> Back in the early 1950s I was in the USAF attached to NSA, a
> cryptanalyst in the Czech section. I was working on Border Guard
> traffic, most of the messages being fairly short (up to around 20 groups
> of text). The encipherment system was one-time pad (i.e., the key was
> never reused), which is undecipherable both in principle and in
> practice.
Hey, Carrol, for a long time I was mixing recordings of encrypted shortwave "numbers stations" into my DJ sets - and there's a whole contingent of numbers station enthusiasts who share data re. same on various mailing lists, etc. The "one-time pad" is an occassional subject of discussion, and there have even been a couple of multi-CD sets released in the last few years that compile recordings of various stations like the Lincolnshire Poacher, the "Spanish Lady," various Cuban and CIA/Mossad numbers stations, etc. Pop bands like Stereolab have even mixed numbers recordings into their songs. If anyone wants to hear what numbers stations sound like, NPR did a (surprisingly engaging) report featuring a handful of members from one of the numbers station discussion lists awhile back for their "Lost and Found Sound" series, which you can listen to here:
http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/000526.stories.html
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/ dave /