Intercepting Independence

The U.S. Air Force and Communications Intelligence in the Cold War

On this day in 1948, the U.S. Air Force created the Air Force Security Service. Five years later, on New Year’s Eve, 1953, Airman Third Class Thomas W. Shackelford arrived in London with little idea that he would soon be engaged in one of the most secret missions of the Cold War.

The streets of London were foreign and unfamiliar. The taxi to the train station was an adventure in itself, and Shackelford was certain that the cabbie made a small fortune from the seven airmen who crowded his car, as yet unaccustomed to the British money they had been given and the current rate of exchange. Then began the journey by rail to Edinburgh, Scotland—all through the night and into the wee hours of the morning, and finally, a bus ride to the base that would be Shackelford’s home for the next two and a half years.

It was cold.

Taking in the dilapidated, World War II era barracks upon arrival in the middle of the night was a stark and unwelcome wake-up call—a far cry from the rural North Mississippi farm where Shackelford had been raised.

RAF Kirknewton, a small air base in southern Scotland, had been used by the British Royal Air Force as an anti-aircraft station during World War II, as well as a temporary holding area for German prisoners of war en route to the United States. Leased by the United States Air Force after the war, the base was now home to a radio squadron of the United States Air Force Security Service, the runways filled not with planes but with antennae, designed to collect encrypted Morse radio signals emanating from the nearby Soviet Union. Rural countryside surrounded the Kirknewton installation—wide fields, ancient stone walls, and grazing land for Scottish sheep—a quiet expanse that stretched southward beneath the watchful gaze of Edinburgh Castle, several miles to the northeast. During the dead of winter and covered in snow, the landscape harbored an unforgiving, almost desolate character as the airmen took round-the-clock shifts in the communications compound with their radios and teletype machines—a vivid representation of the Cold War these young Americans had traveled so far to wage.

The U.S. Air Force Security Service was an anomaly.

Created at a time when the U.S. military was experiencing wholesale reorganization, the Security Service was a small but powerful intelligence organization created to give the nascent Air Force competitive footing in the post-World War II intelligence community. It was authorized along with the U.S. Air Force in the National Security Act of 1947 and administratively organized as a major command directly responsible to the Air Force Chief of Staff, a hierarchical status not shared by the communications intelligence structures of the Army or the Navy. Formally established on October 20, 1948, the Security Service was given the dual mission of providing for the communications security of the U.S. Air Force and collecting communications intelligence, largely encrypted Morse intercepts, in regards to the air forces of the Soviet Union. Soon, the organization had established itself as one of the preeminent communications intelligence agencies in the U.S. intelligence community.

It is easy to describe the Security Service as a group of mavericks, but this characterization is largely derived from the views of U.S. Army leaders and government officials in the years immediately following World War II. Air Force leaders and intelligence officers may not have seen themselves as disrupters, but were nonetheless intent upon creating a communications intelligence capability that would provide for Air Force needs in a new and rapidly developing Cold War environment. Studying the rise of the Security Service in the immediate postwar arena reveals a tension between the executive impetus towards the centralization of communications intelligence, often couched within concerns for efficiency and economy—and the mission-focused priorities of the individual services.

Both the U.S. Navy and the burgeoning Air Force resisted the gathering push for centralization. Although the two services found themselves in the unfamiliar position of working as allies in the struggle against consolidated communications intelligence, their motivations differed. For the Navy, consolidated communications intelligence presented a systems issue—communications intelligence was inexorably integrated into the naval communications structure and naval leaders viewed this arrangement as crucial to the naval manner of command—a system which centralized control of military communications intelligence would disrupt.

For the Air Force, however, it was a matter of survival.

An independent communications intelligence capability meant overcoming dependence upon other services, notably the U.S. Army, for air intelligence information, representing a key step in the evolution of the Air Force as an independent service. Given the importance of communications intelligence to strategic bombing, itself part and parcel of the Air Force’s service identity, remaining dependent upon other agencies for intelligence, and or subordinating Air Force intelligence capabilities to joint control and direction, was an untenable proposal.

The world of Cold War intelligence, even more than the international conflict itself, is vividly captured in our imaginations, more by its representations in popular culture than by actual events. Lack of declassified information provides an obvious opportunity for works of fiction to supply a glimpse behind the veil of secrecy that facts are unavailable to provide. While sluggish, however, these conditions are changing. Government agencies have begun to release more documentation detailing World War II and Cold War espionage activities, and intelligence history is maturing into a robust academic discipline all its own, to positive reception. Both scholarly and popular authors exploring various intelligence topics continue to find a hungry audience that ravenously devours their works.

It must be a bizarre experience for former intelligence personnel. Many of the secrets they labored so long to protect are now finding their way out into the sunlight to emerge, blinking, wondering what year it is. The activities in which these individuals were involved—tightly controlled, very sensitive, and often dangerous—are now openly discussed in countless volumes lining the shelves at every bookstore. Information they held private even from their families is now described, sometimes in considerable detail, for all the world to see. The public appetite for such content can hardly come as a surprise, but still. It must be strange, and I wonder what they think.

Personally, I am incredibly grateful for a special group of these silent warriors, including my grandfather, for taking me under their collective wing and accommodating my curiosity and persistent exploration into their past, secret lives. Many were wary, to be sure, and remain guarded about discussing too many specific details. But this reticence is understandable, and admirable, even. Unmoored from official chains of communication, former intelligence personnel have precious little assistance in making what must be a monumental choice—to open up, even slightly, about responsibilities they once swore to protect, or remain steadfastly committed to a life of silence.

It was a lonely but important mission.

The airmen who staffed the Security Service served quietly, in secret, and as some believed, without the opportunities for recognition and promotion that were available to members of other, less clandestine commands. Yet without exception, not one of the former Security Service members interviewed for this project has indicated that they would change or in any way regret this experience. Serving with the Security Service provided these airmen the opportunity to explore parts of the world they would not have otherwise been able to see, the chance to serve their country at the center of a high profile and very secretive mission, and to acquire skills they might not have otherwise developed. It was an intense, shared experience forging bonds that, in many cases, remain strong to this day, as demonstrated by frequent squadron reunions, trips, and even social networking. Assignment to the Security Service certainly was not a given, however, and for some airmen, not even a first choice.

For Tom Shackelford, joining the Air Force itself was a last-minute decision. He had arrived at the closest military recruitment office—more than thirty miles from his home in rural Mississippi—with the intention of joining the United States Marines. On that particular day, however, in the summer of 1952, the Marine Corps recruiter was not in the office, and so Shackelford decided on the Air Force as a second choice. It was a decision that would shape the next four years of his life and pave the way for unique experiences that remain vivid in his memory today. 

Read more in Rise of the Mavericks: The U.S. Air Force Security Service, released in April 2023 from the U.S. Naval Institute Press.

Available now:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3zqHGYO 

Naval Institute: https://bit.ly/3czy70M 

*Cover image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Reconnaissance, and Surveillance Agency and the U.S. Air Force