Block's 2021 page puts only one word — 'intolerable' — in McLachlan's mouth; the 1939 date, 'anarchy' framing and A1–D5 range are Block's own uncited prose

admiralty-codegodfreymclachlanhistoriographyverificationunverified

Ludo Block's 2021 page on the origin of information grading systems is the vault's only route to Donald McLachlan's 1968 Room 39. Read closely, the page attributes to McLachlan very little. Quotation marks and a page cite (p. 22) attach only to the single word intolerable, describing how Godfrey regarded ungraded reports. The sentence that a system was devised "in which the source and the information itself were evaluated separately, coding the evaluation with letters and numbers from 'A1' to 'D5'" carries neither quotation marks nor a citation. The only extended verbatim McLachlan text on the page is three passages Block places at p. 23, none spoken by Godfrey: two are attributed to an unnamed "officer involved in devising the system" (the Brest-hospital source-grading example and the passage on the grading authority's obligations), and a third (the "torpedo with wings" flying-bomb example) is introduced only as "McLachlan (p. 23) gives us an example", with no speaker specified.

Consequences for claim-godfrey-1939-devised-admiralty-codes-two-axis-grading-to-fix-report-anarchy: that note's core quotation is Block's own sentence, not McLachlan's. Whether McLachlan gives the 1939 date, the "A1"–"D5" range, or names Godfrey as designer rather than commissioner is [unverified-primary — needs direct read of Room 39 pp. 22–23]. Godfrey's dislike of ungraded reports is the one element with a page cite. The dependent synthesis observation-admiralty-code-diplomatics-independent-origin-not-shared-descent inherits the gap. Verification is routed to question-verify-godfrey-nid-origin-against-mclachlan-room-39; no freely accessible scan is known (observation-merton-1968-no-freely-accessible-cleaner-scan-located records the same class of problem for another 1968 book).