Alastair Denniston
Page 30
Another old friend made contact with AGD on hearing of his retirement. On 12 April 1945, William Friedman wrote:
As the date of your retirement from active service approaches, I want to tell you how much I personally have enjoyed our friendship and how highly I regard the cordial relationship which existed between us from 1941 to the present moment.
Words are often poor things to express the deep feelings one has at times like these, but I do want you to know that there are many of us here who realize the exceptionally valuable contribution which you made toward bringing the war in Europe to a successful conclusion. This added to what you did in the last war makes a target for those who will follow you to shoot at, and it will take some very good shooting to come near it.
AGD and Friedman had immediately struck up a friendship when they met first in the US and then in Britain. In October 1943, Friedman had sent AGD some golf balls, as both were keen golfers. On 5 January 1944, Friedman replied to a letter from AGD and talked about exchanging daughters on what he jokingly referred to as ‘a Lend-Lease basis’ He went on to say that: ‘We are anticipating another expansion to go into exploitation on a much wider scale as regards the Pacific Theatre. Things look pretty good in that direction and we have great hopes of “making a kill”.’ But they were able to mix business with pleasure, as he goes on to say: ‘It seems to me about time for you to be thinking of making another visit in this direction, say some time this spring or early summer. I would like to try you out again on that Army-Navy golf course and see if I could not make up for that drubbing you gave us in 1941.’15
Freidman wrote to AGD again on 19 June, 1945, informing him that he too had left government service. He formally retired on 12 October 1955 to work on ‘civilian’ cryptographic problems. AGD’s daughter ‘Y’ was working in Washington at the time, and Friedman assured him that she was well and happy. The following month, AGD was able to update Friedman on some of their old colleagues:
My dear Friedman,
Some weeks ago I was very grateful to receive an invitation from the Director to be present at a ceremony marking your return to private life. I wish I could have been present to have shaken you by the hand & congratulated you on your very successful active life & have welcomed you to the world of the ‘has beens’. I was glad to see that at least two of your leading pupils are still with you, Sinkov and Kullback – please greet them for me. I am sad to have to tell you that not many of my old party still survive.
I did see Travis in his home in the early spring, also on the retired list, but alas there are not many others. I exchange news once a year with Telford Taylor and Bancroft Littlefield &, we heard McCormack’s voice on the phone while he was visiting England. Since I retired, now 10 years ago I have kept quite clear of the old office. I know nothing of it & its activities for obvious reasons. Oddly enough a biography of Admiral Hall has just appeared which hints at the work of 1914-18. I believe an American edition is now thought of – it might amuse you as I know you once had a long collection of such books. Its title is ‘The Eyes of the Navy’. All personal allusions have been avoided but I fancy you may be able to read between the lines. I hope life has been kind to you & all your family. No doubt you are now a proud grandfather as I am, now attending to my garden & my golf in the depths of the New Forest. Will you please give my warm greetings to any of my old friends should you happen to meet them & accept my warm congratulations.16
Friedman replied and said that the intelligence agency was still keen on him doing work for them, albeit from home. He was also attempting to catalogue all of the items in his cryptographic collection.17. By the end of 1957, AGD told Friedman that he was not as mobile as he once was and ‘am inclined to stay put in this forest village’. The following year, AGD’s health was no better and he updated Friedman in a letter dated 18 January: ‘Since those days at the end of 1957 when we nearly met & when you sent me your book, I have alas been in the hands of doctors who, kindly but firmly, tell me I am now an old man whose works require careful treatment. I must not try to do too much. After weeks in bed I am now allowed up for some 3 or 4 hours a day & feel I am really a nuisance to my overworked wife.’18
By May, AGD was able to report that he was feeling better and becoming more mobile. The two old friends had initiated a discussion about the old days and, in particular, Edward Bell and the Zimmermann Telegram. On 4 May, AGD wrote: ‘You may remember the name Bell, he was the link with that distinguished man whose life we were looking at on Saturday & he dealt personally with our people who were engaged in that affair.’19
By this point, Friedman had decided to produce a definitive account of the Zimmermann Telegram episode, and AGD was probably the only living survivor of the halcyon days of Room 40 that he knew. He had acquired a copy of The Eyes of the Navy, a ‘biographical study’ of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall by Admiral Sir William James. Not surprisingly, it included the story of the Zimmermann Telegram. He told AGD that he was mentioned in the book but not listed in the index. He thought that it was ‘a good piece of work; so far as I have dipped into it and the account appears to be quite factual and I haven’t encountered any glaring misstatement’. Friedman asked Prescott Currier, who was visiting Britain, to deliver a copy of the telegram by hand to AGD.20 AGD and Friedman then proceeded to get into a discussion about how many routes were used to transmit the Zimmermann Telegram. It gives a fascinating insight into the difficulty of recalling historical events from years before without recourse to documents of the day. Some of the letters can be found in Appendix 12.
AGD’s beloved wife Dorothy was diagnosed with breast cancer in the autumn of 1957. She had supported him throughout his career and, while she knew about his work, had been as secretive as her husband. She had an operation in January the following year but sadly died on 7 February 1958. AGD moved to New Milton where ‘Y’ lived with her husband, Geoffrey Finch, the local vicar. ‘Y’ looked after her father as he became frail, inactive and, in the words of his son, ‘distraught’. He died in hospital in Lymington, Hampshire, on 1 January 1961 aged 79, and was buried in Burley in the New Forest. He left his children £2,000 each in his will but his wife, a shrewd investor in stocks and shares, left them £10,000 each. No official representative of the intelligence services attended his funeral and it went unreported in national newspapers.
The following month, ‘Y’ wrote to Friedman, informing him of her father’s death:
Feb 7th 1961
Dear Mr Friedman I hope this letter reaches you only I have lost the letter I had saved up with your address on it.
This comes to tell you that my father died very peacefully on January 1st aged 79. He was really only ill one week though he had been very frail & inactive for the last 3 years. He missed my mother who died in February last year very much & was really only waiting to join her. I think he had been reasonably happy with us & enjoyed the company of the grandchildren. He knew that we were expecting No. 3 in May & was pleased as our first two are adopted. I miss him very much but realise that really his death was a blessing.
With greetings to you all
‘Y’ Finch (nee DENNISTON)21
Friedman’s reply reflects the great esteem with which AGD was held in the intelligence community:
Dear ‘Y’,
Your letter was forwarded quite promptly by my friends at the American Branch of the Cambridge University Press.
The news of your father’s death had been communicated to us and other friends of your father, by Brigadier Tiltman, who as you probably know, is still in Washington.
Your father was a great man in whose debt all English-speaking people will remain for a very long time, if not for ever. That so few of them should know exactly what he did towards achievement of victory in World War I and II is the sad part of the untold story of his life and of his great contribution to that victory. His devotion to the supremely important activities to which he gave so much of himself unstintingly, and with no thought to his own frail strength and
physical welfare will never be forgotten by those of us who had the pleasure of knowing, admiring and loving him.
You probably know that on each of my visits to London after the war I journeyed into the country to renew acquaintances, to further cement our long-standing friendship, and just chat with him. During my last two visits I was sad to see him physically so frail, but glad to find that his mind was as keen as ever. When I learned in January of 1960 of your mother’s passing, I felt that he would not be long in joining her, for on my last visit I saw that she gave him the strong support which was what probably kept him alive. Her pre-deceasing him was so unexpected by me and it was then all the sadder for me to contemplate how much he would miss her. I was relieved to learn from your letter that he was really only ill for a week and that he died peacefully.
Mrs. Friedman joins me in thanking you for your letter and in offering you and your band our very best wishes in regard to the soon anticipated addition to your nice little family.
Very sincerely
William F. Friedman
So Alastair Denniston, the forgotten man of British Sigint, was gone, along with his knowledge of its evolution from a small group crammed into a room in the Admiralty to the beginnings of modern-day GCHQ. While he documented some of his thirty years in intelligence for posterity, it would in the end be left to others to properly assess his contribution to the world of signals intelligence.
Epilogue
A close examination of Alastair Denniston’s thirty-year career in Sigint still leaves many questions unanswered. Given the inherently secret nature of his work, it is not surprising that key documents relating to it remain classified,1 and opinion about the significance of his contribution is divided. Frank Birch, the official historian of British Sigint and former colleague of AGD both in Room 40 and at BP, showed little interest in AGD’s Berkeley Street organisation in his post-war history. While acknowledging the breadth of the work undertaken there, he was quite dismissive of its use in the war effort:
The work of the Diplomatic Sections was primarily concentrated on the systems of the Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, and secondarily on those of China and France, but some 45 other countries – in Europe, South America and the Near and Middle East – also received attention. The Section’s fundamental function had been to spread research over the communications of all countries in readiness to intensify the attack on any in which the Foreign Office might, from time to time, show particular interest, and in the last months of war, the structure of the ‘Civil’ side of GC&CS tended to revert to type.
After AGD left BP, colleagues there seemed to look down on the work at Berkeley Street and considered it to be easy and unexciting. It is curious that they took this view, as did Birch, in the absence of any real understanding of its true value. Their criticism appears to have been driven by the fact that AGD had simply recreated the pre-war GC&CS without its military sections. The implication was that while the rest of BP had been transformed into an intelligence agency, AGD was stuck in the past. Ironically, it was AGD’s strategy in the interwar years which had consolidated all British Sigint under GC&CS and by 1944 facilitated this transformation.
In 2011, his grave was rededicated and GCHQ was represented to finally honour its first Director. Despite the attendance of GCHQ Departmental Historian, Tony Comer, at the rededication service and AGD’s contribution to Sigint being publically acknowledged for the first time, doubts persisted within the intelligence community. Only several years ago, I told a former head of GCHQ that I was writing AGD’s biography and his response was ‘Why would you write a book about him?’ One suspects that even such a senior figure would have known little of the true value of AGD’s contribution to Sigint over a thirty-year period.
It is hard not to come to the conclusion that any public acknowledgement of AGD’s work at Berkeley Street from 1942 to 1945 might have drawn unwelcome attention to a part of GC&CS that the British intelligence community prefers to pretend never existed. Even the award of a knighthood to AGD might have raised questions about British diplomatic Sigint, both during the war and immediately afterwards.
However, GCHQ have, for the first time, provided an opinion on the legacy of diplomatic and commercial Sigint during WW2:2
The point is that being exiled to Berkeley St made Diplomatic and Commercial seem like second class work in comparison to the military tasks carried out at BP. Furthermore, Denniston’s re-creation of pre-war GC&CS led most famously to the Eric Jones comment2 which spurred AGD into producing ‘The Government Code and Cypher School Between the Wars’. It wasn’t Sigint for the experts: it didn’t require the same talent. This differentiation was largely carried on into Eastcote even though the nationality of the military target had changed. It was generally thought that the best talent ought to work Soviet military. Right up to the end of the Cold War we talked about Soviet and NSWP (Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact) on the one hand, and, (almost dismissively) of ‘Rest of the World’ on the other. Denniston didn’t get his Knighthood because Menzies didn’t recommend him, and the source of the antipathy is the events of late 1941 when ‘C’ himself almost lost control of BP owing to AGD’s poor management of an increasingly complex organisation.3
The one person who would never challenge decisions which would affect the rest of his life and legacy was AGD himself. According to his son Robin:
My father was the most secretive man I knew. I learned more about his work from his colleagues than I did from him. Our whole family life was dominated by the fact that my father could not and would not talk about his job. ‘The less said the better’ was the ruling principle of his life.4
By 1973, Robin Denniston had become increasingly frustrated by the failure of the intelligence community to acknowledge his father’s many achievements. A career in publishing5 gave him a professional as well as a private perspective on the true history of Sigint over two world wars. He was particularly concerned about the circumstances of AGD’s removal from BP as he later wrote:
He got quite bad depression, which my mother called Scotch blight, in which he found it impossible to say anything for hours. After he was fired from Bletchley, he suffered enormously. He was very irritable. He had lost confidence in himself, betrayed as he saw it, and so did many, by his friends – by Travis, his subordinate for so many years who now took his job – no evidence at all that he behaved badly – by de Grey. The privacy of his temperament, the secretness of the job meant not only total security but no delegation. He found delegation very difficult not because he was possessive (I don’t think he was), he was a good and experienced cryptographer, but others like Knox and Cooper and Strachey might have been better and he knew it, and of course he readily acknowledged and supported the recruitment of the great mathematicians and chess players – areas in which he did not pretend to compete.6
Robin also felt that he knew very little of his father, who was 45 when he was born and spent much of his time working in London as head of GC&CS. He had gone to boarding school aged 13 in 1939, and thereafter was only home in the holidays when the war was all-consuming for AGD. Robin subsequently went straight to university from school aged 19 when AGD retired, and then married in July 1950 when he was 23. After that he was not at home and tensions between Robin’s first wife, Anne, and AGD had inevitably affected his relationship with his father. It no doubt contributed to his later effort to restore his father’s reputation to its rightful place in Sigint history. His role in the publishing world would help considerably in his efforts to, in the words of his daughter Candy, ‘finish unfinished business’. He had already learned that he needed to tread carefully when it came to the security services. As a young editor at Collins, he had told a publishing friend a little about Bletchley Park while his father was still alive. After his friend made a few enquiries, ‘within days GCHQ (the successor of GC&CS) had descended on my father’s retirement cottage asking him how he, the most discreet of all civil servants, could have become a security risk in his old age. Re
marks were made about withholding his pension. He was furious, I was apologetic. There the matter rested.’
During the war, MI6’s counter-espionage Section V underwent an effective expansion. With a responsibility for the security of signals intelligence in the field, the section successfully exploited the use of what was known as ISOS reports, the generic term for decrypted German Abwehr signals intelligence traffic. MI6 had no history of counter-espionage work and learned how to use double-cross agents and mount ‘l’toxication’ or deception operations, designed to confuse the enemy as to its true intentions, from Paul Paillole, deputy of the French counter-espionage section of the pre-war Deuxième Bureau. Much had depended on the abilities of the section head, Felix Cowgill.
Cowgill had been recruited in March 1939 from the Indian Police, for whom he had made a special study of communism. He brought years of counter-espionage experience to bear on his post, but had no experience of Europe, having spent the previous twelve years running penetration agents in the Comintern’s network in Bengal, most recently as Deputy Commissioner of Special Branch. It had been understood that he would eventually succeed the Deputy Chief and former head of Section V, Valentine ‘Ve-Ve’ Vivian, as the resident MI6 expert on communism and director of a new operational department dealing with the subject. Cowgill’s ablest student within the Section was the successful head of its Iberian subsection, Kim Philby, who would eventually become the British secret service’s favourite son.