Dennis: “Oh but if I went ’round sayin’ I was Emperor, just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!” — Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Keeping Secrets
by J. Hamilton
My father was the chief cryptographer for the Army Air Corp Training Command in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1943 to the end of the war. I was a modern cryptographer when I served in Vietnam, and had a secret-crypto security clearance. I refused a top secret clearance because it would have kept me too close to headquarters.
Private Bradley Manning had a secret clearance and never saw any message with a higher security rating. That is why so much of the material concerning Iraq, Afghanistan, and the State Department that WikiLeaks recently published consists of routine administrative tittle-tattle that serves to confirm what was already on good grounds known or suspected to be true.
The only people who might feel their ox has been gored are those of the ideological left, whose smoky dreams of chicanery, duplicity, and evil intentions were dashed by the daily realities of men and women doing the best they could under difficult circumstances.
Also, King Saud and other Muslim leaders whose off-the-record comments vis-à-vis Iran and Israel didn’t correspond to their public utterances might feel betrayed. It was pleasing to learn (what should have been obvious) how much they hated and feared Iran.
Since there is no shocking revelation in the leaked material beyond what intelligent people already knew, since there is no personal opinion revealed that could be seriously challenged, the sole damage to the United States was the ability of WikiLeaks to acquire the information. Which returns us to Private Bradley Manning.
The United States military is an honor society. I can remember exactly the time, place, and circumstance when I stood at attention and took the oath of allegiance to the United States of America, and so can most who have taken that oath. If one is drawn into the even more disciplined world of secret messages, the honor involved becomes more severe. Even the training for these jobs takes place behind chain-link fences surmounted by razor wire.
My father refused to name the cryptographic machine he used in WWII, even after I could look up pictures of it on the internet. For my whole life he said nothing. He did tell me he was on 24-hour call. The Training Command had a locked and barred room with a solitary cryptographic machine. My father had the only key to the room and was the only one to see or use the machine. My father could keep a secret.
One day, when I was in Vietnam, my lead sergeant came to the crypto-room carrying gray metal slabs under each arm. He placed a slab — the size of a Yield sign — on each crypto-machine. Phosphorus grenades he said. I could read it on the top of the slab: “Red phosphorus grenade.” I asked what they were for. He said if we were overrun, I was to pull the pins in the grenades and destroy the crypto-machines.
I looked upon him with expressionless eyes while I previewed the scenario: We are being overrun. I presume the enemy is trying to blow its way through our steel door into the radio room. I am at the cul-de-sac end of the radio room, standing between two red phosphorus slab grenades, and I am going to commit suicide by pulling the pins to the grenades. The sergeant assumed I would. I think I planned to pull the pins early and abandon the radio room before anyone arrived at the door, but I would have pulled the pins under any circumstances — it was a matter of honor.
Pvt. Manning did not share that perspective. We do share some common frustrations. I often looked at the security level of a message and said to myself — “Secret from whom? We know it. The VC knows it. The Kremlin knows it. The only people who don’t know it are the American people. Secret from the American people.” I considered it a crummy, dirty game.
But I had taken that oath — before God. My opinions didn’t matter.
Some believe in a personal God (Christians, Jews, and Muslims), some believe in history (communists), some believe in “the great virtue out-there-somewhere” (most progressives/liberals, most PhDs). Pvt. Manning belongs to the final category. He’s looking for something good to happen today — something to make his life worth living — some modern-progressive-glow-in-the-dark-roadside-shrine-Jesus that would tell him he had been a good boy, done a good deed, and his sins were forgiven him.
He won’t find it. He lied at his oath. He lied every minute he stole a document, and bragged about his cleverness. Most importantly, Pvt. Manning couldn’t keep secrets (no matter how self-serving or inane the secrets might be). I could — my father could. We had sworn an oath and would not break it.
