The 2013 Center for Cryptologic History Calendar

Yesterday, I posted a copy of the Center for Cryptologic History’s official 2012 calendar. Today, I post the print-version of the official 2013 Center for Cryptologic History’s. With regard to historical tidbits, trivia, and factoids, there is almost complete overlap between the 2012 and 2013 calendars. However, the 2013 calendar has an entirely new set of pictures.  

It seems that David Kahn has been promoted to “noted cryptologic historian” for the 2013 calendar year.  This promotion further serves as evidence of domestication of David Kahn. In the 1960s, Kahn wrote Code Breakers and defied demands by the NSA to redact information from his book by secreting away the footnotes to the information the NSA demanded be removed.  Now, the NSA owns his private collection and calls him a “noted cryptologic historian’.

2013 CCH Calender

The 2012 Center for Cryptologic History Calendar

It seems a little late in the year for a 2012 calendar to be of much use, however the Center for Cryptologic History's 2012 calendar will be good for years to come. The calendar is filled with rare pictures about the NSA and is positively brimming with historical facts relating to the NSA, SIGINT, COMINT, and Cryptologic history to list just a few topics. 

2012 CCH Calendar

Former DIRNSA Mike McConnell Says NSA Employees “Pampered” and “Spoiled.”

In a recently declassified and partially released NSA oral history conducted in the first year as his reign as DIRNSA, VADM stated that he believed the NSA’s staff, while the “best in the Government,” were “spoiled and pampered.”  As is the brief, 13-page interview were McConnell’s doubts as to whether he was “yet qualified to be director,” even though he had a prior tour of duty in the NSA, his plans for transforming the NSA in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and some amusing historical tidbits. 

The oral history isn’t very good which is not surprising that it can at the beginning of McConnell’s term when the prominent events of his reign had yet to begin or were just starting such as Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, the Bosnian War, and the flaring up of the conflict with Iraq.  The real value of this interview is the historical tidbits sprinkled within such as Dick Cheney was fishing and out of contact when the Soviet hardliners staged their coup in 1991 and that McConnell had been given the job of briefing Cheney as to what was going on in the Soviet Union during the coup. 

Another worthwhile bit of information is the revelation that the NSA or at least McConnell had a fear of Congress because “you have to be careful about talking to Congress. You go down there and just give it away, and some member in the Congress at a TS level could stand up on the floor and is not subject to prosecution. He can say anything he wants to say … classified or unclassified. So you have to be careful.”

DIRNSA McConnell NSA Oral History

When Being "A Giant Among Cryptanalysts" Isn't Enough

In 2004, the National Security Agency inducted Brigadier John Tiltman into its “Hall of Honor,” making him the first non-American so honored.” In 2007, the NSA's Center for Cryptologic History published a 65 book titled, "Brigadier John Tiltman: : A Giant Among Cryptanalysts,” in which he is described as "one of the greatest cryptanalysts Great Britain has ever produced."

Given his historical importance, the John Tiltman, you might presume that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would preserve its record pertaining to him, right? Wrong. Despite his achievement, the Bureau destroyed all its records relating to him. See below:


FBI Destroyed Records About John Tiltman