COMING EVENTS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETINGS
The Board of Directors meets once a quarter at the Courtyard Marriott BWI Hotel in the National Business Park, Annapolis Junction, MD. The meeting is held in the Meade room from 1000 – 1200. Meetings are currently scheduled for: September 10 and December 3, 2010.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (EXCOM) MEETINGS
The EXCOM meets the second Thursday of each month unless a BOD meeting or general membership meeting is scheduled that month. The EXCOM meets in the SIGABA room of the NCM from 1000 – 1200. Meetings are currently scheduled for: August 12, and November 8, 2010.
SPECIAL EVENTS
January 19 – July 30, 2010 - Cambridge University Library exhibition titled “Under Covers: Documenting Spies”
Cambridge University Library will shine a light on the shadowy world of espionage using recently declassified documents and ‘top secret’ material from its own archives. The free exhibition examines the art of espionage from Biblical times to the Cold War era.
It draws on personal archives, printed books, official publicity material, popular journals and specialist photographs and maps, mostly from the University Library’s own collections, to illustrate a few of the ways in which spies have been documented through the centuries.
University Librarian Anne Jarvis said “Under Covers brings together an astonishing variety of different kinds of material, all throwing light on the business of uncovering – and keeping – secrets. The University Library is pleased to be able to be uncovering some documentary evidence of these secrets in this exhibition.”
Exhibits range from a 12th-century manuscript recounting the story of King Alfred the Great entering a Danish camp disguised as a harpist to a Soviet-era map of East Anglia. John Ker’s 18th-century ‘licence to spy’, granted by Queen Anne, shows that the underworld of spies was well established long before James Bond’s licence to kill.
Other highlights include papers used by a Parliamentary Committee investigating the Atterbury Plot of the 1720s, a telegraph from the MI6 chief of the day confirming news of Rasputin’s murder, and letters to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin from Lord Curzon and Winston Churchill, only declassified in 2007. Incensed at being denied access to intercepted Japanese telegrams already seen by more junior personnel, Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Prime Minister Baldwin on February 5, 1925: “How can I conduct the controversies on which the management of our finances depends, unless at least I have the same knowledge of secret state affairs freely accessible to the officials of the Admiralty? The words “monstrous” and “intolerable” leap readily to mind.”
A 1985 Soviet map of East Anglia shows English towns and cities in Cyrillic script. Maps of this sort were produced by the Soviet military for more than 50 years before, during, and after the Cold War. Classified as secret, these maps were unknown outside the Soviet military machine until the break-up of the USSR – when they became available on the open market.
The Atterbury Plot papers from the personal archive of Sir Robert Walpole are among the jewels of the exhibition. The plot aimed to restore the Stuart monarchy in Britain between the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745. One of these is a deposition of William Squire concerning the arrest of Christopher Layer on September 18, 1722. Layer was later hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn for his part in the plot.
Twentieth-century material includes a copy of Compton MacKenzie’s book Greek Memories that belonged to MI5 Deputy-Director Eric Holt-Wilson. The book resulted in MacKenzie being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act after he gave details of his time as MI6 station chief in the Eastern Mediterranean. Holt-Wilson’s copy shows the spy chief’s own crossings-out of offending passages.
An Allied escape map of the German-Swiss frontier, a bogus map of the D-Day target area (accurate except for meaningless place names), and detailed dossiers of information gathered by the Nazis for their planned invasion of Britain, form part of the examination of espionage in the Second World War.
The Cambridge Spies also feature, among other items, student record cards for Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and John Cairncross, and a 1933 copy of The Granta magazine with a mock interview with Donald Maclean which reveals his ability to take on different personae. Intelligence historian Dr Nicholas Hiley, who has lent rare material from his own collections for inclusion in the display, said: “A library might seem a strange place for an exhibition of secret service, given its association with guns, fast cars, and high-tech gadgetry.”
“But the one thing that both espionage and counter-espionage have depended upon for centuries is paper - for agent reports, ciphers and codes; for maps and plans; for reports on suspects and advice to government; and for the hundreds of thousands of files on which secret service depends. Paper has also been the basis of the spy novels, memoirs, and histories, which have revealed that secret world to a wider public. In fact, libraries and archives are the best place from which to survey the long history of spies and spying.”
Under Covers: Documenting Spies runs from January 19 to July 30, 2010. Entry to the exhibition is free. Opening times are Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm, Saturday 9am-4.30pm, Sunday closed.
( Information source - http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2010011801
October 12, 2010 General Membership Meeting
December 7, 2010 Pearl Harbor Program
October 5, 2011 General Membership Meeting
October 6 - 7, 2011 Center for Cryptologic History Symposium
CALL FOR PAPERS
The National Security Agency’s Center for Cryptologic History sponsors the Cryptologic History Symposium every two years. Historians from the Center, the Intelligence Community, the defense establishment, and the military services, as well as distinguished scholars from American and foreign academic institutions, veterans of the profession, and the interested public all will gather for two days of reflection and debate on topics from the cryptologic past.
The theme for the upcoming conference will be: “Cryptology in War and Peace: Crisis Points in History.” This topical approach is especially relevant as the year 2011 is an important anniversary marking the start of many seminal events in our nation’s military history. The events that can be commemorated are many.
Such historical episodes include the 1861 outbreak of the fratricidal Civil War between North and South. Nineteen forty-one saw a surprise attack wrench America into the Second World War. The year 1951 began with the fall of Seoul to Chinese Communist forces with United Nations troops retreating in the Korean War. In 1961, the United States began a commitment of advisory troops in Southeast Asia that would eventually escalate into the Vietnam War; that year also marked the height of the Cold War as epitomized by the physical division of Berlin. Twenty years later, a nascent democratic movement was suppressed by a declaration of martial law in Poland; bipolar confrontation would markedly resurge for much of the 1980s. In 1991, the United States intervened in the Persian Gulf to reverse Saddam Hussein’s aggression, all while the Soviet Union suffered through the throes of its final collapse. And in 2001, the nation came under siege by radical terrorism.
Participants will delve into the roles of signals intelligence and information assurance, and not just as these capabilities supported military operations. More cogently, observers will examine how these factors affected and shaped military tactics, operations, strategy, planning, and command and control throughout history. The role of cryptology in preventing conflict and supporting peaceful pursuits will also be examined. The panels will include presentations in a range of technological, operational, organizational, counterintelligence, policy, and international themes.
Past symposia have featured scholarship that set out new ways to consider out cryptologic heritage, and this one will be no exception. The mix of practitioners, scholars, and the public precipitates a lively debate that promotes an enhanced appreciation for the context of past events. Researchers on traditional and technological cryptologic topics, those whose work in any aspect touches upon the historical aspects of cryptology as defined in its broadest sense, as well as foreign scholars working in this field, are especially encouraged to participate.
The Symposium will be held at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory’s Kossiakoff Center, in Laurel, Maryland, a location central to the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas. As has been the case with previous symposia, the conference will provide unparalleled opportunities for interaction with leading historians and distinguished experts. So please make plans to join us for either one or both days of this intellectually stimulating conference.
Interested persons are invited to submit proposals for a potential presentation or even for a full panel. While the topics can relate to this year’s theme, all serious work on any aspect of cryptologic history will be considered. Proposals should include an abstract for each paper and/or a statement of session purpose for each panel, as well as biographical sketches for each presenter. To submit proposals or form more information on this conference, contact Dr. Kent Sieg, the Center’s Symposium Executive Director, at 301-688-2336 or via email at kgsieg@nsa.gov.
