The news stories about the U.S. State Department’s “reply to all” emails bogging down their servers say that a cable was sent to all employees asking them to not use “reply to all” on large distribution lists. Being too familiar with the actual problem (see how it affected Microsoft in 1997 on the Exchange team blog and the resulting t-shirt), I focused instead on the word “cable.” How does the State Department send a cable to all employees? Not Western Union of course (which sent its last telegram in 2006). I found mentions of a five-year overhaul of State’s internal messaging system “based on Western Union-like telegrams which you thought were only in museums” to the State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (SMART). So at the start of the new millenium they were still on WWII era Telex-like devices. The new SMART system is web-based according to this 2003 article and transmits both formal and informal cables, classified and not, and also email. “After delays and a management shake-up,” SMART should be fully rolled out by the end of fiscal year 2009. My question remains: was this cable about email received via old-style cable or SMART? Perhaps it was both.