The Prime Minister's Gold Telephone
A direct line to the President -- and a security vulnerability?
Sure, the Moscow-Washington 'hotline' had a famous red telephone. But what colour was the telephone that linked the Prime Minister to the President of the United States?
I had never heard of the 'Gold Telephone Network' until it came up in my research on Canada’s nuclear history. I recently requested an old PCO file called 'DEFENCE - Canada-US Arrangements - Gold Telephone Network,' and I’ve put the released documents up on Canada Declassified.
Here’s the story of how the Gold Telephone came to Canada, and how it created a security vulnerability in the most important office in Ottawa:
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In March 1962, Canada’s Minister of National Defence, Douglas Harkness, recommended that the Prime Minister join the Gold Telephone Network.
In the United States, the Gold Telephone Network connected the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Service Secretaries with the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), NORAD, and extended as far as Hawaii, London and Paris.
In early 1962, the Department of National Defence in Ottawa began installing circuits that would link the Minister and the Chiefs of Staff with their American counterparts.
Harkness pointed out to Prime Minister Diefenbaker that in an "emergency it will be necessary and desirable that you, as Prime Minister, and the President confer."
Diefenbaker agreed, stating that he "felt that there should be something of this type installed both in my office and in the residence." However, before approving the idea, Diefenbaker wanted to know about the cost.
Each handset had a “one-time installation charge” of $14.00 per telephone, with monthly rental fees of $7.10 for the office phone and just under double that—$14.15—for a phone in the residence.
The Canadians also learned that the telephone network itself had "no speech secrecy equipment whatsoever." It existed only for "dependable and high-quality communication" in an emergency. On the surface, this might seem paradoxical, but the general idea was that the phones would be used in a time of such urgency and crisis that secrecy would no longer matter.
In late March, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Robert Bryce, gave instructions for the project to proceed—to hook up the PM to the network.
But then, nothing happened.
Canada had no Gold Telephone during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time when it would have been very useful to have a direct line to the President.
On November 2, 1962—in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis—Harkness wrote a crisp letter to Diefenbaker, implying that Diefenbaker had taken no action after learning the cost of the phone. He continued:
"You will perhaps recall that this matter came up for discussion during the early days of the Cuban crisis last week, and in view of this, I wonder if you could let me know whether you have given further consideration to the installation of these telephones in your office and residence."
The word "yes" is scribbled and underlined in the margin. An “Action Request” was issued: "The Prime Minister would like these installed, plse [sic]."
While the idea that Diefenbaker had been presented with the idea for the Gold Telephone and then held it up due to cost—only to leave himself with no direct link to the President during the Cuban Missile Crisis—might fit with our caricatures of Diefenbaker, that’s not what happened.
It turns out that in the spring of 1962, the DND had been working on the Gold Telephone system and found it "technically unsatisfactory." There had been other hold-ups, too. This one can’t be blamed on Dief.
But by the end of November, the Gold Telephones were installed in the Prime Minister’s office and residence, and he was provided with instructions on how to use them.
The instructions were straightforward:
"It is only necessary to pick up the phone and ask the Duty Officer to place the call."
There were no numbers to dial—the telephone immediately connected to the Air Force Headquarters Operations Centre, which was manned around the clock. The Canadian Duty Officer, on receiving directions from the Canadian caller, would connect with an American Duty Officer in Washington, who would then connect to the appropriate U.S. official.
Have a look at this map of the “Gold Phone Alerting Network”:
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On August 29, 1963, Prime Minister Pearson was briefed by an Air Force officer on the “Gold Telephone.”
The timing, I think, was no coincidence: This was within weeks of Canada and the United States finally settling on arrangements for the U.S. to provide Canada with nuclear warheads.
On August 16, at a press conference to announce the agreement, Pearson had said that the warheads would only be transferred to Canada at the time of hostilities, and so this would require “instantaneous communication.” The reporters asked if this would “involve setting up a special direct line between you and the President?”
Pearson responded:
"I do not know, but that is certainly under consideration. It is essential that the men in Washington, D.C. and here will be able to get in touch with Ottawa at a second’s notice."
Whether or not Pearson knew about the phone before the formal briefing a few weeks later, he took it seriously enough. By the summer of 1965 (during another important point in negotiations with the United States about nuclear consultation), Pearson had another Gold Telephone installed at the summer residence at Harrington Lake, “in a clothes closet in the Prime Minister’s bedroom.”
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The Gold Telephone handsets, however, turned out to pose a security threat of their own.
The Prime Minister’s office was inspected regularly by “Sweep Teams” from National Defence and External Affairs. They searched for “bugs” and other electronic listening devices and security vulnerabilities.
It turns out that the handsets were broadcasting “recoverable voice signals” down the telephone line, even if the handset was in the “disconnect position.” In other words, even when the phone was hung up, it was transmitting what was said near the phone.
The handsets were equipped with an “impaired speech” amplifier that helped boost the volume and clarity of the caller’s voice — and this function continued to work even if the handset was resting on the cradle.
There was no indication of “subversive activity” here, but still, any access to the line would have allowed someone to listen in on “room noises and office conversations” in the Prime Minister’s office. The phones in the Centre Block and the East Block were hidden behind “heavy drapes” that would have reduced what the phones picked up, but if not for the drapes, “eavesdropping attempts… would have been greatly enhanced.” Technical experts had to be called in to remove the amplifiers, preventing the incidental bugging.
The sweep team also learned that the phone in the PM’s residence had been “knocked loose during cleaning,” automatically connecting to the National Defence switchboard.
After that, both the phone in the residence and the one in the East Block office were “kept on the floor out of sight, and both have been taped down to prevent accidental dislodgement of the handset from the base.”
Heavy drapes. A piece of tape. These are the real tools of national security!
And perhaps it was a cleaner who knocked the phone off the hook in the Prime Minister’s office. But what about at Sussex Drive?
This summer, at Library and Archives Canada, I read a memorandum of conversation in which Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was briefed on nuclear war plans and consultation with the President of the United States in the event of an emergency. Trudeau knew about the Gold Telephone already, before this conversation.
He told his briefers that:
“…on moving into Sussex Drive, [I] had found that the ‘gold phone’ had been tied down to prevent the Pearson grandchildren from playing with it and thus setting in motion the august process of consultation with the President of the United States.”
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Readers of Canada Declassified will know the excellent work of Sam Eberlee. Over the summer, Sam won the Best Article Prize (English) awarded by the Political History Group of the Canadian Historical Association. Congratulations, Sam!
Here is the citation:
Sam Eberlee. “The View from Langley: The CIA and Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the Era of ‘Canada First’ Economic Nationalism,” Canadian Historical Review, 104, no. 3 (September 2023): 367-85.
In a very readable study, Sam Eberlee imaginatively uses recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency files to consider outsiders’ views of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and his government’s policies and places them against a background based on available Canadian sources.