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THE EDITORIAL
Welcome all to our 50 th Issue and to the year 2009, and all that it may bring.
We are entering into uncharted waters, the combination of global economic uncertainty coupled with the profusion of conflicts, both political and military,
in all areas of the globe are leading us into a very dangerous and unstable world.
At no time in history have all these factors come together in simultaneous effect on so many people, it is a frightening prospect.
Our respective governments flail their arms in despair, they also have no previous experience of this situation, looking for a Philosopher’s Stone – which
will not be found.
For many of us there may well be difficult times ahead.
What has this got to do with Enigma 2000 , you may ask.
In practice probably not a great deal, but in individual personal terms maybe more than we think.
As a group we are bonded only by our particular hobby interest, free and untainted from intrusion of Nationality, Colour, Religion, Creed or Location.
As such we can mutually support each other in the face of difficulty and each of us do our own part for our fellow members interests, just by being there,
just by being friends, just by being careful in what we say.
Enjoy, once again, our efforts
Paul & Mike L
We start this special issue with an interesting short penned by Simon Spiro…………
READY,WILLING AND ABEL TO SPY
BY SIMON SPIRO
As number addicts trawl the airwaves looking for that elusive station how many of us wonder about the location. or identity of the intended recipient Are
they western traitors, an undercover Russian on a mission, or some new recruit undergoing training Some will be Russian illegals, sent abroad with
fictitious identities to live in a target country. One of these was Colonel Rudolph Abel about whom more information has emerged since the end of the
Cold War.
Of particular interest to E2K readers is the fact that he was controlled by numbers.
On June 21 1957 agents of the US Immigration Service raided a room at the Hotel Latham, in New York and arrested the occupant.
This was the culmination of months of work by the FBI who had been informed that a Russian illegal was working in the city. He was living undercover as
a photographer and artist who also seemed to take an interest in short wave radio.
The FBI investigation had actually started in 1953 with the famous ‘Hollow Nickel Case.’
This chance event involved a newspaper boy who dropped a hollow coin on the ground and then found it had split in two. In spy conscious America at that
time he guessed that it might be espionage related. It was handed to the police who then passed it to the FBI as it contained a square of microfilm wrapped
in tissue paper.
Under a microscope the film contained 207 groups of five numbers (sound familiar) The blocks had 21 groups down and 10 across with the, numbers
12740/622 typed at the bottom of the page. The typeface was Russian according to the FBI and even after several years of analysis, nobody, in US
intelligence could break the code.
The microfilm remained a mystery until 1956 when Lt Col Reino Hayhanen of the KGB walked in through the front door of the US embassy in Paris and
asked to speak to somebody. He had been an illegal agent working in New York; a Russian who entered the USA via Finland.
He had been the intended recipient of the ‘Nickel’ message but had somehow lost the coin, possibly by spending it in a shop. He had been the assistant of
the agent known as Rudolph Abel who was arrested in New York.
Hayhanen was disliked and distrusted by Abel and due to his foreign accent and excessive drinking, he had been sent back to Russia by Abel. Guessing
that his career was over and a "warm" welcome would be waiting for him in Moscow he decided to defect to the Americans. His codename was "Vic" and
although he knew Abel by the codename "BARK" he did not know his real name or where he was based in New York.
Hayhanen was able to unlock the secret nickel message. As all his messages were received on microfilm he used no radio. His code was based on a system
he had to memorise.
He would construct a grid based on the Russian word for 'snowfall', part of a Russian folk song, a patriotic Russian date and his agent number.
During his training as an illegal he had spent 2-3 weeks on cryptographic training learning how to encipher and decipher messages.
During Abel's trial, where he was a witness, he explained his system; it was incredibly dull even for amateur cryptographers! He had no one time pad and
all his messages were on microfilm and sent through drops. He would receive 6-7 messages each year and decoded them using the keys mentioned before
and a Russian alphabet in a box. The numbers would be substituted for Russian letters in a 40-cell checkerboard including full stops, commas, repeat and
message stop symbols.
To add a level of fiendish complexity, the plaintext was chopped into two parts and a message start sign would indicate where the message started in the
text. It was a complicated system to follow but after a few attempts on the course it became routine!
The integrity of the system was shown by the fact that the FBI and NSA could not solve the message in four years. It relied on memory, substitution,
transposition and other complications. There was no pattern to the messages and a long series of calculations for the key derivations. The key varied from
message to message and each agent had their own key committed to memory.
The bisection of the message could not be found unless one knew how to do it and beginnings and endings could not be exploited. It also meant that there
was no cryptographic equipment to betray him but the KGB did let Hayhanen have microfilmed notes of how to construct the messages in case he forgot!
(Illegals are human presumably)
Hayhanen described the areas in New York where he met Abel and what he looked like. The FBI staked out those areas and eventually saw someone who
fitted his description. He was arrested in his room on immigration charges and a thorough search was carried out there and in his photographic studio to
find evidence of espionage. He was posing as an artist and photographer.
The FBI found that Abel was using a one-time pad in his espionage activities and its use was described in detail at his trial. He was the highest ranking
KGB officer ever arrested in the US and a search of his room and artist's studio revealed a rich haul of material. There was a block of wood casually
discarded in a bin. This was found to be hollow and contained a one-time pad. The pad had 250 pages glued together with numbers in black in one half of
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