Richard Treadwell Hallock (5 April 1906 in

Passaic Passaic ( or ) is a city in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was the state's 16th-most-populous municipality,New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

– 20 November 1980 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

) was an American

Assyriologist Assyriology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logy, -logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cune ...

and

Elam Elam () was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of modern-day southern Iraq. The modern name ''Elam'' stems fr ...

itologist. He reached his Ph.D. degree in Assyriology at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

in 1935, and was editorial secretary of the

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) or The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is a nine-decade project at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute (now known as the Institute for the Study of Ancient ...

(1955–1957). His major work is
Persepolis Fortification Tablets
' (1969), the first edition and translation of the

Persepolis Fortification Archive The Persepolis Administrative Archive (also Fortification Archive or Treasury Archive) are two groups of clay administrative archives — sets of records physically stored together – found in Persepolis dating to the Achaemenid Persian Emp ...

. In 1972, he was elected a corresponding fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

. Hallock also played an instrumental role in the

Venona project The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...

.NSA Page on the history of the Venona project.
/ref> While working on Soviet "Trade" traffic (so named because these messages dealt with Soviet trade issues), Hallock discovered that the Soviets were reusing pages of some of the

one-time pad The one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be Cryptanalysis, cracked in cryptography. It requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is larger than or equal to the size of the message being sent. In this technique, ...

s they relied upon to encrypt their messages. Hallock and his colleagues (including

Genevieve Feinstein Genevieve Marie Grotjan Feinstein (April 30, 1913 – August 10, 2006) was an American mathematician and cryptanalyst. She worked for the Signals Intelligence Service throughout World War II, during which time she played an important role in dec ...

Cecil Phillips Cecil may refer to: People with the name * Cecil (given name), a given name (including a list of people and fictional characters with the name) * Cecil (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) Places Canada * Cecil, Albert ...

, Frank Lewis,

Frank Wanat Frank, FRANK, or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a Germanic people in late Roman times * Franks, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusa ...

, and Lucille Campbell) went on to break into a significant amount of trade traffic, recovering many

additive key tables in the process.

References

* Charles E. Jones and Matthew W. Stolper:
Hallock, Richard Treadwel
, in ''Encyclopædia Iranica''. *
Hallock, Richard Treadwell
, in the
CDLI Wiki
'. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hallock, Richard 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers American Assyriologists 1906 births 1980 deaths Iranologists Venona project Corresponding fellows of the British Academy 20th-century American male writers