CRYPTOGRAPHY

General

U - Z

U.S. Army. INSCOM. History Office. "The Heraldry of Cryptology-- Addendum." Cryptologia 13, no. 1 (Jan. 1989): 79-84.

U.S. Army Security Agency. Historical Background of the Signal Security Agency. Vol. III. The Peace, 1919-1939. Washington, DC: 1946.

U.S. Army Security Agency. History of Codes and Ciphers in the United States During the Period Between the World Wars. Part I: 1919-1929. Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1979.

U.S. Army Security Agency. The History of Codes and Ciphers in the United States During World War I. Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1979.

Constantinides comments that this work, prepared after World War II, draws the main outline of the cryptanalytic effort against the Germans.

U.S. Army Security Agency. The History of Codes and Ciphers in the United States Prior to World War I. Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1978.

Petersen notes that this was "[p]repared after World War II." Constantinides comments on the "shallow quality" of the study, even given that certain material was not available.

U.S. Army Security Agency. The Origin and Development of the Army Security Agency 1917-1947. Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1978.

Constantinides: This work reads just like the form in which it began life: "a typical government orientation lecture." It gives bare-bones treatment of the various names, organizations, and reorganizations over a period of thirty years and two wars.

U.S. War Department. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. Articles on Cryptography and Cryptanalysis Reprinted from the Signal Corps Bulletin. Washington, DC: GPO, 1942. [Petersen]

Weber, Ralph E.

1. "America's First Encrypted Cable." Studies in Intelligence 36, no. 5 (1992): 105-109.

In November 1866, Secretary of State Seward dispatched by Atlantic cable an encrypted message to American Minister to France John Bigelow. The cost: $19,540.50, which the secretary refused to pay. Seward later released the full text of the message to the New York Herald. Less than a year later the State Department issued a new code for diplomatic dispatches, although not a particularly useful one. Eventually, the U.S. had to pay up for services rendered.

2. "Seward's Other Folly: The Fight Over America's First Encrypted Cable." Cryptologia 19, no. 4 (Oct. 1995): 321-348.

The cost ($19,000) of sending an encrypted cable on the Atlantic cable sent the State Department looking for a new encryption system, its first in over 50 years.

Weber, Ralph E. Masked Dispatches: Cryptograms and Cryptology in American History, 1775-1900. Ft. George G. Meade, MD: Center of Military History, National Security Agency, 1993. Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, NSA, 2002.

Kruh, Cryptologia 18.2, identifies this work as "twenty-four delightful vignettes [that] explore highlights of America's cryptologic history during its first 125 years." Kruh, Cryptologia 26.4, notes that this "outstanding collection" has been republished with a new format.

Weber, Ralph E. "State Department Cryptographic Security, Herbert O. Yardley, & President Woodrow Wilson's Secret Code." In In the Name of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer, eds. Hayden B. Peake and Samuel Halpern, 543-596. Washington, DC: NIBC Press, 1994.

The author provides a brief, but nonetheless detailed, history of U.S. State Department codes and ciphers preparatory to surveying some of circumstances surrounding Yardley's breaking a message from Colonel House to President Wilson (revealed 15 years after the fact).

Weber, Ralph E. United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers, 1775-1938. Chicago: Precedent, 1979.

Petersen calls this one of the "foremost classics in the field." Constantinides quotes David Kahn's description of the book as "definitive," but adds that Kahn also found some shortcomings in the work.

According to Pforzheimer, Weber's work begins with the codes and ciphers in use during the American Revolution and "continues in detail down to the Civil War." There is less material for the remainder of the 19th century and "minimal description" of 20th century cryptologic matters "for reasons of security."

Winkel, Brian J., Cipher A. Deavours, David Kahn, and Louis Kruh. The German Enigma Cipher Machine: Beginnings, Success and Ultimate Failure. Boston/London: Artech House, 2005.

From advertisement: "This one-of-a-kind volume contains original essays, historical and technical papers, and translations of historical materials and retrospectives concerning the German Enigma Cipher machine. You get a comprehensive view of the Enigma machine's development, uses, role in WWII Allied intelliegnce, and cryptanalysis. All the papers in this volume are reprints of classic articles that originally appeared in the pages of Cryptologia."

Wolfe, James R. Secret Writing: The Craft of the Cryptographer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. [Petersen]

Woodeman, Nathan X. "Yardley Revisited." Studies in Intelligence 27, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 42-49.

Woods, David, L., ed. Signaling and Communicating at Sea. 2 vols. New York: Arno, 1980. [Petersen]

Wrixon, Fred B.

1. Codes, Ciphers & Other Cryptic & Clandestine Communication: Making and Breaking Secret Messages from Hieroglyphs to the Internet. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 1998.

Kruh, Cryptologia 24.1, says that the author has made "a mighty effort to cover the entire universe of cryptology but it is impossible within the confines of a single volume.... [Nevertheless,] the book contains a great deal of interesting and useful information."

2. Codes, Ciphers, Secrets and Cryptic Communication: Making and Breaking Secret Messages from Hieroglyphs to the Internet. New ed. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2005. [pb]

From publisher: "This immensely readable world history of clandestine communication ... includes illustrations, diagrams, and puzzles that instruct readers how to become amateur cryptographers. It's the last word on secret languages!"

Wrixon, Fred B. Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Languages. New York: Random House, 1989.

Yardley, Herbert O. The American Black Chamber. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931. London: Faber & Faber, 1931. [Reprint] New York: Ballantine, 1981. [Reprint, hb. & pb.] Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1992. [Reprint] Mattituck, NY: Amereon, 1999.

Clark comment: Yardley headed MI8 during World War I and the famous U.S. Black Chamber until 1929 when that entity was dismantled by order of Secretary of State Stimson. For a first-rate biography of Yardley, see David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert Yardley and the Birth of American Intelligence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).

Surveillant 2.4 sees The American Black Chamber as "worthy of being placed back in print.... Some have suggested that this work contains exaggerations and inaccuracies, but they are quite minor." For Pforzheimer, the "book's importance ... cannot be denied."

According to Peake, AIJ 15.1/88, "[n]o book written since has revealed as many technical secrets as Yardley's did." Constantinides reminds us that one of the consequences of the publication of this book was "the passage of the law in 1933 known popularly as the Yardley Law protecting cryptologic matters."

See David Kahn, "The Annotated The American Black Chamber," Cryptologia 9, no. 1 (Jan. 1985), 1-37. Lowenthal views this article as an "[i]mportant corrective to Yardley..., based on notations by ... William F. Friedman." See also Louis Kruh, "Who Wrote The American Black Chamber?" Cryptologia 2, no. 3 (1978), 130-133.

Yardley, Herbert O. The Chinese Black Chamber: An Adventure in Espionage. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

Petersen identifies The Chinese Black Chamber as the author's "manuscript on [his] 1938-40 service to Chiang Kai-shek, hidden for 40 years." For Sexton, this book "furnishes insight into the author's character and the little-known wartime Chinese cryptographic service."

Yardley, Herbert O. Yardleygrams. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1932. [Petersen]

Zim, Herbert S. Codes and Secret Writing. New York: Morrow, 1964. [Petersen]

Zopette, Glenn. "The Edison of Secret Codes." American Heritage of Invention & Technology 10, no. 1 (1994): 34-43.

Concerns Edward Hebern, inventor of a cipher machine later used by U.S. military and diplomatic services.

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