The Codebreaker Who Hacked Hitler (2015) - full transcript

It's one of the most
astonishing stories

of the second World War.

As Nazi forces crushed
all who opposed them,

a small group of geniuses
based in a British country house

fought back.

And the codebreakers won.

The most famous of all
was Alan Turing, whose story,

told in Oscar-winning movie
"The Imitation Game,"

has gripped the world.

But there's one name
that was left out of the film

and largely forgotten.



A codebreaker who should be
as famous as Turing himself.

His name is Gordon Welchman.

Without him, the Nazi codes
might never have been broken.

The war could have lasted
two more years

and tens of thousands
would have died.

When I was a child

there was always in the family
the sense that dad had done,

done something quite important
during the war,

but of course we didn't really
know the details,

and it couldn't really be
talked about.

His achievements
didn't end with World War II.

He would move
to the united states,

where he'd play a critical role
in the cold war

and change the face
of the modern battlefield.



With Edward Snowden's
revelations

of total global surveillance,

we have now discovered
Welchman's legacy

continues to this day.

But when Gordon Welchman chose

to come out of the shadows
and reveal his secrets,

the dark world of espionage
to which he had given so much

ruined him.

September 1939.

As Britain declared war
on Nazi Germany,

an extraordinary motley army

was being assembled
at Bletchley Park,

in the English countryside
near London,

to fight a secret war.

Their mission was to crack

one of the hardest codes
ever devised,

created on a machine
called Enigma.

Enigma lay at the heart

of Hitler's armed forces
communications system.

Bletchley Park's staff consisted
of chess masters,

crossword addicts
and bridge fanatics.

If they could break into Enigma,

they might just save the world
from the nazis.

The best and the brightest
were being recruited

from Britain's top universities.

Two of this elite

were the renowned mathematician
Alan Turing

and the dean of a Cambridge
college, Gordon Welchman.

Gordon Welchman
was actually quite glamorous,

he was good looking, and he knew
he was good looking.

He had a way with the ladies.

He was fantastically bright,

very pugnacious,

obviously a very proud man.

He did mountain climbing,

he did sailing,
he loved dancing.

Here was a man

who had clearly been watching
Hollywood movies.

Here was a kind of Errol Flynn
and Robert Donat.

It's very much that kind
of dashing, young chap

kind of feel to him,

as opposed to the shambling
absent-mindedness

of many of his colleagues.

Welchman was one of
the original elite codebreakers,

given the Herculean task
of decoding the Enigma machine.

Enigma used a combination
of rotors, plugs and wiring

to put German messages
into secret code.

There were 1 in 159 million,
million, million

possible combinations.

Breaking it looked impossible.

While others sought
to crack the codes,

Welchman took
a different approach.

Instead, he focused on what
would come to be known

as traffic analysis.

The body of the message
was unreadable.

But the first few letters
and numbers were not in code.

This was the call sign--
the address--

identifying who the message
was to and from.

There was crucial information
in the call signs,

and Welchman started
to track it,

linking up who was sending
and receiving the messages,

where they were,
where they went.

It was a brilliantly simple
observation,

yet it would prove crucial.

They call it
chat that comes over the air,

and by this means

we can build up a picture
of a German unit--

of the air force, for example--

the headquarters--
any out-stations it has,

and how they
keep in touch with it and so,

and send messages.

We were dealing with
an entire communications system

that would serve the needs
of the German forces.

The call signs came alive
as representing those forces,

whose commanders would have to
send messages to each other.

Just using traffic analysis,

Welchman started to reveal

the precise enemy forces
that faced the allies.

Modern codebreaking was born.

And they had
a big wall map,

and you could visually see
the whole setup

of the German
communications system.

Traffic analysis

was Bletchley's first
major breakthrough.

Without an analysis of traffic

you would never have been able
to use cryptography

to win the war.

When you hear phrases
like traffic analysis

or signals intelligence,

it doesn't immediately sound
quite so glamorous, really.

And I think possibly
that's one of the reasons

why Gordon Welchman
hasn't been recognized so much,

but if people knew
just how absolutely

he was the kind of spine

of the entire
Bletchley Park operation,

then they would look at him
in a completely new way.

The Enigma codes
had still not been broken,

but Welchman now knew the exact
position and strength

of thousands of German troops
and hundreds of aircraft.

It made him realize
that Bletchley Park

could become as forceful a part
of Britain's defenses

as the army, navy and air force.

Their weapon would be
intelligence.

No one else
seemed to be doing anything

about this potential gold mine,

so I drew up
a comprehensive plan,

which called for
the close coordination

of radio interception,

analysis of
the intercepted traffic,

breaking Enigma keys,

decoding messages
on the broken keys,

and extracting intelligence
from the decodes.

It was the end of 1939,

before open warfare between
Britain and Germany had begun.

Welchman was pushing
for a total reorganization

of Bletchley Park--

a radical plan
that would require

far more people and resources

than a collection
of crossword fanatics

and professors solving puzzles.

Welchman went to his boss.

He won
high-level approval for my plan,

and we were able
to start recruiting

the high-quality staff
that would be needed.

Welchman created
what was called Hut 6,

a modest name that belied
the magnitude

of just what was achieved
within its walls.

We had two
or three or four little lights

hanging on wires
from the ceiling,

and we had collapsible
chairs and tables.

It really wasn't for a
high-powered government machine.

I was a bit
of a romantic,

and I thought, well, you know,

I might get involved
in some clandestine operations.

Here, brilliant people
made breakthroughs

that helped change the course
of the war.

All were sworn
to the utmost secrecy.

Welchman would remain head
of Hut 6 until 1943.

In may 1940, Hitler's panzers
invaded France.

And Bletchley Park at last

found a way to read
some Enigma messages.

The intelligence they contained
was code-named ultra.

And it made
for horrifying reading.

The nazis were driving
allied forces

back towards
the English channel.

British, french
and Belgian troops

were fighting desperately.

30 years after the war,

in the only filmed interview
Welchman ever gave,

he revealed how ultra had saved
thousands of British lives.

In the battle of France

probably the most important
thing which came out of ultra

was that it was realized
so early

that we were
in a hopeless position.

Hut 6 had been
established just in time.

Bletchley Park had revealed

the troops in France
were surrounded.

They needed to escape now.

The evacuation of Dunkirk began.

It was decided
to get out as quick as we could.

And this meant that there
was time to organize.

Hut 6 had saved
nearly 340,000 lives

and prevented the annihilation
of the British army.

Its success was a testament to
Welchman's steely-eyed vision.

Well, I think
he was the right person

at the right time.

I think he probably had a lot
of personal characteristics

that were really vital
for his work here.

For Bletchley Park
and Gordon Welchman,

it was just the beginning.

By the end of 1940, Hut 6,
under Gordon Welchman,

was at the heart of the whole
Bletchley Park operation.

Here, they used traffic analysis
to select and target

particular German radio networks
and operators.

Their traffic was then
intercepted and decoded

thanks to a remarkable new
electromechanical device

designed by Alan Turing.

It was helping to break
key Enigma signals

on a daily basis.

It was called "The bombe."

It simulated all
the possible configurations

of the Enigma machine.

The bombe could check them
hundreds of times faster

than the smartest human.

But it was very limited.

To run a test,
known as a bombe run,

it needed to compare
a short phrase from the code

with what the codebreakers
guessed

might be the original message.

For example,
many German messages might begin

with the words "Heil Hitler's."

This guessed text
was known as a crib.

If they were right
in their guess,

the bombe could start
cracking the code.

But they needed accurate cribs.

Welchman realized the German
operators were only human.

Like anyone else they would fall
into bad habits--

and if they could target
these habits,

Bletchley might have a shortcut
to break the codes.

What Welchman discovered

was that by understanding

the way that the Germans used
their communications

you could start to predict
more easily

where particular types
of message would come.

There was
a German commander

in Brittany somewhere,
who, during the war,

regularly sent in
every morning a message,

saying "Alles in ordnung,"
"everything okay here."

It was the same phrase he used
every morning,

which was a godsend
to the decryptors in Hut 6.

Armed with a crib,
the Bletchley team

could now start a bombe run

and hope to find
the Enigma settings.

But it was a race against time.

German codes were changed
at midnight,

and the bombe might take days
to find an answer.

Even if they cracked the code,

it could be too late
to help the allies.

Welchman's genius was to come up
with a modification

of Alan Turing's
brilliant design

and make it work
many times faster.

It was Gordon Welchman

who spots the one thing
that the machines need

that could give them an almost
uncanny elegance and beauty

in the way that they worked.

Welchman came up

with an inspired,
improvised solution.

It was called
the diagonal board.

A simple electrical circuit
enabled the bombe

to cross-check hundreds
of possible combinations

at the same time.

It reduced bombe runs from days
down to hours or even minutes.

Hut 6 could now read
German messages,

sometimes before
they were even read

by the intended enemy recipient.

So here we see an example

of Gordon Welchman's fantastic
mathematical intelligence

coming through,

easily a match for that
of Alan Turing.

By 1941,
Bletchley's decodes

were starting to change
the course of the war.

A German battleship,
the Bismarck,

was scouring the Atlantic,
destroying British shipping,

and threatening
the nation's survival.

The main part
of our fleet

was out pursuing the Bismarck.

She was the latest German ship

and the best thing they'd got
in the navy

and very important.

On may 24, 1941,

the Bismarck sank the pride
of the British navy, hms hood,

Britain's most modern
and biggest battlecruiser.

1,400 British sailors
lost their lives.

Only three of its crew survived.

Winston Churchill
ordered the royal navy

to find and destroy
the Bismarck.

But they had no way
of knowing where it was.

At Bletchley,
Welchman's team believed

they might be able to use
intelligence to find it.

Sifting through the entirety
of German naval communications

for any reference
to the Bismarck

was a daunting challenge.

What I had to do was
to take the Enigma telegrams

as they arrived in Hut 6,

and I had to put them
into the machine.

Then I had to look at them
and see whether--

they were all in German,
of course--

see whether they appeared to be
of any interest.

Then the breakthrough
they had been hoping for.

We discovered this
message from a German commander

to the commander of the Bismarck

saying, "Where are you going?

I'm worried about my son
who's on board."

And the message came back,

which I got,
which said "Brest."

At last they had
a location.

The Bismarck was heading for the
port of brest in northern France

being used by the German navy.

A powerful royal navy
battle group of 13 vessels

was ordered to hunt down
the Bismarck.

In this, perhaps the most
dramatic naval film ever taken,

you will see salvos
from the Bismarck

failing to hit
one of our battleships.

This was during the chase
right across the Atlantic

while the Nazi ship was running
from the guns of our squadron.

A torpedo dropped
from a British biplane

disabled the Bismarck.

The British warships closed in.

We were all
absolutely on our toes

wondering what was going
to come through next,

because we knew it was one of
the major battles of the war.

When these pictures were
taken during the action,

the Bismarck
was nearing her end.

Hut 6 had the satisfaction

of decoding
the very last message

sent from the stricken Bismarck.

"Ship unmanageable.

We shall fight
to the last shell.

Long live the fuhrer."

And eventually
they sank her.

This flagship
of Hitler's navy went down

with over 2,000 of its crew.

I mean, that was
a day to remember.

We were constructing a jigsaw,

but half the pieces
were missing.

Now it all made a picture, and
all the jigsaw came together.

We were invigorated immediately.

It was Britain's
first significant victory

in the darkest days
of World War II.

Bletchley Park had proved that
intelligence could sink ships.

It was a weapon the allies were
determined to use to the limit.

Under Welchman's supervision,

a ramshackle collection
of wooden Huts

became the world's first
intelligence factory,

rebuilt in brick
on a whole new scale.

A handful of codebreakers

became thousands working
around the clock.

Two bombes became 200.

Bletchley Park
was breaking Enigma daily,

revealing the inner secrets
of the German war machine.

And it was changing
the course of the war.

They tapped into field marshal
Erwin Rommel's battle plans,

and his forces were driven
out of north Africa.

They located
the u-boat wolf packs

lurking in the Atlantic,

and they were hunted down.

And thanks to Bletchley,

the allies knew their
d-day deception had worked.

Hitler believed the real
invasion was yet to come

and held back the panzers

that might have driven
the allies into the sea.

For the very first time,

codebreaking had made
a significant difference

to a war:

Bletchley is credited

with hastening the Nazi defeat
by two years.

That's enough
to have saved thousands

or hundreds of thousands
of lives.

By the time the war ended
in 1945,

Bletchley Park had transformed
military intelligence.

The brains at Bletchley

had taken on the brawn
of the teutonic army

and won.

And Welchman was
at the heart of it.

To think of him

as the Henry Ford
of cryptography

is not a bad metaphor.

The industrialization
of cryptography.

That's an astonishing
achievement.

His legacy is
in what Bletchley Park achieved,

what Bletchley Park contributed

to the success
and the allied victory

in, in 1945.

It's hard to have
a bigger legacy than that.

One war was over,
but another was about to start.

It would see
a remarkable contribution

from Gordon Welchman,

but at a devastating
personal cost.

After the end
of the second world war,

the legacy of the work
of Bletchley Park and Hut 6

would endure.

Gordon Welchman's creation
would find itself the model

for the National
Security Agency, the NSA,

and its British equivalent,
GCHQ.

The future lay in computers,

and while Bletchley
had once led the world,

Welchman now believed
bankrupt Britain

was squandering
its technological lead.

You also have a sense
of a man who understands

very, very well
about the computer revolution,

the computer age that was
about to come into being,

because this is a computer age

this is brought into being
at Bletchley Park.

Welchman
was determined to stay

at the forefront
of the computer revolution.

That meant America.

The Massachusetts institute
of technology

was asked by the three
military services

to establish
a new research center.

This new center,
called Mitre,

was created to develop
top secret defense technologies.

And they were recruiting
the finest brains.

I imagine that
the powers that be in England

got in touch with the powers
that be in the united states

and said they had
this wonderful guy

and he would like a job.

Working here
put Gordon Welchman

right back at the heart
of another intelligence war--

the cold war.

Film One of the most
dangerous threats

to our nation's security

is the possibility of attack

by high-speed enemy bombers
armed with nuclear weapons.

This was secret
conflict on a global scale.

Huge strides in technology
were needed

to hold the so-called red menace
at bay.

During that period

was the Cuban missile crisis.

Okay, I mean, that was, that was
really a tough period, okay?

I built a bomb shelter
in my basement

in Bedford, Massachusetts.

A large-scale nuclear attack
on the united states

could produce a patchwork
pattern of fallout

covering two thirds
of the nation.

We cannot afford
to take that chance.

Welchman was given

the highest civilian
security clearance.

It meant becoming
a U.S. Citizen.

The job did require

a very high
security clearance.

In fact it was high enough
so that it--

the fact that I had it
was classified.

With the frightening prospect

of a nuclear confrontation,

Welchman was given
the vital task

of ensuring
U.S. Military communications

were capable
of withstanding attack.

All he had learned
at Bletchley Park

was now applied to help achieve
American supremacy

on a scale
that would dwarf Hut 6.

Traffic analysis
in World War II

led Welchman to understand

the way information flowed
in battle

and how many different ways
it flowed.

Welchman realized
military communications

hadn't really moved on
since his days at Bletchley.

Headquarters issued an order,
units made reports.

But in modern warfare

instant access to battlefield
information was essential.

Repeat,
this is a yellow alert.

And computer technology

was advancing fast enough
to make this possible.

He said, hey, with
this digital communications

we can do some things that we've
never been able to do before.

Welchman used
all his experience

to develop a completely new kind
of network.

Information on the battlefield
was constantly updated,

immediately shared
and totally secure.

Everybody periodically
broadcast bits of information

about where they were,
what they were doing.

Welchman called
his idea a horseshoe,

but we would all recognize it
today as the cloud.

Welchman's system instantly
connected planes, submarines,

ground forces, battleships--

all the elements
of the command structure--

all at the same time.

And that went out
into the sky,

and anybody who was interested
in knowing

what friendly aircraft
are in this area

could immediately get
those reports--

sort of like an instant Goggle,

and this was three, four decades
before Goggle.

Gordon came up
with this radical idea,

and people looked at it and said
hey, that's pretty good,

and, uh, so, you know,
my boss called me in

and said okay, make it work.

His ideas were really
a game changer.

They changed
the way people thought

about command and control,

and they changed the way
battles were managed

and warfare was fought.

It's still in use today,
and it will be for a long time.

The legacy of the two
giants of Bletchley Park

endures to the present day.

Alan Turing had made
a decisive contribution

to the computer revolution.

Gordon Welchman's work

anticipated how the Internet and
the cloud would later develop,

and how technology would enable
a surveillance society.

in 1971 Welchman moved to the
new England town of Newburyport

and married
his third wife, teeny.

He was now 65 and still
at the peak of his powers.

He had made a decisive impact
on both the second world war

and now the cold war.

Yet everything he had achieved

was known only within
his clandestine world.

Fighting an intelligence war
against the Soviet Union,

the U.S. And British governments

had kept the success
of Bletchley Park secret

for two decades.

Everyone who worked there
had been sworn to silence.

But then, in 1974, came an event

that had unexpectedly
far-reaching consequences.

"The ultra secret,"

a government-approved book
by an ex-MI6 officer,

revealed for the first time
the role of codebreaking

in winning the second world war.

Suddenly daylight
was being let in

on a hitherto secret world.

It was a shocking moment
for all those like Welchman,

who had taken their oath
of secrecy so seriously.

For years and years

I didn't even read
the histories of the war

because I was afraid
that somehow or other

I might reveal something
that I'd learned from ultra.

I think
it was an enormous relief.

He could tell these stories,
and could talk to us,

and could share memories that

he'd kept tamped
down for so long.

An idea began to form
in Welchman's mind--

that he should write his story.

I seemed to have

a very special responsibility

in that I was
the only person alive

with inside knowledge

of a very telling episode
in cryptologic history.

In 1977 he also took
the deliberate decision

to appear on the BBC series
"The Secret War,"

which dared to reveal
the still-classified story

of ultra intelligence.

I don't know
whether I should say this,

but it seems to me

that some of the things really

have been kept secret too long,

that there is a point

at which you do more damage
by deceiving your own people

about the true history
of World War II

than you could possibly do

by telling now the story
as it actually happened.

Determined to set
the record straight,

as well as to give
public recognition

to those whose work
had been war-winning,

Welchman had to write
from his own prodigious memory

and discreet research
from former colleagues.

He had no access
to official papers,

which were still classified.

It was seven years' work.

I think my father felt

that he had
a very important insight

on a particular piece of history
which very few other people had,

and he just kept reading
the obituaries

and realizing that there were
fewer and fewer people left.

But Gordon Welchman,

after a life spent
in the secret world,

didn't realize that world
was about to turn on him.

Gordon Welchman's book,
"The Hut Six Story,"

was published
in the united states

in February 1982

and in the UK the following may.

For the first time in print,

an insider's account
of the full secret history

of codebreaking's role
in World War II

was laid bare.

Importantly, it incorporated
Welchman's use

of traffic analysis.

The book also included
a warning.

Welchman believed lessons
from the war were being ignored.

The Americans were making
the very same mistakes

with their security
that the Germans had once made.

He thought
he could talk about this

in a way that would reach
the general public,

that would not disclose
any secrets,

it would not tell
tales you shouldn't.

He hoped it would make
some money,

but he really hoped it would
generate a conversation.

The secret world
didn't wait long to hit back.

I was on my way to work,

and this car speeded up
and stopped

right smack in the, almost
in the middle of the road.

Nobody stops there, so I had to
see what was going on.

Um...

There's Gordon's house,
right there,

and the two men jumped out
wearing black suit,

black tie and black sunglasses.

They looked like
the men in black,

and they raced
across the street.

Gordon answered the door, and
you could see them, you know,

busily discussing something,

and all of a sudden Gordon took
the door and he slammed it,

almost in their faces.

Later I found out that it was
the national security agency.

There had been books
about the ultra secret

prior to his publication.

There was no putting the
toothpaste back in the tube--

the secret was out--

but Welchman's book was
the first about cryptanalysis

by an actual insider
who had done it.

It was still
the height of the cold war.

If our continent were attacked,

this red telephone would be
lifted from its cradle,

and instantly the united states
would launch

the greatest counter-attack
in history.

Signals intelligence
remained, at that time,

at the very heart
of the intelligence conflict

that was being conducted
during the cold war.

So this was as important
and as secret as it could get.

I think that people
who saw what he wrote

felt he was imperiling
current operations.

Welchman's World War II work

in traffic analysis

might have been
40 years earlier,

but what he had discovered

was still so vital
to the secret world

that revealing it, even now,
was considered dangerous.

On February 22, 1982, the men
in dark glasses returned.

These two
young gentlemen came in;

one from NSA and one from,

I believe it was
air force intelligence.

And they said, well,
this information

has never been declassified,

and therefore
is still in violation

of the wartime secrets laws.

Gordon was taken aback.

He said, "This is,
this is absurd."

They were delivering
a message to him,

and it was an ominous message.

I believe they had
conversations with Mr. Welchman.

Beyond that, I'm not sure
that I can talk

about anything meaningful.

And it became clear

the American authorities
were not going to back off.

It was really quite devastating;

he was quite unprepared
for that.

Welchman enlisted
the help of another writer

who had fallen afoul of the NSA.

We lived in the same area,

so we could actually
get together physically

and as far--the kind of things

that you don't want to talk
over the telephone--

especially when you're dealing
with NSA.

He couldn't do any publicity,

he couldn't answer questions
from reporters,

he couldn't appear on
television shows and so forth,

and that was
a really big problem.

The NSA threatened Welchman

with an obscure legal clause

dealing with the sharing
of cryptology.

This same law is now being used

on NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowden's.

The part
of the espionage act.

I think it's ten years
in prison and a heavy fine.

So these were very,
very serious charges.

I could see he was nervous,

I could see
the physical effects

that the NSA was having on him.

That devastates somebody
that's spent their entire life

trying to protect U.S.
And British governments,

and now they're told
that they're going to be charged

with a crime possibly
of giving secrets to the enemy.

He'll be prosecuted
as maybe being a spy or a--

not a spy, but a leaker.

There was
one final act

with devastating consequences.

On the April 29, 1982,

Welchman's security clearance
was withdrawn.

All of a sudden
he disappeared.

"Dear Mr. Welchman,

the Mitre corporation believes
it would be mutually beneficial

to temporarily suspend your
access to classified materials.

This suspension
is effective this date.

Please acknowledge receipt
of this letter

by signing in the space
provided below."

And he signed below.

Rather than stay silent,

Welchman went on the offensive,
writing letters and articles,

which he hoped
would exonerate him,

including a recently discovered
unpublished paper:

"Ultra revisited--
a tale of two contributors."

The stories
of Alan Turing's life and mine

have two things in common.

First, we were regarded
by our boss

as the two greatest contributors

to the wartime success
of Bletchley Park.

Second, we have been branded
as security risks.

What has happened to me

can be compared with
what happened to Turing.

For many
in the intelligence community,

Welchman was being naive

to imagine he could reveal
the secrets of Hut 6

with impunity.

But he never lost his belief

that this was information
the public needed to know.

With Welchman gagged
by the security services,

his book flopped.

He sold only 900 copies.

The rest were pulped.

He suffered a lot,

he went through a great deal
to put "Hut Six Story" out.

The strain
was, was also coming

at a very difficult time.

He'd had some more
medical problems.

It was a cruel irony
that Gordon Welchman,

a master
of the clandestine world,

who helped win World War II
by breaking enemy codes

and also helped the west
win the cold war

by keeping
their communications secret,

would himself fall afoul
of the secret state.

I believe
that the rules at the time

about secrecy
were really inflexible.

The people who administered
inflexible rules

themselves had spent
a full career

being indoctrinated with the
idea that secrecy was the base.

I am today glad
that the book is out.

By now Welchman
was seriously ill with cancer.

I'm not saying
that he was blameless,

but he had broken
the procedures,

and the law was never invoked,

but he lost his job
and his livelihood

without ever appearing in court

or ever facing
any criminal charge.

And finally,
you know, I think he realized

that it, it wasn't
going to go away.

They probably couldn't
successfully prosecute him,

but they would break him
financially.

Gordon Welchman
never redeemed himself.

On October 8, 1985, he died.

It made two of the last
three years of his life

really quite hellish.

But his legacy
would continue.

After his death
his methods and insights

not only became part
of the west's military thinking,

they also became the very heart

of the new intelligence
networks,

as the world became more and
more connected, via computer.

Only in 2013

would the significance
of that legacy become clear.

It's been 30 years
since Gordon Welchman died,

and yet the true legacy of
his work is only now emerging.

In June 2013, Edward Snowden's

leaked tens of thousands
of highly classified files.

Our intelligence agencies
were harvesting metadata--

our phone numbers,
our computers' IP addresses,

the websites we visit,
those we message or call

and where we are
at any given moment.

It suddenly occurred to me

that actually what we do,
now do with metadata,

is in a sense
a highly developed version

of what Welchman started
with traffic analysis.

That's what it is, metadata and
analytics now in a digital world

are essentially our way
of doing traffic analysis,

and it can be
very, very revealing.

Metadata analysis
is today's version

of Welchman's own
traffic analysis

during World War II.

One of the things that
Gordon Welchman discovered

was how important it is

to not just to read
what's in a message

but to derive intelligence
by the activities of messages,

how many are being sent,
where, message--

where they're being sent,

how many are being sent
from one place to another.

These are what's called
the externals--

not the content,
but the externals--

and today
that's extremely important.

Today we call it metadata,
basically,

and the NSA uses this
enormously.

For many,
what Snowden's was revealing

was that we live
in a surveillance state,

that the NSA have turned
Welchman's legacy

against their own citizens,
destroying our privacy.

But for others, traffic analysis
is keeping us safe.

After 9/11,
CIA analysts were on the hunt

for Osama Bin Laden,

the most wanted man
on the planet.

They turned to a technique

Gordon Welchman had developed
so powerfully in World War II.

Traffic analysis, now known
as metadata analysis.

If I want to understand

how to destroy
this terrorist organization,

if I want to take them down
as an organization,

then I have to look
for their vulnerabilities,

and to look for their
vulnerabilities,

I have to understand
their network.

I found a lot of similarities
in Welchman's work.

I have this mass of information,

and it doesn't necessarily
make a lot of sense,

and what I have to do is I have
to look for patterns in that.

In an ever more
connected world,

with more data, more patterns,

traffic analysis is only
becoming more powerful

as an intelligence tool.

What we call link analysis
or network analysis--

the more sophisticated
version of that--

is the absolutely critical tool
in finding covert networks,

whether it's terrorists
or crime networks,

because they're trying to hide

their entire
organizational structure.

With modern encryption,

today's codes seem
genuinely unbreakable,

and so traffic analysis

is all security agencies have
to work with.

We were able
to find out a great deal

about what Al-Qaeda was doing
and Bin Laden

by a looking at the metadata,

what the externals
of the messages were--

where are they going?

How frequently
are they being sent?

It was bin laden's courier

who unwittingly led navy seals
to his compound--

and traffic analysis
that found the courier.

Welchman's legacy in action.

Today, Edward Snowden's
is branded by many a traitor

for revealing the secrets
of modern traffic analysis.

Gordon Welchman also went public

for something
he truly believed in.

But after a glittering career,

he spent the last three years
of his life fighting illness,

fighting for his reputation,

and feeling outcast

from the very world
he had helped to build.

Alan Turing's brilliant work
at Bletchley Park

has made him an iconic figure
in our history.

His pioneering spirit sparked
the computer revolution

and is now part
of all our lives.

It was Gordon Welchman's
misfortune

that his equally
brilliantly work

has not earned him the public
accolades it deserves.

His top secret work impacts
on every one of us

as much as Turing's.

But this very secrecy

denies him his rightful place
in our history.

99.9% of the people in the world

have never heard
of Gordon Welchman,

and you say the name
"Gordon Welchman"

and they just kind of
stare back at you--

and yet he contributed so much.

Shortening the war by two years?
Good heavens.

Saving thousands of lives?

And yet nobody knows who he is.

I have no qualms
about saying he was a genius.

I'm enormously proud
of my grandfather.

Still sometimes distressed
about...

What happened after
he published his book

and how much that meant to him.

He was certainly proud
of what he'd done.

There's always an element

that it was a pity
he didn't get recognized, but...

It's too bad he couldn't
be here today.