Need to Know and Action-On

 

I don't think anybody could disagree with the notion that secret intelligence should only be available to those who need to know. The devil is in the detail:

The strict application of the "need to know" principle from early 1940 onwards was designed to protect the Enigma secret. 'C' was obsessive about the need to protect the fact that the machine the Germans trusted so much that it became their work-horse for encryption had been broken. (In the last LSIB meeting he attended on 1 July 1952 he said that that 'he was convinced that it was only by the most rigid imposition of security that we had won the last war' (Liddell's diaries KV 4/474)).

"Need to know" was imposed inside Bletchley Park as well as outside. Henry Hayward, the Senior Security Officer used to lecture new entrants and impress upon them that 'Secrets which you do not need to know are an unnecessary burden and someone else's secret is never quite so secret as one's own' (de Grey HW 43/78). Staff were discouraged from discussing the work of their section with colleagues from other sections.

In fact, this did not suit the way a Sigint organisation needs to work. It led people to believe that because intelligence derived from cryptanalysis needed a greater level of protection than other intelligence, decrypted material was more important, more valuable, than the rest. The reductio ad absurdam of this position came when the section dealing with German experimental weapons could not get cover of the Luftwaffe nets which produced the intelligence on the development of V-1s and V-2s because it came from plaintext messages and operator chat (HW 43/82 Section K). It also inhibited the sharing of information between huts (except at the most senior level) even though Enigma usage was common across all elements of German forces. Although the area is under-researched, I think it likely that over-rigorous application of "need-to-know" at least contributed to the long delay between it being clear from decrypted material that the Germans were reading to codes in use in the North Atlantic and their being secured.

By the end of the war, the CMY section controlled all UK collection resources in the European theatre, and allocated tasking through a process in which all involved were aware of what needed to be collected, and why, and to what extent. Not every message on every network needed to be collected and decrypted in full every day. For example, a reserve formation might only need to be monitored at its morning call-up once a week to confirm that there was no change in the list of subscribers or their location, freeing up receiver time for other tasks. The relevant importance of the different services, or of diplomatic traffic sent by wireless, could be rebalanced on a daily basis as requirements changed. But this only worked because there was a reconsideration of "need to know": in fact its replacement. By sharing the maximum amount of relevant information CMY was able to optimise the use of allied resources and produce more wanted intelligence for customers. London ministries stated their requirements and people who understood the technicalities of Sigint collection and processing answered them.

The compartmentation which "need to know" had led to within GC&CS was replaced in post-war GCHQ by a system which used vetting as a starting point for creating an organisation with far fewer compartments than had operated at Bletchley Park. Access to Sigint reporting might still be rigorously compartmented outside, but within the organisation there would be no artificial barriers to knowledge sharing.

This doesn't mean, of course, that everybody within GCHQ had access to everything: a member of staff couldn't simply walk into another office and demand to read their reports; furthermore, a process developed which gave extra protection to particularly sensitive lines of traffic; but it meant that a realistic attitude was taken to sharing information.

However, Sigint organisations' need to protect their secrets do not translate simply into the way other parts of the national security community like to handle and process information, and much less how to use it.

A principle created in 1941 when Sigint was first being sent to N Africa applies to this day (though is perhaps more metaphorical than literal today). In it, no recipient of a Sigint report is an action addressee; rather, all are information addressees. You see a shadow of the old signal form every time you receive an email: who it's from, to whom it is addressed, and to whom it is copied. These map onto the From, To, and Info addresses on a signal form. If you are sent a copy of a signal for information, it meant precisely that: you were not authorised to act on that information. The information (the intelligence in the case of Sigint reports) 'belongs' to the originator – the 'From' addressee – and if you are an 'Info' addressee you cannot do anything with the content of the signal without the authority of the originator, the owner.

This concept of ownership is important: 'someone else's secret is never quite so secret as one's own'; but ownership means that the originator can prevent the information being used in a way that might compromise the source of the intelligence or the method used to derive it; it also means that the originator can mandate the standards for storing and sharing the intelligence. This meant that from the 1940s onwards Sigint reports could only normally be read within special facilities (though senior people might have the reports taken to them) by people cleared according to standards agreed to by GCHQ.  

Yet however good the intelligence, it is ultimately valueless if it can't be used. This meant creating a process (Action-On) in which the originator of the intelligence created a plausible alternative source for the information. The classic example of Action-On comes from North Africa during the Second World War: suppose that GHQ learned from a decrypted Enigma message that a convoy carrying supplies for Rommel's Afrika Korps was leaving Sicily for Tunis. Obviously the UK wanted to destroy or disrupt the convoy but simply to attack it would flag up to the Italians and Germans that (at least potentially) the UK had had prior knowledge of the convoy's departure. How could an attack be launched without tipping the enemy off? The best answer was to launch a reconnaissance aircraft on a route which would allow it to spot the resupply convoy and be spotted by it, then allow a sufficient amount of time for the reconnaissance aircraft to radio the information back and for an attack to be mounted by allied forces notionally about other business. This means that some convoys would get though (and some reconnaissance aircraft would get shot up) but these were prices it was thought worth paying.

One of the hardest disciplines to impose was that of only granting access to secret intelligence according to need, and not according to seniority. It was Churchill who, with 'C' removed names from the original list he was given of those with access to Enigma reporting, and at the other end of the production line, restricting access to Y Stations to those with a legitimate reason for entry, rather than simply because it fell under the responsibility of a Command cut across a fundamental piece of military doctrine: how could a Commander be responsible for a unit on his establishment if he had no access to it? The issue was managed, but not simply.

The Second World War saw the first attempt to manage large volumes of secret intelligence produced by large number of people who entered the secret world with little or no background in secrecy. "Need-to-know" was probably the best principle to apply at first: preserving the secret of Enigma was probably one of the most important tasks facing Government in the first half of 1940; but while restricting the circle of knowledge helped protect the secret, it was at a cost of efficient and effective intelligence production for most of the Second World War.

Source Protection

 

Sigint End Product (EP) is the intelligence sent to customers which contains the producing agency's considered view of what material it has intercepted actually means, and is therefore carefully protected, as it can reveal both the source of the intelligence and the methods by which it has been produced. As early as the First World War, was separated into two types depending on whether it had been derived from cryptanalysis or traffic analysis (TA, though up to 1940 it was more commonly referred to as Wireless Telegraphy Intelligence (WTI)). TA reporting was given a wider circulation than cryptanalytic, as it was reasonable to assume that people in other countries knew that their wireless traffic could be intercepted and that it might be possible to draw inferences from it, but both types of reporting were classified. Protecting the source of the intelligence, to ensure that it was not compromised as a source, was part of the process.

There was a rough and ready demarcation between the Services and GC&CS pre-Second World War. The Services believed that they 'owned' TA and GC&CS was prepared to see the Army and RAF distribute TA-derived EP to a wider circulation than was given to decrypts. GC&CS controlled its own product but applied the 'Most Secret' classification indiscriminately to all of its EP, meaning that decrypted diplomatic EP and a decrypted tactical aircraft signal were each given the same classification

With the solution in January 1940 of the current Enigma settings of the German Air Force and later Army the situation changed: 'C' agreed with the service Directors of Intelligence not only to restrict the circulation of Enigma-derived intelligence, but to sanitise EP so that it looked like intelligence from agents rather than Sigint. This meant that 'Most Secret' now covered two different levels of protection: the old 'Most Secret' and the new 'Most Secret CX/JQ' (most intelligence recipients knew that CX meant that the report came from an agent; JQ was used as these were the next two letters to IR (Intelligence Report)).

During the Battle of Norway Sigint was of such operational value that its dissemination became a problem but the battle was over before any handling mechanism could be set up to handle it. The Battle of France came next but it was not until May 22nd, not long before the end, that the German Air Force Enigma was solved regularly. Neither the UK nor France knew how to handle a flood of highly classified material, and neither knew how to interpret it or assess its validity (neither had any idea about how to manage the bilateral exchange either). Some EP reached the British GHQ but is unlikely to have been of any use (see my Sigint Historian: Locking a Stable Door below). The War Office's teleprinter links were of poor quality and completely insecure in France, so an SIS radio link was established in the last few days.

The Admiralty was somewhat better placed. They were already disseminating information to their ships at sea and by using encryption systems with a restricted distribution believed that they could send Most Secret and CX/JQ to their commanders securely (but see Sigint Historian: Ten avoidable problems which made the Royal Navy's encryption exploitable in 1939). Lower-grade decrypts were marked Most Secret by the Admiralty so there was no essential difference in the dissemination of this and CX/JQ.

This was over-complicated. It meant that the value of the intelligence was not at first recognised by recipients and subsequently gave rise to the theory that source CX/JQ was more reliable than (other) Sigint.

Before sending CX/JQ to the Middle East the Y Board agreed two significant principles for overseas dissemination: only to use the most secure cipher systems; and to give Sigint a minimum distribution, and to prohibit redissemination to subordinate commands, except in orders to formations which needed the intelligence for operational reasons, in which case the intelligence would be further sanitised. This clearly established the principle that control of Sigint lay in the UK.

Mobile SIS radio units (SCUs) were used as channels of communication within the Middle East theatre: they weren't intrinsically more secure, but were a time-saving convenience, and a means by which security policy mandated by the UK could be maintained. Any GC&CS EP could be disseminated direct to Commands from Bletchley Park rather than through the Service Ministries. Security of the handling of both decrypted and paraphrased texts was controlled absolutely at either end by 'C'. ('C' wrote to the Director of Military Intelligence in December 1940: "on the question of Security I am directly responsible to the Minister of Defence (i.e. the PM) regarding certain aspects of Y work"; by 1944 he claimed that he was responsible for its Security, not just 'certain aspects' of it: nobody demurred. Did he ask the PM? Did he simply assert his authority?)

When naval machine ciphers were added to the CX/JQ product the Admiralty no longer continue to disseminate Sigint to its naval recipients in the Mediterranean, where this new material was handled in the same way as material for the Army or RAF. But the rest of the output of GC&CS and of service Sigint, both lower-grade decrypts and TA, continued to be disseminated the channels instituted before the war and their security was governed by the Service regulations laid down for Secret and Most Secret documents.

The first attempt formally to classify Sigint and standardise dissemination protocols began in 1941 when it was felt that a 'looseness' had grown up in the way various forms of Signal Intelligence were described and that this looseness was in itself a source of misunderstanding and consequently a danger to security. 'Y Intelligence' was defined as a category of 'Intelligence obtained from a scrutiny of foreign messages intercepted, particularly as to callsigns, frequencies, volume of traffic, indications of priority and from DF bearings'.

A generic codeword ULTRA now covered high grade traffic: in other words, the marking MOST SECRET ULTRA would appear on documents. Its use meant that Sigint no longer needed to be sanitised to suggest that the originator was an agent. As high grade diplomatic became important to Service commands ULTRA began to cover a lot more than Enigma, and needed to be handled and disseminated to many more locations. To avoid duplication and a consequent risk to cipher security all ULTRA now had to be passed through GC&CS. This also meant that security regulations governing both the use and the handling of the ULTRA intelligence should be promulgated from the UK to all recipients. It was difficult to get an agreed set of regulations which would meet the security requirements and the practical requirements of overseas centres, while giving sufficient latitude to the Commands to use the intelligence: this took until June 1942.

In the summer of 1943 Edward Travis negotiated an agreement with the War Department in Washington which included the principles of the existing ULTRA Regulations and Sigint Security, meaning that US would in principle conform to UK regulations. The first step was the issue in October 1943 of an agreed 'Nomenclature', a set of definitions, most important of which was that the words 'Signal Intelligence' included the whole Sigint  process: interception, decryption, analysis (cryptanalysis and TA) and reporting; and 'Y' was limited to interception at stations and DF. More Sigint codewords were set up so that ULTRA was used for the EP from high grade codes and ciphers; PEARL, for EP from low and medium grade codes and ciphers; and THUMB for EP from TA.

The drafting of the complete instructions took much longer, not because they were controversial, but because it was hoped to produce a set of regulations applicable worldwide (in Europe the US had simply adopted UK procedures). They were produced in three separate documents, finally issued on 1 February 1944, but the Admiralty refused to bind itself, adding a statement saying effectively that it would do its own thing, though that just happened to be the same thing as promulgated by the regulations.

The next necessary step was to ensure that analogous regulations covering both British, Australian and American Forces were promulgated in the Far East and SWPA. UK regulations applied in India, but not in Australia, and the Americans, while they had subscribed in Washington and in Europe to the British regulations, had specifically not done so for the Pacific theatre. In July 1944 agreed regulations for ULTRA were promulgated, and in November 1944 for PEARL and THUMB. The USN, however, did not accept them and issued their own regulations in April 1945, dividing Special Intelligence into two categories only – ULTRA, which they extended to cover what in Europe would be considered PEARL, and PINUP, which was essentially THUMB.

It took the formation of STANCIB as an overarching authority in the US, equivalent to the Sigint Board in the US, and, in the UK, the Admiralty's grudging acceptance that GCHQ was the 'owner' of Sigint to allow negotiations for a single set of regulations to take place after the signing of the BRUSA Agreement in 1946, regulations which were to be applied in the US and US, and eventually in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

So much for handling and dissemination: like Protective and Personnel Security, both of which I have written about before, they are aspects of security around which it was possible to write regulations (however difficult it might be to get sailors to sign up to them) and to enforce. There are still two more aspects of security to deal with, however, and these were much more subjective: 'Need to Know' and 'Action On' are integral parts of Source Protection. 'Action On' is a core issue: there is no point collecting information and turning it into intelligence if nobody can use it; but equally, there is no point using intelligence if its use will make the enemy realise that its secret information is known. 'Need to Know' makes obvious sense: nobody thinks that all secret information should be widely available to everybody; but who decides who needs to know what?

Oh là là! A French Farce in the Records of British Intelligence

 

An entry in Guy Liddell's diary for 1 January 1941 (KV 4/187) might lead one to the conclusion that old fashioned farces were not quite as far fetched as I used to think when watching Brian Rix.

Admiral Emile Muselier was in London, attached to General de Gaulle's Headquarters as Commander of Free French Naval Forces. Forged letters suggested he was in secret dealing with the Vichy regime and on New Year's Eve 1940, The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, ordered his arrest. What happened, or at least the way Liddell told the story of what happened, probably confirmed in a generation of intelligence officers some of the prejudices they had inherited about the French.

"We have now obtained 3 more letters from Collin who says that he has obtained them from the same source. They deal with a variety of matters and all incriminate Muselier. His Chief of Staff, a Lt Villiers, also seems to be involved. We can find nothing wrong with the text of the documents Kenneth is giving them to Desmond Morton under the same safeguards.

At about 10 pm I was rung up at Tring by Harker. He said that the PM had given orders for the arrest of Muselier, Villers and Mlle d’Anjou. I offered to come up but he said he did not think this was necessary. He and Kenneth went to see Morton, when Kenneth once more emphasised our doubts about the source of the information. Morton said that the PM had given his order and there was nothing to be done but to carry it out. Col Angenot was fetched and attempts were made to get hold of Gen de Gaulle. He was away on leave and it was found impossible to get into touch with him. Angenot rather regretfully agreed to the action suggested. Although he thought the documents bore the stamp of genuineness he would have liked Gen de Gaulle to have seen them before the arrests were made.

The Home Secretary was visited by Harker and Morton and gave the necessary orders to the police. Luckily we had already warned Canning during the afternoon that some action might be taken. In deference to Angenot’s wishes no action was taken against Moret, Muselier’s Chief of Staff, but at his request Mlle Herincx was put on the list as it was thought that if there was any conspiracy by Muselier she would be the most likely person to have documents. The police took action during the course of the night. Mlle D’Anjou was found in bed with Lisboa and Mlle Herincx with a Dr de Kerguelen. This is the first occasion on which they had slept together and it was his birthday. The police saw fit to bring in the doctor on the grounds of his association with Mlle Herincx. Lisboa, hearing the police entering Mlle d’Anjou’s flat, thought that they had some complaint about the blackout and hid in the lavatory. He eventually emerged and claimed diplomatic privileges. While he could not object to the flat being searched he refused to allow the police to touch any of his own clothes.

Villers could not be arrested till 8 am as he was on night duty at the Free French headquarters, and it was found that the Admiral was down at Windsor spending the night with a lady friend. He eventually rolled up at about 9 am. By way of precaution the police pulled in his valet and chauffeur. The Admiral protested mildly and said he hoped the matter would soon be cleared up as it would create a very bad impression in the Free French Navy."

Security at Bletchley Park

One way in which British Sigint during the Second World War anticipated the way many people work today was in having not just to find ways to provide physical security for the vast quantities of sensitive data being created, but in persuading large numbers of workers with no instinctive or habitual feeling for secrecy to protect the material they dealt with. I've written about the way in which infiltration by communists or communist sympathisers was handled – but how did Bletchley Park ensure that its site remained secure and persuade the ordinary people who made up its staff not to talk about their work, to the extent that few said anything about their involvement with Sigint for thirty years after the war came to an end? 

The initial approach to security at Bletchley Park was to surrounded it with secrecy. The name "Bletchley Park" was not to be mentioned: instead it was referred to as "Station X"; staff were forbidden to reveal the location, even to their families. However staff had to billeted and it was impossible to prevent it being known that Bletchley Park had been taken over by the Government. SIS came up with a cover story – that Bletchley Park was involved with the Air Defence of London – which it was thought would satisfy local inquisitiveness, but this cover story was not used when Bletchley Park was temporarily occupied in 1938 during the Munich Crisis and staff were told what their cover was until after the site was occupied in August 1939. The initial staff scattered about the neighbourhood – members of the Foreign Office, professors of Modern Languages, historians and mathematicians – had no obvious qualification for air defence: it is hard to believe that any one of them could have answered the simplest question if asked.

After SIS had mostly returned to London, the GC&CS leadership decided to change the cover story and to refer to the organisation at Bletchley as "Government Communications Headquarters", a name that was vaguer and potentially covered a broader field than Air Defence. But again the first staff of GC&CS knew about the new name was when in October 1939 they found it displayed on a large white painted signboard at the entrance gates – a sign which was subsequently removed.

The idea of keeping secret where staff were broke down almost at once. People had lives to live outside work and consequently had to have an address and, anyway, after a time some moved their families into houses nearby. At first an accommodation address had been provided: Room 47, Foreign Office; but as numbers grew the amount of work for the Foreign Office became too much, the last straw, allegedly, was when a motor cycle was delivered there. It was only in 1942 when a Bletchley PO Box Number was arranged, mainly for those whose billet address was uncertain, and a London Box Number was arranged which could be used for letters sent abroad (on which the Bletchley address was forbidden).

(There were fewer problems with the Y Stations: there was no question of concealing their presence or their function. But it was common knowledge that WT was used by the Services and the normal measures common to any Service station to prevent unauthorised visitors were satisfactory, though care was needed to prevent senior officers from entering without authorisation. Most commanding officers adopted some cover story for local use, for example that they were relaying weather reports.)

At Bletchley, physical security developed slowly. A solid iron ring fence was put up in the spring of 1940, but as GC&CS grew the fence had to be considerably lengthened and chain wire netting was substituted for the ironwork. There were only two official entrances. The most that can be said for the fencing was that it offered a sort of deterrent: it offered virtually no obstacle to a determined person and was neither lit nor patrolled at night. (During a Home Guard exercise early in 1943 the attackers removed a complete section under cover of darkness with no more formidable weapon than a spanner, and so attacked the defenders, somewhat unsportingly it was felt by the defenders, from the rear.) But it kept out casual intruders and ridiculously insecure as it probably was, it served its purpose during the war.

Every member of GC&CS and certain regular visitors were issued with standard passes. Theoretically passes were examined at the entrance gates but in practice they were simply waved at the gate guards by staff on their way in. There were two kinds of guard on the gates, Military Police, with armed sentries, and unarmed Foreign Office Security Police, recruited from pensioners in the Metropolitan Police. They got to recognise GC&CS staff and were probably the best security GC&CS had against infiltration. The Military Police boarded the incoming coaches and stopped all cars so that passes could be shown. Staff without passes were detained until recognised or claimed by their sections and these cases were reported to the Administration. Of course there were plenty of cases of people who had forgotten passes coming in at busy times and dodging the guard, of passes being handed through the fence out of sight of the gate by someone who had already entered, and of passes lent by someone coming off duty on foot to a pass-less colleague still outside the gate. In fact the number of forgotten passes each morning was considerable and steps had to be taken to make getting those staff into work as tiresome as possible, both to the individual and to their section, which had to send somebody to the guard hut to vouch for their identity. The alternative would have been to refuse entry altogether, which as there was no public transport would have left most individuals who were billeted outside Bletchley with no means of getting back to their billet as well as the loss of a day's work. There were relatively few cases of passes being lost: a fine was imposed to pay for a replacement. Like the fence, the pass system was adequate for the time and place, though not really offering much in the way security.

Temporary passes were issued to craftsmen and others who had business within the perimeter by BP administration. They either remained in sight or were escorted by the Military Police. Visiting military officers also received temporary passes and had to be vouched for by one of a small number of authorised staff from GC&CS. They were also escorted while on site. Further limitations were put upon the entry to work areas both by visitors and by staff from other sections, according to their "need to know".

Standing Orders provided that no room was to be left unoccupied unless all papers had been locked away. At times, whole rooms had to be locked and regarded as "cupboard rooms". The Foreign Office police patrolled buildings each night and all open windows or unsecured papers were reported, papers being kept by the police until the next morning. A "security officer" was appointed in each section to coordinate this within the section but there were many examples of carelessness among staff unaccustomed to this sort of behaviour. It was made more difficult anyway because the cupboards supplied were of poor quality and many of their doors opened enough when locked for a hand to be inserted without difficulty and the fastenings could be broken away by a sharp pull. It made all the fuss made about securing classified material seem futile.

Paper was by far the greatest security issue for GC&CS. The quantity was enormous. Forty or fifty thousand enemy signals entered GC&CS every day and the Cypher Office was handling between two and three million cypher groups (a further twenty or thirty thousand messages between BP and UK authorities) a week. The floors of the signals and deciphering rooms were covered in tape all of which had a gummed underside which stuck to shoes on a damp day. Each section generated formal papers of every kind and received large quantities as well. Most was carefully handled and the registration process prevented even more problems. But there was a lot of unrecorded paperwork as well, and the acute national shortage of paper meant that paper had to be kept for recycling rather than be simply destroyed by burning.

The routine for dealing with confidential waste was to have it collected once a day, sacked, tied up, locked up and taken once a week to a local paper-mill where it was tipped into bleaching vets under the supervision of the GC&CS security officer who had taken it there. This process worked reasonably well. The only difficulties came from GC&CS staff. They produced three kinds of waste – white paper, coloured paper (e.g. carbon paper, brown paper, cardboard boxes) and "hard core" which included almost every conceivable object except paper. The paper mills insisted that white paper should be separated from coloured paper as only white paper waste could produce pulp clean enough for new paper (coloured pulp was used for cardboard). Any hard object in the waste was liable to break the machinery, and glass in particular was dangerous to the workers. Three containers had to be supplied to every room for the three different kinds of waste. Paper waste of both grades was treated as secret while hard core was dealt with at the local council tip. The problem was to persuading staff to use the proper container and from a security point of view the danger lay in the hard core bins. Each member of staff was told how things worked on arrival in their section, was given written instructions, was again specifically reminded at a Security lecture, but carelessness remained an outstanding feature.

Physical security measures at GC&CS were probably not any worse than procedures in the Ministries, except that the grounds in which the offices stood were more vulnerable than a London building. The title "Government Communications Headquarters" worked well enough, though this disguise wore rather thin when the Army ordered shoulder flashes to be added to uniforms and the Bletchley area was thronged by soldiers labelled "Royal Corps of Signals" and "Intelligence Corps" – from a GC&CS point of view an unfortunate association of ideas. But in general GC&CS consistently pursued this policy of being low key, avoiding appearance before local tribunals or in any matter that might engage the attention of the Press or public. The cover stories probably increased rather than reduced curiosity. By far the best protection for GC&CS staff was simply to say that they couldn't talk about their work: to appear, as Churchill remarked of them during his visit 'innocent though engaged in a sinister occupation'.

Every new entrant (civilian or service, at Bletchley or at stations) read and signed an extract from the Official Secrets Act as did everybody leaving in a formal "signing off" process. In GC&CS after the signing of the Official Secrets Act staff were warned that no mention of the nature of the work outside the organisation was allowed, and this warning was included in the Standing Orders issued to them. Further security instruction was left to Section Heads to handle and this system continued until the beginning of 1942 when all security-related matters were centralised when Henry Hayward became Senior Security Officer for GC&CS.

Being "war entry" himself, he realised that suddenly exposing new entrants to highly secret information was an unusual experience and potentially a source of acute anxiety to some, while for others security rules would be no more important than rationing rules or petrol restrictions, which most people were prepared to dodge on the quiet. His solution was to ensure that Security became part of everybody's work rather than a bolt-on, and to do so, he rethought the way that new entrants were trained in security.

His plan was to give a simple lecture to every new entrant a few days after they arrived, followed by the signing of a solemn declaration which listed the main points of the lecture. This paper dealt in the main with the best answers to be given to ordinary everyday questions from acquaintances. It was handed out to be read and signed after the lecture, returned to the Directorate and, as it was a confidential document, its arrival or non-arrival until chased offered a clue to the reliability of the individual. This did not take the place of signing the Official Secrets Act, but supplemented it. Each batch of recruits – the intake was at first about 30 arriving every Monday morning – attended the lecture some three or four days after being signed on. They were divided into three categories according to the "need to know" their work attracted: those engaged in Sigint proper; those employed in support areas such as the Communications Section where there was no need for them to hear about the methodology of Sigint; and staff such as messengers, maintenance and catering, who might enter offices at times and who would certainly overhear other people talking about classified subjects. The lecture was varied according to the audience, the last category being especially warned against inquisitiveness, talking outside the perimeter of anything they saw (for example machinery) or anything they heard, but were otherwise given no information about the purpose of the organisation. The same lecture was given to the WRNS at Stanmore and Eastcote. Hayward visited these stations at longer intervals and audiences varied from about 100 up to 250.

His lecture always covered the following points:

1) Explanation of the provisions of the Official Secrets Act.

2) The Purpose of GC&CS.

3) The effect of its work on operations.

4) How it might be lost and the effect of doing so.

5) 'There is only one way of keeping a secret, and that is to tell it to nobody' not even to the nearest and dearest or others in the same uniform.

6) Behaviour: 'Do not surround yourself with mystery and avoid arousing curiosity' and how to answer casual or not so casual questions.

7) Not to write indiscreet letters.

8) The principle of need to know. 'Secrets which you do not need to know are an unnecessary burden and someone else's secret is never quite so secret as one's own', and how this led to the principle that members of one section should not discuss their work with members of another except when necessary.

9) The honour of the Service.

(Before anyone asks, I do not know what "The honour of the Service" covered.)

Hayward gained a further insight into the sort of issues staff needed to be warned about as all security breaches were reported to him. Most cases fell into one of three main categories: victims of the confidence trick – senior officers saying 'I know all about your work as I was an intelligence officer in the last war' or parents saying 'You can surely trust me'; people who deliberately attracted attention ("men of mystery"); and what he described as "chatterboxes and letter writers". Of these the last category was by far the largest and the most easily dealt with.

Staff were told that it was their duty, however unpleasant, to report security breaches at once and Hayward ensured that incidents were handles in such a way as to minimize any personal animosities. In his words: "It was made to appear rather more a question of helping a weaker vessel than reprimanding a naughty child."

Hayward arranged periodically for a week or so's censorship on all letters leaving or entering the area in which GC&CS staff were living. This produced on each occasion a small crop of letters which were returned to GC&CS for action. No really serious security breach was discovered and all were easily dealt with, but it demonstrated the need to explain in simple language what constituted careless talk and what was meant by security.

American Air Force officers regularly invited WRNS and other young women employees to their dances. Unfortunately the drinks served tended to be both stronger and more plentiful than most of their guests were accustomed to. The presence of women in Naval uniform in the heart of the country was intriguing and led to a degree of innocent questioning. So many cases of indiscreet talk occurred that GC&CS felt obliged to ask the WRNS not to allow their personnel to visit certain American stations. The problem was passed on to the US Army Sigint authorities in the UK, who sorted things out at their end. The security problem was perceived to be greater because of the likelihood that some at least of these officers might fall into enemy hands.

There were some cases of mental breakdown. Fortunately in an early case the patient, by that time in a nursing home, wrote to a colleague about work matters. It was immediately appreciated that a letter like this could be sent to anyone. MI5 was called in and arranged for doctors and nurses to be interviewed and letters censored. This became a standard procedure.

Security breaches during the Second World War were relatively infrequent and easily dealt with.  The idea that maintaining secrecy was an integral part of everybody's job became embedded within the organisation, and many of the practices begun there continued after the war, and indeed to the present day.

Sigint Liaison with Finland

 

The UK now has a Defence Agreement with Finland and Sweden, and will soon be formally allied to both countries in NATO. It is not well known that for a short period in the Second World War the UK and Finland found themselves on the same side: our enemy's enemy was our friend and in spite of the alliance between Nazi Germany and the USSR, German occupation of Poland, Denmark and Norway, the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and the part of Poland the Germans had agreed to let them have, and Swedish neutrality, the UK and Finland enjoyed a Sigint partnership for just over a year.

British Sigint had had relationships with the French, Italians and Americans during the First World War. These had all disappeared by the time GC&CS was formed on 1 November 1919. RAF Sigint did its own deal with the Estonian military Sigint authorities, and for most of the 1930s equipped and trained the Estonians in return for Estonian intercept logs of traffic of the Soviet Air Force, though this ended in 1939. In the 1930s, under the auspices of SIS a relationship was developed with the French to discuss Enigma, and from this grew the 'Enigma Relay', the exchange of information that led to Enigma becoming an exploitable cipher system.

This meant that GC&CS had become receptive to the idea that foreign Sigint services could be met as partners and early in 1940, this led to the idea that somebody should visit Finland to see whether the Finns were doing anything against the Soviet Union, the ally of Nazi Germany, that might benefit UK Sigint. At this point there was no dedicated UK effort against the Soviet military: an interservice cryptanalytical section would not be set up (in Wavendon, near Bletchley) until the summer of 1940.

Tiltman, the Head of the Military Section, went to Finland to meet the Finnish Sigint organisation, a meeting brokered by the SIS representative in Helsinki and the UK Military Attache. He arrived in Finland on March 1st 1940 and stayed for ten days most of which he spent with Major Hallamaa, the head of Finnish Army Sigint, at Kerava. Hallamaa showed Tiltman the whole of his organisation and expressed the willingness of the Finnish General Staff to cooperate fully in Sigint matters with the British.

The Finns were willing to exchange their knowledge of Russian codes and ciphers in return for the radios they were very short of. They needed 50 receivers, 6 DF sets and 6 high-powered transmitters to link their units in the field. The War Office in London confirmed that some of the equipment was available and the Finns handed over a forty page handbook on Russian Army and Naval communications.

The equipment was released on 15 April 1940, and the Finns were further informed that the UK would fund the Finnish purchase of further radio equipment in Sweden up to the value of £500. Some equipment arrived in Helsinki but when another GC&CS officer arrived in Finland to develop liaison on the Russian target he found that the Finns had only obtained 4 receivers, though a search while he was there produced three of the DF sets as well, and the Finns appeared satisfied that the British were acting in good faith. They agreed to provide Soviet intercept provided the British reciprocated: in the Finnish system the clerical effort involved would have to be justified to higher authority by a quid pro quo. They gave the UK the current encryption system being used by the Soviet Baltic Fleet as well as military systems which had become mainly readable. In return GC&CS offered its work on encryption systems used by the Soviet Navy Black Sea Fleet which was being taken in Palestine.

The exchange of intercepts was not straightforward. The air route between the UK and Finland was only open during the summer months, and the Finns were unwilling to open a new two-way radio link to the UK so the only way was to send the traffic by air to Stockholm from Helsinki in a diplomatic bag and to forward the traffic from there on commercial wireless circuits and vice versa. This would have worked if a Typex machine could have been sent to Stockholm and if sufficient Typex capacity had been installed at Sarafand to deal with the Black Sea traffic. However, there were significant problems in the supply of Typex, and by March 1941 Denniston argued that if only GC&CS could be allocated 10 lbs weight in the Stockholm daily bag the need for Typex would disappear, but neither Typex nor the 10 lbs of freight became available.

In spite of all the assurances it had given, the War Office did not actually send the rest of the radio equipment originally promised. It took until summer 1941 before this was sorted out and by then the situation had changed completely. The Germans declared war on Russia and a German mission was sent to Finland just as the final decision to send the missing sets was taken.

The last signal from Finland contained an assurance that they would not reveal to the Germans their Sigint cooperation with the UK and asked for an assurance that the British would not tell the Russians of Finnish cryptanalytical success against Russian systems. This assurance was given, and the Finns and the British each kept their promise (something perhaps easier for the British side than for the Finnish).

GC&CS developed its links with the US, and maintained its links with France and the exiled Poles until December 1942, but this marked the high water of non-Five Eyes cooperation. The Finnish experience had shown GCHQ that a buccaneering attitude to foreign relationships might bring results, but always at a potential cost of the partnership being prey to other considerations, and the dispersal of French and Polish cryptologists after the Nazi occupation of Vichy led to a new and cautious approach which would last for many years.

Sigint Liaison with the Russians

After the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 a military mission (No 30 UK Military Mission) was sent to Moscow and learned that the Russians had a Y Service. In August, 1941 a Y officer from the Middle East went to Moscow. He was given little information, and wasn't allowed to see anything of the Soviet organisation. However, as British relations with the USSR had been bad for many years this was considered unsurprising, and in October 1941 the War Office on its own initiative attached an Army officer (who had been working as a Sigint traffic analyst) in 30 Mission. At the same time the Admiralty negotiated permission to build a Naval Y Station in the far north aimed at providing early warning of any attack on the convoys planned to bring supplies to the Russians. On the Army and Air Force side it was hoped principally to obtain Russian-intercepted German traffic and some help if possible on Japanese systems. In fact, apart from the supposition that Russian Sigint would be less efficient than British there wasn't any clear policy, other than that allied intelligence liaison was a "good thing". 

The Admiralty received Soviet permission to erect a Y Station at Polyarnii, near Murmansk, and British permission to give the Soviets information about Auka (a low-grade Luftwaffe system), and, in May 1942, sent a naval officer from GC&CS to Murmansk to arrange for the exchange of Naval and TA intelligence. As a result of this some naval intercepted traffic reached GC&CS and there was also an interchange of DF bearings.

The War Office representative also made some progress. He was authorised in February 1942 to train the Russians to break the German police ciphers which were being used in rear areas on the Russian front, as well as showing them some traffic intercepted in the UK. (It was never the intention that British success against Enigma should be revealed.) He reported that this had produced a favourable reaction and he asked to be allowed to expand the exchange, giving the Russians identities recovered from callsign analysis of certain German stations in return for traffic intercepted in Russia. In June 1942 he was recalled for discussion of policy and went back to Moscow as representative, not of the War Office, but of the Y Board. But the mood in Moscow had changed: the Russians stalled and eventually in November the Head of the Soviet Army section dealing with Traffic Analysis suggested that cooperation should be discontinued.

Naval cooperation in the far north continued on a restricted basis, though some intercepted material inaudible elsewhere did reach the UK. This lasted until spring 1943 when, just as the UK staff were preparing to hand over another batch of Y material, the Russians suddenly entered the British site, sealed up the transmitters and took away the "meaconing" apparatus (a means of falsifying German Beacon transmissions.) At the same time it came to British knowledge that the German Y Service was reading some high echelon Russian cipher systems without much difficulty. Convoys were not actually in operation at this time, but were expected to resume and the closure of the station and Soviet insecurity greatly increased the hazards of running them.

In return for German Police material, the UK had given the Soviet military the Japanese Military Attaché code, the "Bird book" and index (the GC&CS process for breaking out German enciphered callsigns), the solution to German aerodrome serviceability reports, the process for recovering German police keys, Auka, and some ISOS keys. The Russians had also been made aware that the UK could read the Army tank code, Army medium grade field ciphers as well as the cipher used by one of the German sabotage units. The UK side decided that unless and until the Russians resumed cooperation, no further material should be sent. There was no point in keeping a representative in Moscow and the liaison officer, while retaining the title 'Russian Liaison Officer', was relocated to GC&CS. GC&CS had only one vote on the Y Board but it was a significant one. its attitude towards Russian cooperation was becoming more assertive and more reluctant. 'Jumbo' Travis wrote to Heads of Sections in May 1943 saying that he was prepared to consider an exchange, but only if there was a solid return "as I am not now a believer in Russian cooperation".

Although it had been decided that the Y Board should have no representative in Moscow, 'C' felt that an SIS liaison officer might usefully represent Sigint as well. One went to Moscow in the summer of 1943, just in time for several things to happen all at once. The Soviets asked for a full description of the German Enigma machine; they captured a copy of Auka themselves; and German Y Service traffic intercepted by the UK revealed that Russian ciphers were still being read by the Germans.

A meeting took place in summer 1943 after the British Ambassador made representations to Molotov, and it became clear that the Soviets' main interest was to find out what exactly what the British evidence of Russian cipher insecurity was. They were told that the information had come from a disaffected Austrian prisoner of war and from information from Japanese Military Attaché decrypts; they were also told that the UK side would give no further Sigint-derived information until the Russians delivered on their promises of the previous year. There were a few sporadic meetings and it became perfectly clear in spite of the SIS representative's attempts to put the best possible interpretation on what was going on, that the Russians were trying to get what they could from the British without giving anything away themselves. Telegrams continued to pass desultorily throughout 1944 and an Enigma machine and a small amount of very low level Y information was sent, though probably more for SIS's benefit than for Sigint's. Before the end of the war cooperation had ceased.

Why were the Soviets so reluctant to carry out an exchange of material? GCHQ believed post-war that the Soviet Sigint organisation had made the authorities in Moscow aware that the material being offered by the UK was low grade and that therefore either the UK was keeping its aces up its sleeve, or it didn’t have any capability worth wasting Soviet time on.

In my last post I told the story of how some information derived from Enigma decrypts had been published after having been passed by military censors. Commenting on Twitter @jock_bruce said that "in that story the point is that the folk clearing stuff for publication need to know what they’re actually protecting". I think that there is a similar issue here: those making decisions – the single services, and subsequently the Y Board – didn't understand that any half-way competent Sigint organisation would realise that valuable information was being withheld.

Sigint liaison worked with the French and the Poles when there was a full exchange of knowledge between the national Sigint organisations of each country, and subsequently worked with the US and Australia, Canada and New Zealand, because there was full sharing and integration of staff in each other's organisations. It couldn't work if the exchange was partial and low-level, and it certainly wouldn't work if non-Sigint personnel were representing Sigint.

 

Locking a Stable Door

There is an interesting story in Guy Liddell's diaries (The National Archives (TNA) KV 4/187 and 4/189) about publication of Sigint secrets in a book published in 1941.

March 8th (1941)

SIS are in a great state about the publication of a book called The Diary of a Staff Officer, who (sic) in addition to criticising the French and British Commands in rather an outspoken manner makes reference to work affecting the GC&CS. I communicated first with Mr Ray of Methuens, the publishers, and then with Dick's brother who is a partner in the firm. 1,900 copies have already been issued and since further demands are being made by the booksellers, most of them must be in the hands of private individuals. Meanwhile, another 7,000 copies are in preparation and are to go out on Tuesday next. Dick's brother tells me that the book was submitted to the MOI and passed by all 3 service representatives before Xmas. It was then published serially in the USA. It is possible however that the offending passages may have been omitted. A few copies have gone to Canada and the book has been extensively reviewed here in the Press. I am suggesting that the 7,000 copies should not be circulated and that the censorship and D.4 should be warned against letting any of them out of the country. I feel that if we do more than this we shall only be drawing attention to what we are anxious to donceal (sic). We shall be in a better position to decide on Monday.

March 10th (1941)

I saw Stewart and Hopkinson about the officer's diary. We discussed the problem in all its aspects and thought that before coming to a definite conclusion it would be wise to see Gribble at the earliest possible moment.

March 11th (1941)

Stewart, Lennox and I saw Gribble at the WO. He admitted that he knew the messages came from a very secret source but he thought he was amply covered by having submitted his diary for censorship. He admitted however that he had shown the document previously to his agent to see whether its contents were like (sic) to interest the public if they were published in book form. It was explained to him that certain passages constituted a grave indiscretion and that it was in the public interest that he should cooperate with us in doing anything possible to pick up the pieces. We eventually agreed that even though the offending passages had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post it would be better to issue the new edition in amended form. Gribble was to tell his agent that he wished to make certain amendments in the text and therefore that he would like the return of the proof copy from America before any further action is taken. As regards the Manchester Evening News who were asking permission to publish the book in serial form, it was decided to see first whether they were proposing by their own selection to exclude the offending passages. If not, we should have to say that the book could not be published serially until certain amendments had been made which the author considered desirable in the light of subsequent information received.

…

In the afternoon Dick's brother came down and we discussed details about Gribble's book. It was apparent that if the offending passages were taken out it would be quite clear that a new one had been gummed in. We therefore decided to buy up the whole of the second edition which was already bound and have arranged that the offending page in the other two editions should be removed altogether, with those which were joined to it. These would be collected before the new amended pages were delivered to the printer.

2^nd February (1942)

According to an intercepted letter a New York publisher is trying to arrange with Watt, London, for the publication of Major Gribble's book Diary of a Staff Officer in German. It is to be printed in Switzerland. Lennox has got hold of Gribble and will tell him to stop the publication. If the book circulates in Germany there is a possibility that what has been overlooked may come to light.

(Key to people: Dick is Dick White, MI5 officer and future DG; Stewart is Stewart Menzies, 'C'; Hopkinson is probably Henry Hopkinson, PS to PUS FCO (subsequently Lord Colyton); Lennox is Gilbert Lennox, MI5 officer and responsible for MI5 liaison with the War Office.)

Fascinated by this story, I managed to locate and buy a copy of the first (offending) edition of this book. (The second edition was, presumably, bought up and destroyed; and there were at least third and fourth editions according to abebooks.)

The offending passages appear to be two of the entries for 12 June 1940. Here is the entry for the whole of the day.

June 12th. 1130 hours. The German have three fresh army corps South of RHEIMS. This town was occupied yesterday when the French made a complete withdrawal to the MARNE. There are now 80 German divisions on the CHANNEL – MONTMEDY front. The French possess some very exhausted 35 divisions. There is no longer any hope of success for the French.

PS (private sources) is providing a fund of information. There were 45 messages last night.

1200 hours. The last of these messages consisted of a single word: "SEDAN". This is the German word for bombing PARIS.

1210 hours. It was repeated to us again today that the lack of enthusiasm in the French armies could be attributed to the fact that one third of them was drawn from the occupied territory. Even more, it is thought that at least half the soldiers in the French army have now lost their homes through German occupation.

2300 hours. Very unpleasant news tonight. A big break through over the SEINE with enemy reported as far over as DREUX and EVREUX. Looks like the next move towards the SEINE.

It is pretty clear that Major Gribble was trying it on. He knew how sensitive the material originated from Sigint was, and he knew that the volume of reportable intercepted messages was significant. But he guessed that the military censors wouldn't know as much as he did. I imagine that the fact that "SEDAN" was identified as a codeword message (CWM) meaning "Bomb Paris" was what caused the stir when the book was published, but it's hard to believe that the Germans hadn't assumed that the CWM would be compromised as soon as Paris was bombed.

This diary entry was written before the most severe levels of security were designed for the protection of Sigint, and it is in part because of what happened in France that things were tightened up. As de Grey says, in Appendix III of his Organisation and Evolution of British Sigint (TNA HW 43/78):

The policy adopted in regard to the Enigma decrypts had no repercussions during the "Sitzkrieg" [the Phony War] – they were dull and of no immediate operational value. It was not until the Battle of Norway that the intelligence became of such operational value that its dissemination in a wider field became a problem. Norway was over before any organisation could be set on foot. The Battle of France supervened but it was not until May 22nd that the current German Air Force key was solved and thenceforward solved regularly – that is until a week or two before the end of the Battle. The arrangements to supply GQG [Grand Quartier General: the French GHQ] with results were untried and neither Ally was versed in the exchange of such material. GHQ and AHQ had not had the experience of receiving a flood of such material, were in no position to interpret its significance and were in ignorance of its reliability. The whole front was crumbling and although it is possible that some of the information reached the higher commands it is doubtful whether it was of any use. The War Office channels of dissemination were abandoned possibly for fear of their insecurity and SIS WT was substituted in the last few days. The difficulties of secure dissemination to the commands in the field were thus fully brought to light.

The diary entry illustrates de Grey's point: as well as copious and detailed predictive intelligence from intercepts, Gribble's office was handling top level information about German and French Orbat and German movements, as well as engaging in dubious analysis of what might or might not be demotivating the French Army. This isn't a picture of a well-functioning Intelligence Staff: those involved had no training in or experience of what they were supposed to be doing.

The solution chosen to solve the Sigint part of this problem was ULTRA and the special handling procedures associated with it were effective in protecting the fact of successful cryptanalysis and the products which that success brought, but at a cost: not everybody who handled intelligence had access to all relevant intelligence on a given subject. The level of clearance needed to have access to the most sensitive intelligence was granted to only a small proportion of members of intelligence staffs. That in turn produced problems of its own.