Thirty Secret Years

by Robin Denniston

  Naturally the Military Section worked in close co-operation with the military intercepting station at Chatham, and it was thanks to this that the section, and GC&CS as a whole, had, in 1937, their first glimpse of German army and air force material, and of German police transmissions. Knox failed in his effort on the naval enigma, led the team which started to investigate this new problem. Tiltman, deep in other problems, broke in to contribute one vital link. An ever closer liaison with the French, and through them with the Poles, stimulated the attack. Fresh ideas flowed, even from those selected from a university as recruits in the event of war. I think it may be rightly held that this effort of 1938 and 1939 enabled the party at B/P to read the current traffic of the GAF within five months of the outbreak of war.

  RAF Section The Air Ministry had, since 1922, contributed to our need for traffic by maintaining a very good intercepting station at Waddington. There was no real air traffic, so we profited. As the Intelligence Division of the Air Ministry was never so politically minded as in the other two services, our diplomatic result could not have had the same value to them.

  Our debt to them was therefore the larger. But with the threat of war, about 1935 the Air Ministry decided to form an Air Section to work in GC&CS on the lines of the Military Section. They had no trained experts of their own. They asked, therefore, to have a member of GC&CS transferred to their civil establishment. So Cooper became the first head of the RAF Section and I am sure that the Air Ministry will agree that GC&CS repaid their earlier debt to the full, and with interest. In 1938 further civilians were recruited direct into the section.

  From then onwards, Cheadle, whither Waddington had transferred, began to look out for foreign air traffic.

  The war in Spain and aggression in Europe gave them ample scope. Italians, Spanish and German operational air-to-ground was collected and worked on with success. So the section had first-hand knowledge of some of the methods used by the Germans when war began.

  6 Commercial

  For 20 years, during which cable companies submitted all their traffic to the GC&CS, a vast number of telegrams of a purely commercial nature were seen but never copied. Similarly, the operators at the intercepting stations had to hear and pass over far more than they recorded. We only worked on foreign government traffic. Once or twice perhaps we may have looked out for individuals. Once most certainly we did investigate the telegrams of certain oil companies. But this was not our function. In those days of peace, all companies of any repute had their private codes or at least private encypherments of standard commercial codes. Apart from secrecy, it is cheaper to use code for telegrams. The majority of these commercial codes can be purchased in the open market, whatever their nationality. Therefore the reading of such telegrams presents no difficulty, and where encyphered, GC&CS should be able to break it down.

  But with the few exceptions noted above, commercial work was not in our mandate and we had not the necessary staff.

  Sometime in 1938 the Admiral and the newly appointed DNI formed that opinion that in the events of a troublous political situation in the Far East, the Japanese might take steps to render their diplomatic and service material illegible, and that the communications of the big Japanese firms, particularly as to shipping, might be the only available source of intelligence.

  Further, Major Desmond Morton had now organised a section known as IIC for the study of commercial and financial intelligence out of which grew MEW in the latter half of 1939. He was on our circulating list and was always anxious to extend the bases of his intelligence.

  Therefore, in 1938, Hope started a very small section to investigate commercial traffic, more especially the telegrams of the big Japanese firms. A library of all the known commercial codes in various languages was assembled as a necessary foundation. But his task was definitely cryptographic.

  About this time the Cable Censorship were engaged in drafting their final plans. They naturally intended to stop the use of code for all terminal traffic (except of course for neutral and allied governments whose representatives enjoy cipher privilege). Consequently the Censors themselves would circulate the intelligence derived from terminal plain language. But they did not propose to interfere with traffic transit at censorship points, and they agreed to provide our commercial section with all the commercial code telegrams of this nature. Our intercepting stations were now, in late 1938, asked to record commercial traffic where possible, and as much of this was taken on high speed automatic gear, our slipreading party had even then to be reinforced. The Commercial Section did have 12 months’ experience of a variety of the codes used by all nations, including Japanese, and of the type and mass of plain language commercial telegrams. Above all they began to learn the very necessary discriminations. Never more than 10 per cent of the very large numbers of telegrams received really justified translation and circulation and the accurate selection of this 16 per cent required training and close liaison with the users.

  V

  SUPPLEMENT: TRAFFIC

  The Cabinet authority establishing GC&CS gave no directive as to raw material, without which little could be done. But the authorities controlling the new body were fully alive to the necessity and supported to the best of their power all suggestions we put forward. We only had the experience of four years of war, when such a question was simple, because our results were valued.

  Full cable censorship provided copies of all cable traffic. The development of the scientific methods of intercepting W/T traffic, service or commercial, dated only from 1914 but was now practised on a considerable scale by stations controlled by Admiralty, War Office and GPO. It was necessary to ensure that the provision both of cable and W/T traffic should continue under peace conditions.

  1. Cables

  The conclusion of the Treaty meant the suspension of censorship. Temporary unofficial arrangements were made with the moribund censors which provided the cable traffic for some further months. But legislation in the form of the Official Secrets Act gave the government the right to obtain cable traffic for scrutiny purposes not for censorship. A clause was inserted authorising a secretary of state to issue a warrant to cable companies operating in the UK requiring these companies to hand over all traffic passing over their systems in the UK within ten days of receipt or despatch to a named department, for the purpose of scrutiny, the secretary of state alleging that a general state of unrest and world emergency required him to make this demand.

  I believe the Secretary of State for Home Affairs signed the original warrant and named the Admiralty. I believe occasional questions were asked in the House but we continued to receive all cable traffic from all the companies until September 1939, when cable censorship was again instituted, and once again the Censors provided us through the war with copies of the traffic we asked for.

  Throughout the 20 years (1919-39) it was our aim to make this procedure work smoothly with the companies (British and foreign). It was undoubtedly a nuisance for them to have to send all their traffic in sacks to an outside department, and I have always considered that the credit for smooth working and no questioning should go to Maine. To carry out the work of sorting and copying we took over a comparatively small body of GPO lower grade staff who were accustomed to this work. Our aim was to inconvenience the companies as little as possible, and throughout we tried to let them have their traffic back within 24 hours. We only had to sort out and copy government traffic and occasional suspicious characters in whom our security authorities were interested. I believe we never failed to return all the traffic, though many million telegrams must have passed through our hands.

  Another very valuable job carried out by Maine was to obtain traffic from stations abroad where, during the war, there had been a censorship point, e.g. Malta, Hongkong, Bermuda. Traffic at these points was not required under the warrant.

  Malta, above all, the focal point for traffic between Europe and all the East, was of the highest importance. Maine was able to arrange with Messrs Cable and Wi
reless, who operated the stations, that they should have all the slip transmitting Malta sent back by bag to London, ostensibly for accountancy purposes. We received it, engaged slipreaders, and had this valuable material read regularly, though of course with a considerable delay. For instance, the Japanese traffic to France and Germany always went via Malta. All Italian cable traffic passed there. Thus we were, throughout, enabled to watch the growth of the Axis combination.

  In a similar way we were able to watch other old censorship points and, finding the traffic of little value, to give them up again.

  It is probable that once again after this war, Malta traffic will be essential.

  Also, with the CTO, Maine’s excellent liaison proved of the greatest help at times when foreign embassies during big conferences requested and obtained private lines from their embassy to their capital. The Germans, the French and other great powers adopted this procedure on occasions. Of course these private lines had to pass through the CTO, and Maine was always able to arrange for measures to be taken there whereby copies became available to us.

  Finally, when the state of unrest in the world became intense, from 1935 onwards, it was found that the 10 days’ delay granted by the warrant became intolerable. Maine was able to cut it down to 24-48 hours in the case of foreign companies, and to instant service, where necessary, in the case of the CTO and Cable and Wireless.

  Between us and the companies there has never been any question as to why we wanted the traffic and what we did with it. The warrant merely said scrutiny, and the traffic arrived back apparently untouched within a few hours. I have no doubt that the managers and senior officials must have guessed the true answer, but I have never heard of any indiscretions through all these years with so many people involved.

  In short, barring the delay, we always had as good service of cables when we dealt direct with the companies as in the periods of censorship.

  2. W/T

  We started the peace regime with two Admiralty stations, Pembroke and Scarborough, gradually decreasing their naval work owing to absence of targets and increasing their watch of the big foreign commercial stations, and thereby producing foreign government cipher traffic, and (in the early days) a good deal of foreign government P/L, especially from Moscow.

  Our director was at that time the DNI, Admiral Sinclair, who was obviously able to obtain the willing assistance of the Signal Department who owned the stations and the gear, and of ACR who provided the operators. Further, a Cabinet committee for postwar planning with General Romer as chairman had apparently planned for further interception and had appointed Admiral Sinclair as Co-ordinator of W/T interception. Before the Admiral left (in 1921) to take up the post of OC Submarines, naval interception by these stations was on a firm, if modest, footing, complicated only by the fact that ACR controlled the staff, DSD was responsible for station and sets, and DNI had to indicate the programme of work.

  About this time (1921) the WO also set up a station at Chatham under MI IB, who were also prepared to produce material for us. The GSO2 or 3 of MI IB became a liaison officer to GC&CS, and we worked out a plan of interception with him. Later (about 1923,1 think) the Air Ministry joined up also and founded a station at Waddington under AII, who also nominated a liaison officer to us. So, when the Admiral returned in 1924 as Director, there did exist a means of co-ordination on a low level, that is, such sets and operators as existed were used to our best advantage but any expansion was out of the question. He resumed his function as Chairman of the Co-ordinating Committee and held an annual meeting of the Directors of Intelligence at which on each occasion the Head of GC&CS and the liaison officers assisted. At the early meetings little could be done beyond allotting priorities of work as still no expansion could be hoped for.

  One of the first major actions the Admiral undertook was to arrange with the Police Commissioner for the loan of a small body of constables whom the Commissioner had used as a police W/T unit, I think, for interception of illicit transmissions in this country and for control of the police W/T network in London. These constables (10 to 12) had a small station at Denmark Hill, where their work was directed by a civilian engineer on the staff of the Receiver, Kenworthy by name. The Admiral undertook to pay for these men and the upkeep of the station while the Commissioner agreed to ask no questions about their work. This was the first station which undertook purely diplomatic work over which GC&CS had full control. It was soon apparent that Kenworthy possessed a flair for this work which amounted to genius. To him the FO and the Service intercepting authorities owe a very great debt, not only as a technical W/T engineer designing and constructing suitable gear, but also as the instructor in the matter of interception of difficult transmissions, and as a pioneer in the interception of non-Morse transmissions.

  About 1929 the Admiralty began to take the Far East situation more seriously. The Committee of Co-ordination was able, not only to advise, but also to use the prestige of its members to force necessary expansion through the various departments. The Committee became known as the ‘Y’ Committee, and they formed a ‘Y Sub-Committee’, consisting of the head of GC&CS and the liaison officers. This sub-committee from then onwards met once a fortnight in the GC&CS. Its terms of reference were: to study the work of the various stations, to co-ordinate the programmes allotted, to avoid waste of effort and to investigate new lines of traffic and new means of transmission. Thus policy and expansion were the functions of the ‘Y’ Committee, while the sub-committee formed the executive, each member reporting if need be, to his own director.

  This continued smoothly until about 1935. Certain other departments were asked to appoint liaison officers who sat on the sub-committee, notably the GPO with whom we had hitherto little contact, the chairman of the W/T board, and later Gambier Parry (then Captain) who had been appointed as Section VIII of SIS.

  From the beginning of the Abyssinian war the sub-committee began to take a far more active part, and co-ordination of programmes became a more difficult problem, because there was now service material to be intercepted and new service sections to study the traffic. Consequently, fewer sets were now available for diplomatic traffic at a time when the contents were of more vital interest.

  With the best will in the world, the service officers could hardly make a case for expansion on behalf of diplomatic traffic. It was possible for the Admiral to persuade the Commissioner to increase the staff at Denmark Hill, but with the increase of world unrest, it became clear that the FO would have to take its share in interception. Protracted negotiations resulted in success, but it was not until 11 September 1939 that the first station was opened at Sandridge. It had been planned and erected by the GPO. All the gear was designed and provided by the GPO engineering branch and the operators were all GPO staff. The FO footed the bill and GC&CS directed the various programmes of work. This very important development was one of the major actions of the sub-committee.

  Another was the introduction of teleprinter links between the stations and GC&CS. Hitherto all traffic arrived by registered post creating an average delay of twelve hours. During the anxious days of the Spanish war it had become obvious that all delays must be cut down, and the service members were able to use the value of the results to induce their authorities to sanction the installation of the T/P links between GC&CS and the naval stations (Flowerdown and Scarborough), the WO station (Chatham) and the RAF station (Cheadle). Of course, not only service material but also diplomatic was passed over these links. Thus we had two years’ experience of rapid and efficient communication.

  In the spring of 1938 the Admiral bought the property at Bletchley Park, and the GPO set to work to equip it with suitable lines of communications. In the autumn of that year the service sections of GC&CS spent a month at the Park simulating, as far as possible, wartime conditions and direct communication. Thus it fell out that our work could definitely begin on 1 August 1939, when the Admiral ordered the service sections to take up their war stations. The diplomatic and comme
rcial sections were ordered to move on 15 August.

  From then onwards the university recruits began to join, so that by 1 September when war was declared, GC&CS was in action at its war station, already in process of growth towards that vast and successful body whose full story will perhaps never be told.

  2 December 1944

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  How News was bought from Warsaw at the end of July 1939

  My father always reported on his visits – to Scapa Flow in 1919, about Room 40, and GC&CS 1919-1942, about his Polish visit in 1939, about his American visits in 1941. His words speak for themselves.

  Before attempting from memory a description of the visit of July 24-27 it is necessary to outline previous events which led up to the visit. The hero or mystery man or deus ex machina was undoubtedly the French officer Bertrand alias Godefroi. I never really grasped how G.C. & C.S. came to be involved in this liaison.

  From 1937 onward it was obviously desirable that our Naval, Military and Air intelligence sources should get in very close touch with their French colleagues for political and military reasons. The Admiral had always wished and worked for a close liaison between S.S. and G.C. & C.S. but 1 had always thought that Dunderdale, then in Paris was the man who brought Bertrand into the English organisations. Menzies, it is true, had a close liaison with Rivet under whom Bertrand worked but I think it was Dunderdale who, entirely ignorant of the method of cryptographers, urged this liaison on the technical level. Bertrand was his man in the French military branch. The French had no interservice organisation. In fact they all four, (including Quai d’Orsay) thoroughly disliked and distrusted each other. Bertrand was no cryptographer and never pretended that he was. Any technical staff under him must have been very second rate but he had a genius for making use of others. By July 1939 he certainly was obtaining cryptographic results from us and from the Poles and he also salvaged five Spanish republicans who had worked at Barcelona and installed them in Paris as his party working on Spanish and Italian material.