GCHQ. Richard Aldrich
about how much GCHQ had told the Canadians about Anglo-American agreements, and suspected that GCHQ was secretly giving Ottawa some American sigint.34 During the 1948 discussions of possible CAN-USA sigint agreements, it became clear that the US Communications Intelligence Board was anxious to prevent an information free-for-all. It preferred to hand material to the Canadians on a ‘need to know’ basis, and was anxious to prevent a proliferation of sigint liaison officers.35 Meanwhile, somewhat foolishly, Canada resisted the all-important standardisation of security procedures that was a foundation stone of the BRUSA agreement, so negotiations were ‘very difficult’, dragging on until 1953.36 The Americans were even more wary of sigint cooperation with the Australians due to the KGB spy cases uncovered by Venona in the late 1940s. This, in turn, retarded the joint sigint effort against the newly formed People’s Republic of China from 1949. In late 1953, the advent of a Liberal (i.e. conservative) government in Australia triggered a full resumption of cooperation, formalised at a tripartite sigint conference between the Americans, British and Australians. New Zealand also came in as fifth partner. It was only at this point that the name ‘UKUSA’ was adopted at GCHQ’s request.37
The most prickly area of alliance relations was the business of cypher security, which protected the secrecy of diplomatic communications. Foolishly perhaps, at a meeting in London in May 1947, the British launched an audacious bid to persuade the Americans to share the innermost secrets on matters of their code-making. The discussion revolved around the replacement of the Combined Cypher Machine, which had been developed for inter-allied communications during the war, but was now thought obsolete and vulnerable. The British were also keen to replace their own national machine, the Typex, but were desperately short of money as a result of post-war austerity, and argued that for reasons of economy any new cypher machines should be capable of inter-allied use, and proposed joint research and development with the Americans.38 The Americans were startled: it had been a cardinal principle never to share the secrets of their unique and highly prized Sigaba machine. Hoping to overcome this psychological barrier, the British revealed that they were in fact already knowledgeable about Sigaba. They not only described its inner workings ‘quite accurately’, but confessed that they had ‘incorporated its principles in a radioteletype machine for their own use’. Hoping that they had pushed the Sigaba obstacle aside, the British then made their pitch. They claimed that they had developed an approach to cypher machines that was ‘new and revolutionary’, and ‘superior to the Sigaba principle’. They were happy to share this with the Americans, and perhaps make use of it in joint machines that might be developed for both national and allied use.
Far from being reassured, the Americans were horrified. Discussion had to be ‘temporarily discontinued’ while they withdrew to confer amongst themselves. The US Army could see no objection to releasing the Sigaba principle for use in a combined allied machine, since the British had clearly unravelled it. However, the US Navy offered ‘serious objections’, and used their veto. Thus the British were told that Sigaba had to be completely eliminated from the discussions. At this point they revealed their ‘new and revolutionary idea’ for future cypher machines, only to find that their American colleagues sneered at it and dismissed it as ‘impractical’ on engineering grounds. The two sides parted without agreement.39
While GCHQ was overawed by the scale of American sigint resources, matters looked quite different from Washington. With the Second World War now over, and an economising Republican Congress controlling the federal purse-strings, resources for American co mint interception activities were remarkably tight. This contributed to American under-preparedness prior to the Korean War. It also enforced a division of labour between GCHQ and the Americans, and prevented American sigint from expanding its activities in Europe in the way it had hoped. In 1949, US Army Security Agency interception units in Europe were still passing much of their product to GCHQ for analysis, rather than back to Washington. Moreover, GCHQ retained primary responsibility for areas such as Eastern Europe, the Near East and Africa.40 Because of this division of labour, the late 1940s saw the gradual development of American and British spheres of influence. In Scandinavia, for example, relations with Norway were an American responsibility, while those with the Swedes belonged to GCHQ, although this demarcation was not always strictly adhered to.41 GCHQ enjoyed the additional benefits of the panoply of bases provided by Britain’s imperial and post-imperial presence. Although the Empire was shrinking, the very process of retreat and the euphoria of independence often rendered the new successor states willing to grant limited base facilities to the departing British. These ‘communications relay facilities’ may have seemed innocuous, but in fact many countries were unwitting hosts to important GCHQ collection sites.42
The outbreak of the Korean War early on the morning of Sunday, 25 June 1950 took Britain and the United States by complete surprise. Although they had comint units in locations such as Hong Kong and Japan, their main focus was Russian traffic, and their sigint capabilities against North Korea were non-existent. The NSA official history notes that there was ‘no person or group of persons working on the North Korean problem’, and even had they done so, they had ‘no Korean linguists, no Korean dictionaries and no typewriters’. Although the CIA had picked up what might be called ‘rumours of war’ from human agents, there was no high-profile attack warning delivered to policy-makers. During the first few weeks of the war, the Americans and their South Korean allies suffered serious reverses and were almost overrun. Sigint helped the Americans to beat back the attacks on their rapidly shrinking perimeter by providing excellent tactical intelligence, but they blundered again by missing the entry of the Chinese into the war in October 1950.43
The Korean War resulted in a headlong expansion of American sigint. More than two thousand additional staff were recruited, and more than $5 million of additional spending on comint and comsec was authorised within weeks of the war commencing.44 The outbreak of the war also meant crash expansion in Asia. The Americans informed London of their ‘urgent need’ for a US Air Force sigint unit to be deployed to Hong Kong, and other sites were quickly developed on Taiwan in an attempt to remedy the yawning intelligence gap in East Asia.45
Korea had another important impact. With new employees flooding into the training wing at Nebraska Avenue in central Washington DC, the Americans soon had a vast backlog of people requiring security clearance before they could begin work. By the end of 1950, more than a third of sigint employees were ‘uncleared’. It was then discovered that since 1948 the CIA had been using the polygraph, or lie detector test, initially only to screen people who had access to sigint, although its use was soon extended to all CIA employees. By May 1951 it had been adopted for all American code-breakers, and polygraph examiners were testing ‘from seven in the morning till eleven at night’ to clear the backlog. Polygraphs soon became an embedded part of American sigint culture, but were not introduced at Britain’s GCHQ.46
The Korean War was of enormous importance for GCHQ because it fundamentally reshaped the American sigint community. There had been several failed attempts to create a single unified American sigint organisation along the lines of GCHQ.47 The war broke the logjam. In 1952, President Truman suddenly insisted on the creation of a strong central body called the National Security Agency, or ‘NSA’, under General Ralph Canine. The armed services fought a desperate rearguard action: in August 1952, General Samford of US Air Force intelligence denounced Truman’s desire for ‘strong central control’ as nothing short of a ‘major error’. However, Truman’s mind was made up, and in November he signed the order for the reshaping of American