Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

SIGSALY ESSENTIALS: A simplified overview of a one-way transmission.Return transmissions used the same key setup. (NationalSecurity Agency/Central Security Service)TEAMWORK: For special training of SIGSALY operators, the U.S. ArmySignal Corps established the 805th Signal Service Company. Thisspecial company had the highest average grade of any company inWorld War II. (National Security Agency/Central Security Service)SIGSALY...death in April 1945. Two weeks later, they had a two-hourdiscussion concerning tentative German surrender offers—the longest call ever made over SIGSALY equipment. 13AftermathAs the Allies neared victory, the heavy SIGSALY terminalswere gradually removed from service and returned tothe U.S., starting with the Algiers equipment in 1944, asEisenhower had shifted his headquarters to Britain. TheLondon facility was “recovered” on 31 October 1945. 14Since the technology was still unknown to any othernations, the system remained highly secret for three moredecades (two years, indeed, longer than Bletchley Park’scodebreaking role).SIGSALY was first made public in news accounts inmid-1976, when more than thirty Bell Labs patents (manyapplied for between 1941 and 1945) were finally granted. 15The system is recognized today as a technical pioneer for itsinitial use of numerous techniques which are widely used intelecommunications. 16 When the Cabinet War Rooms werebeing prepared for public tours in the 1980s, Bell Labs provideddetailed advice on the SIGSALY telephone set thatappears today in the underground room Churchill used inhis occasional trans-Atlantic talks with Roosevelt. 17Despite continuing secrecy, Bell Labs won several contemporaryawards for its work, including “Best SignalProcessing Technology” in 1946. Since SIGSALY was stillclassified, attendees at the awards ceremony simply had toaccept the verdict of the judges that this was something ofcrucial importance. A.B. Clark, a key player with Bell Labsand by then Director of Research and Development at theNational Security Agency, delivered his acceptance speechover a coded phone line: “Phrt fdygui jfsowria meeqmwuiosn jxolwps fuekswusjnvkci! Thank you!” ,Endnotes1. J. V. Boone and R. R. Peterson. SIGSALY—The Start of theDigital Revolution (Ft. Meade, Maryland: NSA/CSA Center forCryptologic History, 2000). Refer to www. nsa/gov.2. “Secure Speech Transmission,” in M. D. Fagen, ed., A Historyof Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in Warand Peace 1925-1975 (Chicago: Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1978), 292.3. Donald Mehl, SIGSALY: The Green Hornet—The World WarII Unbreakable Code for Secret High-Level Telephone Conferences(Kansas City: privately published, 1997), 17. Mehl was one of the SignalCorps officers who worked with SIGSALY during the war.4. Mehl, 15-16. See also Ruth Ive, The Woman Who CensoredChurchill (Stroud: History Press, 2008), 93-100; and “Ruth Ive’s Book,”Finest Hour 141, Winter 2008-09, 7.5. Fagen, 291-312.6. Fagen, 310.7. Mehl, 66-71, quotes many of the relevant letters in this controversy.Ive, 109, describes the Turing visit, but incorrectly identifies him asthe “director” of Bletchley Park, which he never was.8. Patrick Weadon, “The SIGSALY Story,” information sheet (Ft.Meade, Maryland: National Cryptologic Museum, n.d. )9. “Signal Corps Fixed Communications in World War II: SpecialAssignments and Techniques. Washington: Signal Corps HistoricalSection (Project E-10), December 1945,” 33. A copy of this once-secretstudy is in the AT&T/Bell Labs Archives. Thanks to Dr. James Spurlockfor this source.10. The location, access, and use issues were all controversial: seeMehl, 72-77.11. Boone and Petrson, op. cit. See note 1.12. Peter Simpkins, Cabinet War Rooms (London: Imperial WarMuseum, 1983), 58.13. Ive, 114, note 4.14. “Signal Corps Fixed…” Appendix A.15. “Patents issued on WW II Speech Encoding Technique,” inBell Labs News, 16:28:1, 12 July 1976. A list of the patents involved is inFagen, 297.16. Mehl, 51-53 cites several other sources. See also the list offirsts in Boone & Patterson, 3-4.17. T. W. Thatcher, “Notes: Description of SIGSALY TelephoneSet and Its Connections,” 28 February 1984. Copy in AT&T/Bell LabsArchives. Thanks again to Dr. James Spurlock.18. Paul D. Lehrman, “Award Winners from the Dawn of ModernAudio” in Mix, Professional Audio and Music Production, 1 August 2006(http:// mixonline.com).FINEST HOUR 149 / 34