Post by Diarist on Sept 22, 2015 12:10:42 GMT 1
The Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary have decided to greatly expand the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). It will be moved to Bletchley Park, NW of London. An outstation in the Far East, the Far East Combined Bureau, will be set up in Hong Kong to study Japanese codes.
During the Great War, the United Kingdom's Army and Navy had separate signals intelligence agencies, MI1b and NID25 (initially known as Room 40) respectively. In 1919, the Cabinet's Secret Service Committee, chaired by Lord Curzon, recommended that a peace-time code-breaking agency should be created, a task given to the then-Director of Naval Intelligence, Hugh Sinclair. Sinclair merged staff from NID25 and MI1b into the new organisation, which initially consisted of around 25–30 officers and a similar number of clerical staff. It was titled the "Government Code and Cypher School", a cover-name chosen by Victor Forbes of the Foreign Office. Alastair Denniston, who had been a member of NID25, was appointed as its operational head. It was initially under the control of the Admiralty, and located in Watergate House, Adelphi, London. Its public function was "to advise as to the security of codes and cyphers used by all Government departments and to assist in their provision", but also had a secret directive to "study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers". GC&CS officially formed on 1 November 1919, and produced its first decrypt on 19 October.
By 1922, the main focus of GC&CS was on diplomatic traffic, with "no service traffic ever worth circulating" and so, at the initiative of Lord Curzon, it was transferred from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office. GC&CS came under the supervision of Hugh Sinclair, who by 1923 was both the Chief of SIS and Director of GC&CS. In 1925, both organisations were co-located on different floors of Broadway Buildings, opposite St. James's Park. Messages decrypted by GC&CS are distributed in blue-jacketed files that are known as "BJs".
GC&GS will now be transferred to the Ministry of Defence; the Foreign Office and TRADOC HQ will each assign representatives to receive encrypted information from Bletchley Park.
Source: Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters#Government_Code_and_Cypher_School
During the Great War, the United Kingdom's Army and Navy had separate signals intelligence agencies, MI1b and NID25 (initially known as Room 40) respectively. In 1919, the Cabinet's Secret Service Committee, chaired by Lord Curzon, recommended that a peace-time code-breaking agency should be created, a task given to the then-Director of Naval Intelligence, Hugh Sinclair. Sinclair merged staff from NID25 and MI1b into the new organisation, which initially consisted of around 25–30 officers and a similar number of clerical staff. It was titled the "Government Code and Cypher School", a cover-name chosen by Victor Forbes of the Foreign Office. Alastair Denniston, who had been a member of NID25, was appointed as its operational head. It was initially under the control of the Admiralty, and located in Watergate House, Adelphi, London. Its public function was "to advise as to the security of codes and cyphers used by all Government departments and to assist in their provision", but also had a secret directive to "study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers". GC&CS officially formed on 1 November 1919, and produced its first decrypt on 19 October.
By 1922, the main focus of GC&CS was on diplomatic traffic, with "no service traffic ever worth circulating" and so, at the initiative of Lord Curzon, it was transferred from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office. GC&CS came under the supervision of Hugh Sinclair, who by 1923 was both the Chief of SIS and Director of GC&CS. In 1925, both organisations were co-located on different floors of Broadway Buildings, opposite St. James's Park. Messages decrypted by GC&CS are distributed in blue-jacketed files that are known as "BJs".
GC&GS will now be transferred to the Ministry of Defence; the Foreign Office and TRADOC HQ will each assign representatives to receive encrypted information from Bletchley Park.
Source: Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters#Government_Code_and_Cypher_School