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90 BLETCHLEY PARK AND BEYOND
Peter Hennessy they are still in force, and as recently as August
2006, some sixty years on, the authorities deemed them so
sensitive that, after anxious deliberation, they announced that
they could not be released. 3 Further agreements were added
- and continue to be added - creating a complex spider's web
of cooperation. However, each agreement has its limits, and
all parties have withheld sigint material from each other. In
short, there is no common pooling of material. Moreover, relations
between the various parties have often been tense, and
latterly Washington has threatened some adherents, including
Britain, Australia and New Zealand, with suspension or exclusion.
If UKUSA is an alliance, its members are only 'allies of
a kind'.4
It is also wrong to think of UKUSA as exclusively concerned
with sigint. It is, rather, a sigint and security network. Security
agreements on physical control of the sigint product and on
protecting the security of communications were perhaps the
most important aspects of the UKUSA network. Sigint reports
on particular subjects were rigidly compartmentalised and given
'Codeword' status, ensuring that they could only be seen by
people cleared to see that series, and making them effectively
'above Top Secret'. Venona is the best-known example of such
a Codeword. Much of this obsessive secrecy was codified in a
biblical tome entitled 'International Regulations on Sigint', or
'IRSIG', which had reached its third edition by 1967. 5 UKUSA
was also about secretly undermining the communications security
of other states, even neutrals and allies. Communications
security, or 'comsec', is perhaps even more sensitive than sigint.
The efforts of the UKUSA powers to control it have been among
the darkest secrets of alliance politics in Western Europe. In
short, the realm of sigint alliances is profoundly realist - at times
even paranoid - with operators 'taking what they can get'. While
UKUSA might appear from the outside to represent a single
powerful intelligence colossus, on the inside it was anything
but unified.
The best example of allies spying on allies is provided by