Responding to msg by rsalz@osf.org (Rich Salz) on Wed, 24 Jan 7:34 PM

Is there any indication that the NSA knew about public-key before it entered the open literature?

Fred B. Wrixon writes in "Codes and Ciphers," under the "Public Key" entry: ... This Hellman-Diffie proposal was apparently anticipated by a similar version developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) a decade earlier. (p. 164) No citation or elaboration is given for this claim. Wrixon's book is a simply written compendium: Codes and Ciphers: An A to Z of Covert Communication, from the Clay Tablet to the Microdot. Fred B. Wrixon Prentice Hall, 1992. Paper $18.00 ISBN 0-13-277047-4