DOC D I 401 SY650 WlDUVmWlDl1 L' WV $ l lWVU lDUl $W Ul SUJWUl S UlII W s fil s f W W I1 UJfil 1 4 c EO 1 4 d P L 86-36 P L I I gg E I N C R 1 86-36 v J GOLDEN OLDIE UNKNOWN LOCATION OF UiI UNIT ooooooooooooooooooooo 8 NEVER AGAIN ooo oooooooooooooo oi o o o o o o o o o o o Jack Gur in ooooooo 9 COMPUTER SCRATCH PAD AT HOME OR AT WORK Bi 11 CrowelL ooooooooooo 10 MINNIE'S MINI ooooooooooooooo o i o o o o o o o o o o o o o Minnie M Kenny oooooooo 11 NSA-CROSTIC NO 15 ooooooooooooooooooooooooo A J S oooooooooo ooooooooo 12 AS I WAS SAYING TWO YEARS AGO o o o ooooooo Mark T Pattie Jr ooooo 14 15 CELTIC LANGUAGES TODAY ooooooooooooooooo oo f o l LETTER TO THE EDITOR ooooooooooooooooooooooo E A Gilbertson oooooo 20 21 C A A NEWS ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 'FIllS BO JYMBN'F JON'FAINS JOBBWORB MA'FBRIAI I I o E I_ifiul hy BIRNSA SIISSS NSA SSSl I 1iJ3 Bxempt f10m 888 BQ 116 1 5 ' 18 a Qee ily lipoo ili a i'R If til QR fillatllF a Declassified and Approved for Release by NSA on '10-'1 2- 20'1 2 pursuant to E O '135 26 vl DR Case # 54778 DOClD 4019650 TOP SECRET Published Monthly by Pl Techniques and Standards for the Personnel of Operations VOL V NO JUNE 1978 6 WILLIAM LUTWINIAK PUBLISHER BOARD OF EDITORS Arthur J Salemme 52365 Editor in Chief Collection 1L - Cryptanalysis Language ---'1 89SSST P 1 I If4902 j ICS Z 6S J S303S 1 Machine Support Mathematics R e e d D a w so n 3 9 5 7 s J---- Special Research Vera Filby 71195 L - Traffic Analysis Production Manager Harry Goff 49985 For individual subscriptions send name and organizational designator to CRYPTOLOG PI TOP S CR T 1 4477s L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 'fOP SRCRE Ul BRA EO 1 4 c P L 86-36 P L June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page I EO 1 4 c P L 86-36 TOP ECRET UMBRA 86-36 DOCID 4019650 301A m 4mm 86-36 June 78 Page 2 DOCID - _------ - -'-l-- --Z1-'C- - ttl 4019650 TOP SEEURRI3 UMBRA June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 3 'lOP Sl3eRE UMBR2 F o L 86-36 DOCID P L 86-36 EO 1 4 c 4019650 TOP 88CR8T UMBRA June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 4 TOP SECRET UMBRA DOCID 4019650 'fOP SECRE'f UflflBRA June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 5 'fOP 8 CR T UMBRA EO 1 4 c P L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 'fOP SECRE'f UMBRA L- B K R AK F VM ON MI HIN AI S Do you know that the Bookbreakers Forum is M- 4 rently developing a new set of boolt' v 1 c breaking runs P L 86- 3 6 In the 10 years since the present Bookbreakers Package was designed there have been remarkable advances in computer technologyJ If you have any ideas that you would like to see incorporated in the new set of bookbreaking runs being developed get in touch with Bookbreakers Forum I Chairman P16 5642s Room 2N039 I 6 Solufion to NSA-c Olf C 668 No 14 by Sardonyx CRYPTOLOG May 1978 I I Freedom in Translation NSA TechnicaZJpurnaZ Vol XXI No 3 Summer 1976 Testing and checking always seem to create a climate where conservative attitudes prevail Setting standards in anything by its very nature focuses on the minimum which is required to do the job rather th n on excellence of performance U P L June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 6 TOP 8KCRKT YMBR 86 36 F9R 9FFISIAL 5E 6HL EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE ON ABNER D Chief R7 not endear them to the maintenance personnel he article byl lin the August 1977 CRYPTOLOG provided an e xcel- More importantly all the digital pulses were lent perspective of how the programmers processed through various lengths of electronic delay lines The latter were all wire-bound on viewed ABNER I followup letter in the November 1977 CRYPTOJ OGprovided very delicate metallic-plated fiberglass rods additional insights on the construction of the and hard-wired into the 5 ystem Likewise all the pulse transformers were hard-wired into the equipment I believe it would be remiss not to cover at least a few points concerning some system and when we were so fortunate as to aspects of the equipment maintenance on the locate a faulty delay line pulse transformer ABNER Serial 1 system or diode isolating gating circuitry it took at least a half-hour or more to replace the suspect When AFSA NSA's predecessor at Arlington compOnent if it was not a tube or aplug-in gate Hall Station first determined in the very early Perhaps mare impdrtant than the hardware re1950s that it was getting into the electronic placement problem was the fact that there were alcomputer arena it was readily determined that most no electrical or software diagnostics for the there was no source of qualified engineering machine The R D Programmers had developed a or electronic computer-maintenance personnel few exercise routineS but the usual mainto be enticed into service at the Agency In tenance technique wasta attempt to run an addition to hiring a few civilian electronic operational program and when it didn't work engineers and technicians it was decided to Maintenance was called in to see if we could attempt to get some expertise in this area by find the trouble This was the standard pracseeking military officers A survey indicated tice in other computer laboratories in the that the training that came closest to meeting United States during this early computer era the Agency's requirements was given at the Over a period of time of course we did develGround Electronics Radar School at Keesler op some diagnostics Many problems however Air Force Base A levy was placed on the occurred with the electromechanical input and USAF AFSA for one officer in the top third of output equipment and with the operations13oneach of ten succeeding graduating classes I sole itself These faults would of course was fortunate enough to be selected as the bring everything to a grinding halt since then first officer from the first class Upon we could not even get data into or out of the arrival at Arlington Hall I was assigned to the machine We were also hampered because the I computer ja e _ r eRilm Serlelike I response time o t e o scillosc0pe s wa 5 So slow that it was difficult to see some of the I laU-of-whom pulse trains and delayed-sweep oscilloscopes are still at NSA were old hands at ABNER mainw re not yet in use tenance having already spent about 6 months When production operations started in 1952 working side by side with the development enginth re was no time allocated for preventive eers and programmers in anticipation of the malntenance All the maintenance time we were computer's becoming operational ' ABNER I Serial 1 the first NSA application allowed was that necessary to correct faults In general the machine was used during the day of serial dynamic logic circuitry presented Shlft by the R D personnel who were continuing new problems for isolating malfunctions The to develop some facets of the equipment and in computer including the consoles and peripherals some cases to improve reI iabi l i ty During the came close to being a maintenance nightmare evening shifts it was used by the programmers All of the electronic D C power supplies were who were ust developing some of the initial of the laboratory type with variable voltprograms twas among the best of ages They were not overly stable and theygenerated a tremendous amount of heat Electro- these and the attempt was made during the midsonic mercury delay lines were used for the 1024 I night shift to run on an operational basis the few programs that worked All three of words of memory 512 words per cabinet or 64 these customers the R D engineers and prodelay lines per cabinet The only pluggable grammers the operational programmers and the components in the whole machine were the diode operators provided a unique technical as well resistor gates there were 25 000 lN34 diodes as human-relations challenge to the maintenance and the 6AN5 vacuum tubes that were used for crew digital pulse amplifiers There were about 1500 6AN5s all being used close to their As time went on things of course improved design rating and they had an MTBF that did The maintenance people still thought the T June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 7 F9R 9FFISIAL 5E 9HLY ' P L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 CONFIDEN'fIAL equipment was poorly designed the programmers were probably the happiest of the lot the R D engineers were glad to get'on to newer things and the operations people suffered through with all of us As Art Salemme wrote in the October 1977 NSA Newslettep most of us lived in the Buckingham area and it was not uncommon to work on the machine for several hours at a time come home and get something to eat with logic equations and microseconds still going through our brains and wander back down to work to see if we could try one more idea in the attempt to fix the machine Maintenance--down times of 4 to 8 hours were very common and on occasions lasted up to 4 or 5 days This was not so much a reflection on the quality of maintenance personnel I would like to think as a reflection of the complexity of the design the newness of the whole concept and the absence of statistically reliable preventive maintenance procedures and software diagnostics In many cases whenever we were sure the input and output equipment and console were working we would write down our own diagnostics to try and locate a sticky logic problem in the machine As each new computer application program was written it was not uncommon to find logic errors in either concept or wiring even after the first year or two of operation After approximately a year of such interesting endeavors I was considered qualified to become th e maintenance chief on a special-purpose machine DELLA being constructed by R D using the same type of digital logic and components albeit wi th many more plug-in components used that was expected to come into operations DELLA was to be located at Nebraska Avenue and I soon began the joys of carpooling from Arlington to NSS and lost contact with ABNER just as it came into its own as a highly productive piece of computing analytical equipment F8M8 type lS suggested by what lS believed to be EXISTENCE OF UNIDENTIFIED UN IT TENTATIVELY ASSUMED AT UNKNOWN LOCATION One of our pegular contpibutops pecently came acposs the following item in his files It was wpitten immediately aftep some dipective came down about not publishing anything that sounded like a snap judgement It was cipculated widely at Aplington Hall Station see the pefepence to the oPiginating sub 13 element within AFSA-242 and opiginalZy bope tne fake classification Top Secpet Blurb 1 td U I Unit possibly behind Iron Curtain 6 AFSA-242c3bSd4j7s4Sx 0 7 date garbled X groups missing Traffic analysis evidence of a very tenuous nature faintly suggests the remote possibility that an unidentified unit of undetermined echelon or type may in some manner exis t somewhere within Soviet Russia or in that general vicinity The tentative existence of this headquarters possibly a unit of undetermined echelon or 5 - Intercept date garbled 6 - Meaning not clear 7 - Unlocated e June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 8 EO 1 4 c P L 86-36 eONFIDEN'fIAL IbA IQbl i VIA EURQPmIT 61IMlIlHS 81iM' DOClD 4019650 UNCLASSIFIED NEVER AGAIN ' I m not easily angered and on those occasions when my face reddens and my hands ' tremble with the realization that something stupid ridiculous and unfair has occurred I cool off rather quickly But something happened more than a year ago and even now whenever I think of it my face gets flushed and I find myself searching out appropriate epithets to mutter to myself of course You see I believed in the system I trusted it even though I knew that many around me although good and loyal members of the establishment smiled condescendingly when I claimed that it was better to obey the letter and spirit of the regulations than to ignore them Their condescension clearly conveyed the notion that they were too canny too experienced in the ways of bureaucracy to be taken in A few came out and said that what I proposed to do was a mistake and that I would rue the day Others merely shrugged their shoulders and said pityingly You'll see I had a file of papers the only one of its kind relating to an experiment which had been conducted in an attempt to improve our processing techniques Without debating the merits of the original idea or of the experiment itself which involved not only NSA but ASA and AFSS as well let me state that a lot of hard work went into it After several years of research training courses TDY trips field trials and interagency correspondence it was decided to call the experiment off The records ended up in my safekeeping and I felt certain that at some time in the futuTe the issue would be revived I have always been aware of the heavy cost of filing cabinets and floor space and I agreed that if a safe alternative existed I should not use files in my office to store this material Besides I might not be around when the fil s would be needed again So I followed the rules and in September 1967 entrusted the files to NSA's Archives after carefully noting the contents and marked them for Indefinite Retention I made certain that I had the receipt which gave the accession number and even the box or shelf number at the storage location I was assured that I could retrieve the file when it would be needed JACK GURIN R5 ing all the files discarding any which seemed to have no further value But nobody had the courtesy or the courage to ask me whether the file was worth retaining even though my name was associated with it Or maybe it was because it was too much trouble to get in touch with me Unable to restore all the data that had been destroyed I could at least register my rage and warn fellow NSA-ers so I wrote a letter to Action Line in the NSA NewsZetter That letter was almost word-far-word what I have described to this point The Action Line editor sent it to the appropriate operational area in the Agency for response and when that response proved to be essentially It didn't happen on my watch my letter was returned to me as inappropriate for publication in Action Line I'll admit it doesn't deal with parking spaces or with people who smoke in no-smoking areas But I do want to register my rage and warn my fellow NSA-ers And I still am mad a year after learning that the material was destroyed I've learned my lesson Never again do you hear never again will I trust the system to keep something for me despite any assurances that the material will be found and returned in a day or two And dear reader if you have anything stored in archives you would be wise to check right now to see whether it is still there or has been destroyed Almost 10 years later in April 1977 you've already guessed I'm sure the subject did come up again at high levels both within and outside the Agency and so I proudly pulled out my receipt and called for the file To my horror I find that the entire fiZe has been destroyed It seems that management became concerned about the amount of material being kept in Indefinite Retention and in 1971 while I serving an overseas assignment a group was charged with examinJune 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 9 UNCLASSIFIED - U P L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 CONF'IDEN't'IAL WHICH WILL WE SEE F'RST A COMPUTER SCRATCH PAD AT HOME OR AT NORK BILL CROWELL A204 s omething caught my eye in the March issue of CRYPTOLOG It was I I article The Hand Is Not Quicker Than the Eye What Wayne describes is a dilemma shared by a large number of analysts not only at NSA but also in businesses and in other government agencies How can we best use computers to support the human part of the analytic process All of us are familiar with the vast capabilities of big computers to crunch numbers sort data and print mountains of listings but do these approaches really support the personal aspects of the human analytic process The type of analysis that Wayne describes involves insight into a problem The type of analysis best solved by the computer support we currently have is the algorithm a finite solution based on human in sight Essentially all of the solutions Row on computer are the result of off-line analytic processes that are largely unsuppoTted by computer Don't get me wrongl Co puters do support the analyst They give hi data to work on and they can be progra ed to give him that data in myriad ways insluding many of the ways that I Idescribed But I contend that most of the truly analytic processes go unsupported by our computer complex Why Well there are at least two contributing factors One was touched on by Wayne we gain analytic insight by doing it ourselves Logging brings us in contact -- a kind of slow motion contact -- with the material we are studying His article attests to the fact that with our current computer support approaches contact is lost The other fact is that analysis is an iterative heuristic process -- trying solutions or parts of solutions until you find one that works or almost works and then applying those learned lessons in adaptive iteration until a solution is found Computers are not easily programmed to do this kind of work -- at least not yet In most cases today the analyst not only must be able to do analysis but he must also be able to describe to a programmer the process or analysis or ways of achieving insight if he wants computer support for his analytic needs It is difficult enough to do this for his data requirements and get what he wants -and describing data ought to be a hell-of-a-sight easier than describing an analytic process This is no slap at the programmer -- or at the analyst If anything it is just recognition of the limitations of language as a means of conveying quickly a complex analytic process that may have many blind alleys Is there a solution to this dilemma I believe there is at least to the specific questions that Wayne raised and perhaps to facilitating all types of analysis The solution I suggest is not a panacea nor is it new but perhaps its time has fi ally come The Analyst's Scratch Pad Almost unn9ticed at NSA the outside world has undergone a revolution in their approach to computer support The day of the microcomputer has arrived Not only have thousands of very small businesses begun using them but -heaven forbid -- even individuals are buying them using them and rapidly creating new applications on them Oh you say these are all engineers and data systems people who want to take their work home with them as a hobby Not so None of the people I know who already have a personal computer or have ordered one is an engineer or a data systems professional One of them is 72 years old and never programmed before -- he is creating a program to analyze the genetics of his cattle herd and he doesn't think it's too late to learn to use computers Why is this happening There are probably numerous reasons among them the fact that very capable computers are becoming available at low cost less than $800 But another reason relates to the desire expressed by Wayne -- to have contact with the material they are studying These new computerists are really analysts who have discovered a powerful new scratch pad for their analytic wanderings Their ranks are swelling at an incredible rate So is the product of their labor Can any of this analytic-scratch-pad technology be applied to the problem described in Wayne's article You bet it can Computerists have found that the instantaneous nature of the computer can be very inhibiting to human beings -- so they created timing loops that simulate human response They found hat endless listings of data befuddled humans -- so they created graphic presentations of the same data so that v sual processes can be applied to problems They encountered problems in handling mistakes made in coding programs -- and created text and word processors to allow the easy manipulation of such data much in the manner than a call sign analyst would love to be able to do June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 10 CONFIDEN't'IAL P L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 CONFIDEN'fIAL Does NSA plan to provide such a capability to their analysts No At least not soon and perhaps not until most NSA analysts have a more useful capability at home than they have at work This is one case where the bureaucratic process has developed a life cycle that far exceeds the cycle of development of new systems and capabilities and costs outside NSA The budget for FY-80 is being built now and it will have us buying more of the large computer systems available last year or the year before There is money for collection and for processing but not for analytic support _ at feast the type of support Wayne and other analysts want Emotional response Yes it is emotional but only because I think NSA is missing an opportunity We have led the way in the design and application of computers to the analysis of seemingly unsolvable problems of cryptology Now the rest of the world has caught fire with enthusiasm in extending the computer's usefulness We ought to take advantage of this new impetus to extending human analytic capabilities no-t MinnieM Kenny MIN NIE'S MINI flVf Chief P16 YEARS LATER AND I STILL WANT ITI My my how the years roll by In the preceding article Bill Crowell says that he would like to see personal-sized computers used at NSA In the December 1973 issue of the B Group publication DRAGON SEEDS of which she was the founding editor Minnie M Kenny said the same thing That 1973 article is reproduced below with a brief introductory word by Mrs Kenny Ed I definitely agree with Mr Crowell as my article in DRAGON SEEDS indicates Mr Crowell's article expressed very succintly two points I tried to make to the ALBRECHT Group -- that an analyst must have contact with the materials he is studying and that the personal-sized minicomputers can be used as powerful new scratch pads and serve as catalysts for the development of new techniques and applications across the whole vista of cryptologic disciplines Imagine Desktop scopes with programmable keyboards and split-screen and scrolling capabilities They're the answer to a SIGINT maiden's prayers We came up with an idea why not hang a tape drive on that modified PDP-8 called the COPE terminal boosting its memory by 4K and declare our independence from Central Control No way We got bottled up in channels and buried under paperwork That's when I began dreaming of desk-top terminals for CA applications Can't you imagine a usercontrolled system of minicomputers say one master and three slaves with an interchangeable hierarchy to eliminate service interruption when there's a malfunction and a terminal on each analyst's desk Why you'd hardly need cross-section paper and pencils One day I stumbled across several idle CRTs I was nosing around down in C at the time I had to have them Hooked up to one of the general processors they'd make an adequate substitute for my dream system I lost out again I could pirate the terminals but I couldn't bootleg the hook-ups About this time R came on the scene touting minicomputers with blisters They were developing interactive CA applications And they wooed me with the promise of the realization of my dream We formed a committee which formed a t seems like ages ago when it all began study group which formed into teams which We were still at FANX and had just experi- inspected CA processes in B The results were enced the nine hundred and ninety-ninth published in a huge compendium called the power outage No COPE no RYE no 6700 ALBRECHT Study but I still want a mini no nothing To top it all off it wasn't even raining Now what kind of Providence was that I June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 11 CONFIBEN'f'IAL DOCID UNCLASSIFIED 4019650 NSA-crosfic No 15 The quotation on the next page s taken from a published work of an NSA-er The first letters of the WORDS spell out the author's name and the title of the work By A J S DEFINITIONS A Escort B ---------- of Texas 2 wds C Loathed 48 -4- 33 79 134 ill 210 247 D Born j 229 E Genus of snakes comprising the anaconda -8- 86 ill 156 F If I hadda knowed that you'da wanted to of went I'da seed that --z6 34 109 ----------------- cited in H L Mencken's The Amencan Language 6 wds 243 U G It sometimes takes people a long time to learn that there's no such thing -2- ill 182 218 as --------- 2 wds n ----s7 226 230 108 186 215 232 7 99 32 179 199 164 144 225 19 87 173 200 13 42 204 220 234 28 88 142 169 175 227 250 7T 151 H Ballet by Word L 2 wds I Bury 47 214 241 10 -g'f 139 209 -1- J Alice's ---------- 228 n ' K American revolutionary figure 1741-1801 2 wds L American composer 1900 2 wds M Lizard-like animal found in water or damp places N Capital of one of the Soviet republics 174 30 O Beloved 213 -3- P Civil War general commanded Confederate left in Battle of Gettysburg Q Decrease 104 153 246 5 114 147 50 ----g- 110 -5- 125 --- rs 135 195 148 117 244 191 R Clumsy S Type of roof T Get the better of 158 90 U Extend 249 160 181 206 140 170 8T 166 194 V In children's games the player whom the other players oppose 188 W The Indian who brought the-first electric power line to his tribe's com---rs 49 69 9T 133 157 -9- 112 136 187 192 223 235 245 munal outhouse was the first person ever to wire -------------------- 5 wds -r4 124 196 167 June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 12 UNCLASSIFIED DOCID 4019650 UNCLASSIFIED X Ballet set to music by Chopin 2 wds 55 84 180 212 203 197 216 143 15 222 128 51 Y G K ---------- 1874-1936 z Excel 66 131 92 41 189 100 74 83 58 208 36 198 Zl Great quantity Z2 Creme de ------ Z3 Interrogatory interjection Z4 Blue --- Z5 Teased good-naturedly 3 0 C 16 K il7 F K G 7 J 8 E 20 V 21 A 10 M 11 Q 24 H 25 0 L 171 K 172 I 184 Z5 185 R 197 X 211 B 224 232 H 235 W 236 245 W 246 N 247 C 248 K 249 Solution next month June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 13 UNCLASSIFIED DOCID 4019650 ever underestimate the power of th press even if it only has a negat ve effect In the May 1976 issue of CRYPTOLOG I had an article on the language problem within NSA and if I had known then what I know now I would not have submitted it for matters have now gone from bad to worse In the article I suggested that the language problem might well be solved if Agency powersthat-be would see fit to reward good linguists with tangible items like promotions Evidently the article struck a nerve for disparity between linguist promotions and those for others such as electronic engineers has increased N AS ' back in the 1960s Surely M3 has figures showing how many were trained and what became of them If memory serves me right there were few who completed the program and I have no way of knowing how many if any are still with the Agency and in language work Still let us assume that the exercise will be completely successful Then why don't we hire high school graduates to be trained as engineers or mathematicians After all if it would work for one skill it ought to work for all Somehow I doubt that those who hire mathematicians and engineers would allow that to happen So how did it happen for linguists I can only suspect that what I said in the earlier article continues to hold Those who make decisions about linguistic capability arenot linguists and they remain convinced t1 latit takes little to become one I would think that the fiasco of President CartElrJs interpreter in Poland might disabuse them of that notion There is an oldcriche You get what you pay for Fo years those who make decisions about hir ingfor the Agency have managed to ' u se hat cliche as a lever to have engineers and scientific personnel hired at higher I grades or at higher levels within grades Now to use another cliche The rich will get i richer and the poor will get poorer Linguists Will enter at the lowest possible grades and will be competing with those who are being I hired many grades above them with little -actually no -- hope of ever catching up This will be a self-perpetuating situation for the time will come when only engineers and scientists will have high enough grades to be considered for appointment to senior management positions and they will continue to make the decisions affecting linguists II But what about the latest solution to the If I sound bitter it is only because I am language problem -- hiring high school Our product so dependent upon the efforts of graduates to be trained as linguists It w ll linguists is bound to suffer as senior Iinbe quite some time before the r sults of t s guists leave and I do not see anything but a move can be evaluated so I am n no pos t on downhill trend in the years ahead if the to state positively that it will not work Ipresent policies remain unchanged You do Still I find it difficult to be optimistic et wha t you p a y for for I have been around long enough to remember the similar experiment with high school studentsl I11111 _ June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 14 fe effleIAL SE e b P L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 SBCRI3'1' SPORE June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 15 8BCRB'I' SPOKE P L 86-36 EO 1 4 c EO 1 4 d DOCID 4019650 SECRET SPOKE June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 16 SECRET SPOKE P L 86-36 EO 1 4 c EO 1 4 d DOCID 4019650 UNCLASSIFIED ceLT1C L Ngu ges ToDA A LOOK AT WELSH AND GAELIC P L L --- lanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch It is undoubtedly the longest place name in the world and it hangs over the train station of this village in Anglesey North Wales only a few miles distant from the village of Llanfairfeehan where I stayed in the summer of 1977 The name means St Mary's Church in a hollow of white hazel close to a rapid whirlpool and St Tysiiio's Church and near a red cave It is usually mercifully abbreviated to Llanfair P G I had come to Wales to learn more about the Welsh language and to collect materials in that language Later I would go north to Scotland and try to do the same with Gaelic The events that led to this pilgrimage and what I discovered there are the topic of this article Before discussing the difficulties that a student of Welsh encounters using words of more manageable length than the one above I would like to say a few words about Celtic in general We have witnessed a revival of interest in Celtic pronounced Kel-tick not Sel-tick -- there is no c pronounced as s in any Celtic language studies in recent years As I looked for the reasons behind this upsurge in interest I came up with several possible ones o the Roots search not limited to blacks but involving people of all ethnic groups o increased publicity In May 1977 National Geographic published a beautifully illus- Based on a talk given in September 1977 to SIGTRAN the Crypto-Linguistics Association's Special Interest Group on Translation - - 4- - - _ 4 trated article on the Celts by Merle Severy including a map of Celtic Europe The map shows that there were Celtic settlements as remote as present-day Turkey where the Galatians lived St Paul wrote an epistle to the Galatians and it eventually became part of the New Testament There is also a greater awareness of Celtic language and mythology because of the tremendous success of J R R Tolkien's books The Hobbitt The Lord of the Rings and more recently The Silmarillion draw upon the wellspring of Icelandic and Celtic lore Tolkien liked Welsh better than any other language and used it as a basis for many of the words in his artificial languages As people became aware of his sources their own interests in these subjects were stimulated o Another reason for the revival of interest is that the field has not been overworked There is still plenty to do In my own field of Hebrew -- especially in the area of the Bible -- scholars have gone over the same ground many times with a fine-toothed comb But with Celtic the situation is just the opposite Dr Robert Meyer of Catholic University in Washington once said that every time he puts down his spade as it were he comes up with something new o Last but not least one may mention the conflict in Northern Ireland which has called attention to all things Irish My own interest in Celtic languages can be traced at least in part to a chance remark made by Agency linguist John Murphy He pointed out that in many ways Irish resembles Hebrew and the other Semitic languages in its structure Some scholars had actually gone so far as to suggest June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 17 UNCLASSIFIED 86-36 --------- _ - DOCID 4019650 UNCLASSIFIED that the insular Celtic languages had been influInsular Continental enced by some Afro-Asiatic substratum John Gaulic etc a Murphy referred to such features as a construct few inscriptions state and conjugated prepositions Later on in Gaulic when I took Dr Meyer's course in Old Irish I was able to spot more similarities in addition P-Celtie X-Celtie to the ones John Murphy had mentioned Here are Sry thonic Goide lie some examples taken from the Scela Mucce Meic Welsh in Wales Old Irish Ogham Datho The Story of Mac Datho's Pig scanty material inscriptions 3rd ConstY'Uet State in Old Welsh but century A D legal Old Irish Ailb'e ainm in chon Ailbe was rich literary texts 6th century the name of the dog lit Ailbe name the dog heritage in MidA D exactly parallel to Ailbe shem ha-kelev if dle and Modern Irish and Scots Gaelic we were to translate it into Hebrew Welsh from 16th century Cornish Cornwall A D Verb-Subjeet-Objeet Word Order Breton Brittany Manx Isle of Man Old Irish ImdIehed in eu Laigniu huili Fig 1 The dog defended all Leinster lit Defended the dog Leinster all-of-it In classical Hebrew one would say Vayagen ha-kelev cal Leinster kullah preserving the same word order Such an order is unusual in a European language The insular branch is divided into K-Celtic Q-Celtic and P-Celtic because of a split that occurred from the Indo-European consonant 0 - In Irish the labialization was lost so that only the k sound remained cf the Irish word for head ceann as in the name Kennedy which literally means ugly head In Welsh on the other hand the word for head is pen as in penguin which literally means white head Conjugated Prepositions The Old Irish word for with is lao Conjugated with pronominal suffixes this becomes lem lat leiss etc In Hebrew and Arabic most prepositions can likewise be conjugated Both Manx and Cornish are extinct The last Cornish speaker is reported to have been a fisherwoman named Dolly Pantreath of Mousehole pronounced moose'l who died in 1789 Another researcher however has claimed that its last speakers were Cornish miners who took part in the California gold rush of 1849 Antieipatory eonstY'Uetion for genitive This feature is shared by both Old Irish and Aramaic Late Hebrew has it as a result of Aramaic influence Old Irisn Ba Heriu dia airdirous in ohon Ireland was full of the fame of the dog lit Was full Ireland of-his fame of the dog Cf Modern Hebrew Kalbo sel ha-'Ts lit his-dog of the man the dog of the man the man's dog Yet from a lexical standpoint the theory that insular Celtic had some kind of Semitic influence -- say from the Phoenicians -- finds no support Aside from a few chance resemblances there is no trace of it One thinks readily of the Arabic loan-words in Spanish Turkish or Persian the Spanish words in Basque or the enormous influence exerted on English by Norse from which even our third person th- pronouns were borrowed The fact that nothing like this can be seen in Celtic makes its connection with Hebrew very doubtful I should now like to give an overview of the Celtic languages both living and extinct before concentrating on Welsh and Gaelic to take their pUlse as it were to determine where they are healthy and where not and what is being done to keep them alive The Celtic languages can be divided into two groups insular and continental see Fig 1 The continental Celtic languages were once very widespread over the European continent but little is known about them Caesar wrote about the Gauls and there are some Gaulic inscriptions but little else remains lan I As for Manx there were still four persons alive in 1954 who spoke that language and they were very elderly at the time so we may safely assume that Manx too is by now a dead language Turning to Gaelic we find a living language but you may have to go out of your way to hear it spoken In Edinburgh I attended a Gaelic church service on a Sunday afternoon at the Highland Tolbooth St John's Church The people were most friendly they bade me a hundred thousand welcomes or Ceud mile failte as they say in Gaelic and I made the acquaintance of a kilted gentleman and his wife who put me in touch with the right organizations and publishing houses so that I could acquire more Gaelic materials The chap had even studied a bit of Hebrew as it turned out so we found that we had some other common ground and hit it off very nicely right from the start At his recommendation I visited the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh School was out for the summer and they were operating on a skeleton crew but the visit turned out to be worthwhile nonetheless I learned that they had recorded thousands of June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 18 UNCLASSIFIED DOCID 4019650 UNCLASSIFIED hours of Gaelic speech on tape and that they publish an attractive bilingual gazine Toaher Dowry It appears 3 times a year and costs only 40 p an issue Here you can find stories songs and traditions from the school's archives There is also a publishing house called Gairm Word which prints books and manuals in and about Gaelic see bibliography A complete Gaelic course is available on tape from National Extension College in Cambridge England for about $50 00 and a number of other tuitional aids are available on both disks and cassettes see bibliography name of the village where I stayed -- Llanfairfechan Now Llanfairfechan means literally Little Church of St Mary's L lan is church or parish a feminine noun Fair is really Mair Mary but after llan the m changes to f And the word fechan can be found in the dictionary only under its masculine form bychan small This is known as the soft mutation Besides the soft mutation there is a nasal mutation involving six consonants Labials DentaZs Voiced Unvoiaed b _ m d - n g _ng p mh t - nh c - ngh This generally happens after the words fy my and yn in Thus pen head but fy mhen my head But to hear Gaelic spoken freely and naturallYI one must go to the islands to a place such as Harris on the Isle of 'Lewis so far north that it never gets dark in the summertime and Finally there is a spirant mutation affectwhere people are not subjected to as much Enging the consonants c p and t This occurs lish influence Even television has not made after the word for her ei e g ei phen great inroads among the people as yet for the her head To use an English example peasant would become her pheasant eception is poor in this region A great deal of linguistic and sociological research is being But aside from this difficulty there is conducted on these people For example a book really no problem The English loan words was published in 1977 by Kenneth MacKinnon abound and the imprint of English is profound Language Eduaation and Soaial Processes in a in other respects as well once in a child's Gaelia Community If you are interested in story I came across the words Oedd PwZl mewn such minute details as the percentage of male piail Pwyll was in a pickle describing one Gaelic speakers using the formal second-person of the characters Pwyll hero of the First pronoun sibh to their wives p 19 or a poll Branch of the Mabinogion who had gotten himself that asks of the Harris community Do girls into some difficulty This is hardly the sort tend to keep their Gaelic in use better than of thing that one would expect to find in the 'boys p 163 then this is the pI ace to original Mabinogion _ or in any other writing turn to true to the Welsh s irit But in many ways Gaelic is losing ground There are also several Welsh newspapers Gaelic broadcasting already infrequent has such as Y Herald cymraeg indicating that recently been cut back even more by the BBC here again the situation is healthier than for causing an uproar among Gaelic supporters An Gaelic which only has an occasional page or appeal was made to the BBC and a final decision column in an English-language newspaper pubis pending lished in the Hebrides Welsh When we turn our attention to Welsh the picture has a rosier healthier look about it Here we are dealing with a much larger number of speakers -- perhaps around 2 million -- and their firm resolve to keep the language going Welsh is also easier than Gaelic in that it is more phonetic it is pronounced just about as it is written while Gaelic is like English in that its spelling includes silent letters etc Radio and TV programs abound I was able to tape a number of broadcasts during my stay in Wales But there is a difficulty i learning Welsh the initial mutations Most languages with which we are familiar introduce changes at the end of the word the declensions and conjugations of Latin or Russian for example Now imagine a language in which the word changes at the beginning How would you ever find it in the dictionary You couldn't of course unless you knew something about the grammar There is an excellent example of this in the It is also easier to find Welsh books There is for example a set of Welsh comic books designed to teach the language and make it seem like fun and though some of the humor is ribald and one senses that beer-drinking must be an important part of the culture the comic books are nonetheless an effective medium for the acquisition of the colloquial language There are also graded readers to help one along after he has mastered the rudiments of the language see bibliography I was even able to pick up attractive children's books such as Alioe in Wonderland and Snow White and the Seven' Dwarfs The story of Snow White with its Disneyesque illustrations takes place between the Welsh Village of Llanfair y Lli and Llanfair y Llwyn It was also possible to pick up an excellent Welsh dictionary at a very reasonable price in contrast to the Gae lie one which cost 8 and which I therefore decided to postpone buying As one travels the motorways one sees Welsh signs everywhere In the June 25 1977 June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 19 UNCLASSIFIED DOCIO 401%-50 CONFIDENTIAL issue of The Economist in an article entitled How Bilingual Was My Valley we are told that the government is spending 10 million to cover Wales with bilingual signs The article goes on to say The Welsh Language Society's long efforts at direct action -- raids on television transmitters bonfires of Englishlanguage documents and sit-ins -- have resulted in the Welsh population receiving dual-language versions of all kinds of official forms from driver's licenses to telephone bills with even the p for pence translated into c for ceiniogau So it appears that an all-out effort is being made for Welsh In contrast to a tiny corner devoted to Gaelic books at a Scottish book seller's one finds entire shops in Wales that specialize in Welsh books In one such shop in Caernarvon the owner Mr Eric Jones told me that after all the tourists go horne at the end of August one hardly hears a word of English spoken in the town until they return in April Here then is a field that has much to offer the language student Whether one delves into the medieval or modern phase of Celtic there is a wealth of interesting literature It is a field that is not overcrowded and in which much basic work- remains to be done But when one looks at those universities in the United States that offer Celtic languages one finds that there are only two American universities that have Celtic departments Harvard University and Catholic University Dr Robert T Meyer of Catholic is the only Professor Emeritus of Celtic languages in the country Elsewhere Celtic languages are offered within the departments of English or Modern Languages as is the case at the University of Texas for example Catholic University has an outstanding Cel tic collection having absorbed the libraries of Professor Joseph Dunn and Major William B S Smith These include a complete set of the Revue celtique and the rare Annales de Bretagne But the department has remained small due to the shortage of money they have a $50 000 endowment fund the annual interest from wnfch comes to only $3000 or so People are attracted to the course for a variety of reasons -- some are medievalists or majors in English or linguistics A small number are actually majoring in Celtic And then there are people like myself -- people already established in some field who through a series of circumstances have caught the Celtic fever and enjoy the subject as a pleasant and rewarding pastime Readers who would like to receive a copy of the bibliography prepared byl l i can get one by writing to CRJPTOLOG Pl or by calling the edito1' on 5236s U Miii iii J1 t6_ Edittn To the Editor CRYPTOLOG I am sure there are many opinions on the questions posed byl linuhisuuatticTe P L 86-36 What Ever Happened to COPES CRYPTOLOG January 1978 Perhaps the questions that should be answered is What has COPES done for us Have we increased our understanding of the target Has output level been maintained with less collec7io resour es Is c llection management EO 1 4 c eaS1er I bel1eve the m1ddle managers some of p whom must have been workers in early days of L 86- 3 6 COPE would have taken hold of COPES and made 1t their own 1f It nad demonstrated its utility IrE u go e n e A G i l b e r t s o n -- June 78 CRYPTOLOr Page 20 P L _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1 F-e - 'e e8 86-36 CONFIQJjNTItU EO 1 4 c P L 86-36 DOCID 4019650 ECRET SPOKE News of the Communications Analysis Associa tion By _ _----JI P14 P L 86-36 CAA Program Committee ur Progra mColll llitfee chaired bYc J has been busy too The committee How do you like our new logo As mentioned 1-1 n-c 'l u-d e-s ' in last month's News of the CAA the winning 5617s entry was sent in byl __ ___ 8379s We had hoped to have a professionally drawn 3505s version of it for this month's issue but we 4226s were late in asking Graphics to do it for us In addition to the monthly meetings of the In the meantime to appease your curiosity Board bimonthly meetings of the Special Interhere it is in a version based on the winner's est Group on Cryptologic History and operaoriginal sketch In case you don't know why tional briefs the Program Committee has lined you like i t so much Hugh explains that The up the following sp e a k e r s - design is the basic monogram based on Classic Roman Capitals arranged to give an impression 28 June of breadth and upward motion September U IL - -I I ---------------------------- Any ideas for other presentations or other speakers Let the committee know Monthly Meetings The CAA is on the move again in all its breadth and upward motion Our board meets once a month usually around the end of the month but the exact time and room change from one month to another But the meetings are open to all members or others If you want to come try and look us over before deciding whether to associate with the likes of us please do so We won't even swear you to secrecy about all the wild things that go on at the meetings If you're afraid to come alone bring a friend Where and when To tell you the truth as I write this in April I don't really know But as you read this in June you can find out J st check with your nearest CAA member or with any of the CAA Board members listed below Or if you're already a member watch for the notices arriving in y-our in-basket U Meet the CAA Secretary I Imoreugenerany krioWriuas Betty is currently Secretary of the CAA She came to an early predecessor of NSA as a French linguist but was shunted to cryptanalysis where she has dwelt happily ever since Her assignments have covered problems that are now handled in A B and G she has held technical management positions at section branch division and office staff levels and she now heads the Cryptanalysis Division in the National Cryptologic School She is a member of the Crypto-Linguistics Association and of the CAA Special Interest Group on Cryptologic History She is also an EEO Counselor President of the Patuxent Business and Professional Women's Club and editor of its Newsletter the former editor of the U WIN Women in NSA Newsletter fo'rmer Cryptanaly sis Editor of CRYPTOLOG and Rewrite Editor of its predecessor Dragon Seeds P L 86-36 U Communications Analysis Association President David Gaddy 3247 President-elect frank 5879 Secretary Treasurer Board members P L 86-36 EO 1 4 c June 78 CRYPTOLOG Page 21 SECRET SPOKE pgrTjno 1 18025 Tim Murphy 3791 4935 5991 3S73 3369 P L L 86-36 PI-MAY 78-53-26425 86-36 D6510 4019650 This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu