Arlington Hall

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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Jan Lundquist
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Arlington Hall

Post by Jan Lundquist »

This is actually a spin off post, inspired by my encounter with Claude Shannon the original thinker who made "fuzzy logic" and deep learning possible:

viewtopic.php?t=665

We must not forget that while the Navy was making huge advances in RADAR development, the Army was proceeding apace with cryptography and signals intelligence. The Army work was conducted at the historic Arlington Hall station. Both the NSA and the NRO were born from this location.
In 1952 the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) transferred its responsibilities related to cyrptology to the National Security Agency (NSA). In 1955 the NSA began vacating its facilities at Arlington Hall Station, and by 1958 both A and B Buildings stood empty. A variety of intelligence and intelligence-related support operations quickly moved into the two buildings.\\

During the 1960s and 1970s Arlington Hal 1 Station provided operational facilities for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Army's Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), the successor to the ASA. The DIA began to vacate the facility in 1984, and INSCOM is currently (1989) completing its relocation to a new facility at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

Many of the activities conducted at Arlington Hall Station since 1942 are considered secret. Documents related to World War II-era construction
programs or operations remain classified and were unavailable for use in this report. The location of various activities, the function of some buildings or portions of buildings, and the activities of many of the agencies headquartered at the facility are not known. Activities during World War II clearly included the analysis of intercepted enemy transmissions, the development of codes and ciphers for use by the Army, and the production of cipher machines. For the period following World War II even less information is available. Arlington Hall clearly continued to play a major role in the provision of signal intelligence and communications security for the United States Army. Beyond that broad generalization virtually no information is available to the general public.
arlingtonhall.pdf
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This document was written in '89. The NRO was established in 1960/61 but its existence was not revealed until 1990.

Reading the history again reminds me that Linda said Townsend always preferred to live near his work, and where was he in the summer of '60, but in Arlington, VA.

Later in the summer, he rowed his dinghy from the Duchess, moored in the Potomac, to visit "Ms. Scattergood." (as Linda reported in her journal, told this by Helen Towt), Margaret Scattergood had been the previous owner of the estate that became the CIA headquarters location.

Linda also recalled Beau Kitselman coming aboard the Duchess for a visit during their sojurn on the river. What is significant about this is that would have been the year (1960) that the NRO was being planned and established. If Townsend was the premier radar man, Beau was the King of Coding, so of course they were involved in the planning process of transitioning activities to the new organization.
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Paul Schatzkin
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Re: Arlington Hall

Post by Paul Schatzkin »

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Oh yeah, I remember something about Arlington Hall...

And of course the Duchess, which period I did not get into in much detail.

I mean, 400+ pages of 'huh? wtf?' is enough to get started don't you think?

And rowing across the Potomac, and 'Scattergood'.

The number of tangents of this rabbit hole is.... what's the word... oh yeah: infinite.
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Paul Schatzkin, author of 'The Man Who Mastered Gravity' https://amz.run/6afz
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It's "a multigenerational project." What's your hurry?
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Jan Lundquist
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Re: Arlington Hall

Post by Jan Lundquist »

The number of tangents of this rabbit hole is.... what's the word... oh yeah: infinite.
In the span of Townsend's lifetime he would have seen the beginnings of RADAR, rockets, jet planes, computers, television, silent running subs, satellites, and putting men into space, so there are infinite tangential possibilities.

I am relooking at the Cady Report now, and have questions, many questions, which I will be asking in a separate thread.
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