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Search forGCHQ boss speaks exclusively to Gloucestershire Media on his retirement
Friday, July 25, 2008, 08:00
So I am very pleased to have this opportunity to offer some personal reflections on GCHQ past and present and on my own time there.
I joined GCHQ in 1972 in the middle of the Cold War, a struggle in which GCHQ played a major part.
At that time, there were still people there who had worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War; their contribution was still secret then, but is now well known.
Today GCHQ is again playing a vital role in countering today's biggest threats to national security – helping the fight against terrorism and supporting British troops wherever they are deployed.
The change in GCHQ that has been most visible to Cheltenham residents has, of course, been the move into our new Benhall building (the Doughnut) and the replacement of much of our old accommodation by houses and the Oakley Sainsbury's.
For many of our old hands, the experience of buying groceries on the spot where we had our first recruitment interview still feels pretty odd.
The Doughnut is important as a building, but the changes in recent years go much deeper than that.
The GCHQ I first knew was very much a Cold War organisation.
We were very hierarchical, with a rather rigid structure and limited internal communications. This is not a criticism – the work we did during that period was excellent, and our response to crises such as the Falklands War could be first class.
The organisation was a product of its time, and well suited to the job it had to do. But by the 1990s it became clear that a different approach was needed for a very different world, with volatile and global threats and the arrival of the internet.
Since then the organisation has been transformed almost beyond recognition.
The accommodation is a big part of this. Rather than a large number of mostly old-fashioned and cellular buildings, most people are now under one roof in modern open-plan offices – no one, including me, has a personal office.
But as a result of all the work we have done on our culture, our leadership, and the way we work, attitudes and behaviour have changed as well.
We are far less concerned about rank and hierarchy, information and knowledge move around more freely, and we are much better able to respond to the urgent needs of today's world. Our targets have changed as well, of course.
The Cold War focus was on the Soviet Union. Now our biggest area of work by far is our contribution to counter-terrorism.
And support to deployed British forces has become a major activity. One of the many things I am proud of about GCHQ is the number of people who volunteer to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, to work alongside the military in conditions that are always very uncomfortable and often dangerous.
In that part of our business that protects government communications and data, we are now at the heart of efforts to protect government networks from intrusion and attack.
I am sometimes asked what a typical day in GCHQ is like. It's an impossible question, really, because every day is different, and because there are so many different jobs being done. But one constant feature for some of us is the 8.30am briefing on current events. The staff working overnight on the 24-hour watch bring us up to date with the latest intelligence stories, and we look at what is happening in the world and what we need to be doing about it.
This is an important reflection of our mindset – we are supporting the Government and our armed forces on a daily and hourly basis.
Although we are based in Cheltenham, we have to spend a lot of time meeting and talking to our customers in Whitehall and elsewhere – the people who use the intelligence and information we produce.
So there is a great deal of travel between Cheltenham and London. My own week revolves around Wednesday meetings – the Cabinet Secretary brings together the heads of all the government departments for an hour in the morning, and in the afternoon the Joint Intelligence Committee meets to agree the week's intelligence assessments that will go to Ministers.
And much of my time is spent working with the heads of the other agencies, MI5 and MI6, to ensure that the three organisations are working ever more closely together – something that is essential in today's fight against terrorism.
Alongside these internal changes, our public profile has also changed dramatically. In 1972, we did not own up to our intelligence role – government policy was not to admit that the UK intercepted foreign communications in peacetime.
That did not change until 1983, after the former GCHQ employee Geoffrey Prime was convicted of spying for the KGB – an event that was a great shock to us all.
Since then we have steadily become more open – not, of course, about the detail of our work, but about aspects that are of genuinely wider interest, such as our experiences in managing radical change and in moving an enterprise of several thousand people across town.
The other side of the coin of openness is our greater readiness now to take in ideas and advice from the outside world. We are still predominantly, and I believe rightly, a career organisation.
But we now welcome a significant number of people into GCHQ in mid-career, including members of our board, and for the last six years we have had three non-executive board members whose experience in industry and elsewhere has been vital in guiding our development in the last few years.
An important aspect of our public profile is our engagement with the local community. We used to be very isolated, operating behind our barbed wire and keeping the world at bay. This construction of our new building forced us to become more open – we had to engage in the planning process, and we were keen to behave as “good neighbours” during a period when being one of our neighbours involved lots of dust, noise and disruption. One thing has led to another, and our approach to the community is now much more open, and I believe much healthier.
It has always been true that many of our staff have been involved as individuals in community and charity activities, but now we engage as GCHQ. This includes work with schools on IT and languages, and support to community work in Hester's Way, Springbank and Oakley.
I am very pleased with what we now feel able to do, and hope it will continue.
We have always relied on the support we get from the Cheltenham community, including the local newspapers, even when they knew almost nothing about us.
Today I hope and believe that we have a fuller relationship in which we are able to reflect back some of that support.
What will I remember after I leave? Too many things to list, of course, and much that I can't describe here. But there are some very vivid memories from recent years. Being summoned to Robin Cook's office the day after the 1997 election to be given instructions to negotiate the return of the national trade unions to GCHQ; escorting the Queen round the Doughnut on the day of the official opening; rushing to London on July 7, 2005, blue lights flashing, to attend the Prime Minister's emergency meeting after the London bombings; flying over Afghanistan in an RAF helicopter that had once belonged to the Soviet Air Force; ducking for cover in Basra and Baghdad as rockets landed not far way; sitting in London's Guildhall at the Lord Mayor's banquet for President Sarkozy; and on and on.
Above all, I will remember the people – my colleagues and friends. In 36 years, a lot has changed. But some things haven't. Our people are skilful, deeply committed and often passionate about their work.
They do the country proud. And I am enormously proud to have worked as one of them for a full career, and to have had the privilege of leading them for my last five years.
I wish my successor, Iain Lobban, every success, and as much pleasure as I have had in the post he is about to occupy.
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