The development and expansion of the traffic processing unit are inextricably linked to the tremendous dependence on the exploitation of Russian communications for intelligence following Black Friday. That day, 25 August 1948, the chief of the Soviet General Staff declared that "the transmission of . . . messages is permitted only by landline." Within weeks, Soviet communications systems that had been successfully exploited since 1945 went off the air. The series of communications changes that began in November 1947 and culminated on Black Friday were catastrophic. Out of this devastation, Russian plaintext communications emerged as the critical provider of intelligence on our primary Cold War adversary.[44]
Eighteen months after Black Friday, in March 1950, the chairman of the United States Communication Intelligence Board (USCIB) Intelligence Committee wrote that Soviet plaintext traffic could, at least partially, fulfill two vital intelligence requirements: (a) Soviet intentions to make war and (b) Soviet capabilities to make war. Accordingly, the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), as the agency was then named, was requested to accomplish complete processing of traffic.[45] By July 1950, over a million messages a month were being forwarded to AFSA for processing and exploitation. The plaintext exploitation unit stood at 170, and it was projected that by April 1952, the volume of messages requiring processing would nearly double, requiring an additional 350 people.[46] During the 1950/1951 time frame, Russian plain text was nearing its zenith in terms of intelligence priorities, collection resources, and personnel; and AFSA-213,[47] the all-black traffic processing branch (later a division) that came to be known as "the snakepit," "the plantation," and "the black hole of Calcutta," was in full operation.
All Russian plaintext traffic forwarded to Arlington Hall Station from U.S. sources was received in AFSA-213. In mid-1950, a paper delivered to Captain Mason (AFSA-02, Chief of Operations), entitled the "Russian Plain Text Problem," placed the AFSA-213 manning at 98 and projected the 1952 personnel requirement at 218. The paper also supplied a concise, descriptive account of the work performed in the traffic processing branch:
The incoming material is of two types, printed messages and perforated radio printer tapes. The printed messages result from the collection of either . . . radio printer communications that were intercepted using standard teletype equipment or . . . morse transmissions that were transcribed from undulator tape recordings. . . . radio printer communications are recorded and printed on perforated teletype tapes in the field, and the tapes are forwarded to AFSA for processing.
Once the material arrives in the Traffic Division, the employees scan it for key words, addresses, and signatures. Messages that meet the selection criteria are assigned a two-digit routing number that separates them into homogenous groupings. Messages that are on tape are sent to the tape printing section for conversion to hard-copy. The selected, printed messages are then stamped with a one-up serial number and microfilmed. In the final step, they are sent to the sections of the plain text branch, according to the twodigit routing number assigned during the initial scanning process.[48]
William Jones worked in AFSA-213 from November 1951 until mid-1955. In an oral interview thirty years later, he provided a remarkably similar account of the process, but added the human dimension.
After I was hired and cleared, I was marched down to the first wing, first floor of A Building and escorted into what was a huge wing, and in there was nothing but black people, except there was an Air Force major in charge of that operation. When you walked in the door, there were long tables, at least twenty feet long, perhaps three and a half/four feet wide, lined up against the wall on both sides of the wing with an aisle down the middle. On each of those tables there must have been eight, possibly ten machines that were like typewriters, except they were printers. They had a little device on the side of them that would read a tape; this was five-level punch paper tape. You put the tape in the reader, start the machine, and the machine would type what was on the tape in hard copy. We only had to type a heading on the page which consisted of basic data like the TO and FROM, the intercept station designator, and the date and time of intercept.
Well, it didn't take long to pick that operation up. I knew that somewhere people were selecting messages, and I began to wonder how did they pick some messages and throw some away. So as a result, I enrolled in a Russian course at the Department of Agriculture. Soon, I was off the machines and pulling tapes, based on keywords. Once we pulled the tapes, we bundled them in categories and put numbers on them that designated subject areas. But it was a little more complicated than that. Many times the print on the tape was not clear, so we had to read the punched holes. I think what we did was critical because we threw away what we thought wasn't any good. If there was anything good in there, it was lost – it went in the burn bag. We were called 'scanners'.
We heard nothing about career choices or moving to any other place. I went to the Department of Agriculture to take Russian because I didn't know they would teach it here. There were people in that place [AFSA-213] who had degrees, had teaching experience, and a bunch of them had advanced degrees. It was kind of revealing, I think, to ultimately find out that most of the black people who came to the Agency, no matter the kind of experience they had, wound up there.[49]
The grade range in AFSA-213 was low. Many, including Dick Hill, who retired as a GG-15 division chief, attested to the fact that new employees entered as a GG-2 or GG-3, despite having a college degree or work experience.
I was working at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and had a master's degree in psychology from Howard University. I was looking for better employment, and I submitted an application to the agency. They were hiring, and I was told that I was qualified to come in as a GS-7; however, they didn't have any GS-7 openings at the time. I called back; they still didn't have any openings at a 7 level, but they had some GS-5 openings. I could come in as a 5. I decided that if I was qualified for a GS-7, there was no sense coming in as a 5, and I would wait a little longer. Well, I called and called, and I finally got to the point where I really wanted to get away from the bureau. When I called again, they didn't have any GS-5 openings; they offered me a GS-3, and I accepted. I was hired and sent to whatever that number was – 294 or what not. It was entirely black with the exception of the division chief. The deputy division chief was a black named Jenkins Johnson. The division chief was an army captain. Not long after I arrived, my section was audited, and all of the jobs were downgraded to GS-2.[50]
Interviewees who worked in AFSA-213 singled out the tape to hard-copy conversion process as mind-numbing and document stamping as both boring and dirty. Further, they revealed that they worked under a production quota system. Scanners were required to review a minimum of 300 messages per day, and page printers were required to print a minimum number of messages. If an employee met the daily quota, his/her name was posted on a board with a star. Monthly statistics were kept, and employees who regularly failed to meet their quotas were counseled.[51] This system of recognition/discipline was taken quite seriously by the subordinates, occasionally with most interesting consequences:
Boxes of tapes would come in [to AFSA-213], and the only whites you would see were service guys that would bring them in. It was sort of funny, because some of the people that had been scanning for years knew the best tapes, the best links. We were working on quotas, and you wouldn't want to get tapes from the bad links because you wouldn't get anything from them. One lady almost fell in the box of tapes trying to get the best ones.[52]
The monotony of the tasks in AFSA-213 and the underutilization of people were recognized as early as 1948. According to Jack Gurin, founder of the Russian plaintext exploitation branch, it was he who initiated the scanning task in the traffic processing branch. Overwhelmed by the monthly traffic volumes, he sought to reduce the workload on his translators and use them more efficiently.
There was this outfit that took these paper tapes where you couldn't read them unless you could read these little holes. You put them into this machine. You make sure it's all lined up properly, and you press the 'on' button. It starts typing and sheets of printed paper would come out. The equipment was called 'Cxco'. I don't remember what that stands for. These people, as I remembered, were all college graduates; all black and all college graduates. Their job was to sit there and watch the machine and make sure it didn't jam. If it jammed, you stopped the machine and pulled out the keys or fixed the paper. Then you started it again and waited for the next jam. That was their job. I looked at them and said this is ridiculous. They were college graduates. They all have some kind of brains. Since the traffic consisted of official messages, they always had the address. I took all the people in this outfit and taught them the elements of Russian, at least the alphabet. I gave them a sheet that said, this [unit] is number 27, this [unit] is number 29, and so forth. So what they did, as the stuff was coming off, they looked at it and looked at the address and put down the correct number. It wasn't terribly challenging, but it was a lot better than what they were doing before.[53]
Low salaries, monotonous, routine tasks, and limited opportunities for advancement made for poor morale. In the summer of 1953, the Agency's managers sought to mitigate the situation by piping in music.
Equipment for the reception of music is being installed in the rear of wing 2, first floor, A Building. Since this is considered an area of low personnel morale as a result of recent downgrading and the monotonous work, it is believed the music will be well received.[54]
The music system was never installed. The documentation contains no explanation, but the proposal may have been abandoned because it was impractical. The audio would have had to have been at an ear-piercing level to be heard over the din of a hundred teletype machines.
Despite uncomfortable working conditions and dim prospects for change, AFSA-213 employees delivered large quantities of messages to the Russian plaintext exploitation branch every month. Undoubtedly, most were motivated by the simple need to keep their employment. Iris Carr, however, expressed other contributors to her work ethic – pride of accomplishment and, despite the racial discrimination she experienced, patriotism. At the age of thirty-three, she was older than most of the employees in AFSA-213 and was cited by many as being an unheralded hero of the period – one who worked diligently and sought to motivate others.
When I graduated from Prairie View College [Prairie View, Texas] in 1932, I received a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major, English and math. I taught school, first in a little town, Horton, Texas, and then in Austin. In Texas at that time, the highest level of education you could get was a B.S. or a B.A. degree. There were no other provisions for minorities. You could not go to the University of Texas or to any of the other white colleges. The state of Texas would pay your transportation to go to another school because teachers were required to go to school every three years, but I went every year because I wanted to get another degree. So, several summers I drove from Texas to New York to take courses at Columbia University.
In 1944, I left Austin for Washington because they would not allow blacks to pay into the teacher's retirement fund. I could see myself as a little old lady of sixty or seventy with no income and not able to work. I knew I had to get someplace where I could earn retirement benefits. I also wanted to do something to help out in the war.
My first job was at the Office of the Recorder of Deeds. Then, after the war, schools were opened for veterans and a black electronics school [Hilltop Radio Electronics Institute] on U Street needed teachers. I graded math papers and taught business English in this school for radiomen and electricians. While I was working there I met Bernice Mills, who was working at the agency. She took my application in and shortly after that I was called for an interview.
The work [in AFSA-213] was rather boring, because it was the same thing every day. But if you knew what you were doing and what you were looking for, it was more interesting. We learned to read a Russian dictionary, and we could pick up bits of information on different tapes. From that, you would get an idea of what was going on. If something was completely irrelevant, we would throw it away, but I explained to people that they had to be very careful to give the analysts all the messages we possibly can, because the work was important. . . . Most of the people I worked with were younger than I, and I felt an obligation to be as good as I could be to help them to be good.[55]
