GCHQ
Richard J. Aldrich
The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency
For Libby (for the dark night-time)
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Sigint and Comsec Locations in the UK
Note on Terminology
Abbreviations
Introduction
THE 1940s BLETCHLEY PARK AND BEYOND
1 Schooldays
2 Friends and Allies
3 Every War Must Have an End
4 The KGB and the Venona Project
5 UKUSA – Creating the Global Sigint Alliance
THE 1950s FIGHTING THE ELECTRONIC WAR
6 ‘Elint’ and the Soviet Nuclear Target
7 The Voyages of HMS Turpin
8 Sigint in the Sun – GCHQ’s Overseas Empire
9 Blake, Bugs and the Berlin Tunnel
10 Embassy Wars
THE 1960s SPACE, SPY SHIPS AND SCANDALS
11 Harold Macmillan – Shootdowns, Cyphers and Spending
12 Harold Wilson – Security Scandals and Spy Revelations
13 Intelligence for Doomsday
14 Staying Ahead – Sigint Ships and Spy Planes
THE 1970s TURBULENCE AND TERROR
15 Trouble with Henry
16 Disaster at Kizildere
17 Turmoil on Cyprus
18 Unmasking GCHQ: The ABC Trial
THE 1980s INTO THE THATCHER ERA
19 Geoffrey Prime–The GCHQ Mole
20 A Surprise Attack – The Falklands War
21 Thatcher and the GCHQ Trade Union Ban
22 NSA and the Zircon Project
AFTER 1989 GCHQ GOES GLOBAL
23 From Cold War to Hot Peace – The Gulf War and Bosnia
24 The New Age of Ubiquitous Computing
25 The 9/11 Attacks and the Iraq War
26 From Bletchley Park to a Brave New World?
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3 – GCHO Organisation in 1946
Appendix 4 – GCHO Organisation in 1970
Appendix 5 – GCHO Organisation in 1998
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Sigint and Comsec Locations in the UK
Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, BT Research Laboratories, 1975–
Beaumanor/Garats Hay, Leic., post–war Army sigint base & Special Projects Agency, 1945–94
Bletchley Park; this remained a sigint training site after the war until 1985
Boddington, Glos, (RAF) military communications unit working with GCHQ
Bower, Bowermadden near Wick, listening station, closed 1975
Brawdy, Haverfordwest, Wales, 14 Signals Regiment (electronic warfare)
Brora, Sutherland, listening station, closed 1984
Capenhurst Tower, Cheshire, intercepting telephone traffic to Ireland, 1990–98
Cheadle, Staffs, (RAF) listening station, closed 1996
Cheltenham (Oakley and Benhall); GCHQ moved to the twin sites between 1952 and 1954
Chicksands, Beds, NSA/USAF until 1994, then UK Defence Intelligence & Security Centre
Cricklade, Wilts, GCHQ experimental radio station
Culmhead, Somerset, GCHQ Central Training School, replacing Bletchley, 1985–94
Digby, Lincs, main centre for RAF ground sigint and now UK joint services sigint centre
Edzell, Brechin, US Navy/NSA site, 1960–96
HMS Flowerdown, near Winchester, listening station, closed 1977
Gilnahirk, Belfast, listening station, closed 1978
Hanslope Park, near Milton Keynes, Diplomatic Wireless Service and DTMS
Hawklaw, (Cupar) Fife, listening station, closed 1988
Hereford, 264 Signal Squadron supporting 22 SAS
Irton Moor, Scarborough, listening station, now GCHQ Scarborough
Island Hill, Comber, Northern Ireland, closed 1977
Ivy Farm, Knockholt Pound, Kent, listening station
Kirknewton, near Edinburgh, US listening station, closed 1966
Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, US Army listening station, taken over by NSA 1963
HMS Mercury, near Petersfield, naval signals centre, 1941–93
Morwenstow, now GCHQ Bude, focused on satellite communications, 1969–
Oakhanger, (RAF) control centre for Skynet since 1967
Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, from 1953, later Defence Research Agency
Waddington, Lincs, (RAF) Nimrod R1s of 51 Squadron since 1995
Watton, Norfolk, (RAF) Central Signals Establishment, 192 Squadron 1945–63
Whaddon Manor, Bucks, outstation of Bletchley Park, closed 1946
Wyton, Cambridgeshire, (RAF) Comets and Nimrod R1s of 51 Squadron, 1963–95
London
Chester Road, Borehamwood, (GCHQ/SIS) factory making radio microphones in the 1950s
Chesterfield Street W1, London office for GCHQ in the late 1940s
Dollis Hill, North London, Post Office Research Station, 1921–75
Eastcote, Harrow; GCHQ moved here in 1946 and some comsec staff remained after 1952
Empress State Building, Earl’s Court, listening station, 1962–94
London Processing Group, St Dunstan’s Hill, City of London, moved to Cheltenham 1975
Northwood Hills, small post–war GCHQ site; Permanent Joint HQ since 1996
Palmer St W1, LCSA headquarters until 1969; also GCHQ’s London office
Note on Terminology
On 1 November 1919, Britain created the Government Code and Cypher School, or ‘GC&CS’, the nation’s first integrated code-making and code-breaking unit. The term GC&CS remained in widespread use until the end of the Second World War.
By contrast, Government Communications Headquarters, or ‘GCHQ’, is a term of uncertain origin. Originally developed as a cover name for Bletchley Park in late 1939, it competed for usage with several other designations, including ‘BP’, ‘Station X’ and indeed ‘GC&CS’. However, the Government Code and Cypher School remained the formal title of the whole organisation in wartime. During 1946, GC&CS re-designated itself the ‘London Signals Intelligence Centre’ when the staff of Bletchley Park decamped to a new site at Eastcote near Uxbridge, although GCHQ remained in widespread use as a cover name. On 1 November 1948, as Britain’s code-breakers began to investigate a further move away from London to Cheltenham, the term GCHQ was formally adopted and has remained in use ever since.
‘Code-breaker’ is also a troublesome phrase. Codes are usually considered to be words substituted for others, often chosen somewhat at random. Typically, the military operations that constituted D-Day in 1944 were code-named ‘Overlord’. By contrast, systems of communication where letters and numbers are substituted in an organised pattern, either by machine or by hand, are referred to as cyphers. Yet the term code-breaker is so frequently applied to the people who worked at Bletchley Park and at GCHQ that this book follows common usage.
The constantly changing names of the Soviet intelligence and security services are especially vexing and so, despite the inescapable anachronisms, the Soviet civilian intelligence service is referred to as ‘KGB’ until 1989, while the military intelligence service is denoted as ‘GRU’. In Britain, the Security Service is denoted here by the commonly known term ‘MI5’ and its sister organisation, the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6, is referred to as ‘SIS’. Ships’ and submarines’ names are italicised, e.g. HMS Turpin. Onshore naval bases and training establishments, e.g. HMS Anderson, are not italicised.
Abbreviations
A-2—US Air Force
Intelligence
ASA—Army Security Agency [American]
ASIO—Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
BDS—British Defence Staff, Washington
BfV—West German security service
BJ—‘Blue jacket’ file for signals intelligence or an individual intercept
Blue Book—Weekly digest of comint material for the PM
BND—Bundesnachrichtendienst – foreign intelligence service of West Germany
Brixmis—British Military Mission to the HQ Soviet Army in East Germany
BRUSA—Anglo–American signals intelligence agreement, 1943
‘C’—Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
CESD—Communications-Electronics Security Department, succeeded by CESG
CESG—Communications-Electronics Security Group
CIA—Central Intelligence Agency [American]
comint—Communications intelligence
comsec—Communications security
CSE—Communications Security Establishment [Canadian]
CSU—Civil Service Union
CX—Prefix for a report originating with SIS
DIS—Defence Intelligence Staff
DMSI—Director of Management and Support for Intelligence in DIS
DSD—Defence Signals Department [Australian], formerly DSB
DWS—Diplomatic Wireless Service
elint—Electronic intelligence
FBI—Federal Bureau of Investigation [American]
GC&CS—Government Code and Cypher School
GCHQ—Government Communications Headquarters
GRU—Soviet Military Intelligence
GTAC—Government Technical Assistance Centre, established in 2000 – later NTAC
IRSIG—Instructions and Regulations concerning the Security of Signals Intelligence [Allied]
JIC—Joint Intelligence Committee
JSRU—Joint Speech Research Unit
JSSU—Joint Services Signals Unit, combined sigint collection units
KGB—Russian secret service
LCSA—London Communications Security Agency, until 1963
LCSA—London Communications-Electronics Security Agency, until 1965
LPG—London Processing Group
MI5—Security Service
MI6—Secret Intelligence Service (also SIS)
MiG—Mikoyan – Soviet fighter aircraft
MoD—Ministry of Defence
MTI—Methods to Improve, sequential five-year sigint programmes at GCHQ
NATO—North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NSA—National Security Agency [American]
NTAC—National Technical Assistance Centre, previously GTAC
PHP—Post-Hostilities Planning Committee
PSIS—Permanent Secretaries’ Committee on the Intelligence Services
SAS—Special Air Service
SBS—Special Boat Service
SDECE—French intelligence service
Sigdasys—An allied operational sigint distribution system in Germany in the 1980s
sigint—Signals intelligence
SIS—Secret Intelligence Service (also MI6)
SOE—Special Operations Executive
SUSLO—Special United States Liaison Officer based in Britain
TICOM—Target Intelligence Committee dealing with signals intelligence
UKUSA—UK–USA signals intelligence agreements
VHF—Very High Frequency
Y—Wireless interception, usually low-level
Y Section—SIS unit undertaking interception activities
Y Service—Signals interception arms of the three services
Introduction
GCHQ – The Last Secret?
GCHQ has been by far the most valuable source of intelligence for the British Government ever since it began operating at Bletchley during the last war. British skills in interception and code-breaking are unique and highly valued by our allies. GCHQ has been a key element in our relationship with the United States for more than forty years.
Denis Healey, House of Commons, 27 February 19841
‘GCHQ’ is the last great British secret. For more than half a century, Government Communications Headquarters – the successor to the famous wartime code-breaking organisation at Bletchley Park – has been the nation’s largest and yet most elusive intelligence service. During all of this period it has commanded more staff than the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) combined, and has enjoyed the lion’s share of Britain’s secret service budget. GCHQ’s product, known as signals intelligence or ‘sigint’, constituted the majority of the secret information available to political decision-makers during the Cold War. Since then, it has become yet more significant in an increasingly ‘wired’ world. GCHQ now plays a leading role in shaping Britain’s secret state, and in the summer of 2003 it relocated to a spectacular new headquarters that constituted the single largest construction project in Europe. Today, it is more important than ever – yet we know almost nothing about it.2
By contrast, the wartime work of Bletchley Park is widely celebrated. The importance of decrypted German communications – known as ‘the Ultra secret’ – to Britain’s victory over the Axis is universally recognised. Winston Churchill’s wartime addiction to his daily supply of ‘Ultra’ intelligence, derived from supposedly impenetrable German cypher machines such as ‘Enigma’, is legendary. The mathematical triumphs of brilliant figures such as Alan Turing are a central part of the story of Allied success in the Second World War. The astonishing achievement of signals intelligence allowed Allied prime ministers and presidents to see into the minds of their Axis enemies. Thanks to ‘sigint’ we too can now read about the futile attempts of Japanese leaders to seek a favourable armistice in August 1945, even as the last screws were being tightened on the atomic bombs destined for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.3
However, shortly after VJ-Day, something rather odd happens. In the words of Christopher Andrew, the world’s leading intelligence historian, we are confronted with the sudden disappearance of signals intelligence from the historical landscape. This is an extraordinary omission which, according to Andrew, has ‘seriously distorted the study of the Cold War’.4 Intelligence services were at the forefront of the Cold War, yet most accounts of international relations after 1945 stubbornly refuse to recognise even the existence of the code-breakers who actually constituted the largest part of this apparatus.5 Nor did this amazing cloak of historical invisibility stop with the end of the Cold War. In 2004, following the furore over the role of intelligence in justifying the invasion of Iraq, Lord Butler, a former Cabinet Secretary, was appointed to undertake an inquiry into ‘British Intelligence and Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Butler’s report into the workings of the secret agencies was unprecedented in its depth and detail. However, GCHQ is mentioned only once, in the list of abbreviations, where we are told that the acronym stands for ‘Government Communications Headquarters’.6 This is all we learn, for in the subsequent 260 pages the term GCHQ is in fact never used, and the organisation is never discussed. The subject is simply too secret.
Sigint was not simply a Second World War phenomenon. Throughout the twentieth century, Britain’s code-breakers continually supplied Downing Street with the most precious jewels of British intelligence, discreetly delivered in what became known as the ‘Blue Book’. Nicholas Henderson, formerly Britain’s Ambassador to Washington, explains: ‘All Prime Ministers love intelligence, because it’s a sort of weapon…The intelligence reports used to arrive in special little boxes, and it gave them a belief that they had a direct line to something that no other ordinary departments have.’ It was partly for this reason that British Prime Ministers ‘never minded spending money on intelligence’. Signals intelligence also matters to political leaders because it allows them to hear the authentic voices of their enemies. Although Winston Churchill was the most famous recipient of such material, his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, was als
o offered some remarkable insights into the mind of Adolf Hitler. In 1939, shortly after the Munich appeasement, Chamberlain was given an intelligence report which showed that Hitler habitually referred to him in private as ‘der alter Arschloch’, or ‘the old arsehole’. Understandably, this revelation ‘had a profound effect on Chamberlain’.7
However, constant exposure to secrets derived from the world of code-breaking, bugging and other kinds of secret listening has the capacity to induce paranoia. Harold Wilson regularly dragged his Private Secretary, Bernard Donoughue, into the bathrooms and toilets of Downing Street. Only there, with the taps turned on full and water sloshing noisily in the basins, did he feel immune to the threat of bugs.8 A top priority for Britain’s technical security specialists during the Wilson years was the installation of the latest scrambler phones at the Prime Minister’s holiday home in the Scilly Isles, so he could speak to Whitehall without fear of interception. Doubtless, Wilson would have been delighted to learn that some of his opponents felt equally oppressed by electronic surveillance. When Ian Smith, the Rhodesian leader, visited London in late 1965 he insisted on having some of the more sensitive conversations with his delegation in the ladies’ lavatory, convinced that this was the one location where British intelligence would not have dared to plant microphones.9
Secret listening terrified friend and foe alike. Harold Macmillan recalled the almost unbearable sense of oppression he felt on his visit to Moscow to see the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1959. His delegation feared that British codes were compromised, and they were unable to talk freely, even outside in the open air, because of constant technical surveillance. He would have been fascinated to learn that, at the very same moment, Khrushchev and his immediate circle also felt increasingly anxious about KGB microphones, to the extent that they dared not speak freely, even amongst themselves in their own capital.10 In June 1966, to his immense fury, President Tito of Yugoslavia discovered that he was being bugged by his own security chief. ‘Concealed microphones have been installed everywhere,’ he exclaimed angrily to a friend: ‘Even my bedroom!’11
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