Chief of UK spy agency apologizes for treatment of gays

by Austin Stallings
Journalism Intern

LONDON (AP) — The head of Britain's digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization's historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II code breaker Alan Turing.

During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's code breaking center. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Turing, who was gay, was convicted of indecency in 1952 and stripped of his security clearance. He later committed suicide.

GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency's ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there.

"It was also kind of an act of atonement — for the lost opportunity of his early death," Hannigan said. "Who knows what Turing would have gone on to do, where, for example, he might have taken his pioneering interest in artificial intelligence, which is the thing everyone is talking about. We will never know and should, as a society, never repeat that mistake."

Hannigan said things are different now.

"The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the Cold War, but it does not make it any less wrong and we should apologize for it," Hannigan said Friday at the conference organized by Stonewall, which campaigns for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.

To make the point, he shared a story about an internal agency blog headlined "So it's goodbye from him." Hannigan said that at first he thought it was written by someone who was leaving the agency for the private sector. It turned out to be the story of a transgender employee — who he called Emma — who had finally decided to start the process of transition.

Hannigan said he was proud the blog was the most "liked" the agency had ever had, and that the comments were genuinely supportive. But he stressed that GCHQ was still far from a utopia.

"That is the real point of diversity for me," he said. "To do our job, which is solving some of the hardest technology problems the world faces for security reasons, we need all talents and we need people who dare to think differently and be different. ... Dull uniformity would completely destroy us."

The Gayly 04/18/2016 @ 3:50 p.m. CDT