ABSTRACT
Allen Dulles’ point was the naivete and casualness of earlier attitudes toward codes and communications security. The Dulles story and other similar written or verbal accounts hide or distort the history of secret communications in the United States. Arab writers became fascinated with secret writing and employed cipher alphabets in their books. More importantly, they began the systematic study of secret writing, or cryptanalysis. Although most of the early secret messages are in the form of written communications, cryptology also concerns itself in modern times with enciphered telephony and enciphered facsimile. An ancient Greek book by Aeneas the Tactician, entitled On the Defense of Fortified Places, has come to be recognized as the first instructional text on communications security. Perhaps a major incentive for increasing communication security stemmed from the fact that Venetian ambassadors wrote much too freely and used untrustworthy foreign couriers between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.
