In 1876, the year of America's Centennial, an epoch-making secret codebook, The Cipher of the Department of State, designed by John H. Haswell and printed in the Government Printing Office, became the initial volume in a series of elaborate State Department codebooks. It established the basic blueprint for secret American diplomatic correspondence for more than six decades. Much of Haswell's research for this codebook, soon termed the Red Code of 1876, was completed before Secretary of State Hamilton Fish appointed him chief of the Bureau of Indexes and Archives in August 1873.^[356]

Undoubtedly, Haswell's earlier accomplishments as a department clerk for Secretary William Seward, together with Seward's costly cablegram, made him particularly sensitive to the dire need for an economical secret codebook. Not only did this complex codebook furnish code words and code numbers, but it also added various message transmission routes for further protecting diplomatic dispatches from foreign government post offices and espionage agents. In the State Department, the meticulously prepared volume quickly replaced the 1867 codebook and all the earlier codesheets and ciphers.^[357] Colonial codemaker James Lovell would have been delighted to have such an instrument for protecting American diplomatic correspondence.

The innovative and imaginative one-part codebook listed plaintext words, phrases, and short sentences in alphabetical order. The code words were also in alphabetical order, and the code numbers followed alongside in sequential order. This arrangement, though avoiding the need for two distinct books, i.e., one for encode and another for decode purposes, was a distinct security weakness. Almost 1,200 pages in length, this volume contained several approaches for encoding; first, the use of arbitrary words to express plaintext words and sentences, and, second, a system of code numbers that could be used instead of the code words. Thus, the masked message could be sent in code words or five-digit code numbers similar to the design in Robert Slater's codebook, and the plain text, or as the codebook termed it, the "true reading," would be carefully masked.

Figure 22.1. Slater codebook, front page

Numerous State Department frustrations with the 1867 codebook were reflected in the new codebook's "Directions" page, where it was lamented that Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish telegraph operators, ignorant of English, "constantly commit vexatious and often serious mutilations of original messages." According to Haswell, these operators could, however, transmit code-numbers with accuracy because the figures were readily intelligible.

John Haswell and a cost-conscious State Department, still scarred by the exorbitant $19,540 cablegram sent by William Seward to John Bigelow in France in 1866, focused on economy as a prime feature in this complex codebook. In the directions for encoding a message, Haswell carefully explained: "It would be well to commence with the first word therein, and though there be found no expression under it which could be applied to the message, nevertheless find its corresponding codeword and write it down, and proceed in like manner with the remaining words in the message, until there is found an expression which contains some of the words that have already been coded. In this case expunge from the message thus far coded all the code-words found in that expression, and substitute for them the codeword of the expression last found. Thus in sending by means of one word an expression which contains several words, economy, which is one of the principal features of the code, will be secured."^[358]

During the exciting decades after the invention of the telegraph, entrepreneurs, merchants, bankers, and governments turned increasingly to codes and ciphers for a modicum of security and lower expenses. The first private secure code for telegrams, along with an explanatory book of reference, was probably devised by the founder of Reuter's Telegraph Company, Baron Paul Julius von Reuter who, after a brief stint as bank clerk, started a pigeon post service in 1849 that filled the span between telegraph stations in Aachen, Germany, and Verviers, Belgium. Soon after, he moved to England, became a naturalized citizen and opened Reuters, a news office in London, which provided financial data for bankers. Within two decades, he added news reports to financial coverage and cabled this intelligence to European and American newspapers eager for current information. In subsequent generations, Reuters became a principal company in an enormous information industry.^[359]

Figure 22.2. Slater book, second page

Sir Francis Bolton introduced another codebook in 1866. In the formative years, cables proved to be the most expensive branch of the telegraph business. For example, in July 1866 the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company charged $100 gold for twenty words or less, including address, date and signature, for cables from America to England. Every additional word, not exceeding five letters, cost $5. Code and cipher messages were charged at a double rate.^[360] After 1 November 1866, Atlantic cable rates were reduced 50 percent.

Because of the expensive charges, and also the need for secrecy, telegraphers developed new codes.^[361] At the International Telegraph Conference in Rome in 1870, and again at the St. Petersburg Conference in 1875, it was specified that code words must not contain more than ten characters (a character is one letter); and words of length greater than ten were liable to be refused, although some companies accepted them and promptly charged higher rates. The Bureau of the St. Petersburg Conference received authority to compile a vocabulary of words to be recognized and accepted for code purposes. However, transmission of encoded messages could be suppressed by the government that granted the cable concession. Indeed, President Woodrow Wilson invoked this measure in the early years of World War I and permitted only the sending and receipt of encoded messages on figures, telegraphers in each repeating station through which the message was sent were urged to repeat back in order to achieve greater accuracy. This meant double service for the telegraph company, and double charges.

In a rapidly expanding domestic market, code words proved especially attractive to retail merchants and other businessmen in the decades after the Civil War. In the early years, various mercantile houses and news organizations built up amazing code vocabularies. In time, almost all commercial traffic was encoded, and some highly imaginative designs were developed. For example, the code word "unholy" was used to designate 160 words. Other examples from this flourishing shorthand code vocabulary were as shown below.

In 1870, Robert Slater, secretary of the French Atlantic Telegraph Company, developed and published one of the most extensive and notable codebooks, entitled Telegraphic Code, to Ensure Secresy [sic] in the Transmission of Telegrams, printed by W. R. Gray in London. Slater noted that the telegraph system throughout the United Kingdom would pass into the hands of the government on 1 February 1870, and Post Office officials would work the lines. "In other words, those who have hitherto so judiciously and satisfactorily managed the delivery of our sealed letters will in future be entrusted also with the transmission and delivery of our open letters in the shape of telegraphic communications, which will thus be exposed not only to the gaze of public officials, but from the necessity of the case must be read by them." Troubled by the greater threat to community privacy, Slater added, "Now in large or small communities (particularly perhaps in the latter) there are always to be found prying spirits, curious as to the affairs of their neighbours, which they think they can manage so much better than the parties chiefly interested, and proverbially inclined to gossip."^[363] In addition, he wrote, experience had shown that in the transmission of commercial intelligence it was necessary "to conceal the news communicated from all but the receivers of the messages, and particularly is this the case in the instance of submarine cables... ."^[364] Finally, he concluded, codes can result in much lower costs.

Secrecy and economy characterized his codebook, which offered 24,000 words (words beginning with C totaled 2,800) in its vocabulary in addition to 1,000 more words expressing Christian names, common surnames, heroes, deities, and some geographical names. Each word was expressed by a five-digit number. This codebook also offered an additional plan for adding or subtracting specific numbers from the code number in order to mask the message further between two correspondents who agreed on the additive number.

In the United States State Department, Hamilton Fish continued to employ the economical 1867 code for foreign correspondence despite the frustrating errors caused by domestic and foreign telegraphers. Searching for better secret writing systems, Fish was influenced by Colonel Albert Myer, a brilliant New Yorker, born in 1829, who entered the army in 1854 as a medical officer and served in Texas. Knowledgeable about the telegraphic code, he transferred the sound system to visual signaling. During the Civil War, Myer organized the Signal Corps and also supervised the construction of 5,000 miles of telegraph lines to western frontier forts.^[365] Myer suggested a route or word transposition system, including arbitrary words, to Secretary Fish.

Figure 22.3. Colonel A. J. Myer

The route system originated with young Anson Stager, another New York state resident, four years younger than Myer, who would become intrigued with the expanding telegraph business. He began his working life as a printer's devil in an office under Henry O'Reilly (who became a leader in telegraph construction and management) and then bookkeeper for a small newspaper, before becoming a telegraph operator in Philadelphia, then Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Rapid promotions followed: after a brief time as telegraph office manager in Pittsburgh, he became, in his early thirties, general superintendent of the Western Union Telegraph Company, with headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. Stager's early employment made him sympathetic with newsmen and their relations with the telegraph companies. Also, he convinced railroad executives that their companies could profit handsomely by permitting his company to share use of the railroad telegraph lines.

Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, Captain Stager took over responsibility for ail the telegraph lines in the Ohio military district and prepared a cipher for the governor to communicate with the chief executives in Indiana and Illinois. At General George McClellan's Cincinnati home, Stager developed a similar cipher that the general and also detective Allen C. Pinkerton would use. Stager accompanied McClellan's forces and established the first system of field telegraphs used in the war: "The wire followed the army headquarters wherever that went, and the enemy were confounded by the constant and instant communications kept up between the Union army in the field and the Union government at home."^[366] When McClellan traveled to Washington to take command of the Army of the Potomac, Stager was assigned to organize the military telegraph in that region; and in early 1862, when the president took control of all the telegraph lines in the United States, Stager became chief of the United States Military Telegraph. "The cryptography used throughout the war was perfected by him, and baffled all attempts of the enemy to translate it."^[367]

Stager's encryption system called for determining the number of lines in the proposed telegram and indicating the number by the first word in the message. For example, "mail" indicated one line; "may," two lines; "August," three lines; and so on with descriptors for up to thirty-three lines. His clever design also included check or meaningless words to be included as every sixth word in the message, for example, "charge," "change," "scamp," "thief," and "puppy." The third element in the procedure listed code words for specific officers and locations, such as "Mecca" for McClellan; "Arabia" for Grant, and "Joe" for Martinsburg. The route and number of columns for encrypting and decrypting the message were communicated verbally.^[368] The Stager design functioned very well during the Civil War years. And Stager prospered on his return to civilian life: he became superintendent of the Central Region of the Western Union Company, with headquarters in Cleveland, and after 1868, in Chicago.

As early as 1871, and probably because of Myer's persuasion, Hamilton Fish, in his third year as secretary of state, adopted the Stager system for some of his domestic correspondence. He described the system to General Horace Porter, a West Point graduate and Congressional Medal of Honor holder, who was serving as President Ulysses S. Grant's military secretary. Fish wrote: "The plan of the route cypher of which we spoke is simple [-] on receiving a despatch you write off the words in four columns omitting every sixth word then read up the first down the fourth up the third down the second."^[369]

Fish continued:

The encrypted dispatch would be transmitted as follows:

While vacationing at his home in Garrison, New York, Fish began using this route system in 1871 for correspondence with his assistants, John Chandler Bancroft Davis and R.S. Chews, in the State Department. Davis also used the plan for masking important State Department information in his telegrams to Fish, In a letter that probably included his first use of the cipher, Fish also wrote, "What a grand cipher we have!"^[371] And several days later, Chews wrote back, "Yes our cipher is a grand one, if its only mission is to make a man crazy."^[372] However, despite early difficulties, including telegrapher mistakes, the correspondents continued to use this system over the next several years.^[373]

As Haswell began fashioning the new Cipher of the Department of State, he studied the first generation of telegraph codebooks and Civil War systems. His carefully designed book would incorporate some of the very best secret techniques in the telegraph and cable industry.

The example printed in Haswell's codebook directions revealed the very detailed, cost-conscious design inherent in this thick volume. To encode the phrase "The President directs me to enter a protest against the rules proposed by the International Congress," the sender referred to the first principal word "President" and in the codebook a plaintext phrase, "the President directs me" was found for which die codeword was "Plant." Since this code word was on page 443, line 84, the codenumber was "44384." For the plaintext word protest, a phrase containing this word in its proper context was found in the codebook as enter a protest and was designated by "Precursors" and the code-number, "45202." For the word against, the expression against the rules was masked by "Applauded" and "11769": for proposed, the phrase proposed by the was designated by "Pater" and "45082." Finally, under the word congress, the expression international congress was found and designated by "Declamation" and "21920." Thus the complete message in codewords read "Plant, Precursors, Applauded, Prater, Declamation." Using code numbers, the message would be "44384, 45202, 11769, 45082, 21920." Haswell emphasized with enthusiasm and genuine pride that a plaintext dispatch of sixteen words could be encoded in five words or five groups of numbers. This codebook provided for economical masked dispatches. Haswell made no mention of communications security.

Instructions for the codebook noted that when the sender could not locate phrases or sentences in the codebook, the plaintext message might be altered so that codebook phrases could be used. If, however, the proposed alteration changed the sense of the dispatch, the sender should stop the search for economy and encode each word. For all messages, the encoder could use a mixture of code numbers and code words, especially since proper names were included in the codebook's vocabulary. Thus the message "Pullman has been appointed Consul-General of the United States at London" with "46248, Bedfellow, Deletery, Masquer" or since London was in the vocabulary, "46248, Bedfellow, Deletery, 38053." Once again, Haswell proudly noted the codebook's design for economy: a message of twelve words was encoded in the equivalent of four words.

From twenty to as high as ninety code word and code number spaces were provided in the codebook at the end of each alphabet letter series, apparently for additional plaintext words or phrases to be added by the State Department and the various embassies as required for particular references.

To construct an even higher communications security fence around the diplomatic dispatches, Haswell added a holocryptic code as an appendix to this codebook several months after the codebook was printed. Entitled Holocryptic Code, An Appendix to the Cypher of the Department of State, this system offered fifty rules, each designated by the name of a specific animal, a name that was also found in the plaintext column of the codebook. The sender, after using a particular rule for encoding the message, told the receiver what rule was used by prefixing to the message the code word or code number of the animal named by the particular rule. This prefix was termed the indicator. Indicators could be interpolated into any part of the encoded message: all the message after each indicator would be decoded in accord with the rule represented by that indicator.

Haswell emphasized that encoding required precision and accuracy, and to insure these qualities, the sender, before transmitting, should decode the message after it was encoded in order to provide a better guarantee of correctness. Moreover, the encoder was instructed to write the letters and figures very carefully so the telegrapher could readily read them (the State Department apparently did not introduce typewriters until 1880):^[374] this was more important for words than numbers since the telegrapher could misread a letter more readily than a digit.

The fifty rules in the Holocryptic Code provided fascinating variations for further concealment of the encoded dispatch. These rules were designated by fifty animal names ranging from "Ape" through "Deer" and "Pony" to "Zebra." The easiest rule, and the one most attractive to impatient or lethargic diplomats and code clerks, was "Zebra": it simply specified that the message should be encoded and then transmitted without making any change.

The clever designs for these fifty regulations were shaped around three different classes: Route, Addition, and Miscellaneous. The term Route referred to a system of changing the sequence of words in the message by arranging them in an order or route different from that in which they naturally would be written. A key feature of the system consisted in arranging the words up and down in columns. The routing process began when the sender, after encoding the message, divided the words or groups of numbers in the encoded message into as many parts or columns as the particular rule indicated. If there were a remainder after dividing the code words, one word was added to the quotient.

The first pattern within the Route Class called for two columns and provided for routing the encoded words in these columns. For example, in Rule 1, named "Ape," the words of the message were divided into two columns, and the sender began writing codewords of the message at the top of the second column, writing down, and then writing down the first column; in Rule 2, named "Ass," two columns were again used, but the sender wrote the words beginning at the bottom of the second, writing up, and then writing up the first column. The message was then transmitted like a plaintext dispatch, i.e., reading from left to right across the columns. According to the instructions, the Route Class should be used only when there was a minimum of three words in a column. Haswell taught that it would be advisable to change the rule with every message.

The second Route Class pattern contained sixteen variations on routing the encoded words by using three different columns. The following example indicates the complexity of the system. Suppose the following message is to be sent: "A Joint Committee from the Senate and House of Representatives of the United Sates called upon the President and informed him of the organization of the Forty-fourth Congress and their readiness to hear from him."

The receiver of the dispatch knew from the indicator word "disinclines" that three columns were in the design; and thus he wrote the words in three columns from left to right and then arranged the code words in the order specified in Rule 14. The final step involved using the codebook to find the plaintext words andlor phrases. Besides the sixteen variations of the three-column routing, there were sixteen variations for four-column routes similar to the example noted above.

The Addition Class required the sender to add a specific number to each code number. There are twelve variations ranging from adding a number as low as 33, which had the indicator "Moie," to a high additive of 322, named "Stag." The directions page advised encoding the entire message in code numbers, adding the number specified by the rule, and then transmitting the resulting number, beginning with the indicator. If instead of code numbers, the sender desired to use code words, then he prepared the message in code numbers, added the number specified by the rule, then referred to the codebook and wrote down the code words opposite to this new number, and transmitted the code words.

The Miscellaneous Class included three rules in addition to the "Zebra" rule noted earlier. These variations called for rearranging the code words. The "Tapir" Rule called for substituting the first code word or code number in the message for the second, the second for the first, the third for the fourth, the fourth for the third, etc. The "Tiger" Rule specified the message was transmitted by beginning the message with the last codeword or codenumber and ending it with the first. The third rule in the Miscellaneous Class, named "Wolf," called for letting the first two figures represent the line on the page and the last three numbers represented the page number.

A spelling code completed the last section of the book. Keyed to the first code number in the dispatch, and matching those individual numerals to a special chart, the spelling chart provided a mixed alphabet substitution in a workable though complex manner.

Hamilton Fish, secretary of state, added a new department regulation for this innovative codebook when, in a preface, he ordered that every person authorized to have the book, had to, at the expiration of his term in office or employment, deliver the codebook to the department or a person duly authorized to receive the book.^[375] Each person entrusted with the volume was to be be held responsible, and each copy of the book was distinctly numbered. And lastly, each recipient of a copy was required to furnish a receipt for it, and when surrendering the book, obtain a duplicate receipt, one of which was to be forwarded to the department. Never before had State Department codesheets or cipher sheets been numbered; now, for the first time, the complete inventory of department codebooks could be audited and greater security achieved.

It is this codebook, its successor, and the State Department that James Thurber spoofed in a delightful New Yorker essay in 1948. Describing his first months as a code clerk in the State Department in 1918, Thurber wrote with much exaggeration that the codebook "had been put together so hastily that the word 'America' was left out and code groups so closely paralleled true readings that 'Lovve' for example, was the symbol for 'love'."^[376] In fact, however, the 1876 codebook included a codeword, "Auric" and codenumber, "12641," for "America": the 1899 codebook listed "Beaker" and "14566." The 1876 book did not include code symbols for "love"; its successor in 1899 included it, masked as "leek" and "47768."

Thurber continued his charming account with another code story about his assignment to Europe: "I had been instructed to report to Colonel House at the Hotel Crillon when I got to Paris, but I never saw him. I saw instead an outraged gentleman named Auchincloss, who plainly regarded me as an unsuccessful comic puppet in a crude and inexcusable practical joke. He said bitterly that code clerks had been showing up for days, that Colonel House did not want even one code clerk, let alone twelve or fifteen, and that I was to go on over to the Embassy, where I belonged." And then Thurber explained, "The explanation was, I think, as simple as it was monumental. Several weeks before, the State Department in Washington had received a cablegram from Colonel House in Paris urgently requesting the immediate shipment of twelve or fifteen code clerks to the Crillon, where headquarters for the American Peace Delegation had been set up. It is plain to me now what must have happened. Colonel House's cablegram must have urgently requested the immediate shipment of twelve or fifteen code books, not code clerks. The cipher groups for 'books' and 'clerks' must have been nearly identical, say 'DOGEC' and 'DOGED,' and hence a setup for the telegraphic garble. Thus, if my theory is right, the single letter 'D' sent me to Paris, when I had originally been slated for Berne. Even after thirty years, the power of the minuscule slip of the alphabet gives me a high sense of insecurity. A 'D' for a 'C' sent Colonel House clerks instead of books, and sent me to France instead of Switzerland."^[377] Unfortunately, Thurber's engaging and delightful theory did not fit the fact, as seen in the chart below:

As Otter indicates the rule in this example, reference should now be had to the vocabulary, where Otter is represented by the Code Word OTTON, which is the Indicator, and should be prefixed to the message when transmitted. The message will then read as follows:

But Thurber appraised an important aspect of the codebooks accurately when he wrote they "were intended to save words and cut telegraph costs."^[378]

An alarming dispatch from General Horace Porter, the American minister in France, to Secretary John Sherman on the eve of the Spanish-American War told of a new communications threat. Porter enclosed a note from H. R. Newberry, formerly secretary of the American legation at Madrid, and then living in Paris, which stated: "Am sure Madrid Knows State Department cipher."^[379] Newberry, whose father was a business associate of General Russell A. Alger, secretary of war, asked Porter to send this information to Alger, and Alger volunteered to be of service at the wish of President McKinley.

A cautious Porter sent a note to Newberry and asked for the source for the cipher information. In a personal message, Newberry replied that upon receiving Porter's request, he sought permission to reveal the name of the person who informed him of the fact that the cipher was known to Madrid officials. Though he could not reveal the name, Newberry added that the informer had not only seen but looked over the State Department book in a Spanish government official's office in Madrid. In addition, he added that it was known that the series of five figures had their order often changed.^[380]

Promptly, Porter also warned General Stewart Woodford, the American minister in Madrid in cipher: "Newberry, formerly Secretary of Legation, Madrid, believes Spanish Government has our cipher book. A gentleman he cannot name, says he saw and looked over it, in the hands of a government official."^[381] Nevertheless, Woodford continued to employ the 1876 code for his messages to the State Department.

Several weeks after Porter sent his confidential dispatch regarding the apparently compromised cipher, Secretary John Sherman simply replied that he had received the Porter dispatch relative to Spanish-American affairs and offered no comment on the codebook.^[382] Woodford became even more troubled by the possibility the codebook had been compromised, for he was very aware of Spanish censorship and activities in the telegraph office. He was also sensitive to the hostile criticism of his accomplishments in Spain as published in The New York Tribune. Indeed, only three weeks earlier he had written President McKinley and thanked him for sending the generous telegram of praise: "Coming open in English through the telegraph office where everything is read by the Government censor and communicated to the Ministry, you have also given me the great help of reassuring the Ministry of your personal friendship and confidence. Someone, either at Washington or New York, keeps the Government here posted as to all criticism in the United States of my actions and the Tribune dispatches from Washington were embarrassing me."^[383]

Troubled Alvey Adee, second assistant secretary, uncertain whether Spanish authorities had the codebook, and reluctant to arouse Spanish suspicions by telegraphing an inquiry to Woodford, since it might be intercepted and read, nevertheless telegraphed Woodford in cipher on April 17: "Have you the printed holocryptic Appendix to the cipher code."^[384] And Woodford replied by telegram the next day, "Yes."^[385] But by this time, relations between Spain and the United States had deteriorated so badly that substantive cables between Washington and Madrid, in plain text or cipher, even using the holocryptic appendix, were useless. On 21 April, Woodford learned from the Spanish minister that diplomatic relations had been broken, and he left for Paris that afternoon.

Despite the Newberry information, the State Department continued during the Spanish-American War and months afterward to employ the 1876 Red Code for encrypting messages to General Horace Porter in France, Spain's friendly neighbor. Moreover, the department continued to use the codebook as though Porter had never sent the warning dispatch.^[386] In May 1899, the department finally switched to the newly published Haswell-designed 1899 Blue Code.

In 1876, America's centennial year, the State Department finally possessed a modern codebook for secret foreign correspondence. The United States, tempted by further overseas expansion and empire, and increasingly cognizant of the dire necessity for secure confidential communications, adopted a better and more practical instrument for masking telegraph and cable dispatches. This new codebook also reflected the flourishing commercial use of codes and ciphers, a practice that flourished in the decades after the invention of the telegraph and transatlantic cable. Public instruments for wire communication required special systems for negotiations and secrecy. Prompt, safe, and accurate official communications could strengthen American economic and political transactions at home and abroad. Technology made code and ciphers essential tools, especially for those engaged in foreign commerce and diplomacy.