American Cryptology during the Cold War - The Black Vault

; Ib) (1)
Ib) (3) -50 USC 403
Ib) (3) -P.L. 86-36
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To Army cryptology, as to the Navy, peace was devastating/Most of the work force at
Arlington Hall left civilian government service, and within/days /the halls were almost
empty. Intercept sites overseas were suddenly confronted/with no Japanese or German
intercept mission. One former soldier described the experience/as being left stranded on
Okinawa with no Japanese mission to copy and no instructionson a/follow-on assignment.
His unit eventually moved to Seoul, relocated to a/former /Japanese communications
station, and there got a new mission- Soviet and.Chinese Communist communications.
European units tackled French and Greek missions, and/by mid-1946 nearly half the
Army's end product was based on the intercept of French communications. 12
The late 1940s were a period of damaging retrep.chment. The Army and Navy
cryptologic organizations that began the Soviet mission had little experience, less money,
and no expertise. Yet ASA was able to survive better/than OP-20-G. The Army had relied
historically on civilians, and many of the best, including William Friedman, Frank
Rowlett, Abraham Sinkov, and Solomon Kullback, stayed/on. Missing the excitement of
wartime cryptology, others drifted back to Arlington Hall after brief, humdrum civilian
careers. The Navy, which had r.elied on uniformed cryptologists, lost a far higher number
to civilian life and found the transition to peacetime a difficult one.
In 1947 ASA and OP-20-G were joined by yet a third cryptologic service, that of the
newly created Air Force./The Army Air Corps had actually established its SIGINT service
in the Pacific in 1944. /The Air Force acquired an early reputation for parochialism and
interservice rivalry./The feuding led Carter Clarke, then head of Special Branch of
Military Intelligence Service, to write in June 1944 that "the Air Force insists that these
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loperate only for the Air Force and insists further that no personnel can
be attached or detached therefrom; neither should the theaters give them any operational
directives in the sense that we think ofit." The first Air Force unit in the Pacific was the
_____________.....Ilwhich beganoperations in 1944 in New Guinea. 13
When the independent Air Force was created in 1947, there was no direct reference to
cryptologic activities, and for a time ASA continued to provide these to the nascent Air
Force. Yet the Air Force was determined to establish its own capability. Certain Air Force
generals were aware of the contributions of COMINT during the war. One in particular,
Hoyt S. Ve.'1denberg, who was later to become Air Force chiefof staff, was convinced that
the Air Force had to have its own cryptologic service. He saw how the British controlled
cryptology in Europe and felt that it was essential to get this under American, and
particularly Air Force, control. 14
In early 1948 the Air Force fashi(med a transition agreement with ASA. The latter
established an Air Force Security Group within its headquarters at Arlington Hall to
oversee the transfer. Three c::::::::Jand eight COMSEC units were turned over to the Air
Force. The Air Force role was defined as mobile and tactical, and ASA continued to
operate all fixed sites. A set number ofASA officers (thirty-two) became blue-suiters, and
this group became the "founding fathers" ofAir Force cryptology. Air Force cryptologists
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