Richard Aldrich - GCHQ

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.

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

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 1984 1

‘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 also 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