Tony Comer

👀 Great to see Dr. Chris Baxter's new website. Chris is an outstanding historian of early Twentieth Century security, intelligence and diplomacy, who was involved with the Cabinet Office and FCO/FCDO on exciting projects. Have a look ⏬️ 🔗 christopherjamesbaxter.com

On 27 November 1943, Guy Liddell, a senior MI5 officer recorded a story about Winston Churchill. (Source TNA KV4/192)

How you maintain Communications Security in the heat of battle? A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at the Battle of the North Cape and concludes that leaving it pragmatically to the people on the spot may be the most sensible approach.

@pinstripedline @SchemieG 'little known' perhaps rather than 'forgotten'. An excellent thread.

@SchemieG Edzell is a fascinating and sadly forgotten location from a cold war perpsective isnt it!

This is the USS PALM BEACH, sister ship to the USS PUEBLO, a spy ship captured by North Korea. In 1967 the US Navy sought British permission to base her in the UK to carry out top secret intelligence missions against Russia. A short PSL thread on Cold War spy ships!

@ChrisGreenwayUK Sorry, Chris: I've just seen this. I've commented on your comment (and corrected the mistake you noticed).

@TCHisTree A fantastic post Tony! Thanks. I've left a comment under it.

I explore need-to-know again in a post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looking at an Official Secrets Act case in which a clear Sigint connection was ignored because the investigators had no idea it existed.

@pinstripedline Did it get subsumed into Hinsley?

In 1973 the MOD began working on a TOP SECRET intelligence history of WW2, before ULTRA became public knowledge. Incredibly, this project remained highly classified, with even mention of its existence classified as CONFIDENTIAL due to the need to protect ULTRA decades later...

How good is 'I was there' as a guarantee of historical memory? Not, perhaps, as good as it might seem. A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at records and memory.

It's easy to overclassify and it's easy to be nervous about release. An illustration of this point in a new post on siginthistorian.blogspot.com

@shashj @CiarliniKoerner Thanks, @shashj. I posted about the encryption of Italian Diplomatic, not military, messages. @CiarliniKoerner is right that the English-language history of Sigint in the Mediterranean during the SWW (and the skill of Italian cryptanalysts) is inadequate.

A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at what can happen when two opposing sides are using the same cryptosystems.

Excellent news that Bill Tutte is being commemorated on a VE-80 stamp. What a pity that the Post Office doesn't seem to know that 'codebreak' isn't a verb and that codes and ciphers are different. If only there was a national agency that they could have approached for advice ...

This is excellent, spelling out the difficulties for an Inquiry asked to assess, not just how intelligence was acquired and assessed a quarter of a century ago, but how, at that time, without the benefit of hindsight, it should have been acted on. instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/omagh-…

A really interesting edition of Código Crystal. An interview with former CNI Head Felix Sanz Roldán (in Spanish) about secrecy and transparency. He argues that a release and declassification legislation would increase trust in intelligence agencies. rtve.es/play/audios/co…

Austerity was really hard in 1949: but there was a welcome mitigation for staff at GCHQ. See siginthistorian.blogspot.com for what happened.

This is a fascinating thread and illustrates why security plays a large part in the details of the UKUSA Agreement. Recipients have to give assurance before they receive classified material that they will protect it to the originator's satisfaction, but these waters can run deep.

The link should of course be siginthistorian.blogspot.com

Is the earliest satirical novel about IA a heavily disguised satire on GCHQ as well? See my latest post on siginthistorian.com ...

The lives traitors live(d)! Post-confession Anthony Blunt's drinks bill was £100 a month in 1965 and he claims to have lived for a day on gin: when gin was £1/10/- (£1.50) a bottle.

Some first thoughts on what newly released MI5 files on John Cairncross tell us about his time as a Soviet agent at Bletchley Park available at siginthistorian.blogspot.com. Some new detail, but there's nothing particularly spectacular.