Joel D. Gruhn

Paul, on C A Evans, the memo author: From the New York Times 12/12/1964 WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (AP)—Courtney A. Evans, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will retire from, the bureau at the end of this month. Mr. Evans, who has been with the bureau for 24 years, is an aide of J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau's director. The sandy‐haired, mild‐mannered Mr. Evans is one of the F.B.I.'s more widely known men. He is known to the business world as the bureau's expert on matters financial—embezzlements, bankruptcy, confidence rackets, defalcations, and the threat of organized crime to business. For three years he has directed the wide‐ranging operations of the bureau's special investigative division. Joel

yes, excellent. Please let us know what you need in terms of financial support. Joel Gruhn

b, didn't peek first Please select one of the responses below Choice A [ 3 ] [42.86%] Choice B [ 1 ] [14.29%] Choice C [ 3 ] [42.86%] What is wrong with B?

Jack, there is an add-on to IP Board (the message board software used here) that provides a photo gallery - exactly what you want. A full description is at http://www.invisionpower.com/products/gallery/ cost is ~ $65; it could be a central place for many photos galleries. Having it an integral part of the board software would, in my humble opinion, make it easier to moderate. I am wondering if we need to pass the hat. Joel D. Gruhn

I don't agree with much of what Peter wrote, but I must defend his presence here. If a you work on your home, and thereby increase the value of your property, that increase is often referred to as "sweat equity" In the case of an open forum of ideas, that sweat equity is the sharing of research by members, and their objective commentary on the subjects at hand. IMHO I know of no other web forum where the moderators routinely fall back on justifications of "ownership". Yes - they own the server, and put up with complaints, and I respect that. But does that make it wise or legitimate to erase another person's intellectual effort utterly? retroactively? without 5 minutes warning? without allowing the author to move his work to a more stable and tolerant venue? There is real value in the contributions made by so many qualified people here. I am grateful for the stunning knowledge and effort shown on these pages. What respect does it show to all who contribute to see an active contributor's efforts disposed of unilaterally? The subject of this forum, the JFK Assassination Debate, is likely to inflame passions and stimulate political arguments. If we cannot all agree with the point of view of each post or contributor, can we not at least make this forum safe for diversity? Going forward, we can make this forum more valuable by valuing the diverse, sometimes polemical, "sweat equity" of all contributors.

not to mention Tosh Plumlee... add a score more, who in frustration will simply decide that they have better things to do. We had a valuable and unique place here to share ideas.

Forum: 1. A public meeting place for open discussion. 2. A medium for open discussion or voicing of ideas, such as a newspaper, a radio or television program, or a website. I have to agree, Len. A moderator must be moderate and accept that everyone is not going to always agree in a spirited debate, and be able to temper his/her defensiveness. The threads were disappeared, which to anyone would feel like like censorship rather than an open forum. My two posts were whisked away - and they were not critical of any specific individual, any more than this one is. I think someone is perhaps feeling a little hyper-sensitive, and if that is the case they are MORE likely to get criticism for combining censorship with a total lack of transparency. I guess we are not suppose to question authority. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell Joel

Without getting into the details of cryptanalysis, it is my understanding that having even a short piece of known plaintext incorporated into a coded message drastically reduces the computer time required to break the code in a brute force attack. This is called 'gardening". As described in the Wikipedia article on Gardening (cryptanalysis): In cryptanalysis, gardening was a term used at Bletchley Park, England, during World War II for schemes to entice the Germans to include known plaintext, which the British called "cribs," in their encrypted messages. This term presumably came from RAF minelaying missions, or “gardening” sorties, so called because sectors of the coastal waters around Europe were given code-names based on fruits and vegetables.[1] The technique is claimed to have been most effective against messages produced by the German Navy's Enigma machines. A well-known example involved mines. If the Germans had recently swept a particular area for mines, and Bletchley Park was in need of some cribs, they might (and apparently did on several occasions) direct that the area be mined again. This would hopefully evoke encrypted messages from the local command mentioning 'Minen' ('mines' in German) and/or the location, and perhaps messages also from the headquarters with minesweeping ships to assign to that location, mentioning the same. It worked often enough to try several times. In modern terms, this was a chosen plaintext attack, because plain text effectively chosen by the British was injected into the ciphertext. Concievably there are many ways that a defector such as Oswald could be exploited to deliver a crib, either wittingly or unwittingly. Joel Gruhn

Greg, I am interested if you could please post the rest for all to similarly review.... jdg

I believe it would have been Itek, a bunch of very savvy optical engineers; they designed photo reconnasence cameras such as the CORONA. I had a friend who worked there in mid '70's at the California office near Moffitt Field where they serviced the U2 cameras. They would be good at microdensitometry, where the pixels are very very small. The wikipedia page offers a fairly complete history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itek Joel