REF ID:A2119475
CONFIDENTIAL
O, thou vile and insatiable monster! To disturb these poor bones!
If thou hadst learned something more useful than the art of deciphering,
Thou wouldst not be footsore, hungry, or in need of money!
I'm frank to confess that many times during my 40-year preoccupation with cryptology, and generally near the middle and the end of each month, I felt that good old Queen Semiramis knew what she was talking about. However, earning money is only a part of the recompense for working in the cryptologic field, and I hope that most of you will find out sooner or later what some of these otheer recompenses are, and what they can mean to you.
If Queen Semiramis thought there are other things to learn that are more useful than the art of deciphering, I suppose we'd have to agree, but we are warranted in saying, at least, that there isn't any question about the importance of the role that cryptology plays in modern times: all of us are influenced and affected by it, as I hope to show you in a few minutes.
I shall begin by reading from a source which you'll all recognize—Time, the issue of 17 December 1945. I will preface the reading by reminding you that by that date World War II was all over - or at least V-E and V-J days had been celebrated some months before. Some of you may be old enough to remember very clearly the loud clamor on the part of certain vociferous members of Congress, who had for years been insisting upon learning the reasons why we had been caught by surprise in such a disastrous defeat as the Japanese had inflicted upon us at Pearl Harbor. This clamor had to be met, for these Congressmen contended that the truth could no longer be hushed up or held back because of an alleged continuing need for military secrecy, as claimed by the Administration and by many Democratic senators and representatives. The war was over — wasn't it? — Republican senators and representatives insisted. There had been investigations—a half dozen of them-but all except one were Top Secret. The Republicans wanted—and at last they got what they desired—a grand finale Joint Congressional Investigation which would all be completely open to the public. No more secrets! It was spectacular. Not only did the Congressional Inquiry bring into the open every detail and exhibit uncovered by its own lengthy hearings, but it also disclosed to America and to the whole world everything that had been said and shown at all the previous Army and Navy investigations. Most of the information that was thus disclosed had been, and much of it still, was Top Secret; yet all of these precious secrets became matters of public information as a result of the Congressional Investigation.
There came a day in the Congressional Hearings when the Chief of Staff of the United States Anny at the time of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 5-star General George C. Marshall, was called to the witness stand. He testified for several long, long days, eight of them in all. Toward the end of the second day of his ordeal he was questioned about a letter it had been rumored he'd written to Govenor Dewey in the Autumn of 1944, during the Presidential Campaign. The letter was about codes. With frozen face, General Marshall balked at disclosing the whole letter. He pleaded most earnestly with the Committee not to force him to disclose certain of its contents, but to no avail. He had to bow to the will of the majority of the Committee. I shall now read from Time a bit of information which may be new to many of my listeners, especially to those who were too young in December 1945 to be delving into periodical literature or to be reading any pages of the daily newspaper other than those on which the comics appear.
Said Time, and I quote:
"'U.S. citizens discovered last week that perhaps their most potent secret weapon of World War II was not radar, not the VT fuse, not the atom bomb, but a harmless little machine which cryptographers had painstakingly constructed in a hidden room in Washington. With this machine, built after years of trial and error, of inference and deduction, cryptographers had duplicated the decoding devices used in Tokyo. Testimony before the Pearl Harbor Committee had already shown that the machine, known as 'Magic', was in use long before December 7, 1941,
