Cryptologic Quarterly 2014-012017-01 • Vol. • Vol. 33 36 CenterCenter for forCryptologic Cryptologic History History Cryptologic Quarterly Contacts. Please feel free to address questions or comments to Editor, CQ, at [email protected]. Disclaimer. All opinions expressed in Cryptologic PUBLISHER: Center for Cryptologic History Quarterly are those of the authors. Th ey do not neces- EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Pamela F. Murray sarily refl ect the offi cial views of the National Security MANAGING EDITOR: Laura Redcay Agency. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Jennie Reinhardt Copies of Cryptologic Quarterly can be obtained by sending an email to [email protected]. Editorial Policy. Cryptologic Quarterly is the pro- fessional journal for the National Security Agency/ Central Security Service. Its mission is to advance knowledge of all aspects of cryptology by serving as a forum for issues related to cryptologic theory, doc- trine, operations, management, and history. Th e pri- mary audience for Cryptologic Quarterly is NSA/CSS professionals, but CQ is also distributed to personnel in other United States intelligence organizations as well as cleared personnel in other federal agencies and departments. Cryptologic Quarterly is published by the Center for Cryptologic History, NSA. Th e publication is de- signed as a working aid and is not subject to receipt, control, or accountability. Cover: Monument to Marian Rejewski in Bydgoszcz, Poland, with sculpture of the ENIGMA machine he reconstructed; see article on page 56. Cryptologic Quarterly, 2014-01 Contents 2014-01 • Volume 33 Articles Renaissance Cryptography, Occultism, and the Jewish Cabala by Erin Higgins ..........................................................................................2 The Dawn of American Communications Intelligence: The Spanish-American War and After by David A. Hatch ...................................................................................17 NSA’s Senior Technical Development Program Turns Twenty by Nancy Welker and Cathleen L. Civiello ...............................................30 Farmhouse Field Station Houlton, Maine: The U.S. Army’s First Fixed Field Site by Betsy Rohaly Smoot .............................................................................40 The Thought behind High-Level Cryptological Discovery, 1930–1945 by Peter W. Donovan ...............................................................................56 Contributors ..................................................................................... 72 Cryptologic Quarterly, 2014-01 Renaissance Cryptography, Occultism, and the Jewish Cabala Erin Higgins everal minor but cipher and an underpaid messenger. The early devel- historically interest- opers of Renaissance-era ciphers and codes were ing cipher systems focused in Italy but popped up throughout Europe: expounded upon by Leon Battista Alberti, inventor of the cipher wheel; Renaissance crypto- and Johannes Trithemius, who publicized and elabo- graphers have their rated on the wheel, and introduced steganography, origin in the Jew- for which he is most widely remembered. Then ish mystical system later, Bellaso developed mixed keying for polyalpha- Cabala. The link be- betic ciphers;1 Porta recommended layering ciphers Stween cryptography and Cabala is a book by Cornelius to prevent cryptanalysis, an art on which he wrote Agrippa, which reproduced and expounded upon sev- extensively; and Vigenère, the French diplomat and eral cabalistic systems of rearranging words. These sys- Cabalist, collated and expanded upon the works of tems were picked up and elaborated upon by the later these men and pioneered the concept of auto-key- cryptographers Giambattista della Porta and Blaise de ing, showing what was, by 1586,2 the state of the art Vigenère. We consider here the Tables of Ziruf, some- in cryptography. thing Agrippa learned from the Cabalists and which Our concern here is to establish the connection appear to be the ancestor of the Reciprocal Ciphers of among these men, the cryptographers, and Heinrich Giovan Battista Bellaso, Porta, and Vigenère. Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (hereafter Agrip- Introduction pa), who is nearly exclusively remembered as a super- stitious magician and occasionally as an early modern During the Renaissance, manual cryptography, skeptic. The tremendous dissonance between these such as was used until very recently, was just begin- two labels should immediately rouse the suspicions of ning to flower. Particularly in Italy and the Papal the reader: what has he done that history can name states, with the advent of resident ambassadors and him equally superstitious and skeptical? An explana- what we would even now recognize as modern-style tion lies in Agrippa’s relationship with the cryptogra- diplomacy, powerful players recognized the need pher Trithemius, who, likewise, was widely regarded for communication more secure than a Caesar-shift as a magician, though we know differently today. 2 Cryptologic Quarterly, 2014-01 Up until 1996, Trithemius schol- arship was split into two camps: those who thought the books he wrote were strictly about cryptography, and those who thought that some of his writings dealt in magic. With Thomas Ernst’s and James Reeds’ 3 independent solutions of the remaining ciphers in Book III of Steg- anographia, history knows Trithemius as strictly a cryptographer, who used magical- sounding verbiage only as cover text. Agrippa entered the story in 1509, shortly after the Benedictine monk Trithemius had left his first abbey in Sponheim, Germany, having been ordered to Wurzburg. Agrippa had Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (Wikimedia) read something of Trithemius’ work— though only in manuscript, since Steg- anographia was not published until sonal letter he sent with it referenced their meeting nearly a century later, and Polygraphia, Trithemius’s and discussions of Cabala and magic. Trithemius is overt book of ciphers, was not yet written. Agrippa, said to have detained the messenger so he could read returning from what seems to have been a diplomat- the manuscript immediately and compose a response ic mission on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor,4 that very hour. The reply letter, which Agrippa later stopped by the abbey at Wurzburg. Our record of had printed along with his letter to Trithemius as a the meeting is a pair of letters the men exchanged sort of preface to De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres, afterward. In early 1510, Agrippa sent Trithemius a praises Agrippa’s accomplishment this far, urging manuscript of a book he had been writing; the per- him to continue, but with caution.5 3 3 Cryptologic Quarterly, 2014-01 Trithemius, in writing Steganographia, evi- Background on Ciphers dently thought it the height of cleverness to com- and Cabala pose a book of ciphers disguised as magic, and was Cabala is probably unfamiliar to most readers; shocked when there was outcry against it and he there is room here only for explanation of the ele- was called “magician.”6 Agrippa, soon after, sent ments which pertain to Agrippa and cryptography. him this manuscript which was full of what schol- An important book in traditional Jewish cabalism13 ars of the time called “natural magic”—a sort of is the Sefer Yetzirah. It had circulated in one of four bastard mix of early science, late superstition, and manuscript versions for generations,14 though it was folk medicine. There was nothing obviously iden- not translated into Latin before Agrippa’s death.15 The tifiable as ciphers or cipher text in the initial draft; book, the name of which translates as “The Book of if there are ciphers, they are more cleverly hidden Formation” or “The Book of Creation,” poetically than in Steganographia. describes the creation of the universe as an analogy to Agrippa could be highly rationalist, especially in the creation of the Hebrew alphabet. his later years. While the publication of De Occulta The Sefer Yetzirah is the source of a system Philosophia is his most remembered bit of civil disobe- literally ,צירוף) ”of cipher alphabets, called “Ziruf dience today, at the time he landed himself in worse “refinement”) by Johannes Reuchlin,16 Agrippa,17 trouble for a book he published several years earlier, and Vigenère,18 but called “the 231 gates” by Aryeh in 1530: De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque Kaplan in his commentary to the Sefer Yetzirah. There artium declamatio invectivo.7 This book, an example are no Ziruf in the Sefer Yetzirah itself; they originated of Pyrrhonic skepticism similar to that which Des- probably in early medieval and Renaissance commen- cartes would espouse a few years later, attacks all the ”,or “change ,(תמורח) taries.19 This system of Temurah arts and sciences. In it—and in a section of the book is itself the source for the famous AThBaSh and reprinted and included as an epilogue in Occulta Phi- ALBaM biblical ciphers.20 losophia three years later—Agrippa appears to recant his early magical experimentations as the foolishness Traditional Cabala concerns itself, in addi- of youth, accounting for nothing.8 In De Vanitate,9 tion to the Temurah, with other letter and word after he is finished declaiming magic, sorcery, and his manipulations. Gematria is the practice of equat- own De Occulta Philosophia, he goes on to forswear ing words on the basis of the numeric value of their mathematics, astronomy and astrology, chemistry letters.21 Notarikon is shorthand, acrostic, or initial- and alchemy, painting, printing, the monastic sys- ism: a new word is formed from the initial,