GCHQ. Richard Aldrich

to the historian Peter Hennessy they are still in force, and as recently as August 2006, some sixty years on, the authorities deemed them so sensitive that, after anxious deliberation, they announced that they could not be released.³ Further agreements were added – and continue to be added – creating a complex spider’s web of cooperation. However, each agreement has its limits, and all parties have withheld sigint material from each other. In short, there is no common pooling of material. Moreover, relations between the various parties have often been tense, and latterly Washington has threatened some adherents, including Britain, Australia and New Zealand, with suspension or exclusion. If UKUSA is an alliance, its members are only ‘allies of a kind’.⁴

      It is also wrong to think of UKUSA as exclusively concerned with sigint. It is, rather, a sigint and security network. Security agreements on physical control of the sigint product and on protecting the security of communications were perhaps the most important aspects of the UKUSA network. Sigint reports on particular subjects were rigidly compartmentalised and given ‘Codeword’ status, ensuring that they could only be seen by people cleared to see that series, and making them effectively ‘above Top Secret’. Venona is the best-known example of such a Codeword. Much of this obsessive secrecy was codified in a biblical tome entitled ‘International Regulations on Sigint’, or ‘IRSIG’, which had reached its third edition by 1967.⁵ UKUSA was also about secretly undermining the communications security of other states, even neutrals and allies. Communications security, or ‘comsec’, is perhaps even more sensitive than sigint. The efforts of the UKUSA powers to control it have been among the darkest secrets of alliance politics in Western Europe. In short, the realm of sigint alliances is profoundly realist – at times even paranoid – with operators ‘taking what they can get’. While UKUSA might appear from the outside to represent a single powerful intelligence colossus, on the inside it was anything but unified.

      The best example of allies spying on allies is provided by Finland. The end of the Second World War had not turned out well for the Finns, since their Russian enemy had returned to the Baltic in overwhelming strength. Anticipating the arrival of the Russians, the talented Finnish code-breakers decamped en masse to Sweden, complete with their relatives, equipment and support staff. There they began a veritable car-boot sale of their cryptographic wares, including the results of sixteen years of continuous work against Russian systems. The beauty of selling codes is that the same items can be sold many times over. Predictably, the Finns paid their ground rent by assisting the Swedish equivalent of Bletchley Park, the Förvarets Radioanstalt, or FRA. In the last days of the war they also sold complete Russian codebooks to the American wartime intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, to Britain’s SIS and also to the Japanese. They also sold the Americans the details of the British codes they had broken, and work they had completed against some US State Department cyphers. The Americans were eager customers. This episode – known as the ‘Stella Polaris’ case because of its northern origins – underlines the duplicitous nature of friendships in the realm of code-breaking.⁶

      In the autumn of 1945, even while the Stella Polaris case was ‘live’, President Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, was engaged in the abolition of the Office of Strategic Services. Two years later its remnants would be revived to become the Central Intelligence Agency, but for now many of its intelligence officers were dispersed and its agents paid off. By contrast, Truman regarded sigint as indispensable, and secretly gave permission for the American code-breaking agencies to work on into the post-war period and ‘to continue collaboration in the field of communication intelligence between the United States Army and Navy and the British’.⁷ All major countries desired the maximum world coverage. On 19 November 1945, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Britain’s senior naval commander, attended a critical meeting of the British Chiefs of Staff. There was ‘Much discussion about 100 per cent cooperation with the USA about Sigint,’ he recorded, adding that they ‘Decided that less than 100 per cent was not worth having.’ In Ottawa, George Glazebrook, a senior Canadian diplomat, recommended to the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee that Canada enhance her independent sigint effort in order to stake a claim in this secretive emerging cooperative system. ‘It is paramount,’ he insisted, ‘that Canada should make an adequate contribution to the general pool.’⁸

      Yet a ‘general pool’ was not what emerged. Moreover, the way ahead was strewn with obstacles and tortuous negotiations. The complex package of agreements, letters and memoranda of understanding was not completed until 1953. In this process, Britain derived considerable benefit from her dominance over her Commonwealth partners and her imperial bases. GCHQ’s approach was to align her Commonwealth affiliates to create a critical mass before entering negotiations with the Americans. The story of Britain’s sigint relations with Australia illustrates this well. In March 1945, with the end of the European war looming, Edward Travis set off from Bletchley Park on a veritable world sigint tour. The possibility of transforming wartime cooperative arrangements into a post-war sigint alliance was already in his mind.⁹ En route, he and his party visited major sigint centres at Heliopolis in Egypt and HMS Anderson in Ceylon. They arrived in Melbourne in early April, and spent time with the Australian code-breaking organisation there, called the Central Bureau. On 17 April they departed for New Zealand and then moved on to Hawaii, San Francisco and finally Washington. By the time they reached Hawaii they were running low on funds, and had to beg a cash advance from the Foreign Office before they could proceed further. At each stop, the possibility of continued post-war cooperation was gently raised.¹⁰

      Relations with the Australians were somewhat awkward. Typically, London had reluctantly agreed that Sir Frederick Shedden, the new Australian Defence Minister, could be indoctrinated into the secrets of sigint, but only so he could use his power to prevent a reduction of Australian spending on intelligence. There had also been alleged leaks about intelligence in Canberra, and in September 1945 there were momentary doubts as to whether any cooperation with Australia on sigint would be authorised.¹¹ Indeed, by December 1945 a ‘dangerous position’ had developed, with the Australians seeming to want to go it alone with their own system; what was worse, there were rival elements within the Australian armed services. British liaison officers warned, ‘If we are not prompt to give a lead there may even be 3 or 4 rival shows in Australia with no hope of proper security.’ During the war, material collected in Australia and the Far East had often been sent back to Britain for analysis. However, there was now a possibility that the Australians might end up ‘insisting on full exploitation in Australia’. This was a situation that British code-breakers wanted to avoid at all costs, since final exploitation was power, and they wished to keep their Commonwealth associates in a subordinate position.¹²

      The crucial moment in the creation of the global sigint alliance occurred on 22 February 1946, when Britain opened a two-week Commonwealth conference for ‘Signals Intelligence Authorities’. This gave them critical mass prior to concluding a deal with the Americans the following month. The attendance of Australia and Canada was a foregone conclusion, and given the significant contribution that New Zealand had made during the war to naval sigint, there were hopes that she would also join in.¹³ The conference was also attended by senior officers from GCHQ’s regional centres. Bruce Keith, the commander of HMS Anderson, the massive sigint collection station in Ceylon, was there, accompanied by his deputy, Teddy Poulden.¹⁴ At this conference Australia offered sixty-five operating teams, amounting to 417 personnel, from the three armed services as its contribution to a new global sigint network.¹⁵ Australia was persuaded to set up a British-style Joint Intelligence Committee and, most importantly, a unitary Signals Intelligence Centre