Christos T. • June 27, 2024 12:44 AM
@sqall:
In 1947 the US occupation authorities retrieved the files of the German Army’s codebreaking agency, called Inspectorate 7/VI. These had been buried at the end of the war in a camp in Austria.
The list of the documents that were retrieved is available from NARA as TICOM report IF-272 Tab ‘D’:
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2811501
In page 12 of that report, it says: ‘Technische Erlaeuterung zur maschinellen Bearbeitung von AM 1 Kompromisstextloesungen auf der Texttiefe’.
The translation of that report is TICOM DF-114 ‘GERMAN CRYPTANALYTIC DEVICE FOR SOLUTION OF M-209 TRAFFIC’ and was released by the NSA to NARA in 2011 and copied and uploaded by me to Scribd and Google drive in 2012.
You can find it at NARA: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/23889821
Operation RUBICON THESAURUS
The secret purchase of Crypto AG by BND and CIA
THESAURUS 1 (later: RUBICON), was a secret operation of the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to purchase the Swiss crypto manufacturer Crypto AG (Hagelin) — codenamed MINERVA — in order to control the company, its algorithms and – indirectly – its customers. From 12 June 1970 2 onwards, Crypto AG was jointly owned by CIA and BND, each with 50% of the shares, and from 30 June 1994 exclusively by the CIA [1]. //
Discover how CIA and BND turned Crypto AG from a simple denial operation into an active measures operation. Learn which roles were played by the Deutsche Treuhand Gesellschaft (KPMG), a Liechtenstein law firm, Siemens, Motorola, NSA and Swedish intelligence. The following story is about — in the words of the CIA — The Intelligence Coup of the Century.
The headquarters of the former Crypto AG in Steinhausen (ZG) produced cipher machines for decades. The German foreign intelligence service BND and the US CIA secretly bought the company in 1970. They caused many states to be supplied with machines with weaker encryption that could be decrypted by the BND and CIA. The successor company Crypto International AG was most recently based there. The Swiss company was at the center of a suspected espionage affair. In the summer of 2020, the company was closed due to a federal export ban. Since then, the company premises have been abandoned, but the last traces are still visible, and in a few years the factory and administration building, built in 1966, is to be demolished; around 200 apartments are planned on the site. With my photo report in spring 2021, I documented the abandoned building and area before it disappeared.
In 2020 however, the German TV station ZDF revealed that since 1970, the company was jointly owned by the German BND and the American CIA, and since 1994 exclusively by the CIA [28]. It means that for many years, Western intelligence services were able to manipulate the algorithms of Crypto AG's products and read the communications of many of its customers. Although the company also sold unreadable 1 equipment, the list of countries that had access to such secure technology became shorter every year. According to the NSA, all encryption should be readable.
➤ For further details on this topic, please refer to our follow-up story Operation RUBICON.
- In this context, readable means that the cryptographic algorithms could be broken by the NSA. Also known as friendly. In contrast: algorithms that are not breakable by NSA, are called unfriendly or unreadable.
SIGABA was an electromechanical rotor-based cipher machine developed in the late 1930s in the United States (US) as a joint effort of the US Army and US Navy [1]. At the time it was considered a superior cipher machine, intended to keep high-level communications absolutely secure. It was used throughout WWII and was so reliable that it was used well into the 1950s, after which it was replaced by newer machines like AFSAM-7 (KL-7). As far as we know, SIGABA was never broken.
Remember marveling at the fortitude of the two guys depicted in the 1996 film "The Ghost and The Darkness?" Bell did the same thing. Only instead of two lions, he killed a mess of them (the exact number is not known, but was reported to have been in the high double digits). He did this alone. With a single-shot rifle. In a caliber normally considered good for deer. At age 16.
Eventually, the task of hunting down slavering 500-pound apex predators with a taste for human flesh got too boring for the young Bell, so he determined to go halfway around the planet to join the gold seekers in the Klondike Gold Rush. But it turns out that gold-seeking was about the only thing that the young Bell couldn’t get the hang of, so after enlisting a partner to equip him, he went back to what he did best: Killing things, in this case spending the winter of 1897-98 shooting deer and moose to keep the denizens of Dawson City eating. //
After [WW2], Bell went back to Africa only briefly; just long enough to knock out a 3000-mile canoe trip through the Gold Coast and Liberia. He then retired to Corriemoillie, his 1,000-acre highland estate at Garve in Ross-shire, Scotland.
The Turing-Welchman Bombe was an electro-mechanical device used at Bletchley Park and its outstations during World War II to assist in breaking the Enigma cipher used by the German military.
Based on ideas from a device known as a bomba, designed in Poland by Marian Rejewski as early as 1939, the Turing-Welchman Bombe enabled Bletchley Park to find the daily keys of the Engima machine on a regular basis throughout most of the war.
The British Bombe was designed by Alan Turing with important additions by Gordon Welchman. They were built by the British Tabulating Machine Company in Letchworth, Hertfordshire.
Virtual Bombe is a 3d Turing-Welchman Bombe simulation which can run using just your browser. No install is necessary.
Enigma is the brand name of a series of cipher machines developed in Germany between 1923 and 1945.
A number of these machines were used during World War 2 by the German Army, Navy and Air Force, this website has simulations for both the three rotor Enigma I used by the Heer (Army) and Luftwaffe (Air Force) and the four rotor Enigma M4 used by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy).
The Enigma code was cracked and read initially by the Poles in 1932 with Bletchley Park continuing and expanding on this work where they regularly read the German encrypted messages throughout the war.
Virtual Enigma is a 3d Enigma simulation which can run using just your browser. No install is necessary. It was released on Alan Turing's 109th Birthday 23rd June 2021
Virtual Hagelin M-209
A 3D simulation of the Hagelin M-209 cipher machine
In cryptography, the M-209, designated CSP-1500 by the Navy (C-48 by the manufacturer) is a portable, mechanical cipher machine used by the US military primarily in World War II, though it remained in active use through the Korean War.
The M-209 was designed by Swedish cryptographer Boris Hagelin and manufactured by Smith & Corona in Syracuse (New York, USA). It was based on the C-38 which itself was an improvement of an earlier machine, the C-36.
M-209 was a light-weight portable pin-and-lug cipher machine, developed at the beginning of World War II by Boris Hagelin of AB Cryptoteknik in Stockholm (Sweden), and manufactured by Smith & Corona in Syracuse (New York, USA). The machine is designated CSP-1500 by the US Navy and is the US military variant of the C-38, which in turn is an improved version of the C-36 and C-37. A compatible motorised version – with keyboard – is known as BC-38 (later: BC-543). During WWII, the M-209 was known by German cryptanalysts as AM-1 (American Machine #1)). //
The cryptographic strength of the machine was reasonable for its time, but was not perfect. As of early 1943, it was assumed that German codebreakers were able to break an M-209 message in less than 4 hours. 1 Nevertheless, it was considered sufficiently secure for tactical messages which, due to their nature, would be meaningless after several hours. This is why the M-209 was later also used in the Korean War. The M-209 was succeeded in 1952 by the C-52 and CX-52. //
According to them, the effort to break it was impractically high.
It proved however, that American cryptologist William Friedman, had been right all along. He liked the Hagelin machines and had found them to be theoretically unbreakable, but knew that they could be setup in such a way that they became weak and vulnerable to cryptanalytic attacks [8]. British and American codebreakers were able to read the Hagelins from both enemies and allies.
After the war it became clear that the Germans were able to read 10% of the American Hagelin traffic: 6% from cryptanalysis, and 4% from captured keys. But due to the amount of work involved in breaking, the delay between intercept and decrypt was usually 7 to 10 days; too long to be usefull for tactical messages like the ones sent by the US Army. Apparently, the Japanese also understood many of the principles of Hagelin exploitation, but hardly broke Hagelin traffic [8].
For high-level messages, the Americans used a rotor machine — SIGABA — which was similar to Enigma, but much much more advanced. As far as we know, SIGABA was never compromised.
Cold War
Immediately after WWII, in 1947, the NSA started the development of a cryptanalytic machine named WARLOCK I — also known as AFSAF-D79 and CXNK — that was able to solve the Hagelin C-38/M-209 much faster than with hand methods. The machine became operational in 1951 and was used to read the traffic from many countries that were using M-209 or C-38 machines. The US had 'accidentally' released large batches of M-209 machines on the surplus market for as little as US$ 15 and even US$ 2 [8]. Many of these were purchased by South American countries.
On the Importance of Process and the Republican Nature of the New Government
In Federalist 38 Madison discusses the process by which the new proposed constitution was written and how that process was superior to anything that had been attempted before in history. If you recall, Plato believed that an enlightened philosopher king should rule, and that only this kind of man would be capable of creating, and leading, the city state. His reasoning was that man was too fraught with faults to avoid pursuing his own self-interest.
Madison lists the examples of Minos in Crete, Zaleucus of the Locrians, Theseus in Athens, Lycurgus of Spart, Romulus of Rome, and others to illustrate how these city states all were established, and their laws created, by a single person even as they went on to have legislative bodies. And all these states went through periods where single emperors ruled regardless of the original intent of their founding. Even democracy loving Athenians, “a people who would not suffer an army to be commanded by fewer than ten generals, …should consider one illustrious citizen as a more eligible depositary of the fortunes of themselves and their posterity, than a select body of citizens”.[1]
Up until this point, this is how governments were formed. “(T)hese lessons teach us, … to admire the improvement made by America on the ancient mode of preparing and establishing regular plans of government”. The process by which the new constitution was written matters greatly. The representative way in which all states, and through their delegates the citizens thein, are represented is absolutely novel. It has never happened in the course of history to that time. This process alone helps ensure the liberty of the citizens of the new country.
Madison asks of those who object to the constitution, what they would propose as an alternative? //
In Federalist 39 Madison seeks to answer whether the new constitution creates a truly republican form of government and whether that government is federal or national in construction.
On the first question, Madison starts by declaring that only a representative republic, “would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution”. He points out that no such thing exists anywhere else in the world, and lists the various places that claim the title incorrectly. “It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it”. There is no nobility in the new country, in fact the constitution includes an, “absolute prohibition of titles of nobility”.
In each of the states’ constitutions, legislatures are chosen by the people for, “a definite period, and in many instances, both within the legislative and executive departments, to a period of years.” Here again we see the criticality of turnover within these branches of government for ensuring liberty. //
But to those who worry about too much power being in the hands of the federal government, Madison reiterates the point that Hamilton made earlier that, “the proposed government cannot be deemed a NATIONAL one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”
If you follow family-run businesses over multiple generations, a common theme will emerge that is so statistically significant that even Dave Ramsey warns families about it.
When the first generation starts a business, it is often passed down to the second generation who directly witnessed the blood, sweat, and tears that both of their parents invested to make it sustainable. This second generation generally feels an obligation to the investments made by their parents and generally runs the business well. But the third generation has no historical appreciation for the business. They were not alive when the business was born and can’t comprehend a world without it. If the business was passed from the first to the second generation, of course, it will be passed to the third which causes a sense of entitlement. This entitlement and lack of perspective are at the core of why a disproportionate number of third-generation business owners fail.
The United States is now in its third generation of bureaucracy following World War 2. The first generation was directly a part of the pain and sacrifice made around the world to defeat an axis of evil. The second generation of bureaucracy grew up in the shadows of World War 2 and even got a taste of it during the Cold War. But the third generation of bureaucrats and technocrats embedded in unelected offices earning mid-six-figure salaries have none of this. Their version of a threat to democracy is the prospect of a democratic reelection of Donald Trump.
Just like a family business, this third-generation bureaucrat is running this country into the ground and is stirring a populist revolt that I don’t think they understand. Let me explain.
IN THE EARLY 1900S, PABST was a paragon of success. What started in 1844 as a tiny Milwaukee brewery had become the largest beer maker in the nation by 1874, producing more than a million barrels a year in 1893. That same year, the company started claiming that one of its lagers had won a blue-ribbon award at the Chicago World’s Fair. It was pure malarkey. But the blue silk ribbons they tied around bottle necks put some prestige behind the brand, and helped turn the Pabst family into millionaires.
Yet as America moved towards Prohibition, the folks at Pabst recognized that their beer empire was about to dry up. So, soon after the nationwide ban on alcohol went into effect in 1920, Pabst pivoted to making a “delicious cheese food.” They called it Pabst-ett and sold it in block and spreadable forms, as well as in cheddar, pimento, and Swiss flavors.
This wasn’t the only side hustle the Pabst Brewing Company pursued in 13 years of prohibition, nor the most profitable of them. But it exemplifies the mindsets and tactics American brewers adopted to ride out the decade and resurge after 1933—something only a few dozen of the nearly 1,300 brewing companies active in the U.S. in 1916 managed to do.
Fibber McGee and Molly - 400305 (238) Cleaning Hall Closet (Gracie Allen)
Originally broadcast Tuesday March 5th, 1940
All right, but that radish, you might have been more careful with.
Quick, help!
There's funny little insects all over me.
Brush 'em off, quick.
Oh, calm yourself, calm yourself.
them are my trout flies. [laughter] Doggone it, Molly, why did you have to go and mess up?
[knocking] Oh, dear, come in.
Pepper McGee and Molly?
Yes.
Tell me, with all these radio shows being changed, is it true that you're going to cut your program down to a half hour?
What do you mean, cut it down?
It's only a half hour now.
What?
Boy, it sure seems like an hour. [laughter] Well, as the guy says, when he fell off of the horse and heard something bust, that sounded to me like a rib. [laughter] Well, never mind that now.
We're going to go through that pile of whatnots and throw everything out we don't need.
Oh, yeah?
Well, I've been through this stuff a hundred times and there ain't a thing of it that I can spare.
Oh, there isn't?
No.
What's this old rusty horseshoe for?
Well, I found that in 19-aught-11. [laughter] As soon as I find three more, we can pitch horseshoes in the backyard. [laughter] I see, you expect to find three more, huh?
You betcha.
You don't think the automobile is here to stay, eh?
[laughter] Won't be if we don't catch up with the payments. [laughter]
Well, McGee, I've about exhausted my impatience with you.
Why?
Packing all this useless junk back in that closet.
How about these old books?
Let's see them.
Oh, them.
Well, that's my correspondence course in taxidermy.
Taxidermy.
Why on earth did you want to study taxidermy?
Well, how did I know it meant stuffing birds in animals?
And there I was, stuck with a chauffeur's license, a city map, and a pair of puttees.
Well, hurry up and put your playthings back in the closet.
Okay.
Looks terrible laying around here on the floor with it.
I'll get it. [phone ringing] Hello?
No, this is the McGee residence.
You got the wrong number.
Oh, is that you, Mert?
Oh.
He gadd every week the same thing.
Apologies to skinny Ennis.
How's every little thing, Mert?
What say?
Your Uncle Gulliver.
Oh, that's too bad, Mert.
Oh, my.
And they ain't found the body yet, eh?
Oh, heavenly days, McGee.
What happened?
Mert's uncle drove his car off a cliff and had to walk home.
They found the chassis up in a tree, but they don't know where the body is.
What say, Mert?
Oh, that's okay, Mert.
Everybody has the wrong number now and then, except Irving Berlin.
Well, now, let's see.
McGee, why are you saving this long stick of bamboo?
Why, Molly, that's got a very definite purpose.
If I was offered a job as sparring partner for Joe Lewis, that's the 10-foot pole I wouldn't touch it with.
Welcome Good Old Days subscribers!
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Classic Radio Club
High quality audio of your favorite classic radio shows, Delivered Monthly
All 218 episodes in pristine audio quality (including more than 50 LOST episodes) transferred directly from the Ziv 16 inch discs //
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The odds of finding a single disc in un-played condition is slim. The odds of finding a matched pair of discs in un-played condition is nearly impossible. The odds of locating an entire series of matched discs in un-played condition is one in a million and finding 41 complete series of discs of this condition is one in a billion. That is how rare this opportunity is. I can not stress this enough. This truly is finding an old-time radio Unicorn. To let this opportunity pass — to not save — and not create THE definitive sets of these Ziv radio series, would be an absolute tragedy. I am doing everything I can to prevent tragedy, one series at a time, with YOUR help!
In Sex and Culture (1934), Oxford scholar J. D. Unwin studied 80 primitive tribes and 6 civilizations through 5,000 years of history and found a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe. //
MCP
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sexual repression is the foundation of civilization.
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2008
That is the basic thesis of this unjustly forgotten book. According to Professor Unwin, who was influenced by Freud, it is the "limitation of sexual opportunity" which creates the "mental energy" necessary to build a civilization.
He backs this up with exhaustive examples of the historical cycle he proposes. The cycle goes as follows: in a primitive society, people take their pleasure at whim, without commitment or limits. Then the practice of monogamous marriage, including premarital chastity, is instituted. (How he believes this first arises would take far too long to summarize here; read the book!) The sexual repression required for this chastity and fidelity increases the "mental energy" and the inner strength of those who practice it, enabling them to embark on long-term projects such as monumental architecture, agriculture, and conquest. In this early stage, men have enormous power over their wives and children, even when the children have grown up. ... //
Cornelius
5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
Brilliant and Shocking Exposition of Sexual Regulations and Cultural Advance
Reviewed in Canada on November 27, 2019
Unger surveys eighty so-called 'primitive' civilizations, as well as six advanced civilizations, and finds a stunning correlation between the extent of a society's pre-marital and post-marital sexual regulations, and its civilizational advance (conquest, exploration, abstract thought, industry, commerce, etc.). In general, the more restrained a society is when it comes to sex, the more repressed sexual energy is created; that repressed energy is then transformed into, and given full expression in, productive, outward endeavours. As an anthropologist, Unger is surprisingly careful; since this book was published in 1934, I expected a stereotypical Englishman's exaltation of the white man's superior intellect. Unger does not fall for such preposterousness; he even admits that there is no reason to believe that coloured men have inferior intellects or abilities. In fact, he argues against the racialism that prevailed in his day. Although Unger's correlation is interesting, and his causation convincing, I am not convinced by his proposed mechanism: Freudian sexual sublimation. In fact, there are more direct mechanisms that would explain why repressed sexuality translates into powerful outward displays of productive and expansive energy: 1. When sex is more difficult to procure, people engage in more productive activities. This is a simple opportunity cost formula. 2. Men won't invest resources in children that aren't theirs. Sexual restraint ensures that women are less likely to cheat and conceive children with other men. 3. Hypergamy is dominant: without sexual restraint, men and women expend energy in attaining unachievable sexual partners. Aside from these shortcomings, Unger's book is worth reading if you are interested in why sexual restraints come about, and how they relate to civilizational advance.
Puzzling out the power supply to Urals atom plants.
THE DECRYPTION OF A PICTURE, by Henry S. Lowenhaupt
One day in August 1958 Charles V. Reeves showed me a picture of the Sverdlovsk Central Dispatching Office of the Urals Electric Power System which he had found in the July issue of Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent of Look magazine (Figure 1a). He remarked that at the Boston Edison Company he had controlled electric power generation and flow in the Boston metropolitan area from just such a dispatching station. //
[Source: Studies in Intelligence. Volume II. Issue: Summer. Year: 1967]
This gentleman is no less than Mad Jack Churchill, a man who went into battle with a sword, a revolver, a longbow, and bagpipes. He was one of the bravest men to ever draw breath, and thus richly deserving of our admiration. //
Determined to pursue his education in the most masculine setting possible, Jack Churchill decided he would attend university at King William’s College on the Isle of Man.
That’s right – the Isle of Man. //
After letting the Krauts get in good and close, Churchill gave the order to attack by brandishing his claymore, chucking a grenade, and bellowing, “CHARGE!” The Brits charged, led by the possibly mad Churchill and his broadsword, and routed the German patrol. When asked later by a higher-ranking officer why he insisted on carrying the Scottish sword, Churchill replied by exclaiming that any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed. //
He went on going into battle properly dressed, leading his men on a series of rear-guard and guerilla actions against the Germans until the BEF was evacuated at Dunkirk. He was wounded in the neck by a machine-gun bullet but refused evacuation and went on fighting. //
That unit landed and fought in Sicily and Salerno. In that second action, Churchill was ordered to silence a mortar position and eliminate a German observation post that controlled a pass overlooking the Salerno beachhead. Most officers would have assembled a patrol and moved on the positions with fire and maneuver in a traditional infantry operation, but not Jack Churchill. He led No. 2 Commando to encircle the German observation post, then drew his sword, brandished it, bellowed “COMMANDO!” and charged the post, easily taking it and killing or capturing the German troops. He then went on to take out the mortar post by capturing one guard, then moving on to the others in turn, shoving his Scottish sword in their faces and demanding their surrender. He later commented:
I maintain that, as long as you tell a German loudly and clearly what to do, if you are senior to him he will cry 'jawohl' (yes sir) and get on with it enthusiastically and efficiently whatever the situation. //
In May of 1944, he was ordered to raid the German-held island of Brač.
...
On the second morning of the mission, Churchill led a flanking attack on the German positions while the Partisans remained behind. By the time the Commandos reached the objective, only six were left alive, of which Churchill, still toting a rifle along with his sword and bagpipes, was one. Mortar fire swept their positions, killing all remaining members but Churchill. Out of grenades and ammo. As the Germans closed in, he stood and began playing Will Ye No Come Again on his bagpipes until a grenade knocked him unconscious.
The Germans, noting the name on this identity disk and incorrectly assuming a family connection to the British Prime Minister, sent him to Berlin. There he was interrogated until, in frustration of having learned nothing from the stalwart officer, the Germans sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg, Germany.
By September 1944, Mad Jack had enough of a prisoner’s life. Enlisting a Royal Air Force officer, Bertram James, to help in the attempt, he and James crawled under the wire around the camp and into an abandoned drainpipe. //
Probably because of his predilection for escaping and also probably because he intimidated the bejeebers out of his Wehrmacht guards, in April of 1945 Churchill was sent to an SS-run concentration camp near Tyrol.
...
one Captain Wichard von Alvenslaben, that they were worried about being murdered by the SS, the German captain (perhaps looking ahead to the consequences of Germany’s looming defeat) surrounded the camp and “advised” the SS to get the hell out. They did so, and soon after the German regulars did as well. Churchill and some others promptly decamped and walked 90 miles to Verona, Italy, where they found an American armor unit. On rejoining Allied forces in this manner, Churchill was disappointed to find the Germans had surrendered, and so wasted no time demanding reassignment to Burma, where the Japanese were still kicking up their heels.
The assignment was granted, but by the time Churchill made his triumphant return to Burma, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had both been wiped off the map. The Japanese Emperor, realizing that the tide of battle had irreversibly turned against Japan now that Mad Jack Churchill was in the theater of operations, surrendered. //
He went on bagpiping and longbowing his way through life. Even in retirement, he maintained an office and, in the afternoons on his return home, startled train passengers by hurling his briefcase out of the train window some ways before his stop. When someone finally worked up the nerve to ask why, he calmly explained that he was chucking the thing into his back garden so he wouldn’t have to carry it home from the station.
John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill died on March 8th, 1996, at 89 years of age, in Sussex. The Royal Norwegian Explorers Club named him “one of the finest explorers and adventurers of all time,” and to this day, he has yet to be outmatched in that regard. //
Randy Larson
an hour ago
I would question why a man’s proficiency with the bagpipes would serve him on the silver screen in 1924, when movies were still silent… but then I think I’ve answered my own question.
As I’ve heard them them say in the UK a gentleman is a man who knows how to play the bagpipes… but doesn’t.