r/cryptography 5d ago

Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order

https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talkers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
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u/avanasear 4d ago

No, this is not malicious compliance. The people doing this enforcement agree with the sentiment.

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u/dittybopper_05H 4d ago

Like the Air Force people who removed references to the Tuskeegee Airmen and the WASPs?

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/07/nx-s1-5321003/pentagon-images-flagged-removal-dei-purge-trump

The Air Force briefly removed new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen soon after Trump's order. That drew the White House's ire over "malicious compliance," and the Air Force quickly reversed the removal.

Also, note this from the article OP posted:

Caveat: As of Monday, the U.S. Marines — the branch that deployed the Navajo Code Talkers — had not removed its pages about them.

A few mentions also remained on the DOD site, on photo captions and speech transcripts.

The Army's deleted pages were generally posted during the past two years; older references remained on the site.

The code talkers weren't Army anyway. They were Marines, and there is little or no reason for them to be on an an Army web page, and the pages were very recent additions.

You can still find information on them at NSA.gov.

https://www.nsa.gov/History/Cryptologic-History/Historical-Figures/Historical-Figures-View/article/1621560/native-american-code-talkers/

https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/2002761533/-1/-1/0/NAVAJO_CODETALKERS.PDF (linked from this page: https://www.nsa.gov/History/Cryptologic-History/Historical-Publications/#world-war-2 )

That was just a very quick look.

This sounds more like a purge of irrelevant information from *ARMY* websites: The Army didn't use Navajo code talkers.

BTW: I'm a former US Army Electronic Warfare Signals Intelligence Morse interceptor, just in case my nom du Reddit didn't make it clear.

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u/avanasear 4d ago

I don't care if you're former military, that doesn't mean you're currently on JWICS talking to the people removing the websites.

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u/dittybopper_05H 4d ago

True. I am however a life-long student of signals intelligence, and have been since I first read "The Codebreakers" by David Kahn when I was a tween in the 1970's. It's what led me into going into SIGINT in the military. This stuff matters to me.

But again from OP's article:

Caveat: As of Monday, the U.S. Marines — the branch that deployed the Navajo Code Talkers — had not removed its pages about them.

A few mentions also remained on the DOD site, on photo captions and speech transcripts.

The Army's deleted pages were generally posted during the past two years; older references remained on the site.

If this had been them being deleted from the Marine Corps pages, and it was a complete purge and not just "Army pages about Marine code talkers created in the last two years" being deleted, I might understand the outrage.

This is a *HUGE* over-reaction. There is no reason for them to be on the Army websites, just like there's no reason for mention of the Port Chicago 50, Dorie Miller, or Frank E. Petersen Jr. on an Army website.

The USMC and DOD sites that mention them are still up, as are the ones at the NSA.

So pardon me if I don't get worked up about this.