GCHQ - The Uncensored Story

GCHQ - The Uncensored story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency by Richard Aldrich is a well written book that should be of interest to many members of the amateur radio community, if only because much of the GCHQ SIGINT input is captured by radio intercept.

GCHQ is the successor to the famous Bletchley Park wartime code-breaking organisation and is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the country. During the war, it commanded more staff than MI5 and MI6 combined and has produced a number of intelligence triumphs, as well as some notable failures. Since the end of the Cold War, it has played a pivotal role in shaping Britain's secret state. Still, we know almost nothing about it.

In this ground-breaking new book, Richard Aldrich traces GCHQ's evolvement from a wartime code-breaking operation based in the Bedfordshire countryside, staffed by eccentric crossword puzzlers, to one of the world leading espionage organisations. It tells many dramatic spy stories that shed fresh light on Britain's role in the Cold War - from the secret tunnels dug beneath Vienna and Berlin to tap Soviet phone lines, and daring submarine missions to gather intelligence from the Soviet fleet, to the notorious case of Geoffrey Pine, one of the most damaging moles ever recruited by the Soviets inside British intelligence. The book reveals for the first time how GCHQ operators based in Cheltenham affected the outcome of military confrontations in far-flung locations such as Indonesia and Malaya, and exposes the shocking case of three GGHQ workers who were killed in an infamous shootout with terrorists while working undercover in Turkey.

Today's GCHQ struggles with some of the most difficult issues of our time. A leading force of the state's security efforts against militant terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda, they are also involved in fundamental issues that will mold the future of British society.

For me the key takeaway is that pretty well any place where a Union Jack flys and a good many more places besides are likely to be listening sites feeding this SIGINT machine. Until relatively recently this involved men and women with headphones undertaking a very stressful, but boring job, a mixture that created a number of security risks described in the book. In modern times the remote site is more like a hoover sucking up spectrum for the big SIGINT machine in Cheltenham.

One of the more interesting example of GCHQ activities is contained in the closing chapter: "The surveillance effort between the war in Afghanistan and the "war" at home were now seamlessly connected. The RAF had purchased two Norman Islanders which were equipped with sigint suits. Based at RAF Northholt they are used as covert surveillance by MI5. In early 2007 they were used to support West Midlands police when tracking terrorist suspects. The aircraft fly at fairly high altitude and have been seen loitering over the East End of London for long periods....

Another example cited in the book concerns attempts to place monitoring equipment in shipping containers that were destined to carried back to the Chinese heartlands.

Of course it is in the nature of the subject that one cannot tell truth from myth from disinformation from economies of truth. None the less this is a well written book that set one thinking about modern methods of intelligence gathering and clearly demonstrates the impact that radio intercept has on modern life.

Stewart/G3YSX