For Parsons and the others in OP-20-G, their battles were fought not with guns and artillery, but with code. And their primary foe was the Enigma machine — the notorious encryption device used by the Nazis to conceal and communicate their war plans.
Parsons’ focus was on deciphering messages sent to U-boats, the German submarines that wreaked havoc on Allied shipping channels.
But breaking the Nazi codes was complex and tedious work, and doing so required the help of machines of their own called Bombes.
The Bombe machine was a hulking mass of rotors and wires, each standing 7 feet tall and weighing around 5,000 pounds. Dozens of them were installed at the Nebraska Avenue complex to help with codebreaking, and Parsons and fellow WAVES kept them humming 24 hours a day.
Once a code was cracked and a message revealed, the information was relayed to others in the Navy chain of command, where it was used to locate and, eventually, target enemy submarines.
Not all of the messages they decrypted were about war. Embedded in the traffic were personal messages — happy birthdays, death, even birth notices.
Through the messages that were revealed, Parsons said she felt she got to know many of the U-boat skippers and their families in a way that humanized them. When they were eventually targeted or killed, she says she couldn’t help but feel sadness.
“This one man was so happy because finally (he and his wife) had a little boy, and it wasn’t a week later that his submarine was sunk.” Parsons said. “I felt so bad about that because he’ll never know his father.”
By the end of the war, 95 German U-boats were sunk or captured, in large part thanks to intelligence revealed by the WAVES of OP-20-G.
And to this day, Kohnen says the story of OP-20-G is one of the most important yet little-known secrets of World War II.
“The story of Nebraska Avenue is really yet to be told,” said Kohnen. ” … in many respects we should consider Nebraska Avenue the US Navy’s Bletchley Park.”
Then came the unmistakable voice of the late President of Nigeria (2007 to 2010), AlhajiUmaru MusaYar’Adua.
“There is plenty of room at the bottom because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity.”
And Robert Frost (1874 to 1963)
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
It was left to Denis Waitley (1933 – 2019)to provide the tonic for the rest of the morning:
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.”
Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.”
What followed was the front page report of “Saturday Punch” of 1st August2020.
Headline: “NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION
(NNPC) REPLIES WHISTLE BLOWER, DENIES 48- MILLION-BARREL-OIL THEFT”
(NNPC BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON WHISTLE BLOWER !!)
“The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has denied the claim of 48 million barrels of crude oil allegedly stolen from Nigeria and stored in China in 2015.
The denial is contained in the corporation’s reply to a letter by a firm, SamanoSa De CV and its officials – Ramirez and Jose Salazar Tinajero – who had demanded $125m as compensation for providing information about the alleged theft of the crude oil.
NNPC’s letter signed by the corporation’s lawyer, Mr KehindeOgunwumiju (SAN) of AfeBabalola& Co., was dated July 30, 2020 and addressed to SamanoSa De CV’s counsel, Mr GboyegaOyewole (SAN).
Ogunwumiju stated that the firm’s claim in its letter dated July 23, 2020 sent to the NNPC was “not only unfounded but frivolous”.
He described the firm’s claim as part of “a gold-digging scheme” aimed at “blackmailing and extorting money from our client and the Federal Government of Nigeria”.
The NNPC’s lawyer stated, “We wish to emphatically and unequivocally state for the record that our client vehemently denies your client’s claim that it provided any information to NNPC or the Federal Government of Nigeria which information led to the identification and/or recovery of 48 million barrels of stolen Nigerian Bonny Light Crude Oil stored in the People’s Republic of China.
Accordingly, it is our client’s position that your client is not entitled to the payment of five per cent of the value of the allegedly stolen crude or any amount whatsoever as compensation for information it purportedly gave to the Federal Government of Nigeria in respect of the said stolen crude stored in the People’s Republic of China.”
Ogunwumiju stated that Samano had first contacted NNPC sometime in 2015, alleging that it had been approached by an unnamed group in China to buy 48 million barrels of stolen Nigerian Crude Oil (Bonny Light Grade).
He stated that the firm claimed that the stolen crude oil was shipped out of Nigeria before the Major General MuhammaduBuhari (retd) administration, and requested it be allowed to buy it upon its recovery as compensation for sharing the information with the Federal Government.
He stated that the NNPC had doubted the veracity of the claim of the stolen 48 million barrels of oil from the outset, as “earlier claims made to the Federal Government by other entities in respect of stolen Nigerian crude oil stored in China turned out to be false”.
He also stated that “it was impossible to ship 48 million barrels of crude oil from Nigeria to China without any record or trace of same” especially because, “as of 2015, the daily production of crude ml in Nigeria was below 1.6 million barrels.”
Ogunwumiju added, “Therefore, 48 million barrels of crude oil would have been the total production capacity of the whole country for a month.
It is simply impossible that one-month crude oil production would disappear without any record or trace.”
According to him, notwithstanding the firm’s failure to provide evidence to support its claims, “relevant officials of the government were mandated to proceed to China to verify the claims of the existence of the said stolen Nigerian crude oil.”
He stated, “The said delegation discovered that the Samao’s claim was false and baseless. Consequently, the government severed communications with the syndicate.
Miffed by this, Messrs Ramirez and Jose Salazar Tinajero, acting as agents of Samao, resorted to blackmail and intimidation of key officials of the government and the NNPC, threatening to make public information that the said 48 million barrels of oil had been recovered, sold and the proceeds therefrom, looted by some government officials and the NNPC when it was aware that this was untrue.
They also demanded $125,000,000 from the said government officials, which was conveniently and rightfully ignored.
Thereafter, NNPC reported this case of attempted blackmail to the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force.”
He stated that upon investigation it was discovered that Ramirez had been charged with separate and unconnected criminal charges at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja in charge No: FCT/HC/CR/147/2016 and the Federal High Court, Lagos in Charge No: ID/2763/2016.
He added, “Both charges were preferred against Mr Ramirez by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for economic and financial crimes.
The said Mr Ramirez and his cohorts have since been charged to several courts in Nigeria for criminal offences ranging from fraud, forgery, extortion, blackmail, conspiracy, etc.
The charge which relates to the attempt to fleece the Federal Government and NNPC is Charge No.: FCT/HC/BU/CR/134/2019 between the Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Marco Antonio Ramirez and four others pending before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.
But for the due diligence of the management of the NNPC, the Federal Government would have lost a whopping sum of $125,000,000.
The NNPC is currently consulting its lawyers AfeBabalola& Co in a bid to take corresponding legal action(s) against the said syndicate for damages done to its reputation and its officials as a result of the false publications by the syndicate.”
During the intermission that followed, the late President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe (1987 to 2017) spoke from the grave:
“To applaud a politician because he had built a school, hospital or road using public money ………is the same as congratulating an ATM machine for giving you your money.”
Next cameDr. Nelson Mandela:
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear; but the triumph over it.”
Just when we thought the last word belonged to Oprah Winfrey:
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have
enough.”
all hell broke loose on account of the excerpt from the front page report of “Daily Trust” newspaper of June 13, 2020.
