open-and-shut case like that. We knew the Iranian mood; we knew we were treating the Shah in New York. We should have—"
Now at last Griswold opened one eye and glared at me. "Damn fool," he muttered. "If you don't know anything, why talk? There was no reason to expect a flagrant breach of international law like that when even the Nazis always behaved correctly in that respect. Then, too, you can't carry an evacuation through at a moment's notice. It would take time and careful preparation and if we went about it and the Iranian mob, very well orchestrated by the way, then took over, everyone would have said that the hostages were taken only because we had tried to evacuate the embassy. Of course, as Jennings said, our Intelligence capacity was not exactly utilized to capacity." Jennings smiled. "Then you admit that Intelligence can fail."
"Certainly," said Griswold, lifting his scotch and soda to his lips and then wiping his white mustache delicately, "now that I've retired. There were failures even when I was active, under unusual circumstances, as when I wasn't called in soon enough. For instance—"
I have always maintained [said Griswold] that it was the English language that allowed the Tet offensive to be such a surprise. Militarily, it was the turning point of the Vietnam war. It destroyed President Johnson politically; it broke the faith of the American people in victory; it made an eventual evacuation inevitable. And all because one person was proud of his knowledge of English and others wouldn't listen.
You have to understand the difficulties that lie in the way of working with secret messages. Even if a message represents a true estimate of the situation and has safely been sent off, will it be intercepted? If it is not intercepted, will it be correctly interpreted? If it is correctly interpreted, will it be believed? Stalin's spies in Germany in early 1941 kept him perfectly up to date on Hitler's plans for an attack on the Soviet Union, for instance. Stalin simply refused to believe the reports.
Then, too, the art of decoding messages has enforced such complexity upon the mechanics of cryptography that the weight of precaution can break down the process.
For instance, there are some systems of cryptography that follow the solution to the puzzle of the perfect solvent, the material that is supposed to dissolve all substances. The problem in the case of such a solvent is: what do you use for a container?
Actually there are two solutions. One is to saturate the perfect solvent with glass and when it can dissolve no more, you can safely use a glass container. What if you need pure solvent, however, without glass or anything else dissolved in it?
In that case, you reason that the solvent must be formed in the first place, for no naturally occurring material is a perfect solvent. Therefore, you carry the formation through to the point where you have two substances which are each themselves unremarkable but which, on mixing, will give you the perfect solvent. You keep each in a separate container and when you are ready to use the perfect solvent, you add some of each component to the material you want dissolved. The perfect solvent forms at the site of use and dissolves the material.
You see the analogy. In cryptography, you can send two messages, each of which is meaningless without the other. In that case, interception of one will be of no help to the enemy and of no harm to us. Interception even of both may not serve the enemy, if he doesn't appreciate the connection of the two. It also means that at least one of the messages does not have to be very obscure.
Suppose a particular message cannot be decoded without a keyword, arbitrarily selected for the occasion, and that the keyword is sent separately by another route.
If you want a keyword that is as little as ten letters long, then the number of possibilities of ten-letter combinations based on the twenty-six letters of the alphabet is almost exactly a
Now at last Griswold opened one eye and glared at me. "Damn fool," he muttered. "If you don't know anything, why talk? There was no reason to expect a flagrant breach of international law like that when even the Nazis always behaved correctly in that respect. Then, too, you can't carry an evacuation through at a moment's notice. It would take time and careful preparation and if we went about it and the Iranian mob, very well orchestrated by the way, then took over, everyone would have said that the hostages were taken only because we had tried to evacuate the embassy. Of course, as Jennings said, our Intelligence capacity was not exactly utilized to capacity." Jennings smiled. "Then you admit that Intelligence can fail."
"Certainly," said Griswold, lifting his scotch and soda to his lips and then wiping his white mustache delicately, "now that I've retired. There were failures even when I was active, under unusual circumstances, as when I wasn't called in soon enough. For instance—"
I have always maintained [said Griswold] that it was the English language that allowed the Tet offensive to be such a surprise. Militarily, it was the turning point of the Vietnam war. It destroyed President Johnson politically; it broke the faith of the American people in victory; it made an eventual evacuation inevitable. And all because one person was proud of his knowledge of English and others wouldn't listen.
You have to understand the difficulties that lie in the way of working with secret messages. Even if a message represents a true estimate of the situation and has safely been sent off, will it be intercepted? If it is not intercepted, will it be correctly interpreted? If it is correctly interpreted, will it be believed? Stalin's spies in Germany in early 1941 kept him perfectly up to date on Hitler's plans for an attack on the Soviet Union, for instance. Stalin simply refused to believe the reports.
Then, too, the art of decoding messages has enforced such complexity upon the mechanics of cryptography that the weight of precaution can break down the process.
For instance, there are some systems of cryptography that follow the solution to the puzzle of the perfect solvent, the material that is supposed to dissolve all substances. The problem in the case of such a solvent is: what do you use for a container?
Actually there are two solutions. One is to saturate the perfect solvent with glass and when it can dissolve no more, you can safely use a glass container. What if you need pure solvent, however, without glass or anything else dissolved in it?
In that case, you reason that the solvent must be formed in the first place, for no naturally occurring material is a perfect solvent. Therefore, you carry the formation through to the point where you have two substances which are each themselves unremarkable but which, on mixing, will give you the perfect solvent. You keep each in a separate container and when you are ready to use the perfect solvent, you add some of each component to the material you want dissolved. The perfect solvent forms at the site of use and dissolves the material.
You see the analogy. In cryptography, you can send two messages, each of which is meaningless without the other. In that case, interception of one will be of no help to the enemy and of no harm to us. Interception even of both may not serve the enemy, if he doesn't appreciate the connection of the two. It also means that at least one of the messages does not have to be very obscure.
Suppose a particular message cannot be decoded without a keyword, arbitrarily selected for the occasion, and that the keyword is sent separately by another route.
If you want a keyword that is as little as ten letters long, then the number of possibilities of ten-letter combinations based on the twenty-six letters of the alphabet is almost exactly a
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