Note that the title of this report leads with ‘Coldspur and GCHQ’, not ‘Coldspur versus GCHQ’. I have no adversarial stance against the agency, which I overall admire and support. Yet I believe that GCHQ is struggling with its PR, and with the task of setting policy in a domain in which I have a special interest, namely that of declassifying previously confidential material, and then executing that policy. I have been struggling in recent months to gain the appropriate attention from GCHQ’s leaders, who appear to want to avoid the issue.
As a one-man band, it is much easier for me to stake out an opinion, and to publish it speedily if I want to. I have no constituents who need to be consulted, or who will need ‘buy-in’ before any public statement is made. Once I have prepared a text, I can post it for universal access in minutes. That is obviously not so with any large institution, especially a government one, which will be wary of upsetting any of its ‘stakeholders’ in its statements to the world, and will require any number of checks to be made before publishing news or policy items on its website.
Yet coming under public scrutiny is an unavoidable outcome of pressures for more openness, and GCHQ brought such on itself when it decided that an official history of the agency was merited, and commissioned an outside academic, Professor John Ferris, to write it. All the evidence points to the fact that it did not carefully think through the implications of what it had initiated, with the result that some confusing and contradictory statements concerning the release of previously classified material were made by the Director at the time the history was published, by the official historian himself, and later by the current departmental historian. As Ernest Bevin said: “If you open that Pandora’s Box, you never know what Trojan Horses will jump out.”
Moreover (and it was this event that stirred me into action), when GCHQ was invited to contribute to a set of articles in a distinguished academic journal (Diplomacy and Statecraft), it delegated its contribution to a former employee, the historian who had guided Professor Ferris through the confidential material. That person was the distinguished and dedicated Tony Comer, who worked for the agency for thirty-seven years before retiring in 2020, and was awarded the OBE for his services. When I read his contribution, however, I was not sure whether he was writing in a private capacity, or whether his text had been pre-approved by his former employer before publication. I was surprised that GCHQ would not have entrusted the work to an in-house expert. In any event, I was rather critical of Comer’s description and defence of GCHQ’s opinions on official history. To his credit, he has maturely and very professionally not disengaged from the occasional discussions on cryptological matters that we have enjoyed for a while.
I thus bring readers up-to-date here on the exchange of letters between GCHQ and me. I have previously published on coldspur the mailed letter that I sent at the end of November 2025. (The GCHQ website offers no email address to which members of the public can send messages: that might encourage a burdensome flood, I imagine.) My letter failed to arrive (so I was told), so I sent it again by email, to the Press Office, on January 19, and asked it to be routed to the Director, Mrs Keast-Butler. About five weeks later, on February 23, I received a response from Dr David Abrutat, the departmental historian. I was so disappointed by this reply that I wrote again to Ms. Keast-Butler, on March 2. Here follow the texts of the three messages:
- Coldspur to Keast-Butler (November 25, 2025 & January 19, 2026)
Dear Ms Keast-Butler,
I am a retired historian with a great interest in GCHQ. I read John Ferris’s Behind the Enigma when it came out, and I am prompted to write to you as I see several anomalies in the execution of GCHQ’s policy for releasing archival material that he used. (I am writing a traditional letter to you, as the GCHQ website appears to offer no on-line option for contacting anyone at the institution.) My inquiries run as follows:
- On 24 February, 2017, GCHQ announced the commissioning of John Ferris to write an authorised history and said: “We will be giving as many source documents from the history as we can to the National Archives, alongside our continued programme of releasing previously secret documents from our past.” (https://www.gchq.gov.uk/news/gchq-to-celebrate-centenary-in-2019) What is the implication of ‘as we can’? Who, or what agency, controls those decisions?
- In the Foreword of the history Jeremy Fleming wrote: “For those who want to research further and form their own conclusions, we are also releasing the source material to the National Archives.”
- In his Introduction, John Ferris wrote: “Most of the material I used will be released to the National Archives after this book is published, though some files will be retained, and others redacted to varying degrees.” Why this contradiction with Jeremy Fleming’s statement?
- However, five years after publication the only releases, so far as I can judge, appear as HW 92, consisting of twenty-five files. The descriptions are opaque, but relate mainly to Chapter 13: (HW 92/1-5 Signal traffic regarding Palestine, HW 92/5-13 about Konfrontasi and HW 92/14-25 about the Falklands Conflict), and thus ignore the bulk of Professor Ferris’s text. Why has the remainder of the material not been released?
- Furthermore, these are only hardcopy releases to The National Archives. In an article in Diplomacy and Tradecraft of September 2025, Tony Comer, who appeared to be writing with authority on behalf of GCHQ, expressed his regret that they had not been digitized. I share his dismay, as the lack of digitization means that the documents have to be inspected at the National Archives at Kew, and taking books into the reading-room is forbidden. Thus there is no easy way for researchers ‘to form their own conclusions’ (as Mr Fleming suggested) by checking the text of Behind the Enigma with the sources used. For those of us distant from Kew, of course, access is impossible unless we contract someone to photograph the files – an expensive, wasteful and inefficient process.
I should be very grateful if you could respond to my points, and especially if you could authorize a fuller release, and digitization, of documents used by Professor Ferris.
Sincerely,
Antony Percy
- Abrutat to Coldspur (February 23)
Dear Dr Percy,
I have been asked by Director GCHQ and her Private Office, to respond to your enquiry regarding the release of GCHQ files relating to our authorised history, ‘Behind the Enigma,’ written by Professor John Ferris and published in 2020 by Bloomsbury. You have noted in your letter that our most recent releases to the National Archives (TNA) at Kew, listed under the HW92 series, pertains to this authorised history. The files that were released for the Chapter 13 stories around Konfrontasi, the Palestine Mandate and the Falklands conflict of 1982, were carefully selected. There are still sensitivities around GCHQ’s work during these periods, which means that significant parts of some of the files have to be retained, whether or not John Ferris had access to them during his research. On all our files released to TNA, we have to make considered judgements on operational security. The statements that have been made by Director and John Ferris still stand, but the onus and responsibility for file release lies with me and the Archives review team, for when this is able to happen in the interests of national security. On the question of digitisation, the Archives team at the time extensively reviewed the criteria for digital submission of the files, but records have to be released in the format in which they were created (in this case, paper hardcopy). Even as the Departmental Historian, I have to physically go to TNA Kew to look at our released files. I hope this goes some way to answering your questions.
Best wishes,
Dr David John Abrutat FRGS FRHistS GCHQ Departmental Historian
- Coldspur to Keast-Butler (March 2)
Dear Ms Keast-Butler,
I am writing to you in response to Dr. Abrutat’s recent letter to me. I was extremely disappointed by what he wrote. Given its clumsy construction, and apparently illogical assertions, I have to wonder whether you, or any of the senior officers reporting to you, actually read it before it was transmitted, since I would have expected the text to be corrected and refined during the review process.
When I originally wrote to you (over three months ago), I drew your attention to a statement that one of your predecessors, Sir Jeremy Fleming, made in the Foreword to John Ferris’s history of GCHQ. Since that expression of policy appeared to have been overlooked, or ignored, I was seeking an authoritative statement from you that would provide some explanation as to why GCHQ has not followed up on its promises to the readers of the book. Delegating the task to a departmental historian who would appear not to have any historical or cryptological academic credentials seems to be an abdication of responsibility.
I regret that I failed to follow much of the logic in Dr. Abrutat’s statements.
- “The files that were released for the Chapter 13 stories around Konfrontasi, the Palestine Mandate and the Falklands conflict of 1982, were carefully selected.” I have no doubt that those files were ‘carefully selected’, but that is hardly the point. My challenge related to the statement by Fleming, who made an unqualified promise that ‘the source material’ would be released to the National Archives. The fact that GCHQ acknowledges that a very localized set of files was selected would tend to contradict what Fleming wrote. Does the release include all the ‘source material’ covered by that promise? It would appear not.
- “There are still sensitivities around GCHQ’s work during these periods, which means that significant parts of some of the files have to be retained, whether or not John Ferris had access to them during his research.” It would not surprise me that GCHQ would still be withholding files to which John Ferris never had access: that was never an issue. But does the statement mean that you do not know exactly which material Ferris consulted? I assume that this statement means that Ferris did not see all the contents of some of the files: was a record kept of which documents he was allowed access to? Again, the original statement was that the individual documents seen by Ferris would be released soon after the publication of the book. Does Abrutat’s statement rescind that? Or has some of the material that Ferris saw, due for declassification, has subsequently been judged as Highly Sensitive? Had someone already separated GCHQ records into those two categories before Ferris was commissioned? If, indeed, Ferris was allowed access to Highly Sensitive material, was Behind the Enigma published with details about topics that GCHQ now regrets releasing? Is that why Ferris made his more guarded statement, when it was revealed to him that some material he had used was highly confidential? But, in that case, why was his text published without necessary excisions being made?
- “On all our files released to TNA, we have to make considered judgements on operational security. The statements that have been made by Director and John Ferris still stand, but the onus and responsibility for file release lies with me and the Archives review team, for when this is able to happen in the interests of national security.” I can understand the need for that caution, but presumably Fleming was aware of the situation when he wrote his Foreword. It is, however, a contradiction to assert that the statements made by ‘Director’ (Fleming, presumably) and John Ferris still stand, first because they are in slight conflict with each other, and second, because the Archives Review team has now countermanded the judgments that Fleming made at the time. How is it that the team has greater authority than the former GCHQ Director, and that it is left to this group to make decisions on the vital issue of ‘operational security’? It is very alarming.
- “On the question of digitisation, the Archives team at the time extensively reviewed the criteria for digital submission of the files, but records have to be released in the format in which they were created (in this case, paper hardcopy).” Is this a statement of the obvious? From my analysis of original files at the National Archives, I am very familiar with the format of the records – even to the extent that I recognize that some documents are photographs of the originals. Yet I also know that many files have been digitised, and I fail to see why GCHQ has made the decision that none of the relevant items should undergo that process. I referred to the fact that Fleming had encouraged readers to ‘form their own conclusions’ by their being able to access the fresh material, but, as I have explained, that is an almost impossible task given the lack of digitisation and the security constraints imposed at Kew.
- “Even as the Departmental Historian, I have to physically go to TNA Kew to look at our released files.” I was not aware of any visit to Kew (or anywhere else) being possible without ‘physical’ means (unless GCHQ has devised a process of corporeal transference, the details of which are under a similar security embargo), but this voiced regret does not engage my sympathy. The ease with which Dr. Abrutat and his team could do their work would be improved if the files were digitised: he has made my point for me, and through that process the commitments made by Fleming could be realized.
I very much look forward to reading your authoritative response, since I believe GCHQ owes its followers the provision of lucid statements of policy concerning classification and release of materials, and of clarification to the troubling background to Professor Ferris’s project. I plan to publish an update on the topic on my coldspur website in mid-March, and I should be happy to give you an outlet for a more official and less opaque response to my original inquiry.
Sincerely,
Antony Percy
As of March 14, I have not yet received a reply. This page is open for the publication of GCHQ’s eventual response.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Spectrum App
For better or worse, our home has a bundled arrangement for Internet, telephone and cable service through one provider, originally Time-Warner Cable, now known as Spectrum. Of course, if its service is totally down, we have to use a cell-phone to call in to ascertain whether the company is aware of the outage, and what estimate it has for service to be restored. Yet dealing with the company over its automated phone-service, what with a cheery voice alerting you to the fact that the conversation may be recorded and used for training purposes (if only!) is a pain. Instead of routing you to Technical Support when you need it, they try to address any problems you may have by resetting the modem and router remotely.
Our handicapped daughter Julia uses in her special area a ‘smart’ television, with AppleTV installed, which was for a long time attached to a satellite receiver (for reasons that I shall not go into.) In this bonus room she watches her TV programs, plays her videogames, and watches movies on her DVD player (and reads her books, and listens to her music). I had for a long time been meaning to simplify matters, and reduce costs, by replacing that satellite link with a cable connection, and eventually got round to looking into it. I then discovered that Spectrum no longer offered cable boxes, but, on the assumption that everyone would have a smart TV, required that the customer gain access through a Spectrum App. I thus investigated it: the download worked smoothly, and it was easy to access, and then list, the channels my daughter favours. Yet I did not cancel the satellite installation immediately. Julia was used to pressing a simple button on her satellite remote control. The App required more careful navigation across screens, and a less obvious set of controls. We worked on it, she became comfortable, and at the end of last year, I ripped out the satellite box, and cancelled the subscription.
For a couple of months, things worked fine. Occasionally, Julia would hit a problem, but I was able to sort it out quite quickly. And then, on March 1, suddenly no TV channel would work. We could hear the sound, but the screen went blank, and a strange ribbon like a time-control on a YouTube video appeared at the base of the screen. I looked around on the Web for a problem report, but found nothing really relevant, although the general advice for such phenomena seemed to be to re-boot the AppleTV and reload the Spectrum App. I did all that, but the problem remained. It looked as if Spectrum had introduced a feature that allowed viewers to handle live TV as if it were recorded, with controls like those of a DVD, but had botched it. Indeed, next time I tried the App, I did see a brief reference to such a feature, described as ‘Pause and Replay’.
I thus called Spectrum on the Monday morning, and eventually spoke to Ryan, in New York. He was sympathetic, but he had never heard of the problem before. He recommended the steps I had already taken. We went through it again. The problem remained: I described accurately what the screen looked like. He said that he would have to refer the case to the development team, and promised that I would hear back within seventy-two hours. Thursday morning came and went, so that afternoon, I went through the whole rigmarole of calling up Spectrum again, and was eventually put through to Donald, in Florida, who was able to call up my ticket, and educate himself on the problem. He could shed no light on it: he had not heard of the problem, and could not explain why nobody had called me back. Essentially, he told me simply to wait until the picture was restored.
By this time I was seething more than normally (I am a Big Seether), and I asked to speak to his supervisor. I was quickly put on to Richard, to whom I described my frustrations, which boiled down to the following:
- Why had I not received the promised call back?
- Why had Spectrum not posted on its website the fact that such a problem had been reported, and what its estimate of repair was?
- Why had Spectrum not withdrawn the faulty App, and replaced it with the previous version (which is something I used to perform when I was handling real-time systems back in the 1970s)?
In short, Richard was very sympathetic, agreed with the justification of my three points, said he would pass on my message, and promised to call me back the following morning with an update.
As might have been expected, Richard never called me back. I thus went through the dire process of calling Spectrum again (I wondered about trying to use its ChatRoom facilities, but I dreaded the thought of explaining to a robot what was going on before being able to contact a live person who would also have to be educated), and eventually spoke to Teresa, in Texas. She gave me the same spiel, although she did say that the problem was now acknowledged. I think that fired me up even more, since, if that were so, why had I not been notified? I thus asked to speak to her supervisor, a woman called Amanda, who was likewise unhelpful when I remonstrated about my dissatisfaction. No, she would not tell me how many customers might be affected by the flaw in the software. No, they would not consider returning to the previous version, as it would affect too many other users. (If, as I had now been told, the problem was related to the Spectrum-AppleTV interface, they would be doing a favour to the users of that equipment, and they surely must be able to localize the variant of the App in their central command centre, so that users of other platforms would not be affected.) No, they would not post any notice on the website, since only a few users were affected. (Why did that datum matter, even if it were true?) And No, it was not Spectrum’s policy to call back affected customers, so give up on that idea. I should just retry the App occasionally to ascertain if the problem had been fixed. Yes, a refund could possibly be orchestrated. But why are you complaining? Our records show that you have Spectrum cable-boxes connected to other TVs in your house! (The only positive arising from these encounters was that all five support personnel to whom I spoke were resident in the USA, and I could thus understand what they were saying.)
By this time, I did not want to listen to any more nonsense from any Spectrum Customer Service Representative. I replaced the telephone receiver in disgust. This is 2026: a media company is way out of its depth. It does not know how to test and deliver software properly. It does not brief its technical support agents well. It has lousy support policies. It maintains a website which it could use to provide support information, and thus to reduce the telephone load, but chooses to do nothing. And why does it not simply give out a ticket number on the first technical support call, so that a re-entrant to the system can be asked immediately whether the call is about an existing problem, and request the ticket number to be entered? Spectrum is another large bureaucracy that shows that it is incompetent and does not really care. I simply have to keep trying the App each day (and then reloading it, in case it has been changed) until the system works again. I have carried out that task every day this past week, with the same result: the app is still defective, and I have received no communication from Spectrum as of March 14.
I post this report simply because I can, to let off steam, and in the belief that someone else out there might find it via a Google search. And that those poor Spectrum support personnel, to whom policies are not explained, and who are not given the aids they need, may alight on it, and use it to apply pressure on their management to improve the service the company tries to offer.
P.S. March 16th, 11:00 am. I just spent an hour on the phone with Spectrum’s Jeanne-Marie in Buffalo, NY. She spoke to the back-room boys, and then very patiently took me through a process of switching the HDMI cable connections at the back of the TV. At first things got worse, but, when I found a spare HDMI cable , and replaced the existing AppleTV connection with it, the Spectrum App worked. Very helpful guidance by Jeanne-Marie, but why could Spectrum not have taken me through this process ten days ago, if that was the nature of the ‘known problem’? Julia is very happy.