Sources and methods: Searching for cryptologic records in the findings of post-World War II allied technical surveys and commissions

Abstract At the end of World War II, the Allied Cryptologic agencies in the U.S.A. and U.K. realized that valuable intelligence about Axis codebreaking and other analytic methods, as well as knowledge about Axis cryptography, could be lost, either through destruction or capture by the Soviet Union. A special organization, known as the Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM), was organized to retrieve this information. Special teams followed Allied forces into former Axis territory, gathered captured records and equipment and interrogated Axis cryptographers about their methods, successes, and failures. In the United States, this material was retained by the National Security Agency until major releases of WWII records to the National Archives, beginning in the mid-1990s and continuing for approximately another 20 years. TICOM records constitute a critical resource to understanding the dynamics of the struggle between those charged with protecting communications, the secrets they hold, and those with the mandate to discover those secrets.