CWO4 Ralph T. Briggs (Ret.)
August 10, 1914 – September 1, 1998

Ralph T. Briggs, became interested in ham radio when he was a teenager, obtained a radio operator’s license in the early 1930s and joined a Navy communications reserve program.

Briggs entered the Navy in 1934 and went navy boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center. In 1936 he was selected for the Navy’s Communication Intelligence Organization, formally known as Naval Security Group Command, now called Fleet Cyber Command/Commander Tenth Fleet. With over 44 years of combined Navy and Federal Service, he has performed strategic clandestine and overt intelligence and counterintelligence assignments in both domestic and overseas billets, ashore and afloat.

Chief Warrant Officer Ralph T. Briggs with his wife and her Seeing Eye dog.  He told Captain Safford he had received the controversial “East wind, rain” message a few days before the attack.  Biggs offered to testify at the hearings but was forbidden to do so by his commanding officer, who told him. “Maybe someday you’ll understand the reason for this.”

He was one of the original members of the- “On- the-Roof” Gang, class #20, the nucleus of the Naval Security Group. His duties included staff assignments with the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) thence the National Security Agency (NSA); Naval Security Group (NSG); Naval investigative Service (NIS); and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). He retired from total Naval and Federal Service on July 1, 1978. After retirement, he resided with his wife in Las Vegas, NV and was professional genealogist and historian.

Briggs served as the Vice President of National Intelligence and Counterintelligence Association (NICA); Regional Vice President of National Counterintelligence

Corps (NICA); member of The Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO); one of the founders and member of the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association (NCVA); and an Associate member and past President of the U.S. Naval Group China (SACO) Veterans Association.

Ralph T. Briggs died at the age of 84.

Post Scripted: In 1977 a navy historian interviewed Briggs. In that interview Briggs stated that while on watch on December 4, 1941 he intercepted a schedule Orange (Japanese) weather broadcast HIGASHI NO KAZEAME, which in Japanese means “East Wind Rain.” The Winds Code was an instruction from Tokyo to Japanese legations worldwide that diplomatic relations were in danger of being ruptured. While the code was probably set up, the problem is whether the code was ever transmitted as claimed by Briggs.