American Cryptology during the Cold War - The Black Vault

In the fall of 1957, Sputnik went up, and the White House wanted all military and
warning communications systems brought up to par. At the time, the COMINT Comnet was
still in a state ofpartial being. NSA had managed to purloin some dedicated channels, and
the cryptologic community operated a few relay centers around the world. But the system
needed to be consolidated. More, it needed updated equipment, especially automated
relays to get rid of torn tape relay arrangements. Moneys for these improvements had
managed to find their way into military budgets throughout the 1950s, but they always
seemed to disappear into the outyears as the services took care of more pressing
requirements. All involved had grown cynical, and the budget for FY59 was not even
covered with the fig leaf of outyear moneys. It contained nothing at all for the COMINT
Comnet, and this was how the Eisenhower administration found it in early 1958. 41
SECURING AMERICAN COMMUNICATIONS
It became apparent to me early in my work in the Signal Intelligence Service that it was more
important to secure our own messages than to read the communications ofothers.... I think it is
imperative that our history show the importance of our communicatioJ:1s security effort as
compared with intelligence production.
Frank B. Rowlett
The COMINT Comnet would be no good if it were not secure. The business of securing
American communications had always been integrated with the task of breaking the
communications of other countries. Thus from the earliest days the cryptologic coin had
two sides: COMINT and COMSEC. During World War II, Signal Intelligence Service had a
COMSEC arm, and it produced COMSEC equipment and materials for the Army around the
world. In the Navy the integration was more tenuous and the COMSEC mission more
diffuse, but closely allied offices of OP-20 were involved in both functions. When the Air
Force was created, it gave COMSEC responsibilities to USAFSS. Thus the uniquely
complementary aspects of COMINT and COMSEC were recognized from the first. They were
never, as they were in Germany, divided among various organizations. Although the two
were, as World War II naval cryptologist Joseph Eachus once said, "natural enemies," the
dependence ofone on the other was firmly established.
The Era ofthe Wired Rotor
Since the Revolutionary War, the U.S. government had been using manual (mostly
paper-based) code systemsfor communicatio~ssecurity. With the advent of radio in the
early part of the twentieth century, communications security became even more
important. At the time, only manual codes and ciphers were available. Encrypting and
decrypting was a laborious process which slowed down communications and limited the
amount ofinformation that could be sent from place to place.
IIA:!qf'LI!: VIA: 'fA:LI!lf('f Itl!lYII6LI!l eOMIn'f e6!qTftOL S fS'fI!lMS JOHq'fLY
NOT REI.EASA HI F 1''' il"RI'JI8H !(JtTI6NALS
211