally spoke to his Japanese colleague about the war situation.

(3) How far was the Abwehr involved in the Hess flight to Scotland? I have written a short paper on this but so far without being able to interest anyone else to investigate further.

(4) The MAX network in the Balkans: how one longs for a detailed Russian account of this case by a Russian historian using their own archives. Were Kauders, Hatz and Enomoto all long term Soviet assets?  Did Nahum Eitington make a special journey for a conspiratorial treff with Enomoto and Kauders in Greece in October 1940?

(5) How closely did German intelligence follow the telegram traffic of the Jewish Agency during the war?

(6) Who was the spy NERO in Spain/Portugal reporting on the UK and run by the Hungarians in the last year of the war? His name crops up in Schellenberg and Höttl testimonies.

(7) Why is there not more about the use made of COMINT in Economic Warfare during the war?

(8) What was the greatest triumph of Soviet wartime SIGINT?

A last comment: never forget that in any significant spy case there will always be loose ends. Paradoxically that is both a limitation and an opportunity. 

Bletchley Park versus British bureaucracy

In the course of WWII both the Allies and the Axis powers were able to gain information of great value from reading their enemies secret communications. In Britain the codebreakers of Bletchley Park solved several enemy systems with the most important ones being the German Enigma and Tunny cipher machines and the Italian C-38m. 

Although books and films usually like to focus on Alan Turing, there were also other people who made vital contributions towards the solution of the German Enigma device. The mathematician Gordon Welchman worked on German Army and Airforce traffic and became head of Hut 6. Welchman came up with the idea of the diagonal board, a modification of the bombes that made them much more efficient in their operation.

Welchman became assistant director of mechanization at Bletchley Park in 1943, in 1948 immigrated to the US and from 1962 worked as an analyst of the MITRE Corporation.

An amusing incident is described in Welchman’s book The Hut Six Story, pages 190-192. It concerns the problems caused by the Army bureaucracy and the fact that despite their work at Bletchley the codebreakers were liable to be called into military service!

The passage reads:

‘In my own case exemption from military service involved a curious sequence of events. At the beginning of the war, when I became a temporary civil servant in a branch of the British Foreign Office I was thirty-three years old. In due course my age group was called and I received a notice telling me to report to a unit of the Royal Artillery somewhere in the north of England. I took the notice to the Foreign Office administrative people. They assured me that would handle the matter, and that I was to do nothing. A little later I received a polite letter from the Colonel of my artillery unit, saying that there was no doubt a good reason for my nonappearance, but would I please report at once. I took this letter also to the administrative office. Again I was told that the Foreign Office would handle the matter. The next development was a phone call to my mother-in-law, from her brother, Ned, who as chance would have it was Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire, the county in which I was living. He had a warrant for my arrest. This raised an intriguing point. Bletchley Park was enclosed by a high fence and was under military guard. Its cafeteria was open night and day, and sleeping accommodation was available. Suppose I had kept on living and working there and never emerged? I suspect the police might have had some difficulty in arresting me. As it turned out, however, I did not need to resort to any such dramatic delaying action. The Foreign Office and Army Administrators finally resolved the matter. One problem remained. Army regulations included no means of simply letting go of a man who had been called up but had not enlisted. The regular discharge procedure applied only to those who had gone through the enlistment process. It developed that, in order to sever my relationship with the Gunners, I would first have to enlist. I had to report at a Royal Artillery establishment, and it was arranged that I should go to the nearest one, which was a few miles south of Bletchley Park. I was given a gasoline allowance and drove my own car. The "establishment" turned out to be a small office presided over by a sergeant. The sergeant had received detailed instructions, and after filling a few forms, he shook me by the hand, congratulated me on being a Gunner, and said that he would arrange for me to be discharged some other day. When I explained that my office did not want me to take time off for a second trip, he said that he could not discharge me at once because a medical examination was needed and the doctor would be at lunch. I had to get back to Bletchley as soon as possible, so I discovered where the doctor lived, dashed round and just caught him before he went to lunch. A few minutes later I had whatever medical certificates were necessary for my discharge, only to find that the sergeant had gone to lunch. I found him in the nearest pub and persuaded him to come back to his office. After filling out a few more forms, he told me that I was now a civilian again. My length of military service was almost exactly twenty minutes. Then, having arranged my discharge, the sergeant gave me a few appropriate papers, one of which I treasured for many years. It urged me to join the Home Guard, where my experience in the Army would be extremely valuable.’

Book presentation – ‘Encryptors and Radio Intelligence. Shield and Sword of Information World’

In the 20th century the widespread use of radio for communications gave governments and military forces the ability to transmit information across vast distances almost instantaneously. This new invention however had a big drawback since anyone with a radio device could intercept this traffic. Thus the use of codes and ciphers was mandatory if the contents of these messages were to be kept secure from eavesdroppers.

Countries that neglected to follow this rule, or used weak crypto systems, paid for it in blood.

In the First World War the Western Allies were able to gain information of great value by solving several German Army and Navy codes and in the Eastern front the Germans were able to defeat the Tsarist Armies mainly by solving their ciphers, reading their messages and learning of their plans in advance.

During WWII both sides had their successes. In Britain the codebreakers of Bletchley Park solved several enemy systems with the most important ones being the German Enigma and Tunny cipher machines and the Italian C-38m. Codebreaking played a role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the North Africa Campaign and the Normandy invasion. In the United States the Army and Navy codebreakers solved many Japanese cryptosystems and used this advantage in battle. The great victory at Midway would probably not have been possible if the Americans had not solved the Japanese Navy’s JN25 code.

On the other side of the hill the codebreakers of Germany, Japan, Italy and Finland also solved many important enemy cryptosystems both military and diplomatic. The German codebreakers could eavesdrop on the radio-telephone conversations of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, they could decode the messages of the British and US Navies during their convoy operations in the Atlantic and together with the Japanese and Finns they could solve State Department messages (both low and high level)  from embassies around the world.

Today there is a vast amount of information available on the cryptologic history of Western countries. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the history of cryptology in Russia, both during the Tsarist era and in the Soviet period. During the Soviet era historians avoided references to codes and ciphers and instead talked about ‘radio-electronic combat’ which dealt with direction finding, traffic analysis and jamming. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian researchers have presented new information on the organization and work of the Tsarist codebreakers and of the Soviet cryptologic agencies but there are many unanswered questions and large gaps exist regarding our knowledge of their operations and achievements.  Information on the codes and ciphers used by the Tsarist and Soviet governments and Armed Forces is limited and scattered in various books, articles and internet sites.

I have already covered books published recently that deal with Russian cryptologic history, such as ‘History of cryptology’ by Grebennkov Vadim Viktorovich and ‘The cryptographic front’ by Butirsky, Larin and Shankin.

This time Anatoly Klepov, a professional in the field of communications security has published ‘Encryptors and Radio Intelligence. Shield and Sword of Information World’, which contains some of his articles published online at Moskovskij Komsomolets and writing.com plus new research.

Although the book was written for a Russian audience the author has published an interesting summary in English at aklepov.com:

 

By Anatoly Klepov

Do we know a lot about radio intelligence activities? Very little. We get the knowledge mainly from Western books. How do Western countries assess the radio intelligence efficiency? Churchill, Great Britain Prime Minister, supposed that ““Ultra” (project on German Enigma encryptor decryption – A.K.) was the most important and most secret source of information.” He also stated that “”Ultra” is the tool that helped us to win the war.”

John Slessor, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, shares the same opinion: “”Untra” is ultimately valuable source of intelligence data that had virtually fantastic effect on the strategy or even the tactics of the allies.” Dwight David Eisenhower- Supreme Commander of western allied forces – called the ‘Ultra’ operation as “the decisive factor of allies’ victory.”

Have we ever read anything similar in our commanders’ memoirs? Definitely not. The God of War for us is artillery, tanks, planes, and missiles. This very strategic opinion is most probably still valid nowadays. Do we have efficient and concealed (secured) forces management? In 1941 we had none…

Why have I named my book “Encryptors and Radio Intelligence. Shield and Sword of Information World”?

Reason 1. War.

I started my military service in radio intelligence back in 1972. In one year time, during Gulf of Suez crises, I first realized what real radio war also means that full armies may lose battles simple because the immediate information from commanders of military divisions did not arrive to subordinates on time. Yet the most dangerous outcome was the enemy decrypted or falsified the information.

Without concealed (encrypted) communications hundreds of tanks and planes turned into scrap metal, whereas military divisions became unorganized people having no idea what way to go and where the enemy and allies are.

In general terms, radio intelligence is not a simple radio channel wiretapping and decryption it also implies imposing false information on enemy as well as replacing his messages, etc. Information war determines the military campaign outcome. This is the reason the opposing forces pay special attention to information wars. They conduct the war not only on a battlefield but in mass media as well. Press, radio, and TV are the second front during any large scale conflicts.
Military reporters often send real information from the conflict zones to discover quite a different event overview in the information space. Often press representatives striving to write the truth about war – truth incompatible with the view of world’s mass media agencies – died or perished.

Fortunately, newspapers that send employees to hot spots start to realize that one has to equip military reporter the same way as solders on the battlefield – armored jackets and helmets. Why do paper and digital mass media editorials still do not provide their hot spot reporters with strong encryption equipment to secure the information they transmit?

Years later after my military service and heading ANCORT Company I offered to equip the international hot spot media representatives with encryption equipment. Free of charge.

However, not a single Mass Media agency used the unique opportunity to provide their reporters with a strong and reliable information security system. Why? Going through other wars I realized that that was no coincident. No one wants true information on military actions as it may have more disastrous consequences than the war itself. Even the “most independent” mass media agencies were afraid the messages from their reporters would contradict the official censorship that in addition had no opportunity to control the encrypted communications of reporters. Mass Media heads decided not to provide their reporters with encryption systems despite the fact they left their employees defenseless against the opposing forces on the other frontline side. They could not have been unaware the enemies monitored each and very message transmitted over public communication channels, including the correspondence of Mass Media representatives!

It is interesting when I switched the research from military conflicts to hackers’ crimes against the society and state I discovered a surprising coincidence.

Nowadays international hacker groups performing e-crime make annually over $400 billion. One of the reasons for this to be possible is the absence of strong hardware cryptographic security in global information exchange network, including the Internet and mobile communications. Another reason is virtually no responsibility for committing such crimes! It’s extremely uncommon for such criminals – stealing huge amounts over the Internet – to be caught or penalized. Global Net enables them to commit such actions from the comfort of their homes even being in the other part of the world.

I get a feeling that individual hackers are in fact a complex international organized criminal network aiming at gaining revenue. Moreover, the sad inferiority of the information storage and transfer systems used today is not the only thing that makes it even easier for the criminals to act. Another one is negligence of system administrators who store system passwords and users’ financial information in the places hackers can easily get access to. Just ask the affected persons whether they protected their servers with hardware encryptors. I believe most of them will not even understand what you are talking about. Barack Obama – the US President – confirmed this by saying during an information security meeting that 70% of all US companies use no or extremely weak information security systems.

Now we get a feeling that the officials and politicians prohibit the use of strong encryption because they are afraid to review the old laws and lose the actual ability to totally control the information of the citizens. Hackers worldwide use this bureaucratic paradox to hack into unprotected networks and cause huge financial damage. This is the very reason solders and media representatives die during military conflicts.

However, incorrect use of cryptographic equipment – especially in large-scale wars – also surely leads to tragedy. In the book I provide multiple examples from the history and modern world when the violation of strong encryption equipment use, incorrect encryption key generation, and violation of rules on connecting to encryption equipment resulted in decryption of the top secret information therefore costing millions of military and civilians their lives.

I will give a yet unknown example from the history of cryptography. Experts are aware that the generation strong cryptographic keys is fundamental to creation of strong cryptographic equipment. What was the way the USSR produced encryption keys before 1941?

They used special devices to generate keys to encryption equipment and one-time pads. The devices resembled modern Bingo game machine. The machine featured two units running punch tape. Balls randomly touched the punch tapes generating balanced gamma – random number sequence that was used to generate encryption key. The strength of such encryption keys was miserable. In early 1950s that was confirmed by Vladimir Kozlov – one of the USSR leading cryptologists, associate member of USSR Academy of Sciences.

It was not a big surprise to know the imperfect USSR encryption equipment was one of the reasons of tragedy at the beginning of World War II. The Germans could read even the top secret USSR telegrams up to 1941. I will go in more details in this book.

Now I recall a case from my experience when in late 1970s I decrypted messages encrypted with the top secret USSR cryptographic equipment using simple undulator tape and mathematical compass.

The reason is absolutely the same – incorrect use of encryption equipment. Radio space always demonstrates all defaults in encryption equipment production and usage. It acts as test paper showing all the drawbacks. Unfortunately, some experts are subject to stereotype that once the equipment passes all lab tests one should not control its operation when going life. As my experience shows this approach is totally wrong. Human and technology factors have always existed. These factors may lead to incorrect use of encryption equipment no matter how advanced it is.

I would like to focus on another case to further discuss tragedy arising from unprofessional and improper use of such a powerful force as cryptography. The key conditions for any army to win over the enemy have always been the information exchange secrecy and speed between the commanders and various divisions. Moreover, countless number of lives often depends on encrypted message delivery speed. The ability to deliver secret information as prompt as possible has always been of great value.

Even centuries ago people considered urgent information as valuable as gold. If a message courier’s pay was slightly higher that of a soldier, the pay for express mail was even higher than that a Paduan University professor would get for a year!

That was the pay for information in the XVI century already! Now let’s come back to USSR in the XX century – the century full of wars and conflicts. The country developed encryption system primarily for politicians and top management of the country. However, before the war in 1941 top secret information was encrypted with paper encryption documents. It took a lot of effort and time to encrypt the information in such a way. It was even more challenging when the encrypted information was transmitted over poor communication lines.

Unfortunately, the USSR leaders up to 1941 (war start date) failed to realize the importance of “concealed” (encrypted) armed forces management as the key tool for winning over the enemy. We may trace this fact in Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Vasilievsky and other commanders’ memoires of that period. No one of them mentioned a concealed management of armed forces, including divisions, troops, and so on. You may come across HF communication used by high command of the USSR army. However, NKVD after-war research demonstrated the encryption system was not strong and the encrypted messages probably had been decrypted! I believe this was known even before the research. That was the reason NKVD appointed its soldiers in every 100 meter intervals along the HF communication line. It may appear the most part of information in the war first years were communicated by NKVD couriers, same as back in the XVI century.

The Paradox of Russia. The tragedy that repeats time after time, year after year, century after century and the tragedy that relates to information security should have encouraged the ones who make decisions on cryptography use to give a try and change the situation, to learn the lesson from the past mistakes, make modern information world safe. Ehen…

There won’t be any miracle if we keep everything in our life unchanged. Modern “digital” civilization won’t change for the better on its own. Wars and crimes go on in the information world. Military dictators and criminal geniuses will continue to appear.

This perfectly means world leaders should think not of expanding networks to collect unprotected information and not about the ways to control people’s thoughts but rather about a way to protect the citizens of their states from new threats of virtual world. It is clear that should the world society not take joint care on global information security the civilization will suffer from extremely devastating consequences. XXI century information war has absolutely different logic. The winner will be not the one who has the most powerful information theft means but the one who has the strongest security.

You may wonder what radio intelligence and encryption devices have to do with it. These are the very shield and sword of information world that bring us victories as well as defeats. Strong cryptography nowadays is the only efficient shield capable of protecting the world against any information weapon.

Reason 2. Historical Truth

During my life I have visited 96 countries worldwide where I was lucky to meet and talk to countless people having unique knowledge on our society and the history of civilization. The people I know include heads of government and various government organizations, talented scientists and cultural and religious figures. They knew my main hobby and thanked me for my work and efforts with priceless and king-like gifts – permitting me to study archive documents on history of Russia and cryptography. During one of my multiple foreign business trips I got access to materials on cryptography works of Pushkin’s contemporary and his fried - a well-known Russian scientist Pavel L. Schilling von Cannstatt. By the way, Pavel Schilling’s work as cryptography service head (cipher room) of MFA of Russia has not been mentioned in Russian public sources before. This peculiar fact attracted my real interest. Leaping ahead I will say that the history documents review delivered a great deal of discoveries. Moreover, I was able to look at known things from a different angel. For instance when I studied Pushkin’s works I discovered that the Pushkin’s drawing of an unknown man was actually the picture of his best friend Pavel Schilling. And I am talking about this as well in my book.

However, the more I wanted to learn about Schilling’s activities and work the more challenges I faced. I had to gain various permits and approvals to access historical documents. Even when I got the permit from Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to review the historical documents stored in its archive it suddenly turned out that I need another permit from FSB.

When I finally received this other permit as well I was informed that most part of archive of the room was under reconstruction and most materials were unavailable for review. Even those available documents missed multiple pages – excluded from review. Please note 200 years had passed from the events date!

And now I have a question how did Alexander Pushkin himself access the archives when writing the Captain’s Daughter?! The history tells that he had to address the Tsar with request to work in the Cipher Room archive. During a ball evening Pushkin approached the Imperator with his request. Nicolas I favored the request. Still we do know that even with the highest permit MFA officials did not provide Pushkin with access to all archived documents!

Probably Noblemen were afraid of critical analysis of the political elite relations with opposing citizens participating in agitations against the Court and state. The same is true in relation to Peasant’s War under Emelian Pugachev. However, unlike the Streletsky Uprising the Peasant’s War had external political aspect in it – battle of foreign states for influencing the Russian elite even through financing the elite.

Emelian Pugachev’s links to French Kind Louis XIV and receipt of financial aid from him is a clear example.

The described events took place 200 years ago. Why do modern officials keep the secrets of Tsar Russia? What are they afraid of?

Most probably they are afraid of possible unveiling Pushkin’s life philosophy and his views of State and individual relations.

Reason 3. True Freedom of Word and Democracy

As a cryptographer I was shocked by Pushkin words: “It’s better to be on hard labor rather than being wiretapped.” Hundreds of years have pasted and Pushkin remains virtually the only one who publicly declared the state invaded our privacy!

The reality of the threat is proved by letter from a different epoch. Dozens years past Pushkin’s death (in early September 1959) Alexandra – the Russian Impress – wrote to her husband Nikolas II: “My dear and darling... I wish we had a phone wired directly from your room to mine… This would be our private wire and we could talk without any worries of being tapped.” The Impress was concerned that even the Tsar family had no warranty of privacy!

I learned about another interesting fact related to privacy effect on country fate from Russian noble writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I met him back in 1995 while helping to organize the prestigious literature award of Palermo Institute (Italy) for the “In the First Circle” that also told about the development of USSR first phone encryption device. Soon I discovered that apart from cryptography we shared interest in history on freedom of word and democracy in Russia. During our discussion on 1917 revolution and the reasons of Nikolas II’s abdication, Alexander told me: look for the three latest encrypted telegrams of the Empress to the Tsar and you will understand the real reasons of abdication.

Note that the most powerful radio station was located in Tsarskoe Selo. It was mainly designed for Nicolas II to communicate with the army divisions. However, Alexandra – the Empress – sometimes used it to communicate with her husband with encrypted messages.

I managed to discover the decrypted correspondence of the last Russian tsar in the most unexpected place. To my greatest surprise it was published in a book edited in… UK. I believe the publishers did not include many of the most valuable and important telegrams including the messages and letters Solzhenitsyn was talking about. This mystery will be part of my further history research. However, I managed to learn the way the correspondence of the tsar family got outside the country.

Ernest Fetterlein – the head of Tsar Cryptography Service – developed encryptor for the Tsar and empress. After 1917 revolution he migrated to UK together with his colleagues and created a powerful information decryption service GC&CS in UK intelligence. The service up to late 1920^th decrypted all messages of Soviet government. Moreover, my history research of tsar encrypted correspondence enabled me to glance at encrypted correspondence between Nicolas II and German Kaiser Wilhelm II and learn a lot of interesting details on the customs and situation of that time.

Let’s return to Pushkin’s words on State role in family values privacy and privilege. I would like to note that not a single revolutionary (Herzen, Tolstoy, Gorky, Lenin) countering tsarism had ever clearly stated that “family privacy should be above all political freedoms.”

We may say exactly the same about noble people of the Western civilization. In the history of Europe and USA I spotted only one person who shared the point of view of Pushkin.

Almost Pushkin’s contemporary – Thomas Jefferson, one of the US first presidents, author of Declaration of Independence – believed that “only strong cryptography that cannot be read by the government” brought the US the real freedom and independence. The two grand persons on different continents thought the same way.

And I asked myself why over the centuries have we started to forget the philosophy in Russia and the USA? Where may we get to with all the limitations and bans on strong cryptography use? Of course, I was first interested in Russia fate that experienced significant losses over the last two hundred years just for this very cause. After 1812 when the Russian army celebrated the victory over Napoleon in Paris we note the ignominious losses: Crimean War, 1905 events, 1914 War. Just take a look, over many years Russia had no large victories. The West gained control not only over Russian finances but the political life as well. Due to the cryptography ban the information on state officials and politicians was absolutely open and available to western special services. That means they had plenty of opportunities to compromise and recruit Russian officials.

Reason 4. Cryptography Role in Modern World

Once without the information shield, Russia lost the wars due to external control.

Just think, World War I in 1914 – Russian army could have entered Berlin and finished the war. However it was defeated thus significantly changing the further world history. The true reason of catastrophe was the compromised encryption system of Russian army used to manage and operate the forces. The German army was able to intercept radio calls between the Russian divisions and had all information about every dislocation of the enemy. That led to destruction of Tsar Army. But for this fact the society would have not had any reasons for dissatisfaction that provoked the Russian 1917 Revolution.

The next page of history is the year 1917. Nicolas II – Russian Imperator – loses access to encrypted communication with his army and Tsar Selo. This resulted in revolution.

1941 – The very first days of World War II. The Nazi got hold of large quantity of encryption equipment, manual encryption documents, and – most important – encryption keys. The encryption system of the Soviet Army fighting with German intruders was compromised and virtually ceased to exist. This was the replay of 1914 events. From the very beginning of 1941 War the Soviet Army had to use plain communication or use courier delivery. That sadly led to deaths of some 6 million USSR defenders, huge material loses in the very beginning of the war!

1979 – War in Afghanistan. I will tell you about the “correct” use of soviet encryption equipment and encryption documents and the results in the second volume of my book. Our soldiers and officers in squadrons, battalions, divisions, and even in larger formations had no strong communication encryption. This resulted in unreasonably high losses.

USSR vanishing in 1991. The USSR president, similar to the Imperator in 1917, was shut out from encrypted communication. The wars in Chechnya. I often quote the words of General Troshev from his book “My War. Notes of Trench General”: “Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. We paid in blood for lack of encryptors.” The very same thing happened during Georgia and Ossetia conflict in 2008. General Khrulev, commander of Russian 58th Army used satellite phone of a newspaper reporter to coordinate the troops in the very beginning of campaign. There was no other way of communication…

It turns out to be that years and centuries of negligence to information security of the country have led to the deaths of the best men of Russia, financial and material devastation of the country. This is when Russia has always been considered as a cryptographic power.

What does prevent us from constantly making the past mistakes? I have expressed my thoughts on this in articles that are now a part of the book. The thoughts about the cryptography role in modern world, information impact on person and the information value, changes it applies to our society is the common theme of my book.

Reason 5. Future of Civilization

We live today in an absolutely different world. The humanity has entered the information era where digital and virtual world is as real as the books, paintings, and pictures. Today the people are not the only ones who exchange the information. Nowadays robots do the same. Our real life is filled with more digital devices with every passing day. These devices include medical ones that can remotely monitor the health.

The devices are more often get connected to the global information exchange computer networks. Just in a few years we will not be able to imagine our life without such devices. Well, who is going to control the ones who control the life of people, our thoughts, and our information?! Scientific and technology progress speeds up with every year. Experts already experiment with replacing real memory with imaginary one. This engages Internet technologies without strong cryptographic security. How much time do we have left until we get a technology to fully control the mind of any person – one, five, or ten years?

Will be a person in the near future able to personally secure himself against hackers and criminals? Won’t someone decide to take up the opportunity to take under control crowds of people?

Even today when we read Edward Snowden’s disclosures we note that there exists a global information interception system and information gets concentrated. Where does all the data flow to?

If Snowden managed to get hold of a great deal of important data from the storage, won’t there be anyone else in the future who will rely on the system vulnerabilities and use the information for absolutely different purposes and serve evil?

Won’t the outdated perception of cryptography role in our life lead to an Information Hitler smartly using the inability of our society to respond to new threats? Won’t we give birth to Information Anti-Christ with our negligence to personal information security of a person?

All of us know the word is derivative of our thoughts. The First Epistle of John reads that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. The Words are the holy base of human society existence and development.

Our words and our thoughts stolen from digital space are accumulated on countless servers worldwide. Who does control them and – more important – has the ability to change the stored information?

That was the reason Baron Rothschild – who made fortune over a few days by amending political information – said: “He who owns the information – owns the world!”

By securing our information against theft, securing our words against amendments we secure the world against tragedy.

This is what my book all about. I want to deliver this very thought no only to the readers but to the power players who are able so far to make decisions without any influence from virtual space.

 

Q&A with Anatoly Klepov

The author was kind enough to answer some of my questions

1).   Can you give an overview of your background in the field of communications security?

In 1972 I started my military service in the Soviet Army, radio intelligence. I worked in various USSR organizations related to cryptographic equipment production. Since 1990 I’ve been the sole and continuous head of Ancort Company (25 years already). For more information on the Company history refer to: http://mttgroup.ch/upload/25%20years%20of%20Ancort%20Company.docx

2). You’ve mentioned the Bank of Russia aviso scandal of the 1990’s. Can you give more details on this case?

I produced and developed various cryptographic devices. You may read may article on Central Bank of Russia at http://aklepov.com/index.php?page=The-financial-collapse-of-Russia-en

3). How did you become interested in historical research, what archives have you researched for your book and articles and what topics interest you the most.

History has been a hobby of mine since childhood. I even planned to enter a Historical Institute. However, my life had different plans. I have always been interested in the matters related to managing the country and armed forces. Frankly speaking, Alexander S. Pushkin’s researches have impressed me even more. In my book I have proven that he was a cryptographer. For more information refer to

http://aklepov.com/index.php?page=A-Pushkin-and-Russian-secret-service-en

http://aklepov.com/index.php?page=Secrets-of-Pushkin-s-fairy-tales-en

http://aklepov.com/index.php?page=Pushkin-and-the-tsar-s-cryptographer-en

http://aklepov.com/index.php?page=Pushkin-s-Death-Myths-and-Reality-en

http://aklepov.com/index.php?page=Pushkin-s-service-for-the-State-en

I referred to Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives as well as different archives of the state. My friends from different countries have supplied me with archive documents. I even purchased articles from foreign archive funds. At the moment I am interested in archive documents on cryptography at the Tsar age as well as creation of cryptographic equipment before 1941 war and equipment for calls wiretapping that was used during Tsar Russia and NKVD age.

4). What is the current state of cryptologic historiography in Russia?  Do you expect that a history of Soviet signals intelligence will be released anytime soon? Is the Russian public interested in the history of cryptology?

Unfortunately, the number of documents on USSR cryptography history is still limited. In most cases it’s the historians who have no experience in cryptographic equipment development or in radio intelligence. Therefore, they provide a lot of general conclusions (mostly testimonials) without shedding light on the real things. I am not surprised as cryptography was under control of NKVD and KGB. The said agencies also controlled Mass Media forbidding to publish anything about mistakes of theirs. Of course, the field was a top secret one.

We do have numerous publications on World War II. Nonetheless, we fail to find objective data on the way the secured communication really functioned during the war. I also mean communications between the army, police, and squadrons. Secured – encrypted – communication is the core of Armed Forces management. Without the said communication Army turns into a group of people and pile of metal as it happened back in 1914, 1941, as well as during the wars in Chechnya.

5). As I understand it this is the first book in a series. What topics will you cover in the next books you publish?

I don’t think there is great interest to cryptography history in Russia. This also relates to other fields of knowledge. Everyone has plunged into social networks as Facebook and the like. Therefore, my "Encryptors and Radio Intelligence. Shield and Sword of Information World" book is actually the very first that shades some light on real situation of cryptography in the USSR. We may not write on Russia cryptographic systems as this information is still secret. I was surprised to know that one developed an encryptor for tanks that was too big to fit into a tank. However, it did comply with all security requirements. Of course, this encryptor has never been adopted.

In my next publications I would like to get a better understanding of Tsar Russia cryptography system as of up to 1917 as well as the real reason Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, study the encrypted communication of Tsar and the Empress Alexandra, recover the encrypted communication of Nicholas II with Wilhelm II and encrypted communications of Nicholas II with the King of Great Britain and president of France. I am especially interested in encrypted communication between the Tsar Nicholas II and Minister Witte. I would also like to define the wiretapping system in Tsar Russia, the ones responsible and the way the system was organized. My further researches will tightly related to defining specific organizations responsible for radio intelligence in Germany, as well as for call and telex wiretapping, and the ones related to Holocaust organization. Vatican encryption system interests me strongly as well. I am also interested in the impact the encryption systems had on political events during inquisitions and Crusades.

There are plenty of materials that need to be systematized and organized. I believe I will manage to have time to implement these plans.