QED_jak

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   7-12-95. NYPaper:


   "U.S. Tells How It Found Soviets Sought A-Bomb: Discloses
   Clues That Led to Code-Breaking."

      The American intelligence establishment today unveiled
      one of its oldest secrets: how a small team of
      codebreakers found the first clues that the Soviet Union
      sought to steal the blueprints for the atomic bomb in
      World War II.  Using just brain power -- no computers,
      no stolen skeleton keys -- the cryptographers slowly
      cracked what was thought to be an unbreakable code. 
      Their work and the fact that they had broken the
      Soviets' seemingly impenetrable cipher, was until today
      one of the most tightly held secrets of the National
      Security Agency, the nation's electronic eavesdropping
      service.  The messages were like a jigsaw puzzle with a
      billion pieces -- all black. They had been double-coded
      by a system called a one-time pad -- a unique random
      code for each message, converting words to numbers in a
      pattern used only once.                        HOO_doo


   [Book review] "What Would Happen if E.T. Actually Called:
   The implications of finding other intelligence in the
   universe." 

      Mr. Davies is a supporter of the program called SETI,
      the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which aims
      radio telescopes at thousands of target star systems to
      try to detect communications from extraterrestrial
      civilizations. He argues that if we do pick up any
      signals, or even if we just determine that there is a
      single microorganism out there that formed independently
      of earthly contamination, this "would drastically alter
      our world view and change our society as profoundly as
      the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions." It would be,
      Mr. Davies writes, nothing less than "the greatest
      scientific discovery of all time."             ETT_eeg


   "AT&T Expected to Buy Stake In an Internet Access Provider

      Cementing its recent link with one of the country's
      largest corporate Internet access providers, the AT&T
      Corporation will spend $8 million to buy a stake in the
      BBN Planet Corporation, according to an executive
      familiar with the company's plans.             BBN_bye



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