Black Ops

[Mike Salovesh]

Joseph McCollum wrote:
>
> >
> > > BLACK OPS
> > >
> > >     I've been hearing a lot about "black ops" and "sleeper cells."  We talked about the latter.  The former means "black operations."  It seems a bit clumsy, like military trying to be hip-hop.  But it
> should be recorded.
> >
> > "Ops" as a verbal abbreviation for "Operations" goes back a ways.  In World War II the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) had an
> office known as "Ops B SHAEF" which was in charge of deception operations.
>
> Would the Black part be related to Herbert Yardley's
> Black Chamber?  I don't have the sources in front of me but it was America's cryptology agency which operated from ~1917 to ~1929.
>
> They were fired by Secretary of State Stimson, who supposedly said, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

Wow! A message that triggered my trick memory with references to two
authors who made a big impression on me in the 1940s --

1) Herbert O. Yardley, U.S. Army cryptoanalyst, wrote __America's Black
Chamber__, an account of his work in WWI and beyond.  He broke the Japanese
naval code, and passed on what the Japanese were keeping to themselves
while we were negotiating the Kellog Pact limiting naval construction of
all  major powers, ca. 1921-1922.  Yardley's book is the  source of the
allegation that Secretary Stimson said "gentlemen do not read each other's
mail" when he closed the Black Chamber in 1929.  It had a super-secret
reopening in 1930, with a total staff of 4.  Yardley was NOT invited to
participate, allegedly because his book let the Japanese know that their
code was compromised -- so they changed their code.  The reopened Black
Chamber jest growed into the NSA.

_America's Black Chamber_ led me to another book by Yardley: _The Education
of a Poker Player_.  In a way, the latter book is a compendium of
autobiographical snippets. Some tales, however, are so good they have to be
inventions. (I don't want to say that they're tall tales, but . . .)
Yardley tells each of these tales as a hook for teaching a principle of his
rather conservative system for not losing at poker. I used it to great
profit in my much younger days. (Note, however, that however worthy it may
be to aim for "not losing", it's not at all the same as playing to win. All
other things being equal, I'd rather win.)

2) The "black" in "black ops" apparently was in widespread military usage
in WW II for kinds of secret work that had what would later be called
"plausible deniability".  The point to black ops was that every effort was
taken to conceal the sponsoring forces.

There's a very clear statement of the distinctions involved in
__Psychological Warfare__, by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (first edition
1948). Linebarger was an expert on Chinese affairs.  (He was author of a
book on Sun Yat Sen, for example.) His WW II PsyWar work was in the CBI
(China/Burma/India) Theater.

Linebarger talks of three kinds of PsyWar materials: white propaganda,
gray  propaganda, and black propaganda.  In discussing the uses of black
propaganda, he often says "black operations", but I think he also says
"black ops" from time to time.

His definitions: White propaganda is issued openly with full identification
of its original source.  Gray propaganda is planted in legitimate sources
that have no apparent connection to the real originators, and does not cite
its original source.  Black propaganda is planted in ways that make it seem
to have come from enemy sources.

Linebarger used the pseudonym "Cordwainer Smith" for his well-known works
of science fiction.

-- mike salovesh    <m-salovesh-9 at alumni.uchicago.edu>   PEACE !!!

P.S.: I'm very short on sleep and quite tired, conditions which often
trigger my trick memory.  In pursuit of PAAAC (Pedantic Accuracy At All
Costs), I held off sending the above until I cross-checked my memory with
online library catalogs.

The "trick" of my trick memory is that I read Linebarger's book on PsyWar
in 1948, and I don't think I've seen the book since 1956. (That's when my
wife met one of Linebarger's Chicago relatives through her work. I
suggested she give that relative my copy of the book. He appreciated it,
and I got room to put one more new book on my crowded bookshelves.)

I read Yardley's "Black Chamber" in the late 1940s, too -- and I'm pretty
sure I remember reading his "Poker Player" in a Paperback Books edition at
about the same time. The earliest catalog references I can find for the
poker book list a hardbound, 1957 edition. . .  maybe I'm pushing that
trick memory too far.




















































































































--

-- mike salovesh   <m-salovesh-9 at alumni.uchicago.edu>   PEACE !!!

        IN MEMORIAM:     Peggy Salovesh
        25 January 1932 -- 3 March 2001