[Cryptography] USS Pueblo and crypto

[Arnold Reinhold]

On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 21:07, Jonathan Thornburg wtote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 12:12:37PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> In 1968 the spy ship USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea, allegedly in 
>> their waters (but the Americans dispute this) after a 2-hour chase and the 
>> death of a crew member; there was no time to destroy the classified 
>> material.  The crew were held prisoner for 11 months, but the Pueblo 
>> remains in North Korea as a war museum exhibit, and still remains a 
>> commissioned USN ship (the only one still held in captivity).
>> 
>> Dunno what happened to the crypto stuff, but I'll bet that the Chinese were 
>> slavering over it...
> 
> Laura Heath's thesis on John A Walker's spying (for the USSR),
>  http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/heath.pdf <http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/heath.pdf>
> says there's some evidence (of course, not conclusive) that the Pueblo
> seisure was orchestrated by the USSR, and that 792 pounds of equipment
> and documents captured from the Pueblo were shipped to the USSR shortly
> after the capture.
> 
> ["792 pounds" strikes me as an odd value, since a USSR source would
> probably quote a round number in kilograms, but 360kg = 793.4lbs.]
> 
> David Kahn's "The Codebreakers" says there were a fair number of warning
> signs which the NSA missed/overlooked/ignored that the Pueblo's mission
> might provoke a serious North-Korean response.  After the Pueblo's capture,
> the NSA quietly ended the AGER spy-ship program (of which the Pueblo was
> a member).

There is quite a bit of material about this on the web:

The NSA's damage report:

   https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/uss_pueblo/Doc_1.pdf

Comments by the USS Pueblo crew:

   http://www.usspueblo.org/Aftermath/John_Walker_KW7.html

And in particular, a rebuttal by the Pueblo’s commander, Captain Bucher:

   http://www.usspueblo.org/Aftermath/Bucher_Walker_KW7_rebutal.pdf

He makes a strong case that the Soviets already knew what they needed to make use of the key lists Walker ring supplied them. His suggestion that KL-7s had been captured during the Vietnam war is buttressed by the fact that the KL-7 on display in the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum was donated by North Vietnam. 

According to the Wikipedia KG-13 article: "When the USS Pueblo, with a KG-13 aboard, was captured by the North Koreans in 1968, the personnel didn't have time to destroy it. As a result, a working model of the KG-13 fell into enemy hands. NSA quickly designed a modification to the koken stage board to alter its operation in order that the enemy didn't have an identical working model.” Therefore it’s quite possible the Soviets were unhappy with the PRK’s seizure of the USS Pueblo since it may have caused them some extra trouble. 

Arnold Reinhold

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