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192 FIGHTING THE ELECTRONIC WAR
new and very secure cypher machines to produce better codes
in the hope of thwarting the Soviet sigint services. Although it
existed for nearly two decades, almost nothing is known about
it. Its first chief was Major General William Penney, who had
been Mountbatten's Director of Intelligence in South-East Asia.
Penney was familiar with sigint, but was definitely an outsider.
While the technical staff for communications security remained
at Eastcote and nearby Northwood Hills, Penney and his senior
officers moved into new premises at 8 Palmer Street, which
doubled as GCHQ's London office. Palmer Street was close to
one of the oldest underground stations in London, St James's
Park, and to many of the embassies. Indeed, the warren of
tunnels from the ancient station that ran under the LCSA
building soon gave rise to stories of secret passages and hidden
basement facilities. 29
At obscure locations such as Palmer Street and Hanslope Park,
communications security experts were at the forefront of secret
battles between the embassies. DWS was both an offensive and
a defensive organisation, and was admired for what officials
called its 'buccaneering' spirit. 30 As the Marshall case had
revealed, many of its operators acted as forward collectors for
GCHQ, and one of its larger post-war stations, in Stockholm,
was often referred to as a GCHQ site. 31 In fact, DWS combined
a multitude of curious tasks that were at the gritty interface of
technical and human espionage or counter-espionage. By 1952
they shared accommodation with the sweepers at Hanslope Park.
The old manor house was now surrounded by an unsightly
penumbra consisting of forty nissen huts and concrete bunkers
on each side of the drive leading up to the main building. There
were acres of wireless masts, serving both SIS and the radio
nets for the mainstream Foreign Office. All sorts of interesting
things went on there. A visiting MIS officer noted that the
outlying huts and bunkers were a research and development
centre for many secret devices. 'Those near the manor and to
one side of it are used for research into offensive and defensive
microphone techniques. Several near the end of the drive