American Cryptology during the Cold War - The Black Vault

Organizing for COMSEC in the Postwar World
The SCAs slipped into the postwar period with their COMSEC authorities virtually
unchanged. The newly renamed ASA was responsible for all Army COMSEC tasks. COMSEC
functions were part of the same organization, and personnel rotated between COMINT and
COMSECjobs.
The Navy COMSECfunctions were still less monolithic than those ofthe Army, and the
tasks of engineering development, COMSEC research, production of keying material, and
building COMSEC machines were spread out across several organizations. COMSEC
functions involved the Bureau of Ships, Deputy Chief of Naval Communications for
Administration, Deputy Chiefof Naval Communications Supplementary Activities (CSA,
Le., NSG), and the Naval Code and Signal Laboratory. It was a complex bureaucracy, but
the link-up with the COMINT and COMSEC organizations within CSA seemed to keep naval
COMSEC moving in the same direction. 48
The newly created Air Force did not at first have a centralized COMSEC organization,
and for the first year or two of its existence it was serviced by ASA. But when USAFSS
was created in 1948, the Air Force assigned its centralized COMSEC functions to the new
cryptologic organization.
The three service efforts were rather loosely coordinated by the Joint
Communications-Electronics Committee. When one service developed and procured a
COMSEC device with broad applicability, it took care of the requirements of the other
services, a seat-of-the-pants approach to centralization which worked as long as everyone
agreed on the program. 49 So when AFSA was created in 1949, all three SCAs were doing
their own COMSEC.
Almost unnoticed at its creation, AFSA was anointed with centralized COMSEC
responsibilities. Naval Security Station at Nebraska Avenue became the locus for COMSEC
activities. Army colonel Samuel P. Collins and civilian Abraham Sinkov headed AFSA's
COMSEC organization. Centralized COMSEC functions were placid by comparison with
COMINT, and contributed little ifanything to the demise of the organization. When AFSA
collapsed, it was because ofturmoil in COMINT, not COMSEC. 50
When in October 191)2 President Harry Truman established NSA, he also signed a
memorandum creating a centralized COMSEC function. The memo declared that COMSEC
(like COMINT) was a national responsibility, and it set up the secretary of defense and the
secretary ofstate as a special committee of the National Security Council for COMSEC. It
also directed that a new central board be established, to be called the United States
Communications Security Board (USCSB) to serve as an interdepartmental source of
COMSEC policy.
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