A Story of Eavesdropping (April, 1986) 
--------------------------------------

       Everybody knows an old man who was in the Second World War and 
       has plenty of war stories to tell.  Well sometimes it pays to 
       take the time to listen. 


     We knew that the enemy was monitoring all of our international 
radiotelephone channels, despite the sophisticated voice-scramblers which 
inverted speech, making high tones into low ones and vice versa.  Only 
authorized persons were permitted to use overseas telephone circuits. 

     We were equipped with elaborate recorders and switching control boxes
which permitted us to cut off either side of a conversation, or to substitute
ourselves for either party.  A strict set of rules forbade us to permit maritime
information, weather reports, cargo information, etc. to pass over the circuits. 
     Influences in Washington sometimes resulted in orders issued to us to
permit use of the overseas telephone circuits, even though we were suspicious
of previous conversations because parables and unusual phrases often used, made
it difficult to follow what was being said. "How can we monitor carefully, when
we can't understand what they're saying?" went unheeded. 

     We caught one fellow red-handed in South America using weird terms like 
birds leaving the nest with a basket of eggs.  I finally cut in the circuit and
told him I'd forgotten what they meant.  He tried a couple of other phrases, 
which I also couldn't understand. Finally, he lost his patience and blurted out,
"Oh hell.  I'm talking about those special munition orders which left yesterday
for Germany."

     By this time, a special telephone speech scrambler had been developed which
was small enough to fit and use on a desk.  Its availability was extremely 
limited, but a couple of army officers - one in the U.S. and the other in 
Panama - had been able to get hold of a pair of them, and between them secretly
installed them on their desks, unbeknownst to us of course! 

     One day I heard the fellow in Panama say, "OK Joe, now over to the 
scrambler,"  and their ensuing conversation became unintelligible.  We quickly 
checked the radio telephone circuit equipment and discovered that the technical
characteristics of the equipment they were using and our own were identical. 
As a result, when they inserted their scramblers the speech inversion righted 
itself and their conversations went out over the radiotelephone circuit in 
clear language - readable by anyone! That was the end of the use of their 
private "secret conversation system."  

    Some of the worst offenders of overseas telephone use security were the top
people.  I'll have to list Generals Eisenhower and Marshall as two of them at 
least sometimes.  I can remember one day the circuit between London and 
Washington happened to be very poor in quality and "understandability" was
stretched to the utmost.

     General Marshall in Washington had General Eisenhower on the line in 
London who couldn't understand a word of what Marshall was saying.  Marshall 
repeated several times "Ike, this is GCM - Marshall - GCM - got it?"  without 
results.  Finally in frustration Marshall turned to an aide and could be 
plainly heard to say "What's the code word for my name?"

     The next thing we knew, Marshall was slowly and distinctly repeating his 
code name interspersed with  "GCM"  and "Marshall."  Of course, we had to cut 
the circuit and notify the code group in Washington to immediately "bust" the 
code we couldn't take any chances - revelation of the code word for his name 
might have been all the enemy intelligence was waiting for to help it 
"code-break" other communications. 

     On the other hand, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill were 
two of the best and easiest to monitor.  Both used references to previously 
transmitted overheard messages by numbers and most of the conversations were 
along the lines:  "Well Winnie, on number 528, I really don't think we should 
do that - you know how they are."  Nobody could gain any information from 
listening to their telephone conversations. 

     I always enjoyed listening to Sir Winston originating a call.  The British
telephone operators were required on every connection to announce in advance of
a conversation: "You are warned not to mention the names of vessels, sailing 
dates or conditions, cargoes, weather, etc., etc., etc., any violation on your 
part will result in the circuit being cut off and your action being reported to
the highest authority.  Do you understand?"  Sir Winston always dociley replied.
"Yes ma'am.  I understand."

     One enemy group had learned the "language" of speech inversion.  For 
example, listening on the air to a radiotelephone circuit, one might hear a 
word that sounded exactly like 'krinkanope.'  That was the word 'telephone' 
after it had passed through the speech inversion system!