State Department cipher machines and communications security in the early Cold War, 1944–1965

ABSTRACT

From 1944 the State Department attempted to improve its communications security by creating a Division of Cryptography and mechanising the encryption process. This article assesses the effectiveness of these reforms and shows that State’s new cipher equipment had cryptographic vulnerabilities. Moreover, the department was unable to maintain physical security at the Moscow embassy and through espionage and technical surveillance the KGB broke the ciphers and read American communications. The paper concludes by analysing the impact of this security failure, including the claim that intercepted messages influenced Stalin’s decision to approve the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Kahn, The Codebreakers, 488–501; Andrew, The Secret World, 458, 468, 532, 539, 584.

2. Larsen, “Creating an American Culture,” 107.

3. Ibid., 109, 126–130; Kahn, The Codebreakers, 488–493.

4. NSA, William Friedman Collection of Official Papers, https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Links/NSA-FOIA/Declassification-Transparency-Initiatives/Historical-Releases/Friedman-Documents/

5. NSA, Friedman Collection, A67293, Letter Stimson to Secretary of State, Enclosure B, 22 January 1944; Kahn, The Codebreakers, 495.

6. NSA, Oral History Interview, NSA-OH-1976-1-10 Rowlett.

7. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 240.

8. Alvarez, “Axis Sigint collaboration,” 6–7, 10–11; Alvarez, “Diplomatic solutions,” 171; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 239–240, 243; Andrew, The Secret World, 591, Kahn, The Codebreakers, 493–501.

9. Ferris, Behind the Enigma, 164; Andrew, The Secret World, 638–639.

10. NSA, Friedman Collection, A67132, Report of Special Committee to Investigate Security of State Department communications, 26 June 1941.

11. Ibid., A67130, Notes on Conference between representatives of the Signal Security Agency and the State Department, 19 November 1943; A67270, Letter Corderman to Goodrich, 6 March 1944.

12. Ibid., A67130, Notes on Conference between representatives of the Signal Security Agency and the State Department, 19 November 1943; A67295, Draft report on cryptographic systems used by the State Department, 2 December 1943.

13. Ibid., A67293, Letter Stimson to Secretary of State, Enclosure A, 22 January 1944.

14. Ibid.

15. NSA, History of the Signal Security Agency, Volume 1, Organisation, Part 1, 1939–1945, 13 April 1948; NSA, Friedman Collection, A67035, Letter ASA80 to ASA 82, Enclosed memorandum ‘Establishment of Joint Crypto-Centers’, 29 August, 1947; The National Archives at College Park, Maryland (NARA), Record Group 59, State Department Central Decimal File, 1955–59, Box 490, Letter Henderson to Hoover, 22 July 1956.

16. Maffeo, U.S. Navy Codebreakers, 124–125; NARA, RG 59, 1955–59, Box 490, Letter Henderson to Hoover, 22 July 1956; “Lee Parke Resigns; Mr Rusk Cites his Service Record,” Department of State News Letter, No. 35, March 1964, https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Department_of_State_News_Letter/rQmEPFsz7BgC?hl=en&gbpv=0

17. NSA, History of the Signal Security Agency, Volume 1, Organisation, Part 1, 1939–1945, 13 April 1948.

18. Kruh, “Cipher Equipment”, 148.

19. NSA, Friedman Collection, A69358, Letter Bower to Shaw, 17 November 1944.

20. NSA, History of the Army Security Agency: Post War Transition Period: 1945–1948, 7 April 1952.

21. NSA, History of the Army Security Agency, Volume 1, Organisation, Part 1, 1939–1945, 13 April 1948.

22. The navy version was called the Electric Cipher Machine or ECM.

23. Mucklow, SIGABA/ECM II, 16–18, 29–30.

24. Ibid., 26, 22–24.

25. NSA, History of the Army Security Agency: Post War Transition Period, 1945–48, 7 April 1952.

26. The original Mk 1 versions of the CCM were adaptors in World War Two to enable SIGABA and the British Typex machine to communicate. See NSA, Friedman Collection, A523210, ‘History of Converter M-134-C, Volume 3’, not dated.

27. House of Representatives, 80th Congress, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Department of State Appropriation Bill for 1948, 19 March, 1947, 356.; NSA, History of the Signal Security Agency, Volume 1 Organisation, Part 1, 1939–1945, 13 April 1948; NSA internal history, ‘A History of U.S Communications Security Post World War II’, not dated, www.governmentattic.org

28. NSA, History of the Signal Security Agency, Volume 1 Organisation, Part 1, 1939–1945, 13 April 1948; NARA, RG 59, 1945–49, Box 509, Letter 42, Moscow to State Department, 8 January 1948.

29. NARA, RG 59, 1945–49, Box 511, Letter Parke to Chapin, 11 October 1945; Telegram 5771, State Department to Paris, 11 December 1945; Telegram 550 State Department to Moscow, 17 May 1948; RG 59, 1950–54, Box 497, Telegram 492 State Department to Pusan, 4 February 1953.

30. NARA, RG 59, 1950–54, Box 498, Letter CA-4005 State Department to Tehran, 20 December 1955.

31. ”State Dept. Details Safety Precautions,” The Washington Post, 9 December 1948, 3.

32. Senate, 82nd Congress, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Part 1, Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, and the Judiciary Appropriations for 1952, June 6, 1951, 1169.

33. Easter, “The impact of Tempest,” 2–3.

34. NARA, RG 59, 1950–54, Box 493, Letter State Department to Paris, London, Moscow, Frankfurt and Vienna, 8 March 1951.

35. NSA, History of the Army Security Agency and Subordinate Units, Fiscal Year 1952, Volume 1, Administration, Assistant Chief of Staff, G2, 1955; The British National Archives, FO 371/96594, Folder title ‘Insecurity of the Combined Cypher Machine. Investigation by US and UK experts show that security of CCM is insecure’ 21 December 1951.

36. NSA, Friedman Collection, A71238, AFSA Mail Log, not dated.

37. O’Neil, Kevin and Ken Hughes, History of the CBNRC, Volume V, Chapter 20, 12, No location given, 1987, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project database, September 8, 2022, https://carleton.ca/csids/canadian-foreign-intelligence-history-project/

38. Aldrich, Espionage, Security and Intelligence, 51–53.

39. NSA, Friedman Collection, A272413, Letter Canine to Parke, 24 June 1952. For evidence that CSP 2200 was the naval designation of the MCB see NSA, History of the Signal Security Agency, Volume 1 Organisation, Part 1, 1939–1945, 13 April 1948.

40. Ibid.

41. NSA internal history, “A History of U.S Communications Security Post World War II,” not dated, June 3, 2023, www.governmentattic.org

42. NARA, RG 59, 1950–54, Box 497, Letter State Department to London, 30 January 1953; Letter State Department to Brussels, 27 March 1953; Box 498, Letter A-150 State Department to Lisbon, 19 March 1954; Letter A-210 State Department to Cairo, 1 April 1954; Letter A-508 State Department to Manila, 4 June 1954; Letter A-10 State Department to Buenos Aires, 12 July 1954.

43. Ibid., RG 59, 1955–59, Box 493, Letter A-147, Dillon to Moscow, 13 February 1959; Letter CA-7064 Herter to Bucharest, 17 February 1959.

44. Ibid., RG 59, 1955–59, Box 493, Letter CA-9543, Herter to Cape Town, 4 May 1959.

45. Weatherford, Bill, ‘The Diplomatic Telecommunications Service’, CANDOER News, 7, no. 3 (2007), February 10, 2023, www.candoer.org/issue73.html

46. Daugherty, The Marine Corps, 101.

47. Aldrich, GCHQ, 195; NARA, RG 59, 1955–59, Box 491, Telegram 1161 Taipei to State Department, 25 May 1957, Telegram 1208 Taipei to State Department 28 May 1957, Memorandum Jones to Robertson 29 June 1957; Library of Congress, Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Interview with Thomas S. Estes. 11 May 1988.

48. Between 1947 and 1954 the principal Soviet foreign intelligence service went through several changes of name before it settled on KGB (Committee of State Security). For simplicity’s sake, this article refers to the organisation throughout as the KGB even when that may be anachronistic.

49. McMillin, Stationed in Moscow, 68–71,

50. Ibid., 22–23, 65–66.

51. Ibid., 70; Bagley, Spymaster, 7.

52. Bagley, Spymaster, 7.

53. NSA, History of the Army Security Agency: Post War Transition Period, 1945–48, 7 April 1952.

54. ”Soviet Paper Interviews Turncoat GI,” The Washington Post, 13 December 1956.

55. Bagley, Spymaster, 8–14.

56. Ibid., 1–2, 11–12.

57. Widen, “The Wennerstrom spy case,” 934, 943, 945–946.

58. Senate Judiciary Committee, 88th Congress, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the internal Security Act, The Wennerstroem Spy Case: Excerpts from the Testimony of Stig Wennerstroem, a Noted Soviet Agent, 1964, 151.

59. NARA, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, JFK Assassination Records − 2018, Additional Documents Release, (NARA JFK), CIA Study, The Case of Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, Volume III, February 1967, 413–414, 416–417; NARA JFK, CIA Study, The Examination of the Bona Fides of a KGB Defector: Yuri I. Nosenko, February 1968, 33, 35–36. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104–10150–10136.pdf (Accessed 10 May 2023).

60. NARA JFK, CIA Study, The Examination of the Bona Fides of a KGB Defector: Yuri I. Nosenko, February 1968, 36.

61. Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, 560.

62. NARA, RG 59, 1950–1954, Box 720, Despatch 175, Moscow to State Department, 22 October 1954.

63. Ibid.

64. State Department, History of the Bureau, 233; NARA, RG 59, 1964–66, Box 8, Letter Dutton to Huddleston, 4 June 1964.

65. NARA JFK, CIA Study, The Case of Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, Volume II, February 1967, 252–256, 268.

66. Ibid., Volume III, February 1967, 591.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid., 592.

69. Emelyanov, Larin and Butyrsky, ‘The transformation of cryptology’.

70. Ibid; ‘FAPSI’ television documentary by Sovershenno Sekretno, broadcast 25 October 1997, November 12 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiGkPK3Kt4k

71. Emelyanov, Larin and Butyrsky, ‘The transformation of cryptology’.

72. Senate, 87th Congress, Supplemental Appropriations for 1963, Hearings before the Committee on Appropriations, 2nd Session on H.R. 13290, 239, 250, 252–3.

73. NARA, RG 59, 1960–1963, Box 208, Memorandum, Hanes to Dwinell, 3 October 1960.

74. Easter, ‘Nikita Khrushchev’, 469.

75. Ibid., 468–469.

76. Ibid., 470.

77. NARA JFK, CIA Study, The Case of Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, Volume III, February 1967, 592.

78. Ibid., 590.

79. Gale, U.S. Declassified Documents Online, Minute for President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, “Secure Room Installations,” January 7, 1966,10 June 2022 https://www.gale.com/intl/c/us-declassified-documents-online/

80. NARA, RG 59, 1960–1963, Box 208, Minute Dillon to Gates, 5 November 1960.

81. Senate, 87th Congress, Supplemental Appropriations for 1963, Hearings before the Committee on Appropriations, 2nd Session on H.R. 13290, 1 October 1962, 229, 239.

82. Ibid., 229, 239, 250–255.

83. Ibid., 229.

84. Ibid., 239.

85. Library of Congress, Frontline Diplomacy, Interview with William J. Crockett, 20 June 1990; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Oral History Interview, William H. Orrick, 14 April 1970.

86. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, 360.

87. Ibid.

88. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1962, Volume XXV, Organization of Foreign Policy; Information Policy: United Nations; Scientific Matters, Document 436, Memorandum Wiesner to Kennedy, 25 October 1962; NARA, RG 59, 1960–1963, Box 208, Circular Telegram 699, Rusk to embassies, 30 October 1962.

89. Johnson, American Cryptology, 219; Klein, Securing Record Communications, 10–11.

90. CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (CIA FOIA), https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/home History of the Office of Communications, Chapter III, Section F, The Headquarters Signal Center, not dated.

91. CIA, FOIA, “Diary Notes,” 29 October 1962.

92. Ibid., Letter “Privacy of CIA Intelligence Traffic Transmitted by Electrical Means,” Director of Communications to Director of Central intelligence, 26 October 1962.

93. Ibid.

94. NARA. RG 84, Records of the Foreign Posts of the Department of State, U.S Embassy Jakarta, Classified Central Subject Files, 1963–1969, CR7 Telecommunications Series, 1965, Airgram CA-6180 State Department to all Diplomatic and Consular posts, Enclosure A, 6 December 1962.

95. Lamb, Yvonne, “John W. Coffey, 91: CIA Communications Expert,” Washington Post, 7 August 2008; Library of Congress, Frontline Diplomacy, Interview with William J. Crockett, 20 June 1990.

96. History of the Bureau, 169.

97. Senate, 88th Congress, Staff Reports and Hearings submitted to the Committee on Government Operations by the Sub Committee on National Security and International Operations, 1965, 509; “Lee Parke Resigns: Mr Rusk Cites His Service Record,” Department of State News Letter, No. 35, March 1964.

98. History of the Bureau, 169

99. Senate, 88th Congress, Hearings before the Senate Sub-Committee on Appropriation on HR11134, Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, the Judiciary and related agencies appropriations, Part 1, 1964, 619–620; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, National Security Action Memoranda, NSAM 201, Establishment of Sub-Committee on Communications, 17 November 1962–21 May 1963, Final Report of the NSC Sub-Committee on Communications, not dated.

100. NARA, RG 84, State Department, U.S Embassy Jakarta, Classified Central Subject Files, 1963–1969, CR7 Telecommunications Series, 1965, Airgram CA-6829, State Department to selected posts, Enclosure ‘Off Line Crypto Plan’, 6 January 1965.

101. Ibid., Airgram CA-13202, State Department to selected posts, 9 June 1965.

102. Library of Congress, Frontline Diplomacy, Interview with Nuel L. Pazdral, 3 August 1992.

103. Marchetti and Marks, The CIA, 180.

104. Kahn, The Codebreakers, 712.

105. Easter, ‘Protecting Secrets’, 163–164.

106. CIA FOIA, Fragment of internal history of USIB, “Volume IV Increased and Varied Intelligence Needs in Support of President Johnson,” not dated.

107. NARA JFK, CIA Study, The Case of Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, Volume III, February 1967, 591–2.

108. Ibid. 592.

109. Ibid.

110. NARA, RG 59, Records of Ambassador at large Llewellyn Thompson, 1961–1970, Lot 67 D2, Box 10, Memorandum by Davies, “Damage Estimate: Foreign Policy Interests,” 28 May 1964; RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964–66, Box 2872, Minute Downey to Director of Security, CIA, Attachment, 5 October 1964.

111. NARA, RG 59, Records of Ambassador at large Llewellyn Thompson, 1961–1970, Lot 67 D2, Box 10, Memorandum Johnson to Thompson, 7 June 1964.

112. CIA FOIA, Fragment of internal history of USIB, “Volume IV Increased and Varied Intelligence Needs in Support of President Johnson,” not dated.

113. NARA JFK, CIA Study, The Examination of the Bona Fides of a KGB Defector: Yuri I. Nosenko, February 1968, 239.

114. Ibid.

115. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Soviet Union, Eastern Mediterranean, Volume XXIV, Document 46, 18 May 1956; Document 48, 31 May 1956.

116. Bagley, Spymaster, 11–12.

117. Ibid., 1–2.

118. Ibid.

119. Ibid.

120. International History Declassified podcast, Episode 3, “Stalin, Mao, and an Archival Examination of the Korean War with Sergey Radchenko,” 20 June, 2020 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/audio/international-history-declassified-stalin-mao-and-archival-examination-korean-war-sergey; E-mail, Radchenko to author, 15 July 2023.

121. NSA, Summary Annual Report of the Army Security Agency, Fiscal Year 1948, July 1958, 13–14.

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David Easter

David Easter is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. His research interests are intelligence, the Cold War, and conflict in the Middle East and South East Asia. He has written extensively on Western and Soviet signals intelligence, communications security, American and British covert action and Soviet policy towards Syria and Indonesia under Nikita Khrushchev.