From: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 10:07:38 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
In-Reply-To: <199601262228.RAA21968@jekyll.piermont.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.ULT.3.91.960126165731.19154n-100000@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> jim bell writes:
> > (For the historically-impaired:  Coventry was/is an English town (small 
> > city?) perhaps most famous from the Lady Godiva legend...but I digress...
> >  British found out, I guess through Ultra, that it was going to be bombed.  
> > Telling the inhabitants would have saved many lives, but (possibly) alerted 
> > the Germans that Enigma had been broken.  British made the correct choice:  
> > Let the city get bombed without (much?) warning.  The value of keeping the 
> > broken-ness of Ultra a secret far outweighed the value of Coventry.)
> 
> The current claim is that, in fact, there was no advance warning about
> Coventry and that the claims that there was are unsubstantiated.

Yeah, far be it from me to debunk an urban legend, but that's what I read 
too.

It is true that there is often more going on than meets the eye, but it is
no less true that it's usually not what you imagine. 

Sure the Brits might have received credible reports that Coventry was 
going to be bombed, and sure the US might have received credible reports 
that Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed. But they also received credible 
reports to the contrary, and decisions were made.

Try working for a newspaper or a hospital some time. You'll hear all sorts
of crazy stories, only a few of which are true. It's hardly obvious which
those are. I'm sure the TLAs get even crazier stuff.

I do not believe that the CIA that failed to find Aldrich Ames and was 
cut out of Iran/Contra as unreliable is not capable of half the things it 
has been accused of. There have been a lot of well-documented and 
acknowledged cases like Operation Success (Guatemala), but the rest is 
just speculation, or worse, an Oliver Stone movie.

-rich