Talk:ULTRA

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Changing meaning

I don't have the references right here at hand, but my recollection is that the meaning of "Ultra" changed over time. I think it initially referred to just the Enigma system(s) (both Army, GAF and Navy), but eventually came to cover all high-level cryptanalytic intel. I think the same was true of the US term MAGIC, which came to cover all HLCI. If I have time, I'll try and research this issue further. J. Noel Chiappa 20:05, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

While I don't have the references at hand, I did once spend some research time with the original documents. There were a variety of names, both internal to the COMINT community and outside it. At Churchill's level, the material usually was code-worded BONIFACE or BLACK JUMBO, and even among the very few nontechnical people that saw it, the conscious impression was given that it came from a human source. When the SLU system started distributing it to senior commanders, they had a need to know that it was COMINT. Some SLU-related material suggests there may have been specific distribution lists, which the U.S. now calls BIGOT lists, but there was no special marking that differentiated the Mediterranean BIGOT list from the Channel list.

Eventually, there were three levels of British COMINT: ULTRA RABID, ULTRA DEXTER and ULTRA...ummm...I'lll think of it. It's in Kahn's Codebreakers in the other room. The lowest level was mostly non-cryptanalytic: traffic analysis, especially sensitive direction finding, and what we'd now call a radiofrequency MASINT technique of using recorders and time-domain oscilloscopes to recognize individual variations in Morse keying. Of course, an experienced operator could hear those variationsm, but that takes years to train. There were other markings for tactical direction finding.

I never saw a MAGIC document with any supplemental codewords. In Dan Gallery's book on the capture of the U-505, he talked about a "special TOP SECRET marking", but I went through the logs of his task group at the Naval Operational Archives, and they were just TS, not even MAGIC.

There was a little-known U.S. organization called Joint Security Control (JSC), which was acknowledged to be the steward of agreements on markings. For example, there was a Joint Security Classification Agreement in 1942, in which the British agreed to change from MOST SECRET to TOP SECRET. BIGOT was also established as a code word for TORCH.

What did not come out until the late seventies was that JSC was the U.S. counterpart to the utterly black London Controlling Section (LCS), the strategic deception organization that ran what was first Plan JAEL, and then OPERATION BODYGUARD (Churchill: "In wartime, truth is so precious that she must be protected by a bodyguard of lies.")

I am not clear if the Double-Cross system had any special markings; I've never seen originals of their documents. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:40, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I've mostly relied on secondary sources (with limited exceptions such as memoirs, which of course have their own issues, unless carefully researched).

Was BIGOT used on TORCH too? I thought it was an OVERLORD compartmented code word.

I've been working on a bibliography for Ultra, much of which applies to Enigma. I should add a few Colossus-related books, which are of course specific to FISH; I'd been (incorrectly) thinking 'Enigma' when I saw 'Ultra'. (Blasted code names - I get them all mixed up, and the tendency to drift in meaning a bit over time on the part of some, like 'Ultra', doesn't help!)

Speaking of which, do we have an Enigma article yet? I assume as some point we should have separate article on Enigma, and the breaking thereof. I seem to recall WP had a good article about Enigma, we should probably snarf that. (I see they have a separate article on the attack on it.)

Actually, WP has a number of good article in this area we could snarf - Colossus and Sturgeon - the Fish and Tunny ones aren't so good - although we could use them for source, and re-write. J. Noel Chiappa 23:34, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

BIGOT, as you probably know, originated when the TORCH planners going to Gibraltar had their orders stamped TO GIB; BIGOT spelled it backwards. We get sort of nuanced here; it probably started being used after TORCH, but before OVERLORD was even coined; it was probably somewhere in the BOLERO-ROUNDUP-SLEDGEHAMMER stage.

Incidentally, have you been to the National Cryptologic Museum? I was absolutely amazed when I got to play with an Enigma; the thing looked and felt like a badly maintained 1930-ish manual typewriter. The U.S. SIGABA, which was behind glass, looked like Body by Porsche.

My interest in the primary sources was more in the history of classification, in the mid-seventies. I think I started before the big declassifications, but I had some sponsors that got me a lot of access. While Kahn discusses BIGOT, I first had it explained in an on-the-record interview with the director of security at CIA. BIGOT lists remain a standard procedure for compartmented control systems, although their use is up to the compartment manager. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:28, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think there needs to be something on changes over time, a link to MAGIC, ... I considered rewriting the intro to do that, but decided I didn't know enough to do it well.

More generally, though, the article just needs to be written up beyond stub. Also, related articles like Enigma machine and Collossus need to be written and others like Alan Turing expanded. I think the changes issue will be dealt with in that process. Sandy Harris 03:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)