American Cryptology during the Cold War - The Black Vault

HowItBegan
The Soviet missile program had originated in 1945 when a covey of German missile
scientists fell conveniently into Soviet hands. Working at Peenemunde on the North Sea
coast, this group had developed the VI and V2 missiles, the latter a true ballistic missile
capable of distances in excess of 200 miles. The captured scientists were hustled off to a
research institute in Bleicherode, East Germany, and then in 1946, amid great secrecy,
were transferred to the Soviet Union itself. They were first" set up in a new Scientific
Research Institute 88 at Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. Their first test center, established
in 1947, was at a remote desert site called Kapustin Yar, some 100 miles east of
Stalingrad.
The Germans labored in Kaliningrad, Kapustin Yar and other locations until 1950 or
1951. By that time the Soviets had themselves the rudiments ofa missile program. They
had succeeded in replicating the V2 and a primitive indigenous missile, called the R-10,
had been been designed with German help. At that point the Soviets returned the
Germans to their homeland, where they brought the CIA up to date on the Soviet program.
None of the first Soviet rockets, designated RIO-IS, ever amounted to more than "designer
toys," but the most advanced, the R-15, was designed for a nuclear payload and was to
have a range of3,700 statute miles. 20
Reports of Soviet missile development reached the Oval Office, and the president
demanded more information. But there were precious few assets to be had. In the latter
days of Stalin's reign, the Iron Curtain completely closed off the Soviet Union from CIA
HUMINTpenetration - they had no secret agents in the USSR. There was no photography,
the U-2 still being several years away. Virtually the only asset available was SIGINT.
lIn 1954 the
"-----------------------------------'
German scientists who had worked on the project told American intelligence about a
system of communications between the missile and its ground station, a derivative of a
system the Germans had developed at Peenemunde in World War II. It was a 16-channel
PPM system o~erating in the 60 MHz range that the Germans called MESSINA. The U.S.
intelligence community called it"telemetry."21
11)
Ib) (3) -18 USC 798
Ib) (3) -50 USC 403
Ib) (3) -P.L. 86-36
lI:A:NBbB VIA 'f:A:bBN'f IEBYUSbB eSMIN'f eSN'fRSb S-YS'fBMS dSm'fLY
NoT REI FA i A,QU TQ FQREIS?f ?M'fI8?MbS
171