TICOM

The Target Intelligence Committee ( TICOM ) was an organization formed by the Americans and British, who sought the end of the Second World War by the German code breakers and key machines, where they, inter alia, the Enigma captured. The aim was not only to decipher the messages of the Wehrmacht, but above all to prevent even those of the Russians, and that could decipher secret messages of the British and Americans. There may be also found documents on Russian intercepted messages that contained Soviet intentions about future policy. In addition, weaknesses of the American and British cryptography could be detected and then fixed.

For TICOM inter alia, Paul K. Whitaker, Selmer S. Norland, Arthur Levenson and Howard Campaigne worked. TICOM interrogated et al even the high-ranking Wehrmacht cryptographer Erichhütte grove.

History

TICOM was founded by the Director of the Signal Intelligence Division in Europe, George A. Bicher, 1944. George C. Marshall ordered General Dwight D. Eisenhower, TICOM highest priority.

After first went TICOMs use to plan, the chaos made ​​it difficult in the German Empire from 1945 to search for German code breakers. Then, six teams made from the seat of TICOM at Bletchley Park in March 1945 to take over known or newly discovered targets, which were for the sigint of interest. ( Located in the county of Buckinghamshire Bletchley Park was the official name of Government Code and Cipher School and later Government Communications Headquarters ( GCHQ ). ) A group under Major Paul E. Neff sank in the Soviets allocated area on a gold mine: In a central the German Enlightenment in a castle in Saxony -Anhalt was found Russian code and Chiffriermaterial. After clarification with the British Ministry of Justice, the material together with the Germans at the suggestion of Colonel George Bicher was escorted to England. Two days later, the Soviets occupied the castle.

After analysis of the German cryptology was found that the Germans the most important English encryptions could not break. The Germans had fallen into the hands of the American version of Fish, an apparatus called Sigaba, never.

The TICOM was still active after 1950; after the establishment of the National Security Agency ( NSA), many of the existing documents to this went on from 1952 and remained subject to confidentiality. Parts of the documents have been released and published in 2011 by the NSA.