UNSUNG HEROES

Some people are born to be dramatically disruptive yet utterly unnoticed. When their disruptions influence history, this leaves historians frustrated, searching for and the mysteriously unknown bearings upon which the great affairs of mankind must have pivoted. Such people simply were not born to be stars. They may achieve historic influence but are somehow lacking that inherent spark that brings recognition or fame. Lieutenant-Commander David Winters happens to be such a person. He began as a simple farm boy, yet grew up to graduate from the elite US Naval Academy. Not noticeably standing out in the company of such natural stars, he remained in the Navy to serve in routine capacities at sea and ashore, eventually arriving in London for a sensitive assignment just as obscure and yet as explosive as Mary Sherman Morgan’s rocket fuel job.1

Winters was slipped into a backroom slot handling telecommunications security where he was disturbed to discover that the Department of Defense world-wide telecommunications security system must be compromised at multiple if not countless points (and history later proved him correct). He had stumbled across a monumental national security failure.

But frustratingly, this problem was far “above his pay-grade.” Getting this ongoing catastrophe acknowledged at the necessary levels would be difficult if not impossible, and any attempt to do so would be resisted and hopelessly time consuming. The problem could not wait for that.

Yet from his humble position he also saw a means of correcting the situation under his own authority. The key to successful implementation was simply to call no attention to the problem. This would allow him to work on the solution in plain sight as part of his bland daily routine. If his plan functioned with absolute perfection, nobody would discover what he had achieved until he was safely gone from London and probably the Navy. His innovations would simply fill in the holes and weak spots nobody else had noticed in the first place. The methods he introduced throughout his part of the globe would naturally expand to become the de-facto Navy standards, world-wide because they were frankly cheaper, easier, and simpler than the security processes in use at the time.

But everyone knows that nothing is perfect. His plan was no exception. It could not go unnoticed forever for the simple reason that, his system saved millions of dollars on an ongoing basis. In government bureaucracies, failure to spend cash already allotted is a serious sin and will not go undetected. One must not recklessly gad about saving public money without permission.

While his innovations unavoidably attracted attention due to the stupendous windfall of money saved, nobody noticed their magnificent security impact. That beneficial financial impact utterly obscured the much more important security revolution that caused it.

Motivated by the vast potential financial savings, the entire Navy, sister services, the United States Government, and NATO immediately began incorporating Winters’s methods. The National Security Agency, which had originally developed the technology2 Winters used to create his revolution, adopted his system as the foundation of their classified communications system.

But from message traffic to official histories, Winters’s security achievement went utterly un-noticed, unmentioned, and the credit for it unclaimed, except for that of the money saved. Credit for the savings went to the Navy Telecommunications Command in Washington who absorbed and named Winters’s creation OTAR short for “Over the Air Rekeying”. Non-governmental agencies quickly adapted OTAR to their needs, and it became the foundation stone of practically all communications security world-wide, the basis of entire new industries.

And after adoption of OTAR, all loss and theft of classified communications security materials stopped dead. Of course, nobody in American forces noticed this. After all, when nobody robs your house, it’s not really news worthy.

The enemy Soviet Union surely did take note, however, for the damage to their intelligence operations had to be irreparable and the losses irreplaceable. Within a couple of years, the entire legendary Soviet Union collapsed with little warning and thus ended the apparently interminable Cold War. As to why, nobody knew. Doubtless, no one considered, accounted for, or credited the inestimable intelligence damage done by OTAR.

The OTAR security revolution continued to remain un-noticed for thirty years. This was risky. To ensure that the security gains Winters brought about were preserved, they had to be understood and appreciated. To be understood, they had to be articulated.

Recognizing this, Winters outlined his story, which amounted explaining why and how he undertook to replace all hard copy code (cryptologic) keys, with electronic digital signals, which was the essence of his innovation. Then with minimal additional comment, he forwarded it to the National Security Agency archives.

His recount created some stir, and shortly Winters was engaged to present it before the international Symposium for Cryptologic History, sponsored by the NSA at John’s Hopkins University in 2017. The presentation hall was crowded with students, historians, and various VIPs from the shadowy world of cryptography. Even famed cryptographer Whitfield Diffie attended to see what all the excitement was about.

Although Winters’s revelation was enthusiastically received, no copy of his text was distributed, and the planned video recordings were canceled After his presentation, with the exception of his lone outline somewhere in NSA archives, the story of the most revolutionary innovation in secret communications for centuries simply disappeared. Because of Winters’s prior commitment to secrecy, virtually no documentation of it is publicly accessible. Isolated repetitions of his tale may be found online, but until and unless records of Navy message traffic from the late 1980’s are combed through, details of the historic story may never be reconstructed.

Some people are born to be stars. Some are not. For now, just count Commander Winters, like Mary Sherman Morgan, among the heroes unsung. It’s honorable company.

1. Mary Sherman Morgan of NASA, though apparently lacking “popular star power”, devised the “impossible” rocket fuel that launched Allen Shepherd into space.

2. By another low-key hero and genius, Mahlon Doyle whom we are sad to note, passed away the same year that Winters presented his brief for the NSA.