From the newsroom of the Washington Post.

Hi, good afternoon. This is Tulu O'Lower-Renika with the Washington Post.

Hi, this is Amy Britton calling me the post.

This is Peter Jameson from the Washington Post.

This is Post Reports. I'm Martine Powers.

It's Tuesday, February 11th.

Today, a 70-year covert operation,

the ethics of quarantining a cruise ship, and the truth about the blue-collar boom.

So, I can try to encode a message now.

That is the sound of one of the early primitive encryption machines that countries used in the, in fact, the United States used in World War II.

Greg Miller covers national security for the post.

It's a pretty small device. It weighs about 8 pounds. It has a hand crank.

And it looks kind of like a music box on steroids with all these things spinning around inside of it,

and spitting out garbled messages that could be decrypted by their intended recipients.

And does this machine have a name?

It was called the M209, and it was made by a company called Crypto AG.

And so, who would use these machines in what scenarios would they be used?

So, for that machine, it was only basically used for troops.

But the company that grows out of this supplies encryption machines for governments all over the world,

for their diplomats, militaries, and for their intelligence services.

And these are not just US allies that are using these machines.

No, so Crypto AG, this company, it became a company based in Switzerland that ended up selling encryption devices and systems

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