Ciphony.

This is coolbert:

Prior to and during World War Two [WW2], President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had extensive conversations via secure radio telephone [secure voice - ciphony].

These conversations played a vital part in both men discussing and formulating war strategy. Making decisions that were essential to the war effort. Decisions that had to be made by democracies that did NOT always see things eye to eye.

Personal conversations that were made in the belief that eavesdroppers [the German radio intercept service and their allies] could not decrypt and understand.

These scrambled communications proved at first to be "unbreakable". Using a first generation scrambled speech communications system, Roosevelt and Churchill could discuss the most important matters in security. Knowing that NO ONE ELSE could listen in on what they were saying.

The faith placed by Roosevelt and Churchill in the first generation "scrambling" device was not totally justified.

"The older analogue scrambling technology was not sufficiently secure, and indeed by 1941 it was broken by the Germans."

"Before the full involvement of the United States in WWII, the United States and the United Kingdom were using transatlantic high-frequency radio for voice communications between senior leaders. The analog voice privacy system in use, called the "A-3," provided reasonable protection against the casual eavesdropper, but it was vulnerable to anyone with sophisticated unscrambling capability. This system continued to be used during the early part of the war, and government officials were warned that they could be overheard. In fact, it was later discovered that a German station in the Netherlands was breaking out the conversations in real time. This situation was intolerable, but neither the U.S. nor the U.K. had a ready solution."

[it was not until the middle part of WW2 that a very secure ciphony system called SIGSALY was put into operation. SIGSALY DID make for secure communication.]

According to Wilhelm Flicke, a German WW2 radio intelligence analyst:

"Even before the United States entered the war, it was known in Germany that the two western statesmen [Churchill and Roosevelt] talked in this way [used radio-telephone secure speech]. When Hitler found it out, he gave orders to develop, without regard for cost, a device which would make it possible to understand such conversations . . . . within a few months a complicated apparatus was constructed at great cost . . . now it was possible to listen to the interesting and significant conversations of the two men. A special unit was set up and the results were transmitted to Hitler with the least possible delay."

The Germans WERE able to listen in on and decrypt and understand the most important and vital conversations held between the leaders of the world's two leading democracies, the forces leading the fighting against the fascist menace. This HAD to be of inestimable value to Hitler.

[personal note: This particular blog entry is leading up to something much, much bigger. But an appreciation of the role of ciphony and the ability of the Germans to "read" the first generation secure speech device employed by Churchill and Roosevelt is important to the reader.]

coolbert.