Left on the floor of a Fleet St pub, Britain's greatest Cold War secret

05 Nov 2012

Left on the floor of a Fleet St pub, Britain's greatest Cold War secret
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The leaking of one of Cold War Britain's greatest state secrets was foiled 
when a journalist's notebook was left lying on the floor of a London pub.

By Lucy Kinder

The notebook contained never before seen details of Britain's top secret 
code-breaking site Eastcote, which was later to become the Government 
Communications Headquarters ( GCHQ ).

Eric Tullett, a Sunday Express journalist, had been passed the explosive 
information detailing Britain's operation to intercept and decode Soviet 
signals by Arthur Askew, the Foreign Officer's former head of physical 
security.

But his extraordinary scoop was lost when he left his notebook on floor of 
the Old Bell pub, on London's Fleet Street.

At the time the public were in the dark about the Cold War cipher work 
being carried out at Eastcote. Nor did they know about Bletchley Park, the 
wartime cryptography site which pioneered the art of using early computer 
technology to break encrypted messages.

The secret survived for another 23 years until the existence of GCHQ was 
finally revealed in the mid 1970s.

At some point, Askew had told Tullett of the code cracking operations 
going on at GCHQ which had been transferred from Bletchley Park after the 
Second World War.

His motive for the betrayal of Britain's intelligence services is not 
clear, but it is thought he was furious at newspaper reports that he was 
to blame for the escape of Guy Burgess and Donald Macclean, part of the 
Cambridge Five spy ring. 

The pair escaped to Moscow in 1951 when they came under suspicion of 
spying for the Soviets.

Soon after Askew retired, but media reports suggested he had resigned as 
part of a reorganisation of Britain's security services after the 
embarrassing incident.

Police records indicate that a man, assumed to be Tullett, rang them 
inquiring as to whether a notebook in a leather case had been handed in as 
found property.

But instead a barmaid had found the notebook and, noticing that its pages 
contained words such as "Cipher Machines", "Moscow" and "Secret", alerted 
the police.

The police handed the book to MI5 who then returned it to Tullett with the 
pages referring to the Eastcote removed...../snip/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9655170/Left-on-the-floor-of-a-Fleet-St-pub-Britains-greatest-Cold-War-secret.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/20205616

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/63941000/jpg/_63941808_oldbell.jpg