Johnny Cash, Joseph Stalin, & The Great Morse Code Crack
The badass stories about Johnny Cash abound, and here over a decade after his death, his prominence as a man of cultural greatness still looms as large as it ever did. But arguably the first moment of greatness for Johnny Cash happened off the stage, well away from the spotlight, and before he was known to anyone as a musician.
In 1950, at the age of 18, Johnny Cash did what many young men of the time did, he enlisted in the United States military, specifically the Air Force, and was shipped off from his home in Arkansas to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX. While there, he met what would be his future first wife Vivian Liberto at a roller rink, but the couple wouldn’t be married for another four years. After dating Vivian for only three weeks, Johnny received his deployment papers and was shipped off to a base in Landsberg, West Germany for a three-year tour. The base served as one of the forward outposts in the outbreak of the Cold War the world found itself in after World War II in the face of Soviet aggression.
Over Johnny’s enlistment period, he rose to the rank of Staff Sargent and became a crack Morse Code Operator in a Security Service unit. Because Cash showed such skill at deciphering Morse Code, he was put in a prominent seat at his Landsberg post to listen in on Soviet communications.
The Landsberg, Germany experience was an important marker in the life of the Man in Black. During his three years at the base, he exchanged hundreds of love letters with Vivian Liberto, and formed his first ever band, The Landsberg Barbarians. Though many people attribute Johnny Cash’s inspiration for writing one of his biggest hits “Folsom Prison Blues” to seeing the infamous prison first hand, he actually wrote the song while stationed in Landsberg, and seeing the film Inside The Walls of Folsom Prison. Johnny felt like he could relate to life in the clink because of his top secret military position. The sensitivity of his job necessitated that he couldn’t talk to anyone about what he did specifically, not even his love Vivian back in Texas, and Johnny’s off-base privileges were severely limited.
But all this secrecy also led to one of Johnny Cash’s biggest accomplishments. While manning his post on March 5th, 1953, Staff Sgt. Cash transcribed what would be a very important communique from the Russians. At the time, Soviet Premier Leader Joseph Stalin was in very poor condition. As the man at the head of the Soviet Empire, Stalin’s health status was of critical importance to the United States intelligence community and all Western Powers. While monitoring the Soviet Morse Code chatter on March 5th, Johnny Cash became the very first American to hear of the death of the Soviet supreme leader. Cash then relayed the important info to his superiors, and the rest is history.
Oh course, Johnny Cash couldn’t tell anyone of his accomplishment until years later because of the top secret nature of his job, and eventually the fact would just become a footnote of history to Johnny’s more famous musical efforts. Though Johnny Cash’s mastery of Morse Code and the Stalin death intercept may not seem to have much to do with his music on the surface, Cash’s ability to pick out important rhythms and tones in sometimes garbled, busy, and concealed communications lent later in life in his ability to find that unique sound that would speak to America, and eventually the world, in a language everyone could understand.
June 29, 2014 @ 8:52 pm
I guess this is as good a place as any to ask this, what are some good books/biographies on the history of country music and it’s stars? I realize there are MANY books on the subject, I was just wanting to know some of the better ones.
June 29, 2014 @ 9:02 pm
Well, in lieu of listing off a library, I would suggest as a good general history the Country Music Hall of Fame’s “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”that spans for the very beginning to the mid 2000’s and is well-written, honest, with lots of illustrations and asides that can lead you to more in-depth study for the artists. Also Colin Escott’s biography of Hank Williams is a must-read, as is Willie Nelson’s biography with Bud Shrake. “Improbably Rise of Redneck Rock” is another great one about Texas.
Hope this helps.
June 29, 2014 @ 9:09 pm
Thanks. I’ll definitely check these out. 🙂
September 11, 2017 @ 11:01 pm
I was in the Air Force for nearly 30 years and started out as a Morse Code Operator, Morse Controller and a Morse Systems Supervisor. I have always been a big fan of Johnny Cash. However, this makes a good story, but that is not the way things worked back then. The Russian Morse Code was not sent in plain text. It was sent in groups of five letters, numbers, and special characters. It was all coded and had to be decoded by analysts after the messages were copied by the Morse code operators. The decoding process did not occur immediately after the messages were copied (it often took several hours) and since there were many Morse Code Operators in the work section, the analysts rarely knew who the operator was that copied a particular message. It could have been copied by any one of the other Morse Code Operators who were on duty in the same work section during that time frame. To assign credit to a particular Morse Code Operator simply because he was a celebrity, is immensely unfair to his co-workers.
December 17, 2018 @ 12:30 pm
Every sheet sent to T/A had a header and footer which included the Morse Intercept Operators personal sign and other info such a shift of work. For your service, I thank you for, but your conclusion is patently wrong. The operator would always be known on the copy sent to Traffic Analysis. I was a Morse Intercept Operator in the Army Security Agency and an Instructor in the United States Army Security Agency Training Center and School in Fort Devens, Mass. Only chatter was sent in plain text with the Russians. You are absolutely genuine and know the details (groups, decoding, etc), but the personal sign (I have mine on my Viet Nam lighter) was included on every sheet of copy.
May 30, 2019 @ 2:31 pm
radio traffic analyst here. who got ANY kind of feedback on their copy unless it pertained to future call signs, schedules, or freqs?
i’m with the chief on this.
ex-sp5, 601st rrd
June 30, 2014 @ 6:58 am
Very cool story. Thanks for sharing.
June 26, 2020 @ 11:46 am
You might get feedback if you didn’t copy it very well, usually due to QRM and QRN
June 30, 2014 @ 7:31 am
So if he didn’t speak Russian, how did he understand the message? I presume he knew the Russian variant of Morse that includes letters we don’t have, but they wouldn’t say “Stalin just died.” They’d say “Stalin tol’ko chto umer.” Russian Morse code transcribed is still Russian. Did he show it to a Russian speaker? Was he given some key words to watch for?
February 4, 2015 @ 9:37 am
I was in ASA and did the thing he did. We had manuals we could use to decipher whatever language we were intercepting, that included special characters such as in Russian etc. Lonnnnngggggg time ago.
February 20, 2016 @ 11:16 pm
Steve Dutch: I was stationed at a similar base, except with the Naval Security Group. The on-site staff included linguists. They’re needed to help determine whether a particular frequency is worth continued monitoring. He likely would have been made aware of the value of any important communications he intercepted. I worked equipment maintenance but I naturally learned a fair amount of the operations end of the business.
June 30, 2014 @ 8:58 am
This is great story that I’ve heard many times before. I’m always left wondering: Did this really happen? Even if JC claimed it happened as such, is there proof? Many things from that era get distorted over time.
June 30, 2014 @ 9:35 am
Because what Cash was doing was classified, it may be difficult to obtain records about it or otherwise verify his claims. But of all the things you could lie about, why make something up like this? Details may be gray, but I would be really surprised if the whole thing was just a figment of his imagination.
June 30, 2014 @ 11:56 am
“…but the language of Morse Code is universal…”
Actually, Morse code is based on the English alphabet, with one to three dots and/or dashes representing each letter or punctuation mark. It’s unlikely in the extreme that the Russians were using it. They would have been using their own code, not Morse.
That doesn’t mean that Johnny Cash wasn’t listening and deciphering codes. It just means that it almost certainly wasn’t Morse.
June 30, 2014 @ 1:06 pm
“Morse” could mean a sequence of tones and/or signals with pauses in between them in the same sense that “Kleenex” is synonymous with “tissue” where the two terms are interchangeable. Because Johnny was working in a classified environment (and because he’s no longer around to clarify), there may be no way for any of us to know the specific details of what all went down. Maybe Johnny jotted down the signals, and someone else translated them into Russian. Maybe it was a Russia equivalent to Morse, or maybe some proprietary code that someone else had cracked previously that Johnny was listening in on. Either way, it isn’t that the story is so fantastic or so far fetched that it is something people would be inclined to lie about. Some of the details may be lost, if they were ever found. But I have little doubt Johnny was listening in and was the first to hear it, even if he didn’t exactly know what he was hearing at the time (because it had yet to be translated).
June 30, 2014 @ 1:11 pm
“…Either way, it isn’t that the story is so fantastic or so far fetched that it is something people would be inclined to lie about…”
I agree, and I wasn’t trying to imply that the story was a lie. In fact, I said as much in the last sentence. It’s just got the details a little wrong, is all.
I was pointing out that the writer of the article had claimed that Morse code was a universal language. It isn’t, and there is no such thing as a universal language.
June 30, 2014 @ 1:17 pm
I know. I was making a more general argument because ever since Reddit posted this story yesterday, there have been people saying its bunk because Cash couldn’t speak Russian.
I have revised that portion of the story to not cause any confusion.
June 30, 2014 @ 1:22 pm
Well, if you revised it to say something that can’t possibly be true (Morse Code is a universal language), then you’ve revised it in a way that isn’t at all helpful, and in fact, makes the whole thing sound like bullshit.
Why not just take the “Morse Code” part out altogether, and say he was involved in intercepting the message? That’s all you have to say. That would seem more realistic to me.
Making up details to make the story “more believable” is a bad idea. You should stick to reality, or the internets will call you out on it.
June 30, 2014 @ 1:39 pm
First off, I did eliminate the entire sentence, even though after doing more research, it seems like it could be a valid explanation of the situation, though still potentially misleading.
Here is the definition of Morse Code from Merriam Webster:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morse%20code
1) : a system of sending messages that uses long and short sounds, flashes of light, or marks to represent letters and numbers
2): either of two codes consisting of variously spaced dots and dashes or long and short sounds used for transmitting messages by audible or visual signals
In neither of these definitions does it say anything about language. Now I understand that Samuel Morse was an American and the system was originally set up to translate English over telegraph lines, but as both definitions above illustrate, the term went on to describe ANY communications using a system of “long and short sounds, flashes of light, or marks to represent letters and numbers”. So in this case, it WAS Morse Code, and it in no way is it stretching or incorrect to use that term in this context.
Semantics.
February 19, 2015 @ 7:07 am
I can’t say if it was in 1953, but Morse Code is very much an international method of communication today. My husband and I are amateur radio operators (and have been for since the 60s. While I’m no longer active, my husband ‘talks’ with other ‘hams’ from around the world on an almost daily basis using Morse Code. It’s universally understood, and it’s MORSE Code.
March 14, 2021 @ 6:53 pm
Wrong. Morse code is code period. Whether Russian, English, Chinese or Korean the code is the same. It’s the language that is different—just like typing Russian on a typewriter..
July 2, 2014 @ 1:46 pm
Just as there is an “international” morse code, there is a “Russian” morse code.
Still in use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Morse_code
May 8, 2015 @ 3:53 am
Interesting topic, I also was an electronic warfare signals intelligence operator in the 80s and 90s. All morse code affiliations are the same with variations observed as special characters. Our languages are different and so there must be a corresponding representation. Our analysis took care of the content and value of the product.
July 7, 2016 @ 10:08 pm
Mark, Morse code is an international means of communications still in use by many nations today. The Russians added several “special characters” to represent letters beyond our alphabet. Their Cyrillic alphabet had more characters. Almost all government/military code is encrypted often using very complicated codes. I did the same job for 22 years in the Army.
February 25, 2019 @ 11:23 pm
The Russian version of the Cyrillic alphabet has 33 characters, as I counted them off a website just now. Morse code variants can be applied to any alphabet, since the keyboards all have extra keys. For extra letters, the actual bits of “type” that make the impression were soldered onto the key arms on the Russian “mills” that were used for code interceptors. (I had to resolder them occasionally, since the modifications were less-than-professional in some cases.)
Looking just now at old typewriter keyboard pictures, I see they nearly all had enough various symbol and punctuation keys that could be pulled and replaced with the seven additional Cyrillic characters.
My Navy site in San Miguel, R.P., had linguists 24/7 to determine the value of intercepts.
July 1, 2014 @ 7:11 am
It always comes down to “semantics”. Maybe you should be more attentive to semantics when writing your stories.
July 1, 2014 @ 11:34 am
There is a little mistake in your storry. The german town is “Landsberg” not “Landsburg”. I know that it similar-sounding in the english language.
July 3, 2014 @ 8:37 pm
Under normal circumstances Cash’s full military record wouldn’t be available to the general public until 62 years after discharge, under which time only certain aspects are releasable through the Freedom of Information Act. But the DoD and the National Archives have in place the “Persons of Exceptional Prominence” (PEP) program where the records of celebrities, and Cash should certainly qualify, are released in full 10 years after death, meaning last fall. If there is anything, such as a citation or at least confirmation as to his exact unit, it would be in there and so a request to NARA’s National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis might shed some more light on this.
July 29, 2014 @ 6:03 pm
Intresting story I beleive he did what was said. However as a morse interceptor there are more people involved than just the person with the head sets on. Im sure the code was encrypted and JC having some rank on his collar would know what he was intercepting was of importance and would have notified an analyst. Between the 2 of them they could have decyphered what the message was. He may not have known exactly what the content was of what he was hearing but the potental fact remains is he could have been the first person to hear of Stallins death regardless if he read it as plain text or had to have some one help decypher it.
December 8, 2014 @ 9:36 pm
As a former “ditty bopper” I find the story a little far fetched. The guy copying the morse code did not know the content of what he was copying because it was all encrypted. It would have been just a mixture of letters and/or numbers. If he had a specific target then he might have had an idea that it was of some importance but no way anyone could have known the content in English until it was given to the analyst. And as far as different morse codes, the Russians used the same international code as the U.S. and most of the rest of the world.
September 27, 2015 @ 2:08 pm
Jim,
You hit that nail right on the head.
October 3, 2016 @ 9:37 pm
Johnny zcash was a talented musician but he didn’t understand Russian. He may have intercepted the encrypted Russian Morse Code but he wouldn’t have a clue about the meaning until the message was decrypted and translated so he could’t possibly be the first person to know the meaning of the message, that would have been the translator and they would have understood it in Russian without translating it to English.
June 5, 2018 @ 9:23 pm
Mark
JUNE 30, 2014 @ 11:56 AM
“…but the language of Morse Code is universal…”
Actually, Morse code is based on the English alphabet, with one to three dots and/or dashes representing each letter or punctuation mark. It’s unlikely in the extreme that the Russians were using it. They would have been using their own code, not Morse.
That doesn’t mean that Johnny Cash wasn’t listening and deciphering codes. It just means that it almost certainly wasn’t Morse.
The above comment by Mark is incorrect. Firstly, a Morse code character, number, or letter is not limited to 1 to 3 dots and/or dashes, but can be any combination of up to 5 dots and/or dashes. Secondly, the Russians did use Morse code very extensively and did not invent their own version of Morse code. There have been thousands of US military personnel (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard) whose job was to monitor and copy these transmissions. I am one of them with nearly 30 years in the intelligence career field.
December 17, 2018 @ 12:34 pm
I copied Russian in Morse code. It isn’t different. It just has more letters. I can still copy Russian in Morse code. They used Morse code believe me. (Four years in the Army Security Agency as a Morse Intercept Operator in Intelligence)
March 12, 2023 @ 6:46 am
GUHOR I M I BUD WILLIAMS USAFSS 1955-1975 TRIPOLI, CRETE,ANCHORAGE SHEMYA (15 STINKING MONTHS) ,TAMPA,FT MEADE,CRETE, CRETE, KEESLER, RAF CHICKSANDS ENGLAND,NKP DET 4 THAILAND,CRETE,CRETE,REIRED ON CRETE FALL OF 1975
STAYED TILL AROUND 1978 AND BACK TO ZI.
TKS FER THE CHATTER!!!
CHA CHA CHAA
June 1, 2023 @ 6:35 am
Sgt Williams,
This article was forwarded to me by an Air Force retiree who knows I was stationed on Crete and worked with Morse code operators. The string of comments above caught my attention and I started scrolling down, only to see your name! Wow, what memories.
My wife and I went to Greece for an anniversary celebration last year and we visited the closed-down Iraklion Air Station. All the buildings are totally gutted, but we found the operations center and my wife took a picture of me standing in the middle, where my desk would have been. In my mind, I could still see the rows of ditty boppers and linguists, and the map on the wall, fifty years later.
We did good work there.
“LT” (your flight commander 1972-73)