President Reagan using a STU-II telephone

Here we see a great and very rare, maybe even unique picture of former US president Ronald Reagan using a STU-II secure telephone:

President Reagan making an early morning telephone call regarding the invasion of Grenada
(Photo: Reagan Library, October 22, 1983)

In this picture we see president Reagan making a phone call to his staff regarding the invasion of Grenada. Because he was staying at the Eisenhower cabin on the Augusta National Golf course in Georgia, it was necessary to create a secure telephone line with the White House.

This was done by installing a STU-II, which was the second generation Secure Telephone Unit (STU). This system was introduced by the NSA in the early 1980s, and replaced older systems, like the extremely bulky KY-3, and was the successor to the STU-I.

In the picture we see the STU-II telephone, with handset, a normal keypad, some indicator LEDs and three extra buttons at the bottom, for selecting secure or nonsecure mode. This phone only acted as terminal or user interface, because the actual encryption system (crypto designation: KY-71) was located in a large metal cabinet, with which it was connected through a thick 9-way cable. The STU-II was built by ITT with Northern Telecom as a sub-contractor.

The same room with left to right: national security advisor Bud McFarlane,
secretary of state George Shultz and president Ronald Reagan.
The STU-II secure phone is on the table at the far right.
(Photo: Corbis)

Additionally, a reader of this weblog told us that during presidential roadtrips the STU-II was transported in aluminium transit cases with a packed weight of 170 lbs. Each case contained one KY-71 (the crypto engine), one HYX (the handset) and two ZAMX (unknown).


As of 1987, the STU-II was replaced by the much smaller STU-III, which was a secure phone that consisted of one single desktop device only and had much better speech quality. This new phone became available for president Reagan by the end of his second term:

President Reagan using a Motorola SECTEL 1000 version
of the STU-III secure telephone program
(Photo: NSA, date unknown)

US State Department red phones

(Updated: March 7, 2017)

On February 1st, senator John Kerry became the new US Secretary of State, succeeding Hillary Clinton, who held this office since January 2009. John Kerry is just two weeks in office, but we already have a nice picture of him in his new office:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks by telephone with
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from his Inner Office
at the Department of State, February 5, 2013.
(State Department photo)

This picture is taken in the so called inner or private office, which is next to the bigger ceremonial office, where the secretary of state is most often seen, receiving and talking to his guests. The smaller private office is used for the actual work, and therefore that's also where the phones are (the US president also has a rarely seen private office, next to the ceremonial Oval Office).

On the desk we see a Cisco 7975 unified IP phone with a 7916 expansion module. With a close look we can see that the phone has a yellow faceplate, instead of the standard silver one, which indicates that it's part of the new, highly secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network. This network connects the president with all major decision makers.

The phone which secretary Kerry is using in the picture, is a high end Avaya/Lucent 6424D phone set, which is part of the internal State Department telephone network. This phone can also be seen in many pictures of the ceremonial office. Finally, we see a really large videoteleconferencing (VTC) screen with camera on top.

Updates:

From the FBI investigations in the case of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton using a private e-mail server for government business, we learn that the secretary of state's suit of offices on the 7th floor of the State Department building, known as "Mahogany Row", is secured as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).
Within that area, the bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) has a post called Post 1, where secretary Clinton's BlackBerry was kept in a desk drawer. State Department personnel was not allowed to bring their mobile devices into Post 1 or the SCIF. Clinton had no computer in her office, but she used to check her e-mail using a personal BlackBerry or a personal iPad on the building's 8th floor balcony outside the SCIF.
SCIF's were also created in Clinton's Whitehaven residence in Washington, D.C. and her home in Chappaqua, NY, but both rooms were not always secured, with doors left open and assistants bringing their personal laptops inside.

It was also reported that secretary Clinton preferred to read documents on paper rather than on a screen, so e-mails and other files were often printed out and provided to her either at her office or home, where they were delivered in a diplomatic pouch by a security agent.
However, her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, like many State Department officials, found the government networks to be cumbersome, making printing documents there troubling. As a result, she sometimes transferred e-mails from her unclassified State Department account to either her Yahoo account, or her account on Clinton’s private server, and printed the e-mails from there.

After Donald Trump became president of the United States in January 2017, rooms on Mahogany Row were rebuilt to create an "office space for a new team and a new concept of how State’s nerve center would function" - a concept that wasn't shared with most State Department people though.

It seems the Cisco phone and the VTC-screen are installed quite recently, because when former secretary of state Hillary Clinton showed her inner office in May 2010, there was at least one other type of phone, which was there already when Madeleine Albright held this office:

Video still of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showing her
private office to Scott Pelley of the CBS show 60 Minutes.
(click to watch the video!)

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her private office
(Date unknown)

In both these pictures, we see a big white Integrated Services Telephone (IST) at the lower right corner of the bookshelfs. This futuristic looking phone was designed by Electrospace Systems Inc. and later on produced by Raytheon. It was part of the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), which is the main secure telephone network of the US military.

As we saw in an earlier posting, the president had a newer version of this phone, the IST-2, on his desk in the Oval Office. In 2011 that phone was also replaced by a Cisco 7975 IP phone, just like the one which is now at the desk of the secretary of state. So it looks like these new IP phones of the top secret executive VoIP network are gradually replacing the so called red phones of the DRSN, which is still an old fashioned switched telephone network.

The phones of the Defense Red Switch Network are sometimes called "red phones", because in the sixties and seventies, the telephone sets connected to predecessors of this network were often red. A nice example of such an early day red phone is the one in this picture:

This is a very common phone without rotary dial, made by ITT. Phones like this are still available today, for example for hotlines or emergency lines of any kind. This phone was probably used for a predecessor of the DRSN, like the Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network (AUTOSEVOCOM). This is indicated by the label, which says: "Up to TOP SECRET Information may be processed on this system" with next to it, the eagle from the seal of the United Stated and the words "Bureau of Diplomatic Security":

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) is an agency of the State Department, which is responsible for protecting US embassies and diplomatic personnel and securing critical information systems, like for example the telephone networks.

Therefore, the red telephone in the picture was probably used for a secure telephone connection at one of the major embassies, at the State Department operations center, or maybe even in the office of the secretary of state of that time!



Links
- 1916-2016: History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State
- Washington Examiner: 21 things we learned from the FBI notes on Clinton's emails

Dutch queen Beatrix' phone

The day before yesterday, queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announced that she will abdicate on April 30, when she will have been on the throne for exactly 33 years. Her efficient, professional and even perfectionist style is also reflected by the telephones which are in her office in the palace of Huis ten Bosch: a simple modern white phone from the Unifoon series:

Queen Beatrix in her office at her last meeting with prime minister Mark Rutte
Notice the white Unifoon against the wall and the prime minister having two mobile phones
while the queen only has paper and pencils in front of her (April 22, 2013).
(Photo: Minister-president @ Flickr)

Allthough the Netherlands is a very liberal society, the government and the royal family are still less open. Opposite to the United States, where we can get almost day-to-day pictures of the president and the White House, pictures of queen Beatrix and her surroundings are quite rare.

The Dutch queen Beatrix in her office at the Huis ten Bosch palace in 1987
On the right side of her desk we see a white Unifoon telephone
(Photo: Thuring/RVD)

Queen Beatrix in the same office and with the same phone more recently

Unifoon

The Unifoon was one of the standard telephones sold by the Dutch national telephone administration PTT during the eighties, and therefore could be found in many homes during the last two decades of the 20th century. The phone, which also appeared in the 1979 James Bond-movie Moonraker, was available in white, ivory, beige and red. There were also some modified versions, for example for usage with a small private branch exchange (PBX).

The phone at the queen's desk is also connected to an internal network for the palace. Besides that, her Unifoon has no other functions, like for example programmable memory buttons. This fits her style too, as it's known that queen Beatrix isn't very fond of modern technology, apparently she didn't even had a mobile phone for many years. It fits also with the predominantly ceremonial role of the queen of the Netherlands, working at a certain distance of the actual government.

The Unifoon telephone, as advertised in a 1987 brochure
from the Dutch national telephone administration PTT
(the 149,- guilders would now be 67,- euro)

History

The Unifoon was developed and initially made by the Nederlandse Standard Electric Maatschappij (NSEM), a company providing telephone equipment to the Dutch national telephone administration. The roots of this company go back to the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company (BTMC), which started to make telephone equipment for the Dutch and Belgian markets at a plant in Antwerp in 1882.

By the end of the 19th century nationalistic policies favoured local manufacturers, and so there came a plant of BTMC in The Hague, for providing equipment to the Gemeentelijke Telefoondienst Den Haag and the Rijkstelefoon. This plant became independent in 1940 and was named Nederlandse Standard Electric Maatschappij (NSEM), manufacturing telephone sets and exchanges from 1948 to 1983.

In 1984 or 1985 this company was taken over by ITT and renamed ITT Nederland NV. After the merger of the telecommunications divisions of ITT and CGE, the name was changed to Alcatel Nederland BV.


Noordeinde palace

Besides her office at the palace of Huis ten Bosch, which is the place where she lives, queen Beatrix also has an office at the palace of Noordeinde, which is in the city center of The Hague. Pictures of the interior of this palace are very rare, but from a 2008 book about the palace, we have one great picture of her spacious office room:

The office of queen Beatrix at the palace of Noordeinde

Unfortunately we can't recognize what kind of phone is on the desk, but it seems to be different from the Unifoon which is at the palace of Huis ten Bosch.


Succession

Queen Beatrix will be succeeded by her eldest son Willem-Alexander, who will be installed as king of the Netherlands on April 30. In the years to come we will see what will be the telephone equipment of his choice.

Update:
According to for example this picture, we now know that Willem-Alexander bought and used an iPhone for several years. Also, after he was installed as the new king on April 30, 2013, he sent an SMS-message to the major of Amsterdam, thanking him for all his efforts.

Links
- MaximumPC.com: Unredacted WikiLeaks Cables Include Dutch Queen's Residential Phone Number (2011)

The Israeli prime minister's red phone

(Updated: December 29, 2015)

Based upon popular culture, many people think both the US and Russian presidents have a red telephone on their desks, as part of the famous Hotline between both countries. In a previous article we showed that the Washington-Moscow Hotline is not even a telephone line, let alone there are red phones at both ends. But, as we can see in the picture below, the prime minister of Isreal does have a red phone on his desk:

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) and defence
minister Ehud Barak hold talks in the prime minister's office
(Photo: Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry/Flash90, November 2012)

The dark gray phone at the right, which Netanyahu is using, is a high-end Nortel M3904 executive phone - a model which is also used at the NSA headquaters and at the office of the British prime minister. Nortel was a big Canadian telephone equipment manufacturer, but was dissolved in 2009. The Enterprise Voice and Data division of Nortel was bought by the US telecommications company Avaya (formerly Lucent)

The red telephone seems to be a phone from the UD-series of the Taiwanese manufacturer Uniphone, but remarkable is that it has no cord! That makes it looks like this phone was placed there more like a prop, demonstrating the (military/nuclear) power of the Israeli prime minister.

However that may be, in the video below we get an ever closer look at the red phone set. There it sits next to two black phones, one used by Netanyahu for calling the Russian president:

Israeli prime minister Netanyahu calling the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin
thanking for Russia's assistance in fighting the fire in Israel's North
(December 3, 2010)

The flat black phone is the Telrad Executive Phone 79-100-0000 from the Israeli telecom equipment manufacturer Telrad. This phone can also be seen at the sitting corner of the prime minister's office and in the office of the defense minister. Therefore that phone must be part of the internal private branch exchange (PBX) system of both ministries. At least at the desk of the prime minister they were replaced by the Nortel M3904 by November 2012.

It's not clear what the red telephone is for, but a likely option is that it's connected to a military command and control telephone network, just like the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN) in the United States, for which long ago also red phone sets were used.

> See also: Another "red phone" for the Israeli prime minister

Update:
On December 29, 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported about NSA's spying activities against Israel, saying that they had "a cyber implant in Israeli networks that gave the NSA access to communications within the Israeli prime minister’s office".