What's the Code Word?

MBAs hide behind their pretentious jargon. Likewise, spies get by with their khufia code words. The CIA, being the big daddy of them all, has a rich history of generating cryptonyms for everything under the sun, moon and stars. Of late, they’ve been quite liberal about sharing their stash of covert euphemisms. No one’s paused to wonder why. Conspiracy theories aside, here’s what we’ve culled out from our Deep Throats in Langley:

Everybody knows that POTUS is the President of the United States and his aircraft is the Air Force One. But do you know what the CIA calls Air Force One? It’s ‘Angel’. His limousine, by the way, is code named ‘Stagecoach’. The popular term for it though is ‘the beast’. And the presidential motorcade carries the curious tag ‘Bamboo’.

But the real fun names are dished out to presidents. John F. Kennedy was called ‘Lancer’, which is an allusion to his reputation of being a lothario of sorts. Richard Nixon’s snoopy tendencies were beautifully captured with ‘Searchlight’. Ronald Reagan’s cowboy image was reflected in ‘Rawhide’. George Bush used to run a timber business at some point. So his was ‘Timberwolf’. Since George Dubya Bush used to binge on drinks in his younger days, he was aptly labelled ‘Tumbler’. His deputy Dick Cheney was into fishing and later heavily into spinning the media, ergo ‘Angler’.

Bill Clinton was labelled ‘Eagle’. Not sure if it was inspired by his love for golf. Barack Obama was handed out ‘Renegade’ which might have been a dig at his supposed conversion from Christianity to Islam. Obama embraced it sportingly although his supporters claim that he chose ‘Renegade’ in the first place.

There’s undeniable evidence that CIA had a mildly racist streak. Apparently in the Eighties, Jesse Jackson, one of the leading Democrat presidential candidates, was code named ‘PONTIAC’. For those who are wondering how that’s discriminatory, well, PONTIAC the acronym stands for that famous slur: ‘Poor Old Nigger Thinks It’s A Cadillac’. Talking of Afro-Americans, Martin Luther King Jr, had a secret name too. It was ‘Zorro’, the black-masked comic character.

Even first ladies were assigned names. Dependable-as-a-rock Hillary Clinton was ‘Evergreen’. The current incumbent Michelle Obama happens to be ‘Renaissance’. There’s a tasteless joke about a possible CIA code name for Monica Lewinsky. They say it’s ‘The Hoover’. In case you didn’t get it, The Hoover is a vacuum cleaner that sucks muck! Ain’t that complicated?

The Code of Code Names

May was a rather dramatic month. Batku called it a day. Guruji and Jack dragged the Helicopter down. Raavan and Shining glittered but didn’t strike gold. Chashma looked listless. Model didn’t live up to his billing. Dada was caught out. Rotru, Mowgli and Kavala were jailed. While Monkey and Pagadi danced away to victory.

If that sounded like a load of gibberish to you, it obviously means that you haven’t kept pace with the bookie code names conceived for IPL 6.  In case you’re curious: Rotru means cry baby and it can only refer to India’s most famous slap victim. The rest of the names are fairly decipherable once you get the drift.

Employed first by the military during the World Wars, clandestine euphemisms or cryptonyms have come a long way.  The code names today rarely reek of seriousness. A tinge of humour is the flavour of our times.

Sample these from the United States Secret Service: George Dubya Bush, not exactly known for holding his drink, was given the ‘Tumbler’ moniker. Dick Cheney, a lover of fishing and spinmeister par excellence, earned the ‘Angler’ tag. Barack Obama was called ‘Renegade’ which literally means ‘Christian turned Muslim’. And Richard Nixon, best known for the late night break-ins into the Watergate hotel, was fortuitously named as ‘Searchlight’!

Companies are equally funny when it comes to code names. When Microsoft employees were surreptitiously referring to Windows 95 as ‘Chicago’, the cheeky folks at Apple called their competing product ‘Capone’ after Al Capone, the mafia boss who tormented Chicago. Likewise, spunky Facebook has picked ‘Buffy’ for its secret new phone. ‘Buffy’ as everyone knows is the ‘vampire slayer’. The allusion here is to the blood sucking evil Google!

Not every one fancies a funny code name. Google has a glad eye for desserts - which explains why they chose Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo (Frozen Yoghurt) Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich for the various avatars of Android. Mozilla has a thing for national parks. Intel, Microsoft and Blackberry love place names. Mac OS X has a fixation for animals. ‘What about Indian companies?’ you may ask. Well, our covert names are among the world’s best-kept secrets.

Operation Hush Hush

A military operation is not a military operation till you dignify it with a code name. The German Army was the first to hit upon this brainwave when they cryptically labelled their World War I invasion of the Baltic Islands as ‘Operation Albion’. If they had called it Operation Bloodyhell or Operation Takethatyoulosers, then history may have judged the act of taking 20,000 Russian prisoners, rather offensively.

The German innovation of dressing up of crimson war wounds with high sounding monikers inspired Winston Churchill to issue the now famous guideline, that nomenclature to designate war ops, ‘ought not to be of a frivolous character’ as no mom or widow would like to say ‘that her son was killed in an operation called Bunnyhug or Ballyhoo’.

That’s probably why America opted for ‘Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan, ‘Restore Hope’ in Somalia and ‘Uphold Democracy’ in Haiti. If you ask me, all these names sound like words you’ll associate with peaceniks like Yoko Ono or Bob Geldof!

Sometimes even Pentagon is not so politically correct. Operation Geronimo, the covert raid to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden was roundly criticised by Native Americans for running down not just their chieftain but also their race.

Indian cryptonyms - in my humble view - have shown a lot more intelligence. The Hyderabad Police Action in 1948 was billed as ‘Operation Polo’ as Hyderabad had the highest number of polo grounds in India during that era.

India’s first nuclear test in Pokhran was evocatively designated as ‘Operation Smiling Buddha’ cueing the peaceful nature of the program. . The Indian Army’s desire to be a thorn in the flesh of the coup plotters in Maldives resulted in ‘Cactus’. While the IPKF endgame against LTTE in 1998 was dubbed as ‘Checkmate’.

One name that must have given great angst to the brand manager of Blue Star air conditioners is: Operation Bluestar. I’ve always wondered why they called it so. Could it be that Bluestar refers to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the star of the Khalistan movement who was always seen in a blue turban? Or did Indira Gandhi have a frivolous reason that fails the Churchill test? We’ll never know as this is a national secret.