- 5/17/2025
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00:00This is Gordon Welshman, a World War II code-breaking hero.
00:12Without him, the top-secret German Enigma codes might never have been broken.
00:17The war could have lasted two more years, and tens of thousands more would have died.
00:26Gordon Welshman should be famous.
00:30His contribution to the war was as great as Alan Turing's.
00:35Why have we never heard of him?
00:39When I was a child, there was always in the family the sense that Dad had done something
00:44quite important during the war, but of course we didn't really know the details, and it
00:49couldn't really be talked about.
00:51Gordon Welshman was the architect of a code-breaking technique that was so clever and so
00:56powerful that its wartime use at Bletchley Park still remains classified.
01:04Like Turing, his extraordinary legacy began at Bletchley and continues to this day.
01:11Just as Turing is now celebrated as the genius behind the computers that dominate our world,
01:17so Welshman's influence is everywhere.
01:20But until now, it has remained in the shadows.
01:24His secret work in code-breaking and communications had an impact beyond anything he could ever
01:30have imagined.
01:32Only now, with Edward Snowden's recent revelations of the extent of global surveillance by GCHQ
01:38in Britain and the NSA in America, can we understand Gordon Welshman's true legacy.
01:47It seems to me that some of the things really have been kept secret too long.
01:54Turing was undone by his private life, but is now officially pardoned and celebrated
01:59as a genuine British hero.
02:02But when Gordon Welshman chose to come out of the shadows to reveal his secret, the dark
02:07world of espionage was waiting.
02:11This man, who dared tangle with his own legacy, was ultimately destroyed by it.
02:27September 1939.
02:30As Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, an extraordinary ragtag army was being assembled
02:35at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire to fight a secret war.
02:42Their mission was to crack the hardest code ever devised, created on a machine called
02:47Enigma.
02:53Enigma lay at the heart of the German armed forces' communications system.
02:58If they could break in, these chess masters, crossword addicts and bridge fanatics might
03:04just save Britain from the Nazis.
03:09The best and the brightest were being recruited from Britain's top universities.
03:15Two of this elite were the renowned mathematician Alan Turing and the Dean of Sydney Sussex
03:22College, Cambridge, Gordon Welshman.
03:25Gordon Welshman was actually quite glamorous.
03:28He was good looking and he knew he was good looking.
03:30He had a way with the ladies.
03:32He was fantastically bright, very pugnacious, obviously a very proud man.
03:39He did mountain climbing, he did sailing, he loved dancing.
03:44He was a man who clearly had been watching Hollywood movies.
03:47He was kind of Errol Flynn and Robert Donat.
03:50It was very much that kind of dashing young chap, kind of feel to him, as opposed to the
03:55shambling absent-mindedness of many of his colleagues.
04:02Welshman was one of the five original elite codebreakers, given the impossible task of
04:07decoding the Enigma machine.
04:12Enigma used a combination of rotors, plug boards and wires to put the German messages
04:17into secret code.
04:20The chances of breaking this code were one in 159 million, million, million.
04:30Welshman was set on a radical approach.
04:33He ignored the unreadable messages and concentrated instead on what he could read.
04:39The first few letters and numbers of each message were not in code.
04:44These were call signs, like addresses, identifying who the messages were to and from.
04:51It was a brilliantly simple starting point, yet it would prove crucial.
05:00As I studied that first collection, I began to see somewhat dimly that I was involved
05:06in something very different.
05:14Welshman started to track these call signs.
05:16Who was communicating with whom, how often, and in which direction?
05:22They call it chat that comes over the air.
05:27And by this means we can build up a picture of a German unit of the Air Force, for example,
05:34the headquarters, any outstations it has, and how they keep in touch with each other
05:40and send messages.
05:45We were dealing with an entire communication system that would serve the needs of the German
05:50forces.
05:53The call signs came alive as representing those forces whose commanders would have to
05:59send messages to each other.
06:03The technique Welshman was using was called traffic analysis.
06:07It was this simple observation that a message must include details of the sender and the
06:14receiver, which would allow Welshman to see the entire network of the enemy.
06:23With this simple insight, modern code-breaking was born, and it allowed Welshman to begin
06:30unravelling the enemy's secrets from hundreds of miles away.
06:34And they had a big wall map, and you could visually see the whole set-up of the German
06:42communication system.
06:45It was Bletchley's first major breakthrough, and it had been achieved without reading a
06:50single message.
06:54Without an analysis of traffic, you would never have been able to use cryptography to
07:00win the war.
07:02When you hear phrases like traffic analysis or signals intelligence, it doesn't immediately
07:07sound quite so glamorous, really.
07:10And I think possibly that's one of the reasons why Gordon Welshman hasn't been recognised
07:14so much.
07:15But if people knew just how absolutely he was the kind of spine of the entire Bletchley
07:20Park operation, then they would look at him in a completely new way.
07:25The enigma codes had still not been broken, but Welshman already knew the exact position
07:30and strength of thousands of German troops and hundreds of aircraft, using the power
07:36of traffic analysis.
07:38He now realised that Bletchley Park could become as forceful a part of Britain's defences
07:43as the Army, Navy and Air Force.
07:47Their weapon would be intelligence.
07:54No one else seemed to be doing anything about this potential gold mine, so I drew up a comprehensive
08:01plan which called for close coordination of radio interception, analysis of the intercepted
08:08traffic, breaking enigma keys, decoding messages on the broken keys and extracting intelligence
08:19from the decodes.
08:23This was still the phony war, before fighting between Germany and Britain had begun.
08:30But Welshman was proposing a total reorganisation of Bletchley Park, a radical plan that would
08:35require far more people than a few tweedy professors solving puzzles.
08:42Welshman went to his boss.
08:46He won high-level approval for my plan and we were able to start recruiting the high-quality
08:51staff that would be needed.
08:59Welshman's creation was called Hut 6, a modest name that belied the magnitude of just what
09:05was achieved within its walls.
09:08In this modest hut, brilliant people made breakthroughs that helped change the course
09:13of the war.
09:16For more than 70 years it lay derelict, unloved and abandoned, until it was painstakingly
09:22restored by the Bletchley Park Trust to how it would have been in 1940.
09:28We had two or three or four little lights hanging on wires from the ceiling and we had
09:35collapsible chairs and tables, not very comfortable, and that was our equipment.
09:41So it really wasn't for a high-powered government machine.
09:47Jane Fawcett was one of 400 people who worked at Hut 6, all were sworn to the utmost secrecy.
09:55Many took their secrets to their graves.
09:59Now only a handful are still alive.
10:03I was in the Royal Corps of Signals before, rather against my will, I was transferred
10:10to Bletchley and there I was learning to be an interceptor.
10:18I saw a notice, men with suitable qualifications required for transfer to the Intelligence
10:25Corps and I was a bit of a romantic and I thought, well, you know, I might get involved
10:31in some sandestine operations.
10:38Bletchley scoured the country for the right sort of people for top-secret work.
10:44You have the very posh debutantes, drawn from the higher echelons of society.
10:53Initially, apparently, because it was felt that the smarter a girl's family, the more
10:58likely it was that she'd be able to keep a secret.
11:00Those happy days.
11:02I did the season, which was where the debutante's photographs come from, and I regarded that
11:10as a complete waste of time and money.
11:15And then the war broke out.
11:20I got a letter from one of my best friends who said, we're terribly busy, we really
11:27need you, could you come and help?
11:35As German panzers raced across Western Europe, Bletchley Park at last found a way to read
11:41Enigma traffic.
11:42The intelligence it produced was codenamed Ultra.
11:47But immediately, it gave them a major breakthrough.
11:51Thirty years after the war, in the only filmed interview Welshman ever gave, he revealed
11:56how this intelligence had been turned to advantage during the British forces' retreat from France
12:02at Dunkirk.
12:04In the Battle of France, probably the most important thing which came out of Ultra, we
12:11were still breaking in, was that it was realised so early that we were in a hopeless position.
12:22It showed HOT 6 had been established just in time.
12:29And it was decided to get out as quick as we could.
12:32And this meant that there was time to organise the armada of small boats that managed to
12:39get the troops back from Dunkirk.
12:43The immediate success of HOT 6 was a testament to Welshman's steely-eyed vision.
12:49You do need this, because in an establishment filled with absent-minded boffins who are
12:56walking into cupboards thinking it's the way out of a room or trying to stuff sandwiches
13:00into their pipes, you need someone with the clarity of thought of Gordon Welshman.
13:07Well, I think he was the right person at the right time.
13:09I think he probably had a lot of personal characteristics that were really vital for his work here.
13:15He doesn't have any time for faffing about.
13:18There's a war on, and he has a very particular idea of how this war should be fought.
13:26By the end of 1940, HOT 6 was at the heart of the whole Bletchley Park operation.
13:33Here, they used traffic analysis to select and target particular German radio networks
13:39and operators.
13:42Their traffic was then intercepted and decoded thanks to a remarkable new mechanical device
13:47which was helping to break key Enigma signals on a daily basis.
13:52It was called the BOM.
13:58It simulated all the possible rotor configurations of the Enigma machine.
14:06The BOM could check them hundreds of times faster than a human being.
14:13But it was very limited.
14:15To run a test known as a BOM run, it needed to compare a short phrase from the code with
14:21what the codebreakers guessed might be the original message.
14:26For example, German messages might begin with the words,
14:29Heil Hitler.
14:31This guessed text was known as a crib.
14:35If they were right in their guess, the BOM could start cracking the code.
14:40But they needed accurate cribs.
14:43To find them, Welshmen realised the human routines of the German operators could be
14:48the vulnerable link.
14:51What Welshmen discovered was that by understanding the way that the Germans used their communications,
14:58you could start to predict more easily where particular types of message would come.
15:04There was a German commander in Brittany somewhere who, during the war, regularly sent in every
15:09morning a message saying,
15:12Alles in Ordnung.
15:14Everything's okay here.
15:15The same phrase he used every morning.
15:18This was a godsend to the decryptors in Hut 6.
15:25It was a godsend because if they could work out what these encoded letters were, they
15:30were on their way to cracking the code.
15:34So cunningly, they targeted specific operators, trying to provoke them into using predictable
15:40phrases.
15:41They called it gardening.
15:44This German officer in Brittany used to report lone aircraft approaching.
15:54So we used to send regularly this aircraft over, so he'd send the same message.
16:00Armed with a crib, the Bletchley team could now start a bomb run and hope to find the
16:05Enigma settings.
16:07But it was a race against time.
16:11The German codes were changed at midnight.
16:18And the bomb might take days to find an answer.
16:23Even if they cracked the code, it would be too late to help the Allies.
16:28Welshman's genius was to come up with a modification of Alan Turing's brilliant design.
16:36And make it work many times faster.
16:39It's Gordon Welshman who spots the one thing that the machines need that could give them
16:45an almost uncanny elegance and beauty in the way that they worked.
16:50Welshman came up with an inspired improvised solution.
16:54A simple electrical circuit that dramatically improved the chances of finding the correct
17:00rotor settings.
17:05It was called the diagonal board.
17:08The impact was immediate.
17:10It reduced bomb runs from days down to hours or even minutes.
17:17The German codes could be cracked, sometimes before they were even read by the intended
17:21enemy recipient.
17:25So here we see an example of Gordon Welshman's fantastic mathematical intelligence coming
17:30through, easily a match for that of Alan Turing.
17:35At Dunkirk, ultra-intelligence had proved its worth, snatching thousands of British
17:40troops from death or certain capture.
17:46In May 1941, Bletchley Park proved intelligence could also bring victory.
17:56The main part of our fleet was out pursuing the Bismarck.
18:01It was the latest German ship and the best thing they'd got in the Navy and very important.
18:08The battlecruiser Bismarck was the most feared ship of the German Navy.
18:13On May the 24th, 1941, she sank the pride of the British Navy, HMS Hood, Britain's
18:20most modern and biggest ship.
18:281,400 British sailors lost their lives.
18:33Only three of her crew survived.
18:38Churchill ordered the might of the Royal Navy to hunt Bismarck down.
18:42But where was she?
18:45At Bletchley, Welshman's team believed German messages might reveal her location.
18:52Gordon was always in the depths of the deepest thought.
18:57So he wasn't a very sociable person as far as I remember, but then why should he be?
19:03Because he hadn't got time to talk to people like me, he was just riding a tremendously
19:07important horse and trying to get there because it was possible to get there.
19:17Sifting through the entirety of German naval communications for any reference to the Bismarck
19:23was a daunting challenge.
19:27What I had to do was to take the Enigma telegrams as they arrived in Hut 6 and I had to put
19:34them into the machine.
19:36Then I had to look at them and see whether, they were all in German of course, see whether
19:40they appeared to be of any interest.
19:43Then the breakthrough they had been waiting for.
19:47We discovered this message from a German commander to the commander of the Bismarck saying, where
19:54are you going?
19:55I'm worried about my son.
19:57Who's on board?
19:58And the message came back, which I got, which said Brest.
20:02At last they had a location.
20:04The Bismarck was heading for the port of Brest in northern France, being used by the German
20:09Navy.
20:12A powerful Royal Navy battle group was immediately ordered to hunt down the Bismarck.
20:18In this, perhaps the most dramatic naval film ever taken, you will see salvos from the Bismarck
20:22failing to hit one of our battleships.
20:25This was during the chase right across the Atlantic, while the Nazi ship was running
20:28from the guns of our squadron.
20:43And I was on duty for 24 hours during that period without really having anything to eat
20:49or certainly no sleep, but it was terribly exciting.
20:54A torpedo dropped from a Swordfish biplane disabled the rudder of the Bismarck.
20:59The British cruisers closed in.
21:02We were all absolutely on our toes, wondering what was going to come through next, because
21:06we knew it was one of the major battles of the war.
21:10When these pictures were taken during the action, the Bismarck was nearing her end.
21:14It fell to Hut 6 to decode the very last message sent from the Bismarck.
21:20Ship unmanageable.
21:22We shall fight to the last shell.
21:24Long live the Führer.
21:28And eventually, it sank her.
21:31The flagship of the German Navy went down with over 2,000 of her crew.
21:38I mean, that was a day to remember.
21:41We were constructing a jigsaw, but half the pieces were missing.
21:46Now it's all made a picture and all the jigsaw came together.
21:52We were invigorated immediately.
21:57It was Britain's first significant victory in the darkest days of World War II.
22:04Bletchley Park had proved that intelligence could sink ships.
22:11Yet Welshmen knew that they were chronically under-resourced.
22:14They were still a cottage industry and they could achieve so much more.
22:19The staff and the bombs were working around the clock, but vital intelligence was not
22:24being picked up in time.
22:27Welshmen realised that he had no choice but to go to the very top.
22:33He, together with Alan Turing and Stuart Milder-Barry, wrote this fantastically audacious, rather
22:37cheeky message to Winston Churchill.
22:40Gordon put a lot of pressure on Churchill to produce more staff for us, because he realised
22:44that we were grossly overworked and under considerable strain, and that our equipment
22:51was appalling.
22:54Now imagine writing a letter like this to Winston Churchill.
22:58Dear Prime Minister, some weeks ago you paid us the honour of a visit and we believe that
23:04you regard our work as important.
23:06We think, however, that you ought to know that this work is being held up and in some
23:11cases is not being done at all, principally because we cannot get sufficient staff to
23:16deal with it.
23:18This has got Gordon Welshman all over it.
23:20Just go direct to the top man.
23:22And that's exactly what Gordon Welshman did.
23:24And he got an instant reply.
23:27Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been
23:33done.
23:35Action this day.
23:37This memo had a remarkable effect.
23:41Bletchley did indeed receive more resources.
23:45Major building work followed.
23:48The park was transformed from a ramshackle collection of huts into a giant, code-breaking
23:55production line.
23:57Now, 70 years later, this is what remains of it.
24:03Hut 6 moved from their draughty wooden shed into this huge brick building.
24:11Thousands of people worked here around the clock and in conditions of absolute secrecy,
24:16breaking into supposedly unbreakable German messages.
24:21It represented a remarkable recognition of the power of code-breaking in the war effort.
24:42Two bombs became 200.
24:47The population of Bletchley Park steadily rose to over 8,000 people by the end of the
24:53war.
25:03And this was Welshman's office.
25:06His vision had turned a country mansion into the world's first code-breaking factory.
25:14Bletchley Park was breaking enigma daily, revealing the inner secrets of the German
25:19war machine.
25:20And it was changing the course of the war.
25:27They tapped into Rommel's battle plans, and his forces were driven out of North Africa.
25:37They located the U-boat wolf packs lurking in the Atlantic, and these were ruthlessly
25:42hunted down.
25:45And thanks to Bletchley, the Allies knew they had successfully deceived Hitler into believing
25:50the D-Day landings were purely a diversion, leaving his forces exposed to the mass invasion
25:56of Allied troops that followed.
26:01The boffins at Bletchley were taking on the might of an awe-inspiring Teutonic army and
26:07winning.
26:10Their work has been credited with helping shorten the war by two years, and Gordon Welshman
26:16was central to this achievement.
26:19To think of him as the Henry Ford of cryptography is not a bad metaphor.
26:23The industrialisation of cryptography.
26:25That's an astonishing achievement.
26:31So this is hut 6.
26:35How exciting.
26:37This is the place.
26:46The decoding room.
26:49Wow, look at these machines.
27:00So this is administration.
27:07Ah, this is Dad and Stuart Milner-Barry in this office.
27:11And I can see who's who.
27:13There's Dad's pipe.
27:15Many memories of him fiddling with pipes.
27:17There must have been a haze of smoke.
27:20They've done a beautiful job, and look, stronger every day.
27:23We've got to keep at it.
27:25They must have needed that a lot during their 15-hour days.
27:29My goodness, Dad actually sat here.
27:35And you know how it went from just one or 200 people arriving in August 1939
27:42at Bletchley Park to nearly 10,000 people working there in January 1945.
27:49If we pick him out as probably the most central figure,
27:54his legacy is in what Bletchley Park achieved,
27:58what Bletchley Park contributed to the success and the Allied victory in 1945.
28:06It's hard to have a bigger legacy than that.
28:15One war was over, but another was about to start.
28:19It was to see another remarkable contribution from Gordon Welshman,
28:23but at a devastating personal cost.
28:27Operations at Bletchley were finally shut down in the spring of 1946,
28:31and most of the people who had worked there were allowed to leave
28:34and rejoin everyday life in post-war Britain.
28:37But they were given dire warnings never to speak of their wartime work.
28:42The amazing thing about Bletchley, to most of us who survived it,
28:46was the fact that we did manage to keep it secret.
28:50I'd never been allowed to talk to anybody about what I'd been doing at Bletchley.
28:55My mother and father didn't know. My wife didn't know when I married her.
29:00I mean, unbelievable, really, that such secrecy should have prevailed.
29:07Knowing that you've done so much to help change the course of events,
29:13how do you adjust to a life afterwards?
29:17However, the legacy of Hart 6 would endure.
29:20Welshman's creation would find itself the model for GCHQ in Britain
29:25and the National Security Agency, the NSA, in America.
29:30But the British government, almost bankrupt from the war,
29:33was forced to scale back their operations.
29:37He found himself more and more frustrated
29:42with the attitude of the British government
29:45towards this new field that they'd helped create,
29:48which is, of course, this kind of study and development
29:52of communication systems and of electronics.
29:55It was such a terrible waste to him.
29:59Bletchley had led the world with its remarkable inventions,
30:03but Welshman now thought Britain was squandering this legacy.
30:07You also have a sense of a man who understands very, very well
30:10about the computer revolution, the computer age
30:13that's about to come into being, because this is a computer age
30:16that's brought into being at Bletchley Park.
30:20Welshman realised he had to seize the opportunity
30:23to build on what he'd already created at Bletchley Park.
30:32He was determined to stay at the forefront of the technology
30:35and he was determined to stay at the forefront of the computer revolution.
30:39That meant America.
30:43The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
30:46was asked by the three military services
30:49to establish a new research centre.
30:52They created MITRE to develop top-secret defence technologies
30:57and they were recruiting the finest brains.
31:00I imagine that the powers that be in England
31:04had gotten in touch with the powers that be in the United States
31:08and said they had this wonderful guy and he would like a job.
31:14Working here put Gordon Welshman right back at the heart
31:17of another intelligence war, the Cold War.
31:31One of the most dangerous threats to our nation's security
31:35is the possibility of attack by high-speed enemy bombers
31:39armed with nuclear weapons.
31:42This was warfare on a global scale.
31:49Huge strides in technology were needed
31:52to hold the so-called Red Menace at bay.
31:55During that period was the Cuban Missile Crisis, OK?
31:58I mean, that was really a tough period, OK?
32:01I built a bomb shelter in my basement in Bedford, Massachusetts.
32:06A large-scale nuclear attack on the United States
32:10could produce a patchwork pattern of fallout
32:12covering two-thirds of the nation.
32:19We cannot afford to take that chance.
32:23MUSIC
32:26Welshman was given the highest civilian security clearance.
32:29It meant becoming a US citizen.
32:34The job did require a very high security clearance.
32:38In fact, it was high enough so that the fact that I had it was classified.
32:45With the frightening prospect of a nuclear confrontation,
32:48Welshman was given the vital task of ensuring US military communications
32:53were capable of withstanding attack.
32:58All he had learned at Bletchley Park
33:00was now applied to help achieve American supremacy
33:03on a scale that would dwarf Hart 6.
33:07Traffic analysis in World War II
33:11led Welshman to understand
33:15the way information flowed in battle
33:18and how many different ways it flowed.
33:23Welshman realised military communications
33:26hadn't really moved on since his days at Bletchley.
33:29Headquarters issued an order, units made reports.
33:34But in modern warfare,
33:36instant access to battlefield information was essential.
33:40Repeat, this is a yellow alert.
33:43And computer technology was advancing fast enough to make this possible.
33:49He said, hey, with this digital communications,
33:52we can do some things that we've never been able to do before.
33:56Where once he had used traffic analysis to break into German networks,
34:01now Welshman used all his experience to do the opposite.
34:05He developed a new kind of network,
34:08constantly updated, immediately shared and totally secure,
34:13to serve a battlefield where information was power.
34:17Everybody periodically broadcast bits of information
34:20about where they were, what they were doing.
34:23Welshman called his idea a horseshoe,
34:26but we would all recognise it today as the cloud.
34:31MUSIC
34:34Welshman's system instantly connected planes, submarines,
34:38ground forces, battleships,
34:40all the elements of the command structure, all at the same time.
34:48And that went out into the sky, and anybody who was interested
34:52in knowing what friendly aircraft are in this area
34:55could immediately get those reports.
34:57Sort of like an instant Google,
34:59and this was three, four decades before Google.
35:03Gordon came up with this radical idea,
35:06and people looked at it and said, hey, that's pretty good.
35:10And so, you know, my boss called me in and said, OK, make it work.
35:19His ideas were really a game-changer.
35:23They changed the way people thought about command and control
35:26and they changed the way battles were managed and warfare was fought.
35:32It's still in use today and it will be for a long time.
35:37The legacy of the two giants of Bletchley Park endures to the present day.
35:42Alan Turing made a decisive contribution to the computer revolution.
35:46Gordon Welshman's work prefigured how the internet and the cloud
35:50would later develop,
35:52and how technology would enable a surveillance society.
35:57MUSIC PLAYS
36:04In 1971, Gordon Welshman moved to the New England town of Newburyport
36:09and married his third wife, Tini.
36:15We started coming pretty much as soon as he moved in,
36:19and we visited regularly.
36:21It was a place he really enjoyed.
36:23He liked living here, he loved the town.
36:29He was now 65 and still at the peak of his powers.
36:33He had made a decisive impact on both the Second World War
36:36and now the Cold War.
36:40Yet everything he had achieved was known only within his clandestine world.
36:47Remarkably, the success of Bletchley Park had stayed secret for two decades.
36:53But then, in 1974, an event occurred
36:57which had unexpectedly far-reaching consequences.
37:02The Ultra Secret, a book by an ex-MI6 officer,
37:06revealed for the first time the role of codebreaking
37:09in winning the Second World War.
37:13Whitehall agreed that it would be better for there to be
37:17a controlled disclosure, a non-sensational version by Fred Winterbottom,
37:22but that opened the floodgates.
37:26Suddenly, daylight was being shone on a hitherto secret world.
37:32It was a shocking moment for all those like Welshman
37:35who had taken their oath of secrecy so seriously.
37:39For years and years, I didn't even read the histories of the war
37:44because I was afraid that somehow or other
37:46I might reveal something that I'd learned from Ultra.
37:53Nevertheless, Welshman now felt for the first time
37:56he could tell his family what he had done in the war.
38:02I think it was an enormous relief.
38:04He could tell these stories and could talk to us
38:07and could share memories that he'd kept down for so long.
38:11There was a transformation in his manner.
38:14I think another thing that was a revelation was the discovery
38:17that his grandfather, of all people,
38:19was a sort of prototype of a computer geek.
38:23By chance, another veteran of the secret war
38:26was also living in Newburyport.
38:29I was invited to a dinner party one night, right there.
38:35And then out of a blue sky, Gordon said,
38:40Well, I was at Bletchley during the war
38:46and, of course, my mouth just fell open
38:50because I had been working as an intercept operator at Chicks' Hands.
38:57All the stuff that we had taken went to Bletchley.
39:03An idea began to form in Welshman's mind
39:06that he should write his story.
39:09I seem to have a very special responsibility
39:12in that I was the only person alive with inside knowledge
39:16of a very telling episode in cryptologic history.
39:23In 1977, he also took the deliberate decision to appear on the BBC,
39:28which, for the first time on television,
39:31dared to reveal the still-classified story of ultra-intelligence.
39:37I don't know whether I should say this,
39:40but it seems to me that some of the things
39:45really have been kept secret too long,
39:48that there is a point at which you do more damage
39:54by deceiving your own people
39:56about the true history of World War II
39:58than you could possibly do
40:00by telling now the stories as it actually happened.
40:07He wrote his book here.
40:10He would go off on his own if he wanted to work,
40:13and you didn't disturb him, yes, in his study or his office,
40:18but then he'd emerge and he'd be granddad again.
40:25Determined to set the record straight,
40:27as well as to give public recognition
40:29to those whose work had been war-winning,
40:32he discreetly contacted old colleagues.
40:35He wrote from his own prodigious memory.
40:38He had no access to official papers, which were still classified.
40:43It would take him seven years.
40:46I think it was almost a compulsion to write the book.
40:50It's a very human and understandable thing for this man to think,
40:53I don't care how much trouble this gets me into,
40:56I want the world to know what I achieved.
40:59I think my father felt that he had a very important insight
41:04on a particular piece of history which very few other people had,
41:08and he just kept reading the obituaries
41:11and realising that there were fewer and fewer people left.
41:15The Hut 6 story was published in the United States in February 1982
41:20and in the UK the following May.
41:23For the first time in print,
41:26the full secret history of codebreaking's role in World War II was laid bare,
41:31including Welshman's use of traffic analysis.
41:35As well as telling the true history from an insider's perspective,
41:39the book included a warning.
41:42Welshman believed lessons from the war were being ignored.
41:46The Americans were making the very same mistakes with their security
41:50that the Germans had once made.
41:53He thought he could talk about this in a way
41:55that would reach the general public,
41:57that would not disclose any secrets,
41:59it would not tell tales you shouldn't.
42:01He hoped it would make some money,
42:03but he really hoped it would generate a conversation.
42:08The secret world didn't wait long to hit back.
42:15I was on my way to work and this car speeded up
42:19and stopped right smack, almost in the middle of the road.
42:23Nobody stops there, so I had to see what was going on.
42:29There's Gordon's house right there
42:31and the two men jumped out wearing black suit,
42:35black tie and black sunglasses.
42:39They looked like the men in black
42:41and they raced across the street.
42:43Gordon answered the door,
42:45and you could see them, you know, busily discussing something.
42:50And all of a sudden Gordon took the door
42:54and he slammed it almost in their faces.
42:57Later I found out that it was the National Security Agency.
43:01There had been books about the ultra-secret prior to his publication.
43:07There was no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
43:11The secret was out.
43:13But Welchman's book was the first about cryptanalysis
43:17by an actual insider who had done it.
43:20What Gordon Welchman was doing
43:22was not so much disclosing the nuts and bolts of attacking Enigma.
43:27He was saying there is no communication system
43:32that can resist this kind of cryptanalytical attack.
43:38If our continent were attacked,
43:40this red telephone would be lifted from its cradle
43:43and instantly the United States
43:46would launch the greatest counterattack in history.
43:51Signals Intelligence remained at that time
43:55at the very heart of the intelligence conflict
43:58that was being conducted during the Cold War.
44:01So this was as important and as secret as it was
44:05as important and as secret as it could get.
44:09I think that people who saw what he wrote
44:14felt he was imperiling current operations.
44:19Welchman's World War II work in traffic analysis
44:22might have been 40 years before,
44:24but what he had discovered was still so vital to the secret world
44:28that revealing it even now was considered dangerous.
44:36It was an irony that would all but destroy him.
44:42On 22nd February 1982, the NSA returned.
44:47These two young gentlemen came in,
44:50one from NSA and one from, I believe it was Air Force Intelligence.
44:55They said, well, this information has never been declassified
44:59and therefore is still in violation of wartime secret laws.
45:04Gordon was taken aback. He said, this is absurd.
45:10They were delivering a message to him, and it was an ominous message.
45:20I believe they had conversations with Mr. Welchman.
45:23Beyond that, I'm not sure that I can talk about anything meaningful.
45:29And it became clear the American authorities were not going to back off.
45:34It was really quite devastating. He was quite unprepared for that.
45:41Welchman knew about another writer who was preparing a book
45:44revealing the dark secrets of the NSA itself,
45:47which was doing everything it could to stop publication.
45:51Welchman enlisted his help.
45:53We lived in the same area, so we could actually get together physically.
45:57And it was probably the kind of things that you don't want to talk over the telephone,
46:01especially when you're dealing with NSA.
46:03They were basically telling him he couldn't write anything.
46:06He couldn't do any publicity, he couldn't answer questions from reporters,
46:10he couldn't appear on television shows and so forth,
46:14and that was a really big problem.
46:17The NSA was effectively trying to kill Welchman's book.
46:21Threatened with jail, he was forced to cancel all publicity.
46:27Publication in the UK made matters worse.
46:30Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had to be briefed on the problem of Gordon Welchman.
46:36The Cabinet Secretary wrote to the Prime Minister explaining what issues were at stake,
46:41also explaining that it was unlikely that there was any legal way of proceeding against Gordon Welchman.
46:49Instead, Bamford believes the British pushed the NSA to keep up the pressure on Welchman.
46:56I think GCHQ played an enormously important role, maybe the most important role.
47:02I think a lot of the guidance that NSA was getting was coming from GCHQ.
47:08The directors of NSA and GCHQ were almost like partners in the same organisation.
47:15The NSA threatened Welchman with a little-known law drafted in 1940
47:20to deal with the sharing of cryptology.
47:23This same law is now being used on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
47:29It's a part of the Espionage Act. I think he's ten years in prison and a heavy fine.
47:34So these were very, very serious charges.
47:38I could see he was nervous. I could see the physical effects that the NSA was having on him.
47:45That devastates somebody that spent their entire life trying to protect US and British governments
47:52and now they're being told that they're going to be charged with a crime, possibly, of giving secrets to the enemy.
48:02There was one final act with devastating consequences.
48:06On 29th April 1982, Welchman's security clearance was withdrawn.
48:12All of a sudden, he disappeared.
48:16Dear Mr. Welchman, as you know, the Department of Defence has raised questions about your recent publication.
48:22The MITRE Corporation believes it would be mutually beneficial to temporarily suspend
48:27your access to classified materials and technical data in the custody of MITRE
48:33until the situation has been resolved.
48:36This suspension is effective this date.
48:38Please acknowledge receipt of this letter by signing in the space provided below.
48:44And he signed below.
48:50Yes, this would have been absolutely devastating.
48:57Rather than stay silent, Welchman went on the offensive.
49:00Rather than stay silent, Welchman went on the offensive.
49:05He wrote letters and articles, which he hoped would exonerate him,
49:09including a recently discovered unpublished paper, Ultra Revisited, a tale of two contributors.
49:18The stories of Alan Turing's life and mine have two things in common.
49:24First, we were regarded by our boss as the two greatest contributors to the wartime success of Bletchley Park.
49:32Second, we have been branded as security risks.
49:37What has happened to me can be compared with what happened to Turing.
49:44For many in the intelligence community, Welchman was being naive to imagine
49:48he could reveal the secrets of Hot Six with impunity.
49:54But he never lost his belief that this was information the public needed to know.
50:02I'm afraid that the basic fact is that Gordon Welchman, who had not been involved in any of this after the war,
50:08was in no position to know himself.
50:11And there was no position, of course, to set himself up as the authority on what could and could not be released.
50:17What they didn't stop and think was that the way in which cryptanalysts approached the breaking of Enigma
50:25was as sensitive in the 1980s and is as sensitive today as it was at the time.
50:33He was getting into an area of decision-making that wasn't quite for him.
50:39With Welchman gagged by the security services, his book flopped.
50:44The remaining unsold copies of the Hot Six story were pulped.
50:48The strain was also coming at a very difficult time.
50:52He'd had some more medical problems.
50:57And to add to the pressure, Welchman's wife, Tini, believed they were being put under surveillance.
51:03She did talk about, you know, the feeling of being watched.
51:08It really did put a blight on the end of his life.
51:15It was a cruel irony that Welchman, a master of the secret world,
51:20who helped win World War II by breaking enemy codes,
51:23and helped the West win the Cold War by keeping their communications secret,
51:27would himself fall foul of the secret state.
51:31I believe that the rules at the time about secrecy were really inflexible.
51:38The people who administered inflexible rules themselves had spent a full career
51:44being indoctrinated with the idea that secrecy was the base.
51:49I am today glad that the book is out.
51:53My hunches had more to do with the sort of pathological,
51:56enormous hysterical secrecy which is a kind of British disease.
52:00And it may be that he was just a victim of that in its dying moments.
52:06I'm not saying that he was blameless.
52:08He had broken the procedures and the law was never invoked.
52:14But he lost his job and his livelihood without ever appearing in court
52:20or ever facing any criminal charge.
52:26By now Welchman was seriously ill with cancer,
52:29but he continued with his fight to set the record straight.
52:34It prompted this letter from the head of GCHQ.
52:39It was, as I believe you know, a great shock to my predecessor
52:42and to the US authorities when you published your book in 1982
52:47without consulting us and in defiance of undertakings
52:50which thousands of others have faithfully observed.
52:54I am disappointed to find you following a similar path again in 1985.
53:00The letter went on.
53:02It is a bitter blow to us as well as a disastrous example to others
53:07when valued ex-colleagues decide to let us down.
53:11And finally, you know, I think he realised that it wasn't going to go away.
53:17They probably couldn't successfully prosecute him,
53:20but they would break him financially.
53:24Gordon Welchman never redeemed himself.
53:27Three months later, on October the 8th, 1985, he died.
53:35It made two of the last three years of his life really quite hellish.
53:42But his legacy would continue.
53:45After his death, his methods and insights
53:48not only became part of the West's military thinking,
53:51they became the very heart of the new intelligence networks
53:54as the world became more and more connected via computer.
53:59In June 2013, Edward Snowden leaked tens of thousands of highly classified files.
54:06Our intelligence agencies were harvesting metadata.
54:11Our phone numbers, our computers' IP addresses, the websites we visit,
54:15those we message or call, and where we are at any given moment.
54:20It suddenly occurred to me that actually what we now do with metadata
54:24is in a sense a highly developed version of what Welchman started with traffic analysis.
54:30That's what it is.
54:31Metadata and analytics now, in the digital world,
54:35are essentially our way of doing traffic analysis.
54:37And it can be very, very revealing.
54:42For many, what Snowden was revealing was that we live in a surveillance state.
54:47That GCHQ and the NSA have turned Welchman's legacy against their own citizens,
54:52destroying our privacy.
54:55But for others, traffic analysis is keeping us safe.
55:00After 9-11, it was CIA analysts,
55:04heirs in many ways to Welchman and Bletchley Park,
55:07who led the hunt for the most wanted man on the planet, Osama bin Laden.
55:13If I want to understand how to destroy this terrorist organisation,
55:18if I want to take them down as an organisation,
55:21then I have to look for their vulnerabilities,
55:23and to look for their vulnerabilities, I have to understand their network.
55:27The technique they used had been pioneered by Gordon Welchman in HOT6.
55:32It was the modern equivalent of his traffic analysis.
55:37What we call link analysis or network analysis, the more sophisticated version of that,
55:41is the absolutely critical tool in finding covert networks,
55:46whether it's terrorists or crime networks,
55:50because they're trying to hide their entire organisational structure.
55:53How can I find these people or this place?
55:57How can I do it with enough precision that I'm not just going to bomb an entire town?
56:03First developed at Bletchley Park and then honed in the States,
56:07data analysis would now lead a team of US Navy SEALs to Osama bin Laden.
56:13Today, Edward Snowden is branded a traitor
56:16for revealing the secrets of modern traffic analysis.
56:21Gordon Welchman also went public for something he truly believed in,
56:25but after a glittering career, he spent the last years of his life
56:29fighting illness, fighting for his reputation,
56:32and feeling outcast from the very world he had helped build.
56:38MUSIC
56:43Alan Turing's brilliant work at Bletchley Park
56:46has made him an iconic figure in our history.
56:50His pioneering spirit sparked the computer revolution
56:53and is now part of all our lives.
56:57It was Gordon Welchman's misfortune that his equally brilliant achievement
57:02has not earned him the public accolades it deserves.
57:06His top-secret work impacts on every one of us now, as much as Turing's.
57:13But it was to be this very secrecy that was to deny him his rightful place in our history.
57:21Gordon Welchman unquestionably was a genius.
57:24His genius, however, is probably only recognised within the intelligence community
57:28to which he made such an extraordinary contribution.
57:3299.9% of the people in the world have never heard of Gordon Welchman,
57:37and you say the name Gordon Welchman and they just kind of stare back at you,
57:41and yet he contributed so much, shortening the war by two years,
57:46good heavens, saving thousands of lives, and yet nobody knows who he is.
57:55I have no qualms about saying he was a genius.
57:58Of course, a theme here is Gordon Welchman, the forgotten man of Bletchley Park.
58:04I'm enormously proud of my grandfather,
58:07still sometimes distressed about what happened after he published his book
58:13and how much that meant to him.
58:16He was certainly proud of what he had done.
58:19There's always an element that it was a pity he didn't get recognised,
58:22but it was too bad he couldn't be here today.
58:25I'm enormously proud of my grandfather.
58:28There's always an element that it was a pity he didn't get recognised,
58:31but it was too bad he couldn't be here today.
58:55.
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