THE WASHINGTON-MOSCOW HOT LINE


 A great deal of material has been written about the Washington-Moscow Hot Line since it first went into service in 1963. It is the author's intent to summarize the history of the Washington-Moscow Hot Line using publically available sources. As in any research of this nature, minor conflicts of information arise. Every effort has been made to minimize these situations.

IN THE BEGINNING

David Kahn's, "The Codebreakers", 1967, p 715-716 provides an excellent summary of the how the Hot Line came into existence.

"As a result of the Cuban missile crisis the long, talked-about "hot line" between Washington and Moscow was to become a reality. On 20th June, 1963, at Geneva, Switzerland , the United States and the Soviet Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding that set up a duplex cable circuit routed from Washington-London-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Helsinki to Moscow for primary political communications and a duplex radio circuit routed from Washington to Tangier to Moscow for service communications and as a back-up.

"In our negotiations," wrote Brigadier General George P. Sampson, deputy director of the Defense Communications Agency and chief technical member of the American negotiating team at Geneva, "it was obviously recognized early in the game that some steps had to be taken to insure the privacy of the communications and quite as obviously the technique employed would have to be one generally known throughout the world. It was with this background that the method for privacy which was adopted was suggested and, if my memory serves me correctly, its first mention was by the U.S. side although the general subject had been alluded to by both groups."

The method to be used was one-time tape. Section 4 of the annex to the memorandum stated: "The USSR shall provide for preparation and delivery of keying tapes to the terminal point of the link in the United States for reception of messages from the USSR. The United States shall provide for the preparation and delivery of keying tapes to the terminal point of the link in the USSR for reception of messages from the United States. Delivery of prepared keying tapes to the terminal points of the link shall be effected through the Embassy of the USSR in Washington (for the terminal of the link in the USSR) and through the Embassy of the United States in Moscow (for the terminal of the link in the United States).

For its one-time tape hardware, the US would employ the ETCRRM II, or Electronic Teleprinter Cryptographic Regenerative Repeater Mixer II. One of many 'one-time' tape mechanisms sold by commercial firms, it was produced and sold for about $1,000 by Standard Telefon Kabelfabrik of Oslo, the Norwegian subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, the same company which installed the American terminal in the National Military Command Center deep within the Pentagon. It has four teleprinters -- two with English alphabet and two with Russian -- and four associated ETCRRM II's . In Moscow, the terminus was installed in the Kremlin, near the office of the Premier".

The Washington to London portion of the link was carried over the TAT-1 (Transatlantic No. 1), the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Gallanach Bay, near Oban, Scotland and Clarenville, Newfoundland between 1955 and 1956 and was inaugurated on September 25, 1956.