Scanned Document - National Security Agency

letter, "Probably CUPID" and agreed with the
proposal since he too feared using the regular
Virginia delegates' code for his private
messages to Randolph. Like the others,
Randolph soon tired of the Lovell cipher. He
found it too costly in terms of the time needed
to encipher and decipher; moreover, he could
not decipher some of Madison's passages.
Thus he proposed that they use a new code
that would serve as a "secure seal" for their
c~rres~ondence.~' Here is one of many
instances in which American statesmen
rejected the Lovell polyalphabetic cipher for a
less time-consuming system.
Francis Dana, American minister to
Russia, developed one new cipher for his
correspondence with his friend and colleague
John Adams, stationed at The Hague in 1782,
and another for Robert Livingston
in Philadelphia. The cipher for Adams
combined some elements of the Lovell
polyalphabetic cipher with the best elements
of the eighteenth-century American cipher,
multiple representations for plaintext letters
and substitutes for eighty names of persons
and places, and a few nouns such as war,
credit, fishery, and mediation, all of which
figured prominently in the peace treaty
negotiations." Other keyword ciphers
prepared by Dana used the keywords MTAR'~
and NOT.^^
John Jay also used a keyword cipher. He
designed it so that the keyword YESCA was
placed above the plain text for enciphering;
thirty-five code numbers ranging from 27 for
America to 61 for Rh. Island completed this
cipher. Jay sent this cipher to Livingston in
April 1781. Livingston used it for his first
letter as secretary for foreign affairs to Jay on
1 November 1781, but he made so many
mistakes that the dispatch makes little sense.
Jay used YESCA in his 14 March 1782, letter.
This was the last use of this cipher.31 not her
cipher used XZA as the key and had a list of
code letters and numbers. This was designed
by Robert Livingston and sent to Jay on 26
August 1780. Jay, apprehensive that the
cipher may have been copied, suggested the
YESCA form.32
John Jay
The last of the Lovell-designed ciphers
that has been discovered was based on FOR,
which the Continental Congress also used to
transmit the "Instructions to the Honorable
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay,
Henry Laurens, and Thomas Jefferson to
Negotiate a Treaty of peace."" The Treaty
instructions were transmitted in at least two
different ciphers, including the CR cipher
noted earlier. A cipher using JOHN as the key
apparently was also designated by the
Continental Congress at this same time for
official c~rres~ondence.~~
James Lovell's secret ciphers, in the last
analysis, produced more confusion than
security for American diplomats during
the revolution. Only gradually in the years
after 1775 did American officials become
sophisticated about cryptographic systems.
Because of the frustration with ciphers,