THE SOMERTON MAN MYSTERY; THE NIHILST CIPHER AND THE TORN SLIP PART 1.

..WW2 CLANDESTINE RADIO OPERATOR..

...The ‘tamamshud’ torn slip has been found to contain a concealed message that had been handwritten in a cipher format. The cipher has been identified as a Soviet-era NIHILIST cipher...

As a result of several requests, this post, the first of a short series, sets out to explain the nature of the NIHILIST cipher, how it evolved from a tool developed by a pre-Soviet era extremist group into a WW2 and early Cold War front line and relatively secure communication method between Moscow Centre and various spy groups in the field.

In this journey you will learn more about the torn slip, the construction of the cipher and the concealed message itself.

1, The NIHILIST cipher was first developed and used in pre-Soviet Russia during the 1800s it was based on a POLYBIUS grid:

'The Nihilist Substitution cipher dates back to around 1878 when it was used by Russian Nihilists in their war against the Tsarist regime. It is a variation of the checkerboard using a Polybius square to create a numerical cipher to which is added another numerical key to disguise the simple substitution effect of the checkerboard to make it more secure. The Polybius square was devised by the Greek historian and writer, Polybius (circa. 200 BC - 120 BC) and used a 25-letter alphabet written into a 5x5 grid with rows and columns numbered 1 to 5 '

2. What a cipher does is to take messages that are originally in ‘plain text’ and turn them into ‘cipher text’, A SERIES OF LETTERS AND/OR NUMBERS, these can be in pairs but more commonly in groups of 5. This cipher text can be protected by ‘keys’ sets of letters or numbers that must first be entered to view the message concealed in the text. 

Here's an example of a plain text message:

'Meet at the Northern end of Victoria Square, carry a belt in your left hand and a black leather briefcase in your right hand, and wear a brown trilby hat' (this was an actual instruction given to a Soviet agent in the 1940s)

And here's the same message encrypted with a basic Nihilist cipher:

76 44 43 77 49 77 66 76 53 73 73 46 79 63 33 59 82 44 72 55 76 56 73 77 63 77 73 46 66 47 42 89 92 47 45 44 56 47 35 59 96 47 44 44 68 77 53 86 96 74 82 46 68 44 45 90 72 47 72 55 49 73 44 60 54 66 46 54 67 66 33 60 86 63 43 46 47 46 53 57 65 54 46 53 46 64 62 100 83 83 45 46 66 57 52 90 72 47 72 55 49 73 44 98 53 47 45 47 47 46 63 98 82 77 45 64 68 45 76 76 56 77

And this is how a part of it sounds in a Morse code transmission:

As you will read in the next post, the evolution of the cipher included the ability to vary the number of digits in a group and to simultaneously include letters and digits in a group plus other innovations.

3, The Soviets, seeing the flexibility that the cipher offered, used it as a platform and developed numerous iterations of the cipher incorporating ‘layers’ of complexity that enhanced its overall strength and resistance to ‘cracking’. Effectively, the cipher could be readily ‘customized’ right down to individual operators' requirements. 

4. In practice, this meant, for example, Moscow Centre, could have one cipher for one agent and another cipher for a different agent. Both ciphers are NIHILIST but customized as required.

5. For our purposes and recognizing that cipher text can be, and was on occasion, sent by regular mail or by radio, thus an ‘agent’ can also be a radio operator.

6. In these days there are online software tools that can quickly recognize a NIHILIST cipher based on its basic ‘construction’. However, this step does not do more than identify in terms of probability, the type of cipher that it pertains to. Decrypting the cipher text is on an entirely different and more complex level.

At the time of writing this post, the identity of the man in whose pocket the ‘Tamam shud’ torn slip was found is still unknown. The claim that he was a man known as Carl Webb has not been proven with several facts emerging including that the DNA analysis process was deeply flawed and the facial features, notably the ears, do not match the two images of Carl Webb.

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