Breaking Winston's "Eggs"

(Breaking Winston's "Eggs")

When it was first introduced, the German Enigma machine seemed to be the most secure encryption device yet developed. However, on the eve of the Secomd World War, a group of Polish cryptographers determined the mathematical basis for the Enigma cypher. The information was passed to both France and Great Britain. After France fell in June 1940, Britain continued the work and in time, with the team of code breakers at Bletchley Park, Enigma began to be "read" on a regular basis. As all Enigma intelligence would by definition be confined to only the highest levels of Allied political and military leaders and the product had been termed ULTRA. For British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his ULTRA information had been referred to as "Winston's Eggs."

It would go without saying that had ULTRA been compromised, the damage to the Allied cause could have proved in-calculable to the War's prosecution. If ULTRA were lost, the conflict could have endured for possibly two more years. That would mean thousands of more dead, a persistent Nazi occupation of the Continent, and, without ULTRA being able to provide assurances of the viability of a cross channel attack, the Soviet Army would have been able to march west and that time, not necessarily stopping at Berlin.

These days, however, a so-called "Top Secret" clearance has almost been made as a mail order or some kind of subscription. Apply online and anybody can receive that level of classification. Maybe people can find one in a box of Cracker Jacks. Frivolity aside, it is true that the federal government has been too generous in its dispensation of high class access. That fact has been laid bare in the revelations that a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard named Jack Teixeira, one that apparently got his top-secret clearance in the mail, saw fit to release the data he could access and if reporting is accurate, such disclosures have been damaging.

The material released regarded the Ukraine War and what is being known about relations with China such as the development of a new hyper-sonic missile. Teixeira has also possibly compromised foreign agents. There was also some indication that there was also a source within the GRU, Russian Military Intelligence. Colonel Oleg Penskovski who provided intelligence to the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis had been a member in the GRU.

Needless to say, heads will roll. Not just Teixeira, who is going to prison for a very long time but the whole classification process. Information at the most senior levels, like Churchill's "Eggs." As one might remember, April 14th is when the Titanic struck the iceberg and was sent to the bottom and any number of comparisons can be made to the current situation. Pick one.