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EVERY WAR MUST HAVE AN END 57
Communications Security Adviser, was also to be appointed,
who would serve as the Secretary of the Cypher Policy Board.
In reality, this person, Captain Edmund Wilson, was the new
broom. 29 After the war Wilson was replaced by Commander
T.R.W. Burton-Miller, who operated from a new headquarters
at 10 Chesterfield Street Wl, conveniently close to both MIS
and SIS. 3o Soon they had extended their authority over the
design and production of all British cypher machines, with
Gordon Welchman their chief technical adviser. 31
During 1944, Bletchley Park offered an impressive technical
solution to worries about cypher security. It fielded a new and
rather superior cypher machine called 'Rockex l' that produced
what was effectively automated one-time pad traffic. Instead of
using tiresome tear-off sheets from a one-time pad that had to
be processed by hand, it used code tape, which carried the same
information. This was initially used for messages between
Bletchley Park and its sigint collaborators in Washington and
Ottawa, together with the SIS wartime office in New York. A
new version called 'Rockex II' was already being developed by
the British. The machine was originally intended for the Special
Communications Units that disseminated Ultra to Allied
commanders in the field, but after the war it became a mainstream
British cypher machine, and was still being used by
smaller embassies in the 1970s. 32
The super-secret Rockex cypher machine also had another
purpose. From 1944, it provided extra security for the communications
network of Britain's SIS agents around the world. With
assistance from Bletchley Park, wartime SIS had been able to
develop an effective long-range wireless network to support its
overseas stations and agents in the field. Known as SIS Section
VIII, this was run by Brigadier Richard Gambier-Parry from two
country houses not far from Bletchley, at Whaddon Hall and
Hanslope Park. These locations not only provided a wireless
network for SIS, they also built covert radio sets hidden in suitcases
used by British agents and fitted out vehicles for the Special
Liaison Units that supplied sigint to overseas commands such