Five Secrets About GCHQ & Its First Female Spymaster Anne Keast-Butler

Anne Keast-Butler has been appointed as the first female director of UK cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ at a time when British spies are focused heavily on Russian and Chinese security threats. 

It’s not the first time a woman has headed one of Britain’s ‘big three’ spy agencies which include GCHQ, MI5, and the foreign intelligence experts at MI6. Now perhaps better known as a spy novelist, Stella Rimington directed MI5 from 1992 to 1996 and Elizabeth Lydia Manningham-Buller oversaw the agency from 2002 to 2007, but it’s still relatively rare for female spymasters to rise to the top.

Here are five little-known facts about Keast-Butler and GCHQ.
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1. Keast-Butler will lead a GCHQ staff of 7,000-10,000

Keast-Butler, who is married with three children, grew up in Cambridge, England and holds a degree in mathematics from Merton College, University of Oxford. Her new job will involve leading a staff estimated at between 7,000 and 10,000 - among them Britain’s greatest hackers, technophiles, and spies. According to GCHQ, their job is to “focus on communications: how to access, analyze and - occasionally - disrupt the communications of the UK’s adversaries; and on the nation’s cyber security.”
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2. Keast-Butler’s experience involves Russia and terrorism

During her 30 years at MI5, Keast-Butler spent two years on secondment to GCHQ as head of counterterrorism and organized crime, and she worked at the heart of government in Whitehall helping to launch the National Cyber Security Program. As MI5’s deputy director general, Keast-Butler was responsible for the agency’s preparation and response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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3. GCHQ’s secret operations involve ISIS and state-sponsored attacks‍

In the past century, GCHQ spies have evolved from codebreakers into a key agency battling technological threats to Britain’s national security. During WWII, GCHQ’s top-secret operations included deciphering secret communications between Adolf Hitler and his field marshals. More recently, GCHQ has conducted a cyber campaign against ISIS to hinder their ability to coordinate attacks, exposed Russian attacks on the development of coronavirus vaccines in 2020, and foiled other attacks.

4. GCHQ hasn’t always found itself on the right side of the law

US whistle-blower Edward Snowden exposed mass surveillance of private data and communications by America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ in 2013. Eight years later, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled GCHQ’s methods for bulk interception of online communications were a breach of the right to privacy and that its regime for collection of data was unlawful. Judges also decided, however, that the operation of a bulk interception regime was not in itself a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Snowden’s leaked files also revealed a campaign developed by JTRIG - a secretive group answering to GCHQ - that included offensive attacks against adversaries ranging from Iran to Anonymous hackers.

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5. GCHQ operates from many secret sites‍

While most GCHQ observers know that the SIGINT agency operates from a round-shaped office in Cheltenham, England known as ‘The Doughnut’, the agency has operated from many other unlikely locations across the UK including a manor on the White Cliffs of Dover where during WWII where 50-60 staff collected Very High Frequency communications from Germany directing aircraft or fast-moving E-boats in the English Channel. Today, GCHQ operates from Cheltenham and various other bases including London, home to the National Cyber Security Center hackers who work against state actors and criminals.