[GreenKeys] Twitter to Replace Washington-Kremlin Hotline

[Steve Cichorsky]

" Obama said that both he and visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev use
> the popular social networking program Twittter. Obama said "we may be able 
> to finally throw away those red phones" that were designed to allow 
> immediate contact between the Kremlin and the White House during the cold 
> war."

 This 1963 article describes the Bell System/WECo/Teletype equipment that 
was
 used to implement the original "Hot Line." IIRC, ITT provided the
 international circuits.

 Steve C.

> 'Hot Line' Opened by U.S. and Soviet to Cut Attack Risk
>
> Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
>
> Washington, Aug. 30 -- A diplomatic "hot line" between Moscow and 
> Washington went into operation today with the simultaneous clattering of 
> telecommunication machines in the Kremlin and the Pentagon.
> The emergency communications channel is designed to reduce the risk of 
> accidental war. The opening was announced in a one-sentence Defense 
> Department statement:
> "The direct communications link between Washington and Moscow is now 
> operational."
>
> No ceremony accompanied the implementations of one of the few arms control 
> measures that the United States and the Soviet Union, the two major 
> nuclear powers, have been able to agree upon in years of negotiations.
>
> Text Message Is Sent
>
> There was no exchange of official messages. Instead, from Washington went 
> the message used by Teletype operators to test whether a circuit is 
> operating -- "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back 
> 1234567890,"
> Back from Moscow came a similar test message in Russian, which was 
> completely unintelligible to the United States operators but at least 
> showed that all the characters on the Teletype were working correctly.
> After a series of exchanges of such messages, the Pentagon said, it was 
> determined that the link was "completely satisfactory" and it was 
> "declared operational and made available for exchange of official messages 
> between the two Governments."
>
> Now that the link has been established, it will be used only "in time of 
> emergency" and then only for exchange of messages between the two heads of 
> Government.
> The decision to establish the "hot line" is a direct outgrowth of the 
> serious delays that developed in diplomatic communications between the two 
> capitals during the Cuban crisis last fall. Diplomatic messages are now 
> sent over normal commercial channels to the United States and Soviet 
> Embassies in Moscow and Washington.
>
> With the time consumed by transmission, coding and decoding, translation 
> and delivery, hours are often required before a message reaches its 
> destination.
> The direct link, which is available 24 hours a day, will make it possible 
> for the heads of the two Governments to exchange messages in minutes.
>
> A message from President Kennedy to Premier Khrushchev, for example, will 
> be sent to the Washington terminal of the link in the National Military 
> Command Center in the Pentagon. There American Teletype operators will 
> type the message on a teleprinter and a punched tape.
>
> After checking the typed message against the original copy, the Teletype 
> tape will be fed into a Teletype transmitter. As the message goes out, it 
> will be encoded by a "scrambling device" to prevent anyone from reading it 
> at relay points along the 10,000-mile cable circuit.
>
> In Moscow, the message will go through a decoding device and appear on a 
> Teletype machine in the Kremlin near the office of Premier Khrushchev.
>
> Translation Necessary
>
> The plan calls for the United States to transmit messages in English and 
> the Soviet Union in Russian. Thus at each end it will be necessary for the 
> messages to be translated before they can be delivered to the leaders.
> The agreement to establish the link was reached in Geneva June 20, about 
> eight months after the Cuban crisis. The idea had been studied for several 
> years.
> Since June, Soviet and American technicians have been rushing to install 
> the equipment by a Sept. 1 deadline.
>
> Four American Teletype machines- the 66-word-a-minute Model 28 
> manufactured by Teletype Corporation of Chicago- were carried to Moscow by 
> plane in July and installed in the Kremlin by Aug. 1.
> Four comparable Soviet machines, built in East Germany, arrived last 
> weekend at the Soviet Embassy here and were delivered to the Pentagon on 
> Monday. On Tuesday, the machines were installed in an office in the 
> section of the Pentagon occupied by the office of the Joint Chiefs of 
> Staff.
>
> American technicians report that the German-built equipment was "very 
> good" and that the installation and the first test transmissions in the 
> last few days had gone "remarkably smoothly." The two countries also 
> exchanged a year's supply of spare parts, special tools, operating 
> instructions and telecommunication tape. In addition, there was an 
> exchange of encoding equipment, which undernormal circumstances is treated 
> with the highest secrecy.
> According to officials, the nature of the encoding equipment was a major 
> difficulty in working out the hot line agreement. It was finally decided 
> that what is known as "one time tape system encoding equipment" would be 
> used.
> This equipment is employed by commercial as well as military 
> communications systems, so that no military secrets were divulged in 
> making it available to the Soviet Union.
>
> The one time tape system, regarded as being virtually "breakproof" by 
> cryptographers, works in this fashion:
> As the Teletype tape containing a message is fed into one transmitter, an 
> encoding "keying tape" is fed into another transmitter. The result is to 
> scramble up the letters in the outgoing message so that it is 
> unintelligible.
> At the receiving end, the same keying tape is fed into the Teletype, and 
> the message comes out decoded. A keying tape is used only once, thus 
> making the coding system impervious to "breaking" by cryptographic 
> analysis.
> Under the agreement, the two sides exchange keying tapes. Thus, when the 
> Russian center wants to send a message, for example, it sends along a 
> number identifying the tape to be used in the Pentagon machines.
>
> Circuit's Route Given
>
> The two terminals are linked by cable and radio circuits, with the two 
> sides sharing the cost of leasing the circuits from commercial companies. 
> The cost is expected to range from $80,000 to $90,000 a year.
> The principal circuit is a land-line and ocean cable connection running 
> from Wahington to London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow.
>
> It is a duplex telegraph circuit capable of handling two simultaneous 
> Teletype transmissions.
> In addition, there is a duplex radio circuit going from Washington to 
> Tangier in North Africa and from there to Moscow.
> The radio circuit will be used for coordinating operations between the two 
> terminals. But it will also be used as a stand-by Teletype connection, in 
> the event that trouble develops on the land-line connection.