Papal telephony

(Updated: March 27, 2013)

Earlier this month, pope Benedict XVI announced his historical decision to step down from his office on February 28, 2013. This makes him the first pope to resign since 1415! Therefore, a good moment to take a look at the telephone equipment, which is used by this leader of almost 1.2 billion catholics.

Pope Benedict XVI, assisted by his private secretary, signs a papal bull.

In this picture we see pope Benedict XVI at work in his private study in the papal apartment of the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. At the far right we can see two white telephones sitting on a side table: an older one with a rotary dial and a newer one with a keypad.

The same combination of a somewhat older rotary dial phone and a newer keypad telephone can be seen at the table of the guard, next to the main entrance door of the papal apartment:

Swiss Guard soldier garding the door
to the papal apartment, ca. 1989

Three rotary dial phones in different colors on a side table
next to the desk of pope John Paul II in the early 1980's.

To prevent people from directly calling the pope, the extension number of the papal apartment is listed nowhere, not even in Vatican phone books. Only a handful of people chosen by the pope himself have his number, which also changes with each new pope. Pope Benedict XVI had no a beeper or cell phone, but he could be reached through the cell phone of his personal secretary, msgr. Georg Gänswein.

The Vatican receives almost 2000 calls a day, and there are always a handful of people saying they must speak with the pope for whatever reasons. One of them was Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, who once dialed Vatican City, using a so called blue box. He identified himself as Henry Kissinger by imitating Kissinger's German accent and asked to speak to the pope. But due to the different time zone, he was sleeping at that time.*

A very rare picture of pope Benedict XVI using a telephone

The papal telecommunications started in 1886, at the beginnings of telephony, thanks to Giovanni Battista Marzi who invented the world's first automatic telephone exchange, which linked 10 separate phones, but could only make internal calls. A few decades later, Guglielmo Marconi effected the first Italian link via radio, connecting the Vatican and the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

After the 1929 Lateran Pacts agreement with Italy, by which the Vatican City State was created, the Vatican was finally allowed to send and receive calls to and from the rest of the world. Therefore, in 1930 a new central telephone exchange was donated by the International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT). It was installed in the Belvedere building and provided telephone services for approximately 360 end users in the various Vatican offices and residences. The telephone exchange was consecrated by pope Pius XI on November 19th, 1930.

The first Vatican telephone switchboard,
with the upper left lines 2 and 3 are for the pope
The book is the Annuario Pontificio, the directory of the Holy See
(Photo: David Seymour, 1948)

The Bell Rotary Telephone-system was state of the art at the time and had the following functions:
1. Dial a direct phone set inside the Vatican
2. Get a connection with any phone with only two numbers
3. Get an automatic connection with someone in Rome by just dialling the number and adding a "0" in front for an external line
4. Answer calls from outside the Vatican at a post with 2 seating areas
5. priority for some telephone sets for emergencies and important calls

Together with the new exchange, catholics in the United States donated pope Pius XI the first papal telephone: an apparently solid gold phone set, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, emblazoned with the papal arms and decorated with blue enamel. The phone is now for display at the Vatican State Telecommunications Department:

The first papal telephone, donated to pope Pius XI by catholics in the United States.
(Photo: Dancejill @ TripAdvisor)

This golden papal telephone was used by several popes, until the end of pope John XXIII's pontificate in 1963. Later, the phone in the pope's apartments was a standard phone in 'papal' white.

In 1957 the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) also presented a (less elaborate) ceremonial golden telephone to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. This was depicted in the 1974 movie The Godfather Part II, where "United Telephone and Telegraph" and American industrialists present a solid golden telephone to the Cuban dictator.

Pope Pius XI sitting at his desk, with the golden telephone.

Postcard showing pope Pius XII writing a letter. In the background we can
see the golden phone of Pius XI and another white telephone set,
probably made by the Italian manufacturer Olivetti.

In the forties and fifties it was very special when the pope was calling. For example, when Pius XII picked up the phone and said "que Pacelli" (his original family name), the receiving end would kneel to hear the papal message.

In 1960 the Bell telephone system was replaced by an ITT Pentaconta exchange with a capacity of 1500 numbers, which was later extended to 3000. In June 1992 the Vatican's third central telephone exchange was inaugurated, providing the Vatican with an advanced technological interface, qualifying the Vatican State amongst the first to have a completely numeric telephone network.

The new telephone plant was installed in a forepart of the Belvedere building and consists of a modern numeric telephone exchange with 5120 terminations. The exchange is also equipped with a numeric switch for operator call management and it is linked via radio to the San Giovanni in Laterano, the Palazzo di San Callisto and the Palazzo della Cancelleria. These Roman buildings are extra-territorial zones under jurisdiction of the Holy See.

Since 1948, the Telephone Service of the Vatican State has been run by members of the religious order of the Society of St. Paul. It employs over 30 laymen, a few priests and a dozen nuns, who are members of the Pious Disciples of the Divine Master. On account of their in-depth knowledge of foreign languages, they work for 24 hours a day in six-hour shifts as operators of the manual switchboard:

Two nuns operating the Vatican telephone exchange
(Photo: 30giorni, date unknown)

The Vatican Telephone Service is the telecommunications provider of Vatican City, which is part of the Governorate’s Department of Telecommunications since 2002. The Telephone Service maintains a complex infrastructure of telephone and data networks, designed and maintained by its own personnel. In 2005, the Vatican telephone service handled 8.5 million outgoing calls.

In November 2005 the telecommunications department moved into a new three-story brick building, with sleek, comfortable and modern facilities. They also include historical items, such as papal telephones and early technological equipment, on display in glass cases.

A better look at the present-day keypad telephone, here in
a room used by the cardinal secretary of state, Bertone

After the resignation of pope Benedict XVI, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church came together to elect a new pope. The traditional election was done in the famous Sixtine Chapel, but the cardinals stayed in the Casa di Santa Marta, with over 120 rooms. This guesthouse was build in 1996, and got a state-of-the-art Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone network, with Cisco 7911G Unified IP phone sets, as can be seen in the picture below:

A Cisco 7911G Unified IP phone on a side table in the Vatican
(Photo: Orbis Catholicus Secundus, December 2010)

After the Argentinian archbishop and cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ was elected to be the new pope on March 13, he named himself Francis. Shortly afterwards he spoke to former pope Benedict by phone - the first time ever a pope calls his predecessor!

In the days to follow, pope Francis personally called quite a number of other people (including his dentist), probably with the Cisco phone from his Santa Marta suite, but maybe he is also the first pope using a mobile cell phone. We will see.


Sources and Links
- Web page of the Vatican Telephone Service
- Extensive article: On call 24/7: Vatican phone system directs thousands of call each day
- Blog posting: 'Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome
- Wikipedia article: Golden Telephone

See also:
- Bruce Schneier's blog about Hacking the Papal Election
- Article about Vatican admits secretly bugging its own clergy
- During World War II: The Pope’s codes

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

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 (like the one in the header of this weblog), 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.

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!

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

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)

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.


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.


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

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

A White House staff phone

Earlier, we discussed some of the phones which are used by the US president in his Oval Office. Now we have a picture of a telephone set which was used by White House staff members, presumably in the years around 1990, during the presidency of George H.W. Bush:

A White House staff phone from around 1990.
(Click for a bigger version)

This is a quite common corded telephone from the 900-series of AT&T. It has standard buttons for program, pause, flash, mute, hold, redial, volume and speaker, and also 16 programmable buttons for two entries each. Red lights indicate when the mute, hold and speaker functions are enabled.

Most distinctive is the big, customized sticker with the security warning "OFFICIAL USE ONLY - WHITE HOUSE NON-SECURE TELEPHONE - DO NOT USE FOR CLASSIFIED OR SENSITIVE INFORMATION"

Allthough there's always a small chance such a sticker could be fake, in this case it's most likely real. Apart from the fact that in real life such warnings are often different from what most people think based upon popular movies, we can also compare this phone with an earlier White House staff phone, which is shown below. On that phone we see almost exactly the same warnings (in black and red capitals) as on the first phone, only slightly different arranged:

A White House staff phone from the eighties.
(Click for a bigger version)

The phone in this picture is probably the same one as being displayed in the Icelandic Telecommunication Museum, and which seems to be left there by the presidential staff after the Reagan-Gorbatchev Reykjavík Summit in 1986.

For a nice overview of all earlier phones used in the White House, check the website of Adam Forrest. As we can see there, the president had another telephone in the Oval Office: a Western Electric 18-button Call Director, a type of phone which dates back to the 1960's.

The white AT&T phone in our first picture was probably used until 1996, when the White House got a completely new telephone system. This consisted of an automated private branch exchange (PBX) with black executive phone sets (models 8410 and 8520) from Lucent. Only by then, the old Western Electric at the president's desk was replaced by a high-end Lucent 8520 telephone. Except for a break of a few years, this phone is still there today. White House staff members nowadays also still use the Lucent/Avaya 8410 and 8250 phones.

Pictures at the NSA's 60th anniversary

Last month, on November 4, 2012, the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States celebrated it's 60th anniversary. The NSA is one of the world's largest intelligence agencies, responsible for gathering foreign signals intelligence and protecting domestic communications.

For this diamond anniversary, NSA published a full color illustrated publication (available here in PDF) with an interesting overview of its history. In this booklet there are also nice pictures, some of them unseen until now:

President George H.W. Bush using a secure Motorola STU-III telephone.
Such a phone was placed everywhere where the president stayed during a travel,
so he was able to always place secure calls. This purpose is also indicated
by the plate below the phone. It's not clear what the white device is for.
This black Motorola STU-III still served in this function, when president George W. Bush
was calling during his stay at the elementary school on September 11, 2001.
(Photo: NSA - Click for a bigger version)

The new National Security Operations Center (NSOC) at the NSA
This center was established in 1968 as the National SIGINT Watch Center (NSWC)
and renamed into National SIGINT Operations Center (NSOC) in 1973.
This "nerve center of the NSA" got its current name in 1996.
(Photo: NSA - Click for a bigger version)

The NSA/CSS Threat Operations Center (NTOC) at the NSA
From left to right we see a black STE secure phone, an unidentified,
but quite common black phone, and a white Nortel M3904 phone,
which is connected to the NSA Secure Telephone System (NSTS).
(Photo: NSA - Click for a bigger version)

Many more new pictures and also newly declassified documents can be found via the timeline at the 60th anniversary-page on the NSA-website!


Earlier this year, NSA also cooperated with the National Geographic Channel in making what is said to be the first documentary about this agency since the 9/11 attacks in 2001:

With a close look at this video, we can recognize a number of different telephone systems used at the NSA. Some of them we already mentioned here earlier, more of them we will discuss sometimes later on at this weblog.


Update January 12, 2014:

After the Snowden-scandal, a new television report with some unique insights into the NSA was broadcasted in the CBS 60 Minutes show on December 15, 2013.