Comments
Arif YILDIRIM • April 21, 2011 8:33 PM
I don’t understand why these documents are at CIA and they released under the Freedom of Information Act even if CIA didn’t exist at WWI. The documents are in English and French so the European languages, maybe they passed to CIA by English or French governments, mostly English, I guess. Because of the historical reasons I think. In addition, I really admire Germany’s technology and ideas about the security while in WWI and WWII; they were really contributor to Cryptography/Stenography. Secret ink and Enigma. These were really good efforts.
Nobodyspecial • April 21, 2011 9:57 PM
The first one seems to be encrypted in some strange form
David • April 21, 2011 10:32 PM
It’s probably best that the authorities release this information before WikiLeaks does!
Mike Wonham • April 22, 2011 1:27 AM
The first one is a recipe for a tart tatin cupcake. Always go down with a bang at parties.
calimelo civciv • April 22, 2011 3:32 AM
declassification of files by a non-existing organization. CIA must have been a legacy of some other organization which makes me think it all the way goes to Christopher Columbus. The first inteliligence officer of USA.
jotwe • April 22, 2011 3:43 AM
Columbus. The first inteliligence officer of USA.
That would explain why he believed that he was in India 😀
BF Skinner • April 22, 2011 6:34 AM
” media is reporting they’re CIA documents, but the CIA didn’t exist before 1947″
Reading media stories about my area of work leads me to belive the problem is less about any sort of ‘bias’ but lazy or unskilled reporting.
Does anyone know who writes well about our world?
BF Skinner • April 22, 2011 6:35 AM
@jotwe “he believed that he was in India ”
No. No. He connected the dots. Just either cherry picked or left a bunch out.
wiredog • April 22, 2011 7:10 AM
Well, the first one is marked “Received Jul 12 1918” by “Director O.N.I.” which would be Office of Naval Intelligence. But it’s also marked “EXEMPT from automatic declassification” by someone named Turner (Stansfield perhaps?) on 28 Jan 1978.
kingsnake • April 22, 2011 7:46 AM
Hopefully my grandkids (some yet unborn) will still be alive when they get around to fully declassifying the Spanish-American War …
Axel • April 22, 2011 9:57 AM
Document 6, item 30:
“For developing, heat paper slightly and powder with finely powdered dragons blood.”
Historian • April 22, 2011 10:05 AM
@Arif, @Calimelo, @BF Skinner
No, the CIA did not exist before 1947, but they owned the documents because of the direct progression from WW1, when the various military branches ran disjointed intelligence operations, then the OSS was formed during WWII to consolidate the intelligence efforts, and finally, post-WWII, the CIA was formed (and the OSS disbanded) to organize intelligence operations under civilian control.
The CIA may not have created the documents in question, but they certainly were under their control, and the documents could be called “CIA documents”.
Ned • April 22, 2011 11:07 AM
Is there a dick drawn on the fourth page of the fourth document?
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CIAsOldest/Secret-writing-document-four.pdf
And then scribbled over?
Seriously, it looks like a dick to me.
kabel • April 22, 2011 11:12 AM
@kingsnake: Or stop taxing us for it.
Dirk Praet • April 22, 2011 11:15 AM
@ Historian
“when the various military branches ran disjointed intelligence operations”
Well, it’s reassuring that we’ve come a long way since those dark days. It is a well-established fact that nowadays all TLA’s, military and civilian alike, work closely together to protect us from hordes of blood-thirsty muslim terrorists and sneaky Chinamen who are after our secrets and hell-bent on crippling our critical infrastructures. And all of that while making optimum use of the taxpayer’s dollars, baring in mind nothing else but efficiency and the savegarding of our freedoms.
Rob Smeets • April 22, 2011 3:16 PM
@Dirk Praet,
People from Betelgeuze 5 do not understand that type of talk.
Nick P • April 22, 2011 8:01 PM
@ Ned
You might be right lol. I was going to comment that it was missing the tip, but then I noticed a worn out part that looked like that. Who draws dicks on Top Secret documents? The guys working on that “honorable” discharge, perhaps?
(Note: I think I’d do it just to piss some people off. Ya know how those War College types hate reading anything vulgar… 😉
spoke • April 22, 2011 10:22 PM
I’d be far more interested in hearing about chip implants and remotely controlled EEG related studies.
“DARPA budgeted $4 million in 2009 to investigate technology to enable soldiers on the battlefield to communicate via computer-mediated telepathy. The aim is to analyse neural signals that exist in the brain before words are spoken.”
- secure <> wikimedia.org <> wikipedia/en/wiki/Eeg#EEG_and_Telepathy
Nick P • April 23, 2011 1:17 AM
@ spoke
I thought I heard that SRI developed that capability a long time ago and correlated certain neural patterns with words? Personally, though, I thought J.F. Shapitz’s DOD-sponsored work on radio-induced hypnotic suggestion was the most interesting because it was one of the only experiments from the MKULTRA days whose results didn’t leak from classified files or informants. I’ve always wondered what they found.
asd • April 23, 2011 1:45 AM
@Nick P , if you don’t mind a religons text being programmed into you when you walk into a shop maybe don’t donwload it
Clive Robinson • April 23, 2011 8:37 AM
@ Spoke, Nick P,
It might not be “brainwave analysis” but…
Engineers in National Instruments Waterloo labs have come up with some hardware and software to read the electrical impulses from around the eye to control game play etc. The technology has been made open source and you can either google “eye Mario” or have a look at,
So maybe with a little further work you to could build your own Electro Encephalo Graph/gram (EEG) interface and have your own brain controled wheel chair etc (as described in the Book about a Russian MiG fighter which in the film had Clint Eastwood as the disaffected US pilot sent in to steal it).
Various University labs around the world including several in the UK are working on “concious thought control” by reading brain waves but it is extremely difficult because the human mind does many many things simultaneously with the bigest chunk going to sensory input (vision, hearing etc).
It apears the current leaders on the wheel chair side are Toyota…
MikeA • April 23, 2011 10:08 AM
@Axel
Dragon’s blood is/was the common name for a resinous substance used as a “resist” in printing.
The Muggle printers next door to me used it well into the 1970s.
asd • April 23, 2011 6:03 PM
@Clive Robinson, reprogramming might be easier, say or hear the words I want to go forward, and then give a electrical pulse to a part of the arm.
Like in martial arts 5000 rep should store it in long term memory. Then when they think to go forward there arm should tinkle.
Compressing the words to sound below 15khz should speed up the learning time involved
tommy • April 24, 2011 9:18 PM
@ Ned, Nick P:
Assuming that you are correct, then what would that sort-of triangle-shaped thing on the left side of the page be?
(Nick, being caught at that might lead to a “premature discharge” — despite, of course, one’s long honorable record as an able-bodied semen.)
tommy • April 25, 2011 4:52 PM
@ Nick P and Ian:
I’m disappointed. I thought that the two were the basic design for some type of penetration-testing equipment.
Or the logo for it. 😉
AC2 • April 26, 2011 1:28 AM
@Clive
Well, Clint Eastwood did all this a long time back in Firefox…
"You MUST think in RUSSIAN!"
Tom Dibble • April 27, 2011 10:23 PM
Triangle thing looks kind of like a golf insignia to me. Not sure why. I really like the “O N I” doodle… reminds me of a Metallica logo drawn on some high schooler’s trapper-keeper.
I can deal with the phallic doodling. But, why the need to practice one’s signature 7 or so times? And just who is “F Martineli”?
Tom Dibble • April 27, 2011 10:29 PM
I’d also note on the first/second document the asymmetry of the process: encrypted (written) using fairly ordinary / simple processes (two ingredients, not particularly exactly measured out, but kept in rough proportion, in a solution of water). Decrypted using two baths of different complex mixtures and a relatively significant time investment. Quite modern in design.
asd • April 28, 2011 2:23 AM
@Mod, is there a edit botton?
cowtipper • April 28, 2011 6:03 PM
remote controlled faked insects for the win!
how about a nice robotic earwig which plants a bug inside the ear canal while the subject is asleep?
imagine the possibilities!
asd • April 28, 2011 8:23 PM
shit 🙁 now i’m going have to buy some Tarantulas
Subscribe to comments on this entry
Leave a comment
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Gary Arndt • April 21, 2011 7:57 PM
When we make this sort of information public, the Kaiser wins.