*** Most decidedly off topic, but what the heck... ***
Ah... The methods used by "bashers" to post "secret" messages to other "bashers" have been protected from disclosure by the court... To read any "secret" messages, you'll need to firmly grasp your monitor and gently wave it to and fro approximately 5.23 inches above a lit taper with a moderately flickering flame... <g> Not recommended for lurkers using a flat-screen monitor... <g>
azcentral.com
Old invisible ink formulas kept secret by CIA
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Feb. 26, 2002 13:50:00
Is a secret, 85-year-old formula for invisible ink an important tool in our war on terrorism?
Apparently, the Central Intelligence Agency thinks so.
It has persuaded a federal judge to keep secret classified documents describing World War I-era formulas for invisible ink.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled 12 days ago in Washington that he would not make the documents public.
Several of the six documents from 1917 and 1918 contain German recipes for invisible ink. In his ruling, Jackson sided with the CIA, which had insisted that releasing the documents "would risk compromise of . . . intelligence methods."
At the center of the debate is a millennia-old form of secret communication known to spies and children. Its formulas can be created in kitchens and laboratories, and are easily found on the Internet.
"This is a damn joke," said Mark S. Zaid, executive director of the James Madison Project, a nonprofit group that works to lessen government secrecy. The Washington-based group sued to declassify the material - not because it cares about invisible ink, but to combat unnecessary secrecy in government.
"These formulas are so rudimentary that it's like taking Indian smoke signals and making them secret," Zaid said.
"Nuclear weapons formulas and designs can be published and are available . . . but German World War I invisible-ink formulas will somehow cause a collapse of our society if released?"
A CIA spokesman, quoting an unnamed intelligence official, said the documents' release indeed presented a threat. Revealing the formulas, he said, would "allow terrorist groups to develop more sophisticated methods of secret writing."
He added, "The formulas for secret writing ink are still classified because they remain viable for use by the CIA."
Zaid said the judge's decision would be appealed.
The six documents are the oldest classified records in the National Archives and Records Administration.
But not nearly as old as invisible ink, which can be traced back to antiquity.
Directions on cereal boxes taught children to make it in the 1960s. George Washington used it to spy against the British in 1779. Italian scientists invented new formulas in the 1500s. Arabs wrote about its mysteries in a 1412 encyclopedia.
Invisible ink is not ink as we've come to know it, not Waterman ink or India ink. It can be saliva or lemon juice or milk or urine or one of a host of chemicals that are invisible when applied with a toothpick or pen to paper or skin or clothing, but are visible when light or heat or moisture or another chemical is applied.
The inventive combinations for creating invisible ink appear endless, as are its uses, from secret messages between lovers to espionage to the prevention of voting fraud and counterfeiting. And today, of all places, invisible ink can be found in the federal courts.
The James Madison Project originally filed its suit in 1998. "We wanted to set up an example of the excess secrecy in government and asked the National Archives what the oldest classified document was," said Zaid.
In eight months of legal back-and-forth, he learned the bare bones of the oldest document: it was an Oct. 30, 1917, memo from an assistant chemist named Heingleman in the federal Bureau of Standards to an otherwise unidentified Frank V. Marlenck, and listed seven samples of "specific secret writing inks, and developing techniques for three of these samples."
Zaid learned two other facts: There were five more classified invisible-ink documents from the same period with at least two containing German formulas, and the agency trying to keep them secret was not the National Archives, but the CIA.
The case grew to include all six documents, but was delayed for three years because the jurist assigned - Judge Jackson - was preoccupied with a very visible case concerning the government's effort to break up a company called Microsoft.
The judge did not respond to interview requests last week for this article.
His ruling has not yet been issued in writing, and has caused no outcry, other than from the James Madison Project.
But not everyone agrees with or understands the ruling.
"It's hard to believe," said Gene Poteat, a retired CIA scientific officer who said CIA operatives were using invisible ink when he retired in the mid-1980s.
"On some rare occasion, it's possible they have an old formula they're still using, but this doesn't make any sense. Nineteen seventeen is just too long ago," said Poteat, president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, a nonprofit educational organization based in McLean, Va.
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Whatever the documents may reveal, people probably know it already, argued David Kahn, author of "The Codebreakers, a 1996 book chronicling the history of codes, cryptography and steganography, or "covered writing."
"Obviously, I have not seen those records, but I have seen many bits of information about secret ink from that period, and all of it is so widely known now that it's wrongheaded of the government to try and keep it secret," he said.
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Norman Gardner, who's in the business of making invisible inks for corporate use, is also skeptical about what the government is trying to keep secret: "It's impossible for a formula like that to have any validity today."
Gardner is chairman of LaserLock Technologies Inc. in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., which marks dice, chips and gaming equipment with invisible ink to protect against counterfeiting.
"Technology has changed so very much that the formula would be obsolete now. ... What I'm saying is that with lasers, optics and scanning, it would not be invisible anymore."
Even so, Zaid said the CIA's behavior was predictable. "I wasn't surprised they would fight it. It's just in their nature."
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