Alastair Denniston

by Alastair Denniston- Code-breaking From Room 40 to Berkeley Street

  26. There is some confusion about the term JIG. McCormack and Birch seem to use it to refer to the Japanese Government. However, JIG also refers to the letter J in the US Phonetic Alphabet, a radio alphabet used in WW2.

  27. Correspondence between William Friedman and Filby, 25 April 1944. In the same correspondence, Friedman tells Filby about a chance encounter he had with ‘Y’ Denniston on a train and after renewing acquaintance with her, planned to look after her while she was in the US.

  28. A Lorenz machine had been offered to GC&CS for producing pads in 1932 and while the Foreign Office declined, documentation and illustrations had been retained. The pads consisted of eight lines of six five-figure groups, each group emerging from a set of five wheels, each bearing around its circumference ten digits in hatted (not numerical) order. The wheels were notched like Enigma wheels to prevent cyclic repetitions.

  29. British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 1, pp 199. This is the official GCHQ line at this time.

  30. Lou Maddison, GCHQ archivist. Discussions with R.L. Benson at GCHQ, 6 May 1992.

  31. In late 1943, John Croft had been assigned to Scott’s team. Croft’s description of the system illustrates the sort of systems AGD’s team were dealing with: ‘It turned out to be a substitution cipher in which the 36 letters of the Russian alphabet transposed as numbers, the message was set out in a sort of three line grid: to this was added the key, and the result transmitted to the recipient. The key, the indicators of which were sent at the beginning of each encryption, was a text which was taken from an edition, in English, of Shakespeare. The indicators gave the page and line with which to start both the encipherment and decipherment.’ See Croft.

  32. Verona collection, box D101, in a folder marked NSA Technical Library S-7289, a series of papers on individual target desks at Berkeley Street.

  33. See Smith and Erskine, Chapter 9.

  34. Filby letter to Robin Denniston, 15 April 1981.

  Chapter 6: Cut loose

  1. Virginia Military Institute, William Friedman papers, SRH-153, TNA FO371/50209.

  2. See Hinsley, Volume 3, Part 2, pp. 616–7.

  3. Welchman, Hinsley and Crankshaw, to Travis ‘A Note on the future of G.C. and C.S.’, 17. 09.44, TNA HW 3/169.

  4. Tiltman (GC&CS), ‘Note by the Chairman: Brigadier Tiltman on Mr Welchman’s Statement’, 04.10.44, TNA HW 3/130.

  5. Bentinck, ‘The Intelligence Machine’, CAB 163/6.

  6. JIC meeting, 22 Oct. 1945, NAC, RG24, 2469, S715-10-16-1-3(4-5).

  7. Director’s Order 89, ‘Eastcote’, 24.01.46, TNA HW 14/164.

  8. The proposal was that the organisation would be GCHQ in public (at UNCLASSIFIED and RESTRICTED) and LSIC at CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET and TOP SECRET. It dropped out in 1948 partly because it was so cumbersome, and partly because GCHQ was leaving London.

  9. COS (52) 152nd mtg (1) Confidential Annex, 04.11.52.

  10. Wenger (NSS) to Travis (GCHQ), 05.03.46, Box 101, CSG records, RG 38, NARA.

  11. AGD’s monthly salary was £80 in 1939, £161in 1942 and £100 in 1943.

  12. See Smith, p. 177.

  13. Group Captain Jones was Head of Hut 3, 1942–5 and later Sir Eric Jones, Director of GCHQ, 1956–60.

  14. DENN 1/4 and also see Denniston’s INS paper.

  15. William Friedman Papers, Box 3, Folder 16, Geo. C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, VA.

  16. Ibid.

  17. In May 2015, the NSA declassified and released to the public an enormous trove of documents from the William F. Friedman collection. Copies have been given to the Marshall Library in Lexington, VA, where they are being digitised and catalogued.

  18. William Friedman Papers, Box 3, Folder 16, Geo. C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, VA.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Ibid.

  Epilogue

  1. GC&CS Diplomatic and Commercial Sigint Volume I, 1 November 1919 – 30 August 1945, TNA HW 43/4. GC&CS Diplomatic and Commercial Sigint Volume II, 1 September 1939 – 30 August 1945, TNA HW 43/5

  2. Jones wrote that ‘it would indeed be a tragic and retrograde step … if GC&CS were to sink back into its pre-war position’.

  3. Kindly provided by Tony Comer, the GCHQ Historian.

  4. Personal letter to Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville.

  5. Robin Denniston started his publishing career when he joined the Collins publishing house in Glasgow. Within 18 months he had been promoted to head office, and become a close friend of the Collins family, for whom he worked as editor, for nine years, before leaving to head a small religious publishing house, Faith Press. He was then recruited by Hodder and Stoughton, where he was to build a formidable reputation, becoming successively editorial director and managing director. In 1973, he joined George Weidenfeld as deputy chairman, and was then recruited by Thomson Publications to head a string of firms, including Michael Joseph, Thomas Nelson, George Rainbird and Sphere Books. He ended his publishing career in the academic division of the Oxford University Press, where he brought an acute business mind to bear on a department that was struggling, and succeeded in transforming its fortunes.

  6. Robin Denniston personal papers.

  7. The UK and US versions had different titles. See Page, Knightly and Leitch.

  8. Guy Liddell Diaries, TNA KV4/466.

  9. Robin’s spiritual life was ultimately as important to him as his publishing career. Ordained first as a deacon, then as priest in the Anglican church, he became an honorary curate in the late 1970s, before taking on the assignment that he was to grow to love more than all others – as stipendiary minister at Great Tew in Oxfordshire. So loved was he by his parishioners that they persuaded him to return for an unprecedented second term of office after a five-year break.

  10. See his INS article.

  11. Filby subsequently published his account of his days at Berkeley Street. See Filby.

  12. GCHQ have given the following reason for not releasing the documents: ‘The retention (subject to periodic review) of “Diplomatic and Commercial Sigint” is that it is entirely a cryptanalytic history: it is cryptanalytic techniques that we are protecting.’

  13. J.E.S. Cooper, ‘Personal notes on GC&CS 1925-1939’, n.d., TNA HW 3/83.

  Appendix 12: Denniston/Friedman Correspondence

  1. William Friedman Papers, Box 3, Folder 16, Geo. C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, VA.

  2. Ibid.

  3. SCAMP III LECTURE, SECTION 1 AND 2; ZIMMERMANN TELEGRAM public_info/_files/friedmanDocuments/LecturesandSpeecheshttps://www.nsa.gov//FOLDER_021/41700089073941.pdf.

  4. William Friedman Papers, Box 3, Folder 16, Geo. C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, VA.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

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