This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor &
Francis in Intelligence and National Security in November 2008,
available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/
DOI:10.1080/02684520802449526
GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s
DAVID EASTER
This study examines the role played by GCHQ during the 1960s. It looks at
GCHQ’s overseas Sigint collection network, its relationship with the NSA and
the problems caused by decolonisation, economic crisis and military
withdrawal from East of Suez. The paper also discusses GCHQ’s intelligence
targets in the 1960s, its codebreaking successes and assesses how important
Sigint was for British policy towards France, Egypt and Indonesia. It
concludes that while Sigint gave Britain tactical benefits in dealing with
France and Egypt it was only in the case of Indonesia that Sigint helped
Britain to achieve its strategic goals.
For many years there was a curious gap in the historiography of British external
policy. While historians readily acknowledged the immense importance of Ultra and
other forms of signals intelligence (Sigint) during the Second World War few of them
examined the role played by Sigint or Britain’s Sigint agency, the Government
Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), in the post war world. In contrast to the
abundant and still growing literature on Ultra writing on GCHQ was sparse.1
Diplomatic and military historians rarely considered the possible impact of Sigint on
British foreign policy or military strategy after 1945.
1
Over the last few years this missing dimension of Britain’s post war history has been
partially filled in, particularly by Richard Aldrich and his ground breaking book The
Hidden Hand, which has provided a wealth of detail on GCHQ’s activities in the early
Cold War.2 However, as yet very little has been produced on the post 1960 period.
This is perhaps not so surprising; as soon as an historian attempts to work in this field
it becomes apparent that from a research point of view, the curious gap is not curious
at all because there is a major problem in studying GCHQ, namely official secrecy.
Over the years the British government has worked hard to prevent the disclosure of
information on GCHQ including even relatively innocuous facts such as the
organisation’s budget. GCHQ’s archives are exempt from the normal 30 year rule of
security declassification and virtually no documents have been released to the British
National Archives for the post 1945 period. Furthermore material supplied by GCHQ
has an absolute exemption from the 2000 Freedom of Information Act. Security
restrictions also apply to other government bodies that assessed or used Sigint such as
the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). A large number of JIC files from the 1960s
have been declassified but the most sensitive items, including discussions of Sigint,
were held in the Secretary’s Standard File series and this is still retained. Other
references to Sigint in Foreign Office, Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of
Defence (MOD) documents are routinely redacted.
The security conventions used at the time create another barrier to documentary
research. Aldrich has explained that Foreign Office officials kept GCHQ decrypts in
separate special blue files and were told not to refer to Sigint in normal
correspondence.3 Even in MOD documents classified as ‘Top Secret’ officials
frequently used euphemisms to disguise references to Sigint. Sigint was called
2
‘special intelligence’ and Sigint intercept posts were described as ‘special wireless
stations’.4
An alternative avenue of research is to use human sources; memoirs, diaries or
interviews with former GCHQ personnel and other officials who had connections
with Sigint. But again the British government has tried to block the release of
information. The government has banned publications and even prosecuted former
officials who breached the Official Secrets Act by writing about GCHQ and Sigint.
The notorious prosecution of ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright over his book Spycatcher
may partly have been inspired by the candid discussion of Sigint in his memoirs.
There are other examples, such as the prosecution of Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and
Duncan Campbell in the ‘ABC Case’ in the 1970s and the banning of books by Jock
Kane, a former GCHQ employee, in the 1980s.
Research into GCHQ is therefore difficult but it is not impossible. Information from
documentary and human sources has gradually emerged over the last 40 years and this
article will bring together the limited material available and examine the role played
by GCHQ during the 1960s. It will look at GCHQ’s overseas Sigint collection
network, its relationship with the United States and the problems it faced in a decade
of rapid change. It will also examine GCHQ’s intelligence targets, its codebreaking
successes and assess how important Sigint was for British policy towards France,
Egypt and Indonesia. As so many documents are still retained this paper can only be
an outline and doubtless there will be many omissions, but hopefully it will suggest
areas of further enquiry and stimulate more research into GCHQ and its impact on
British external policy
3
In the 1960s GCHQ was Britain’s largest intelligence gathering organisation – indeed
Aldrich estimates that it was bigger than the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and
MI5 combined.5 By 1966 GCHQ directly employed about 8,000 people, half of whom
worked at its main Cheltenham base and a small London office, and with the rest
scattered in listening stations in Britain and around the world.6 Around 3,500 service
personnel were also engaged in Sigint work on behalf of GCHQ, which allocated
tasks and directed the deployment of army, naval and RAF special signal units to
intercept posts at home and abroad.7
Despite the organisation’s size the government was able to conceal the costs of
GCHQ from parliament and the public by hiding its finances within spending on the
MOD and the Foreign Office. A quarter of Sigint expenditure was hidden in the
Foreign Office budget and the rest was carried by the three armed services in the
MOD.8 Documents show that in 1965 the planned MOD budget allocation for Sigint
and GCHQ for financial year 1969-70 was £23.5-£23.9 million and applying the
75%:25% ratio in funding between the MOD and the Foreign Office, this would have
given GCHQ a budget of roughly £32 million.9
With these resources GCHQ and the military operated a network of signals intercept
stations in the United Kingdom and overseas. Some of these facilities were based in
Europe using the territory of NATO allies. There were several RAF and army special
signals units in West Germany and West Berlin giving coverage of the USSR and the
Soviet Bloc, and GCHQ had a listening post at Sinop on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.10
However, GCHQ’s greatest asset was perhaps the listening posts beyond Europe
4
which exploited the global reach of the British Empire.11 In the early 1960s there was
a chain of intercept stations spread around the world in British colonies, often colocated in military bases and manned by the services. In the Mediterranean Britain
had large Sigint facilities at Pergamos and Ayios Nikolaos in Cyprus, which were
operated by the army and RAF, and a site at Dingli Royal Navy base on the island of
Malta.12
The services also ran intercept posts for GCHQ in the Middle East and Africa. The
Aden colony hosted army Sigint facilities and a ‘Special Wireless Station’ at Steamer
Point.13 In the Persian Gulf, army Sigint personnel were apparently based in Bahrain,
which was a British protected state.14 Britain also seems to have built up Sigint
facilities in Kenya during the late 1950s and early 1960s in parallel with its
construction of a large military base there.15 The army radio receiver site in Nairobi
incorporated a Sigint station, which was described by Joint Planning Staff in 1963 as
‘a very important part of our world wide coverage’.16
The situation was slightly different in Asia because there most British Sigint facilities
were run jointly with Australia’s Sigint organisation, the Defence Signals Directorate
(DSD). Hong Kong was an important centre for combined GCHQ-DSD operations
with a base at Little Sai Wan and a direction finding outpost at Kong Wei.17 In the
late 1950s Britain also began building a large RAF radar site at Tai Mo Shan in the
New Territories, which at 958 metres was the highest point in Hong Kong. The radar
provided early warning for the British Far East Command and the American Pacific
Command and, in addition, acted as cover for an important Sigint facility.18 The DSD
and GCHQ operated another station in Singapore at Chai Kang, near Seletar RAF
5
airbase. Known as CK2 (Chai Kang 2), the installation was manned by Australian
naval, army and air force personnel and GCHQ and British Admiralty civilians.19 In
South Asia, there appears to have been a Royal Navy Sigint site in independent Sri
Lanka during the early 1960s.20
The Royal Navy also manned intercept bases on remote islands in mid-ocean. On
Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, HMS Mauritius telecommunications centre covered a
Sigint station and the navy had another listening post on the isolated Ascension Island
in the South Atlantic.21 There may have been more monitoring sites concealed in
other military bases; in 1961 the Joint Planning Staff devised a radical alternative
defence strategy which would have abandoned most fixed bases outside Europe and
relied on sea borne and air borne forces, island staging posts and facilities in Britain
and Australia to defend interests East of Suez. As a counterpart to this study the JIC
examined the measures that would be needed ‘to ensure the continued availability of
essential intelligence, particularly SIGINT’ if Britain withdrew its East of Suez
garrisons.22
The JIC prepared a paper on ‘The value of overseas bases to the
intelligence organisation’ which, in addition to all the bases discussed above,
considered Gibraltar, Libya, the Seychelles and the West Indies.23 The final JIC report
has not been released however, so it is uncertain if these territories hosted signals
intercept sites or were used for other intelligence purposes.24
The Sigint bases varied in size and importance. In the early 1960s about 1,000 army
and RAF personnel worked at the Pergamos and Ayios Nikolaos stations in Cyprus,
compared to 230 Sigint staff at Dingli on Malta and just 28 on tiny Ascension
Island.25 Defence planners regarded the Malta station as important but thought that if
6
necessary most of its facilities could be replaced by expanding the Cyprus Sigint
sites.26 By contrast the loss of Cyprus would cause
A very serious loss of intelligence unless adequate shipborne interception could
be provided before withdrawal of our present SIGINT facilities. This could not
at best be mounted in less than three years and would entail very high costs.27
Hong Kong and Singapore were also key bases. Defence officials stressed that Hong
Kong was the main source of British intelligence on China and described the Tai Mo
Shan Sigint facilities as ‘of great importance to the United Kingdom and United
States intelligence on China.’28 Australian officials told the British in 1968 that they
rated the Singapore Sigint station as ‘being of extreme value to them’ partly because
of ‘its particular target’, which was almost certainly Indonesia, and partly because its
‘take’ provided a unique contribution to the intelligence exchange with the United
States.29 Overall though, Cyprus appears to have been the most valuable base. Writing
in his memoirs about being JIC Chairman between 1968 and 1970 Sir Edward Peck
referred to the chain of intercept stations in British colonies and ex-colonies and
claimed that ‘Of these, Cyprus was, and still remains, the most important.’30
Aside from the dedicated Sigint bases, GCHQ also intercepted signals from mobile
platforms, such as RAF planes and Royal Navy ships, and from diplomatic premises.
Fitzgerald and Leopold claimed that in the 1950s approximately 15 British embassies
had a permanent GCHQ presence, although this had been reduced to four by the
1980s.31 In a similar vein, Richelson and Ball wrote that in the 1980s the Moscow,
Nairobi, Pretoria and Lilongwe (capital of Malawi) embassies were used for signals
monitoring and probably the missions in Accra, Budapest, Cairo, Freetown, Prague
and Warsaw as well.32 If this was so, it seems likely that during the 1960s GCHQ also
used some of these sites. The former GCHQ employee, Jock Kane, has given an
7
example of these types of operations. Kane told author James Bamford that GCHQ
secretly gathered Sigint from the British embassy in South Yemen.33 After South
Yemen achieved independence from Britain in 1967 Kane and two GCHQ operators
were sent to the embassy under the cover of working for the Diplomatic Wireless
Service. Antennas were set up disguised as flag poles and the team intercepted
Ethiopian signals traffic for the United States and South Yemeni military
communications.
This covert Anglo-American effort to spy on Ethiopian signals illustrates another
central feature of GCHQ: its intimate relationship with the American Sigint
organisation, the National Security Agency (NSA). GCHQ and the NSA were bound
together by the 1946 British-United States Communications Intelligence Agreement
and the 1948 UK-USA Communications Intelligence Agreement (UKUSA).34 These
secret agreements created a tight knit Sigint alliance between the United States,
Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Anglo-Saxon powers agreed to
share information and, as a part of a global network, allocated out responsibility for
different areas of Sigint gathering to each member. The NSA developed its own
overseas Sigint bases, which complemented GCHQ’s chain of listening posts, and
they set up liaison teams at each other’s headquarters.35
There are signs that GCHQ and the NSA closely cooperated during the 1960s. Two
NSA employees, William Martin and Bernon Mitchell, who defected to the Soviet
Union in 1960, claimed that Britain and the United States exchanged information on
cryptanalytic methods and results in reading the codes of other nations.36 A GCHQ
official explained to the Cabinet Office in 1968 that ‘there will continue to be a
8
considerable flow from GCHQ of NSA originated material in hard copy and signal
form’.37 Britain also provided space for American Sigint bases in its colonial
territories. For example, there was an American Sigint facility on Mauritius and in
Cyprus 250 men of the US Naval Security Group carried out work for NSA at a base
at Yerolakkos outside Nicosia.38 The Yerolakkos Sigint base and some co-located
CIA communications facilities had been agreed to by the British in a series of
informal understandings, some of which were merely verbal.39
The Sigint relationship with the United States was not an equal one because the NSA
was much larger and better funded than GCHQ. In the mid 1960s the NSA
commanded around 80,000 staff compared to the 11,500 deployed by GCHQ.40 Sir
Patrick Dean, head of the JIC in the 1950s, observed in 1958 that ‘The United States
effort on intelligence was anything from ten to fifteen times as much as ours’, and
although this estimate probably included other forms of intelligence, it gives some
idea of the disparity in size.41 British officials who went to Washington and saw the
NSA headquarters came back in awe of the organisation’s size and power. After a
1963 visit Major-General Oswald, the Director of Military Intelligence, War Office,
told the JIC that the NSA ‘had been particularly striking for its size and enormous
resources.’42 Peck described a later visit in his memoirs and noted that ‘At the NSA I
was overwhelmed with the mountains of information’.43 But although GCHQ had to
accept being a junior partner the UKUSA agreement gave Britain many benefits; not
just access to NSA Sigint but also American resources that could help GCHQ do
things that might otherwise have been beyond its means. By the early 1960s the NSA
had supplied GCHQ with computers, probably for decryption, and the United States
9
provided the equipment for the Tai Mo Shan radar and Sigint installation in Hong
Kong.44
Against this background the 1960s were a difficult and testing time for GCHQ as
multiple challenges emerged which threatened to disrupt or restrict its activities. One
major problem was the accelerating process of British decolonisation. As the empire
melted away GCHQ’s own empire of overseas Sigint stations also faced dissolution.
Cyprus, Singapore, Malta, Kenya, Aden and Mauritius all achieved independence
during the 1960s and this jeopardised the future of the Sigint stations on their soil and
Britain’s ability to maintain a global collection network. London tried to solve this
problem in different ways. In Cyprus Britain simply refused to grant independence to
the whole of island. Instead, upon independence in 1960 it carved out two Sovereign
Base Areas, Dhekelia and Akrotiri, and continued to hold them under British rule. The
Dhekelia enclave was specifically designed to include the Pergamos and Ayios
Nikolaos Sigint stations and Britain continued to use them during the 1960s.
With Singapore, Malta, Mauritius and Kenya London adopted an alternative
approach. Britain conceded sovereignty to friendly nationalists but signed defence
agreements which allowed it to retain limited military facilities in the country,
including, perhaps unbeknownst to the host government, an intercept site. Singapore
became independent as part of Malaysia in 1963 but Britain retained the right to keep
indefinitely a large military base complex on the island, which covered the Sigint
station.45 Elsewhere Britain had to accept a fixed tenure. A ten year defence
agreement was signed with Malta in 1964, a six year agreement with Mauritius in
1968 and in Kenya, after independence in 1963 Britain was allowed to maintain a
10
signals centre until 1966.46 In the case of Aden neither solution was possible and
decolonisation meant the immediate end of the service Sigint base. Britain was unable
to create a viable, friendly successor government in Aden and had to hand over power
to Marxist-Arab nationalist guerrillas. The colony became part of the People’s
Democratic Republic of South Yemen and there was no chance of Britain being
allowed to retain military installations that could conceal an intercept post. So, as seen
above, GCHQ instead used the British embassy to spy on the South Yemenis and
Ethiopians.
Another problem GCHQ faced was budgetary. During the 1960s the British economy
struggled with chronic balance of payments deficits which eventually culminated in
the forced devaluation of Sterling in 1968. Throughout the decade governments
sought to prop up the pound by cutting state spending and particularly spending
overseas. In this bleak fiscal environment GCHQ was very vulnerable; Sigint required
cutting edge technology and GCHQ needed to invest in expensive equipment such as
advanced electronic interception devices and computers in order to maintain its ability
to intercept and decrypt signals. Furthermore, its global chain of listening posts was a
drain of foreign exchange.
GCHQ evidently experienced financial pressures during the 1960s. In August 1961
the JIC discussed a planned 10% cut in the expenditure of the intelligence
departments for financial year 1962-1963.47 Another JIC document showed that in the
autumn of 1962 Harold Macmillan’s government asked Professor Stuart Hampshire, a
celebrated philosopher and codebreaker in the Second World War, to examine the
future of Sigint ‘in light of the various difficulties – political, technical and financial –
11
which were to be foreseen’.48 Hampshire presented his report by July 1963, although
this is still withheld in the British archives.49 However, Wright, in Spycatcher, painted
a slightly different picture. He claimed that because of concerns over the Sigint
budget and American pressure on Britain to share the costs of developing Sigint
satellites, the 1964-1970 Labour government commissioned a review by Hampshire.50
This review examined whether Britain had the financial resources to maintain its
share of the UKUSA agreement or to develop with the Americans a new generation of
spy satellites. According to Wright, the review’s conclusion was that ‘We could not
possibly afford to lose the UKUSA exchange, but on the other hand, we could remain
in without necessarily funding every technical development pound for dollar.’51
Wright is not always a reliable source and he may have got his time frame wrong or
perhaps Hampshire carried out two separate studies but in any case, the Hampshire
review(s) illustrate the financial squeeze that GCHQ was under. After devaluation the
organisation again had to make economies and a GCHQ official warned in June 1968
that ‘We…cannot afford as much collection effort as in the past.’52
Britain’s economic crisis also had an indirect adverse effect on GCHQ. To balance
budgets and support Sterling the Labour government had to slash overseas defence
spending and was forced to close most military bases East of Suez. In 1968 the
Cabinet decided to pull British forces out of the Persian Gulf and Singapore by the
end of 1971. Since many Sigint interception posts were manned by the services and
concealed and protected by military bases, this decision created problems for GCHQ.
The withdrawal of British military forces East of Suez would remove security and
cover for some Sigint posts and a decision was apparently taken to move them
elsewhere once the services pulled out. The joint DSD/GCHQ station at Singapore
12
was shut down and partially replaced by a facility in Darwin in northern Australia and
the Sigint post in Bahrain appears to have been transferred to the island of Masirah in
the Sultanate of Oman in 1971.53
The triple effects of decolonisation, economic crisis and military withdrawal from
East of Suez made the 1960s a turbulent and disruptive decade for GCHQ but there
was another, more insidious threat to its operations. Aldrich has noted the problems
GCHQ had in vetting its large numbers of staff and during the 1960s there were
several major security breaches.54 In 1961 a Chinese communist spy ring was
uncovered in Hong Kong, which included a translator working at Little Sai Wan,
Chan Tak Fei.55 Chan had been sending information to China for two years. In 1968
British police arrested Douglas Britten, a senior RAF Sigint technician who had spied
for the Soviet Union since 1962, including a four year period when he worked at the
Pergamos station on Cyprus.56 Almost exactly at the same time that Britten was
caught the Soviets recruited a new agent, Geoffrey Prime. Prime was an RAF corporal
at Gatow Sigint base in West Berlin but when he left the service in 1968 he joined
GCHQ with the full encouragement of the KGB.57 He would go on to do serious
damage to British Sigint operations in the 1970s.
Nonetheless, even though GCHQ experienced major disruption and difficulties it was
still able to maintain a global Sigint gathering capability during the 1960s. Its Sigint
collection was aimed at a variety of targets. The JIC gave GCHQ and other agencies a
list of intelligence requirements in order of priority. In 1960 information on the Soviet
strategic nuclear threat topped the JIC’s target list and the greater part of the
intelligence effort was focused on the Soviet Bloc.58 As the 1960s progressed China
13
also became a major area of interest. Lord Mountbatten, the Chief of Defence Staff,
explained to the Australian Prime Minister in March 1964 that ‘Mainland China was
now a first priority target with the J.I.C. London’.59 Indeed, in 1966 and 1967 the JIC
discussed whether intelligence gathering against the Soviet Bloc should be cut back to
allow more resources to be directed at China, which was described as a ‘growth
target’.60
Yet despite the Cold War context, many of GCHQ’s targets in the 1960s were in fact
non-aligned or Western states rather than communist countries. This was partly
because the most active military threats to British interests at the time came not from
the Soviet Union or China but from a trio of radical, anti-imperialist Third World
states: Iraq, Egypt, known then as the United Arab Republic (UAR), and Indonesia.
Iraq made a territorial claim to Kuwait in 1961 and Britain had to rush troops into the
country to forestall a possible invasion. For the rest of the decade London remained
on alert to defend oil rich Kuwait from an Iraqi attack and Mobley has described the
importance of intelligence in giving advance warning of possible hostile Iraqi
moves.61 GCHQ and the Cyprus Sigint base were key elements in this surveillance of
Iraq.62 Sergeant John Berry, who served in the 9th Signals Regiment at the Ayios
Nikolaos Sigint base in Cyprus between 1966 and 1970, later recalled that his main
task had been to chart the activities of the Iraqi army. A small GCHQ team was also
based in Kuwait and RAF Comet and Canberra planes flew flights on the Iranian side
of the Iran-Iraq border to eavesdrop on Iraqi radio communications.
The UAR and Indonesia posed an even more aggressive challenge to Britain than
Iraq. Gamal Nasser, the president of the UAR, had long been the archenemy of British
14
imperialism in the Middle East and had famously humiliated Britain in the 1956 Suez
War. This antagonism intensified after Egyptian forces intervened in the Yemen Arab
Republic (North Yemen) in 1962 and supported its Nasserite Republican government
in a civil war with Royalist rebels. Using the Yemen as a base Nasser sponsored a
revolt in the neighbouring South Arabian Federation, a British protectorate which
included the Aden colony. From 1963 to 1967 the UAR helped Arab nationalists fight
a guerrilla insurgency against British rule in the territory.
In a similar way Indonesia attacked Britain’s position in South East Asia. Between
1963 and 1966 Indonesia tried to break up the new state of Malaysia, which hosted
the Singapore military base and was a key British regional ally. As part of this
campaign called ‘Confrontation’ Indonesian guerrillas carried out raids into Borneo
and made sea landings in Malaya. Britain defended Malaysia against Confrontation
and for three years British and Indonesian soldiers fought a low-level, undeclared war
in the jungles of Borneo and Malaya. The UAR and Indonesia were thus direct and
dangerous opponents of Britain in the mid 1960s and they were key targets for
GCHQ, which could use the Sigint bases in Cyprus, Aden and Singapore to collect
intelligence.
It is possible that GCHQ also spied on Britain’s Asian allies in the Confrontation with
Indonesia. In August 1965, at the height of the Indonesian campaign, the leaders of
Singapore and Malaysia secretly negotiated the separation of Singapore from
Malaysia and it broke away to become an independent city state. This was done
behind the backs of the British, who had virtually no advance warning of the plan, and
it severely undermined British defence strategy in the Far East. London seems to have
15
reacted by trying to make sure that Malaysia and Singapore did not take it by surprise
again. In the weeks following the separation the JIC repeatedly discussed the topic
‘Intelligence on Malaysia and Singapore’ and under this heading the SIS, in
conjunction with GCHQ and MI5, drew up a list of new intelligence requirements,
which were approved by the British High Commissioners in Malaysia and
Singapore.63 At the end of October 1965 the Commonwealth Relations Secretary gave
the go ahead to the list of requirements and measures to implement them.64 A year
later, in a misunderstanding between Britain and Malaysia over the disposal of surplus
military equipment in Borneo, London had information from ‘secret sources’ about
the Malaysian authorities’ thinking.65
If GCHQ did operate against Malaysia and Singapore it would not have been unusual;
in the Sigint world concern for national interests tended to outweigh respect for allies’
privacy and during the 1960s Britain spied on other friendly states, such as fellow
members of NATO. According to Wright, GCHQ targeted France in order to assist
Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community (EEC).66 Turkey and
probably Greece also attracted the attention of GCHQ. These two NATO allies were
locked in a bitter dispute over Cyprus and in 1964 and 1967 Ankara came close to
invading the island to protect the Turkish Cypriots. Such an invasion could not only
trigger a Greco-Turkish war but might also threaten the British Sovereign Base Areas.
Britain therefore needed to be fully aware of Turkish and Greek intentions and it used
the Cyprus Sigint base to eavesdrop. Berry revealed that the Ayios Nikolaos station
had intercepted the communications of ‘NATO partners’ and monitored the planned
sailing of the Turkish fleet towards Cyprus, most likely in 1967.67
16
These were only some of the main targets; GCHQ spied on many other non-aligned or
Western countries. Some of these, like Ethiopia, were targeted in response to
American requests or to meet Britain’s obligations under the UKUSA agreement.
Other states became Sigint targets because of British national requirements. For
example, after a colonial, white minority government in Rhodesia unilaterally
declared independence from Britain in 1965 a ‘Special Signals Unit’ was deployed to
Lusaka, in neighbouring Zambia.68 General Franco’s Spain was targeted because of
its noisy campaign to drive Britain out of Gibraltar. In 1965 the JIC looked at ways to
improve intelligence on Spanish intentions over Gibraltar but concluded that there
was ‘little or no likelihood of improving the state of our intelligence, at least the
SIGINT aspect, for some months.’69 However, by 1969 the Governor of Gibraltar
could report that ‘“warning” both from 291 Signal Unit and other sources has been
further developed and looks much healthier.’70
GCHQ gathered intelligence from its target countries in a variety of ways. Sigint was
(and is) composed of several sub categories: Elint (Electronic Signals Intelligence)
was collected by intercepting emissions from foreign electronic devices, such as radar
systems. Fisint (Foreign Instrumentation Signals Intelligence) was derived from the
emissions produced by the testing of aerospace technology, such as telemetry from
ballistic missile tests, and Comint (Communications Intelligence), the most well
known form of Sigint, was obtained from communication sources such as radio voice
signals, radio teletype and Morse code. Even if foreign communications were securely
encrypted GCHQ could still extract intelligence. Traffic analysis and direction finding
could provide information on the scale, duration, pattern and position of radio
17
transmissions and from this is was possible to work out the location and organisation
of military forces and their operational procedures.
Normally though the most valuable information would be encrypted and to gain the
most benefit GCHQ would not only have to intercept messages but decipher them as
well. Cipher systems were becoming more complex and difficult to solve but GCHQ
had certain strengths in this field. The UKUSA agreement enabled it to work with the
NSA on cracking codes, giving it access to the vast resources and advanced
technology of the American agency. GCHQ also had NSA supplied computers and
skilled, experienced cryptanalysts. A former NSA analyst who dealt with GCHQ staff
in the 1960s later said that
I got to respect the English analysts very highly. They’re real professionals in
GCHQ, and some are master analysts. They’ll stay on the job for twenty-five or
thirty years and learn a lot.71
Certain cryptanalytical short cuts were also available. If Britain wanted to spy on
friendly or neutral nations it could supply them with insecure code machines. After
the Second World War London kept its Ultra code breaking success secret and
according to Kahn, it sold German Enigma machines to Third World governments,
who were blissfully unaware that GCHQ knew how to read Enigma codes.72 In his
biography of SIS Chief Sir Dick White, which was based on interviews with White
and other ex-SIS officers, Tom Bower claimed that during the 1960s Arab states used
Enigma code machines or ‘new encoders purchased from a British manufacturer, not
realising that the secrets of their machinery were passed on to SIS.’73 A passage in an
official report on the Communications Electronic Security Department (CESD) in
1969 strongly implied that Britain did carry out these sorts of operations. The CESD
18
was responsible for arranging the production of British cryptographic equipment and
the secret report noted that
…there is no better way to successful Sigint that to influence selected target
countries by Comsec [communication security] advice to use a source of
equipment desired by Sigint, and this can sometimes be done when UK national
interest and Comsec factors allow.74
Another method was to use human intelligence agencies to help unlock the secrets of
cryptographic systems; what Kahn has called ‘practical cryptanalysis’.75 The CIA and
the KGB suborned foreign cipher clerks, stole cryptographic material, tapped
communication lines and bugged embassies to get information on codes.76 Britain
similarly engaged in ‘practical cryptanalysis’. Wright has described how in the late
1950s and early 1960s MI5 bugged cipher rooms in foreign embassies in London and
tapped their telex lines in order to assist GCHQ’s codebreaking efforts.77 The SIS
operated in the same way against embassies abroad.
Partly by using these means GCHQ seems to have broken the codes of several target
countries. It is hard to know the full extent of GCHQ’s codebreaking achievements in
1960s because this information was a closely guarded secret at the time and most
Sigint material is still withheld by the British government, but it appears that, at a
minimum, GCHQ could read some of the codes of France, the UAR, Indonesia and
perhaps the Soviet Union.
In the case of the main intelligence target, the USSR, the picture is mixed. Sigint did
undoubtedly provide much useful information on the Soviet Union. A British official
noted in 1960 that the bulk of the intelligence on Soviet scientific research and
development on missiles came from U2 spyflights and GCHQ intercepts, which was
19
most likely a reference to Fisint derived from Soviet telemetry.78 Since at the time the
Soviet nuclear missile programme was the priority target for JIC this was a significant
contribution. Matthew Aid has suggested that NSA in the 1960s may even have made
some progress against Soviet high level diplomatic and military cipher systems and
been able to gather Comint.79 The United States allegedly broke the Soviet military’s
Silver code and was able to read communications traffic between Moscow and the
Soviet embassies in Washington, Hanoi and Cairo. Given the close links between the
NSA and GCHQ such American breakthroughs could have aided GCHQ’s
cryptanalytical efforts. Britain also managed to intercept telephone conversations
between Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and President Leonid Brezhnev in 1967,
when Kosygin was staying at Claridge’s Hotel in London and taking part in Vietnam
peace talks.80 On the other hand, a ‘senior GCHQ officer’ told Urban in the 1990s that
against the Soviet Union
there was a time up until the mid-1970s when we used to get useful political and
high-level military communications, but that dried up, party because of Prime.
We never ever had the Soviet diplomatic traffic.81
GCHQ probably had more success in gathering Comint from its Western and Third
World targets. In Spycatcher Wright claimed that GCHQ was able to crack the French
diplomatic ciphers, assisted by MI5 tapping telex cables into the French embassy in
London.82 From 1960 to 1963 Britain could read the high grade traffic coming in and
out of the French embassy. A similar MI5/GCHQ operation may have been
undertaken during Britain’s second application to the EEC in the mid 1960s. In his
biography of White Bower wrote that in 1966 ‘Intercepts placed in the French
embassy in London would provide a daily appreciation of France’s negotiating
position.’83
20
According to Wright GCHQ also broke into UAR ciphers in the mid to late 1950s and
by 1958 could read all the Egyptian diplomatic cipher groups.84 This source may have
been compromised in September 1960 by NSA defectors Martin and Mitchell, who
publicly announced at a press conference in Moscow that the United States had solved
the codes of the UAR and six other countries.85 Presumably after this dramatic exposé
Cairo would have improved its communications security but a former British official
has informed the author that Britain and the United States could still read Egyptian
codes and ciphers to a considerable extent in the 1960s.86
Released British documents do appear to confirm that GCHQ could at least
intermittently read Egyptian military traffic. When Nasser first sent UAR forces into
the Yemen in October 1962 the British commander in chief in the Middle East
immediately asked for photo reconnaissance flights to get information on Egyptian
planes using Yemeni air fields.87 In response, the JIC Chairman, Sir Hugh Stevenson,
told the Chiefs of Staff that the flights would add little extra knowledge because
‘They were already in receipt of a great deal of first class intelligence from special
sources’.88 The RAF had already conceded that ‘other sources, particularly Sigint,
were producing good results.’89 The commander’s request was denied, on the grounds
that ‘In general our special intelligence gives good coverage of activities in the
Yemen.’90 A year and a half later London seems to have lost this intelligence source.
Responding to another request for photo-reconnaissance flights over Yemeni airfields
in April 1964, a British official noted that ‘There is some question of the information
that we have received in the past from SIGINT being no longer available.’91 Writing
on the same matter, the Air Minister mentioned a ‘great reduction in reliable
intelligence on the air order of battle of the UAR forces in the Yemen.’92
21
Comments by Air Marshall Harold Maguire, the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff
(Intelligence), suggest that by 1966 these problems had been resolved and Britain
once more could read UAR military codes. In July 1966 the Chiefs of Staff discussed
UAR military exercises which had taken place at Mersa Matruh on Egypt’s
Mediterranean coast. Britain had received no prior intelligence warning of the
manoeuvres, carried out by a battalion group with air support. Maguire reassured the
Chiefs that:
The lack of warning of a recent UAR exercise at Mersa Matruh was due to a
misunderstanding; our organisation in Cyprus had now been alerted to this and
in future we could expect 48 hours warning of any UAR military activity. 93
Maguire’s confident remarks seem to imply that GCHQ could read Egyptian military
traffic collected by the Cyprus Sigint base.
Indonesian codes proved equally vulnerable. Wright revealed in Spycatcher that
Britain was able to read Indonesian ciphers throughout the Confrontation and two
former British officials have confirmed this to the author.94 British documents also
point to Sigint operations. For example, in 1965 the Foreign Office was worried about
the possible sale of advanced American communications equipment to the
Indonesians because of the ‘intercept aspect’. The Foreign Office wished to ensure
that ‘the GCHQ interests are fully appreciated’.95 Some of the breaks into Indonesian
codes probably came through ‘practical cryptanalysis’ because according to Wright,
MI5 and GCHQ bugged the cipher room in the Indonesian embassy in London but
Britain’s allies may also have helped.96 During an earlier colonial dispute over the
West Irian territory the Netherlands broke the Indonesian diplomatic and military
codes and historian Cees Wiebes has claimed that the Dutch supplied GCHQ with the
22
Indonesian air forces codes in the late 1950s.97 The Australian DSD, working from
the Singapore Sigint base, almost certainly gave support as well. Indeed, Sir Bernard
Burrows, the Chairman of JIC, observed in December 1965 that ‘Australian
intelligence plays a critical role as far as Indonesia and confrontation is concerned.’98
Overall then GCHQ seems to have performed reasonably well in the 1960s. It was
able to read the traffic of several target states and collect Comint. Although it may not
have broken all Soviet ciphers (and little is known of operations against China),
GCHQ could read the codes of the two states sponsoring insurgencies against British
interests, the UAR and Indonesia, and of France, a state which stood in the way of a
central British foreign policy objective, entry into the EEC. These successes raise
questions about the importance of Sigint for British external policy during the 1960s.
How useful and influential was Sigint? Did it help British policymakers achieve their
goals in relation to France, the UAR and Indonesia?
Judging by the claims made in Spycatcher, GCHQ did produce high quality Sigint on
France in the early 1960s. During the British EEC application every move made by
the French was monitored and, in Wright’s words, ‘The intelligence was avidly
devoured by the Foreign Office.’99 Verbatim copies of cables from French President
Charles De Gaulle were regularly passed to the British Foreign Secretary in his red
box. These insights into the French position probably helped British negotiators in the
protracted talks on entry into the Common Market; the Permanent Secretary at the
Foreign Office is supposed to have described the Sigint product as ‘Priceless
material…simply priceless.’100 Yet, as Wright himself admitted, while the Sigint may
have been of great tactical use it did not enable Britain to join the EEC. De Gaulle
23
vetoed British entry in 1963 and in 1967. Despite having good intelligence sources
London was unable to entice, persuade or coerce De Gaulle into dropping his
opposition to British membership of the Common Market.
Britain gathered Sigint on the UAR and other Arab states during the Middle East
crisis of May-June 1967, which culminated in the Six Day War.101 In May 1967
Nasser removed UN peacekeepers from the Israeli-Egyptian border, massed thousand
of UAR troops in Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. On 5 June
Israel responded with a devastating surprise air attack on the UAR air force and it
then swiftly defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. GCHQ followed the
dramatic events from the nearby Cyprus Sigint base. According to Berry, the Ayios
Nikolaos station listened to the Egyptian panic as Israeli planes first attacked their
airfields, helped by fact that the Egyptians, in their confusion, abandoned all attempts
at code.102 Berry even heard an Egyptian soldier cry out to Allah as his tank was hit
by an Israeli shell. Shortly after the war ended a Foreign Office official noted that the
‘intelligence gathering facilities’ in Cyprus ‘have proved of great value in recent
weeks’.103 Britain also had a tap on an Egyptian landline from Cairo to Ismailia which
Nasser believed was totally secure.104 The Sigint may have been supplemented by
human intelligence as it appears that Britain had a high level agent in Egypt in
1967.105
In the build up to the war these sources seem to have provided Britain with sensitive
intelligence on the UAR’s position. On 29 May the Chiefs of Staff were given
detailed information on the UAR units concentrated at Sharm el Sheik, overlooking
the Straits of Tiran, and told that the Egyptians expected an Israeli attack there,
24
possibly by paratroops combined with an amphibious landing.106 The UAR was also
known to have asked the Soviet Union for large quantities of new equipment,
including 200 T62 or T55 tanks. Bower claimed that GCHQ provided ‘the raw
material which anticipated Israel’s attack on its neighbours and its victory after six
days’ and the British assessment of the relative military balance just prior to the war
did correctly predict a rapid Israeli victory over the Arab states.107
Yet in this instance Sigint does not appear to have had a major impact on British
policy.108 Britain disliked Nasser’s aggressive actions and in May Prime Minister
Harold Wilson called for Western intervention to raise the blockade of the Straits of
Tiran. Wilson touted the idea of Britain and the United States organising a
multinational fleet that would keep the Straits of Tiran open to Israeli shipping. As
the crisis unfolded, however, the Foreign Office lost enthusiasm for this proposal.
Officials began to speculate that it might be preferable if Israel took military action
and dealt with Nasser by itself. Presumably this line of thinking was encouraged by
the intelligence assessment, partly based on Sigint, which forecast quick Israeli
success. If Britain had expected an Arab victory or a long war it might have pushed
plans for a multilateral maritime force much harder. But there were plenty of other,
more telling reasons why London backed away from multilateral intervention: most of
the Cabinet disapproved of the scheme, very few maritime nations were willing to
take part and Arab states threatened to retaliate against British oil supplies from the
Persian Gulf.
Sigint on the UAR was perhaps more useful to Britain in south west Arabia where,
unlike in Sinai or the Straits of Tiran, it was itself involved in a conflict with Nasser.
25
In this area Sigint helped British policymakers in several ways. Firstly, it allowed
London to monitor developments in the Yemen Civil War, as the Royalist rebels
fought Egyptian and Republican government troops between 1962 and 1967.
According to Bower, GCHQ intercepted messages between Egyptian army
commanders struggling against the Royalists in the mountains and deserts of the
Yemen.109 Robin Young, the British Senior Adviser (West) in Aden, tracked the
progress of the Royalists using intercepts of Republican and UAR radio traffic.110
This type of intelligence seems to have fed into ministerial debates in London about
whether the Royalists could survive and whether Britain should give them covert
support.111
It is highly likely that Sigint on the UAR forces in the Yemen also revealed Egyptian
efforts to foment a nationalist revolt in the neighbouring South Arabian Federation
(SAF). By 1964 London knew that the UAR military commander in the Yemen was
actively supporting an Arab nationalist guerrilla movement, the National Liberation
Front (NLF), in the British protectorate.112 The UAR had allocated thousands of rifles,
automatic weapons and mines for use in subversive operations and the Foreign Office
even had the names of Egyptian intelligence officers in Yemeni-SAF border towns
like Baidha and Qataba who directed and coordinated NLF activity.
Britain did not passively accept the Egyptian subversion in the SAF. It responded in
kind, carrying out covert operations in the Yemen, and it seems to have employed
Sigint as an aid to these activities. Jones and Mawby have shown that Britain gave
limited support to the Yemeni Royalists in the civil war and, perhaps more
significantly, stimulated an insurrection against the Egyptians on the Yemeni-SAF
26
border.113 In April 1964 ministers agreed to supply money to dissident Yemeni tribes
up to 20 miles over the border and encourage them to attack the Egyptians and the
guerrillas.114 These operations were codenamed ‘Rancour’. After some initial set
backs SIS took tighter control over the ‘Rancour’ operation and for the next three
years British officials supplied arms, money and training to tribesmen and directed
their attacks on the Egyptians in the Yemen.115 Sigint appears to have identified
targets for raids; discussing the SIS operations Bower wrote that ‘intelligence from
GCHQ intercepts pinpointed the enemy’s location and weak points.’116 On a tactical
level ‘Rancour’ does seem to have worked because it drove the UAR intelligence
officers out of Baidha and reduced rebel activity near the border.117 The assessment of
Lord Shackleton in 1967 was that
RANCOUR operations in the Yemen have been extremely successful. They
have been effective both in driving the Egyptians back from parts of the South
Arabian frontier and in causing the Egyptians considerable inconvenience by
tying down a disproportionate number of Egyptian forces. Information we have
received demonstrates that as a result the Egyptians have even been near to
losing control in some areas.118
Another way to apply counter pressure on the UAR was through propaganda. During
the Yemeni Civil War Egyptian planes secretly bombed Royalist fighters and villages
with poison gas and British ministers were keen to expose Nasser’s use of chemical
weapons.119 If it could be revealed that he was gassing his fellow Arabs in the Yemen
it might tarnish his exalted image in the Arab world. Although the gas raids took place
in remote parts of the Yemen London was well informed about them. A British
official noted in 1967 that there was ‘a considerable amount of intelligence’ available
on this topic, ‘much of it of a very high security classification.’120 At least some of
this intelligence was Sigint: commenting on an Egyptian mustard and phosgene gas
bombing raid in the Yemen in May 1967 the Chief of Defence Staff informed
27
Defence Secretary Denis Healey that ‘We have firm evidence through intercepts of
the use of gas in these attacks’.121 The information needed to be handled carefully in
order to protect intelligence sources but if collaborative accounts could be provided
from quotable sources, such as Red Cross officials and journalists visiting the
Royalist areas in the Yemen, it could be exploited by the covert propaganda arm of
the Foreign Office, the Information Research Department (IRD).122 In 1967 the IRD
successfully spread unattributable propaganda about the Egyptian use of gas to media
outlets in the Indian sub-continent and Europe.123 For example, it supplied material to
the popular French photo-news weekly Paris Match, which in March 1967 ran a story
on Egyptian gas attacks in the Yemen.124
Sigint thus helped Britain to embarrass and harass the Egyptians over their
intervention in the Yemen. But, as in the case of France and entry into the EEC, while
Sigint was tactically useful it did not enable Britain to achieve its overall objective. In
spite of his difficulties in the Yemen Nasser continued to support the nationalist rebels
in the SAF and in 1967 Britain was forced to withdraw from the territory and grant
independence. Indeed, in contrast to the apparently good intelligence on the Yemen
British intelligence on the insurgency in the SAF was poor. The army had to rely on
interrogation of suspects to gain information on the guerrillas and GCHQ does not
appear to have been of much assistance.125
It was in the Confrontation with Indonesia that GCHQ had its greatest success. During
the conflict British policymakers had very good intelligence on Indonesia and the JIC
even received ministerial commendation for the quality of its reporting.126 Some of
the intelligence came from human sources but Sigint seems to have been more
28
important; Anthony Golds, who headed the Foreign Office/Commonwealth Relations
Office’s Joint Malaysia-Indonesia Department from 1964 to 1965, described it as
‘vital’ in the Confrontation.127 GCHQ could read the Indonesian military and
diplomatic codes and it could therefore give advance information on Jakarta’s plans
and intentions, although due to the peculiarities of the Indonesian political system this
intelligence was not always perfect. The Indonesian president, Sukarno, was an
erratic, capricious dictator, prone to impulsive moves, such as announcing in January
1965 that Indonesia was leaving the United Nations without first informing the
Indonesian UN mission in New York.128 Since in this case Sukarno did not even tell
his own diplomats about his plans access to Indonesian diplomatic traffic could not
give Britain any forewarning. Furthermore, by 1965 many Indonesian army leaders
were opposed to the Confrontation policy and they secretly obstructed operations in
Borneo, which may have confused British officials reading the orders being sent
down to them from Jakarta.129 Yet despite the sometimes Byzantine complexities of
the Indonesian state the Sigint was helpful. Looking back at the Confrontation with
the Chiefs of Staff, Sir John Grandy, the commander of British forces in the Far East
from 1965 to 1967, observed that ‘We had enjoyed excellent intelligence of
Indonesian intentions which had contributed greatly to the success of the campaign’130
Policymakers could also use Sigint to monitor how the Indonesians reacted to British
operations in the Confrontation and decide how far they could go without provoking a
wider war with Sukarno.131 To curb the Indonesian guerrilla raids the British
government authorised patrols across the border into Kalimantan, the Indonesian part
of Borneo. From July 1964 British troops could offensively patrol up to 3,000 yards
over the border. However, there was considerable apprehension in London about
29
taking such aggressive action and ministers wanted the operations, which took place
over an ill-defined jungle border, to be kept secret, limited and deniable. In November
1964 Admiral Sir Varyl Begg, the commander-in-chief in the Far East, asked for
permission to extend the patrols to five miles inside Kalimantan but this request was
rejected by the Chiefs of Staff, who feared that deeper operations might not be
credibly deniable and could escalate the conflict.
The Chiefs soon had to rethink their position. In December 1964 ‘intelligence reports
from delicate sources’ which ‘cannot be disclosed to the Malaysians’ (probably
Sigint) revealed that the Indonesians planned to massively increase their forces on the
border with Malaysia, deploying two brigades to Kalimantan and two brigades to the
island of Sumatra opposite Malaya.132 To counteract the build up Begg again
requested an extension of the cross border patrols and this time he used Sigint to
support his case. Decrypted Indonesian military signals showed that the local
commanders in Kalimantan always reported any clash, even those in which their
troops were defeated, as a great victory.133 They had been loath to report any of
Britain’s earlier cross border operations and instead had described imaginary attacks
of their own. Begg told Australian and New Zealand diplomats that
…local Indonesian commanders have proved reluctant to admit to Djakarta the
circumstances in which they have suffered casualties. They have represented
rather that these occurred in “aggressive” operations they have carried out on
Sarawak’s [part of Borneo] soil.134
Begg therefore suggested to the Chiefs of Staff that larger British cross border raids,
attacking Indonesian camps, staging areas and supply dumps up to a depth of 10,000
yards, offered no greater risk, as the ‘[Indonesian] High Command might well remain
in ignorance of them.’135
30
Begg’s proposal was accepted by the Chiefs of Staff and senior ministers and in
January 1965 he was given permission to extend operations up to 10,000 yards over
the Indonesian border and to make attacks on specific targets.136 These new
operations were codenamed ‘Claret’. Sigint seems to have helped persuade
policymakers to approve deeper cross border operations. Certainly Wilson was aware
of the Sigint evidence; in a message to the Australian Prime Minister informing him
about ‘Claret’ he predicted that the Indonesians would probably not complain as they
had not reacted to Britain’s earlier patrols and ‘the local commanders seem to have
been reluctant to report accurately to their superiors what happens on their side of the
border.’137
The decision to approve ‘Claret’ was significant because the operations proved to be
very effective.138 They inflicted a high casualty ratio on the Indonesians and forced
them to withdraw their patrol bases from the frontier area and dissipate their efforts in
defensive measures. Despite the build up of Indonesian troops for the rest of the
conflict Jakarta was unable to increase or even sustain its level of guerrilla activity in
Borneo. It can therefore be argued that Sigint gave London the necessary confidence
to take the cross border military measures which in the end contained Confrontation.
Furthermore, Sigint helped plan individual ‘Claret’ operations, probably identifying
targets for attack.139
Sigint also assisted British covert propaganda during the Confrontation. In October
1965 there was an attempted coup in Jakarta which the Indonesian army blamed on
the Indonesian communist party (the PKI). The army responded by brutally repressing
the communists and it began to challenge Sukarno for political control. An IRD team,
31
based in Singapore and led by Norman Reddaway, encouraged the power struggle by
mounting a vigorous covert propaganda campaign against Sukarno and the PKI.
Reddaway was keen to exploit Sigint in this propaganda offensive. In late October
1965 he discussed with Brian Tovey, the GCHQ chief in Singapore, the possibility of
getting newsworthy pieces from the intelligence machinery and passing them on
unattributably to publicists.140 On at least one occasion this does seem to have
happened. Lashmar and Oliver claimed that Britain learnt from Sigint about secret
contacts between Sukarno’s government and the disgraced PKI leader Aidit, who at
the time was being hunted by the military for involvement in the coup plot. This story
was then publicised by Reddaway via media outlets in Hong Kong.141
It is clear that Britain used Sigint in similar ways in the Confrontation and in
Yemen/Aden. Sigint provided information on Indonesian and Egyptian military
movements and intentions, supported secret British cross border operations,
‘Rancour’ and ‘Claret’, and provided material for unattributable propaganda by IRD.
Yet the outcomes of the two conflicts were very different. Whereas Britain had to
withdraw in ignominy from the SAF, in the Confrontation it achieved its goals. The
Indonesian army emerged victorious in the internal power struggle and in March 1966
it effectively seized control from Sukarno.142 The army then proceeded to make peace
with Malaysia and Britain and ended Confrontation in August 1966. For once the
tactical advantages given by Sigint had carried over into a strategic success for
Britain.
For GCHQ as an organisation the 1960s were a difficult decade. Decolonisation,
military withdrawal from East of Suez and financial crises all adversely affected its
32
operations. The global network of intercept sites shrank down and became more
dependent on insecure treaty arrangements with independent states rather than bases
in British colonies. These changes were largely due to Britain’s decline as a global
power as the country completed decolonisation and grappled with an overvalued
currency and a sluggish economy. Britain’s armed forces, which were intimately
connected to GCHQ, experienced a similar contraction during the 1960s. Yet
although GCHQ was weakened it remained a powerful Sigint organisation. It was still
one of the leading Sigint agencies in the world, benefitted from close ties to the NSA
and could gather Sigint beyond Europe in sensitive areas such as the Middle East and
South East Asia. With these assets GCHQ continued to produce valuable intelligence
for British policymakers in the 1960s. In December 1964, at a time when Britain was
struggling with the Egyptians in Yemen/Aden and the Indonesians in Borneo,
Burrows told the JIC that ‘Everyone recognised the immensely important part that
Sigint played in intelligence, and particularly its present operational value.’143
GCHQ spied on a wide variety of countries. The main targets were the Cold War
adversaries, the Soviet Bloc and China, but a considerable amount of effort also went
into tapping the communications of non-communist states. In some ways this
reflected the threats Britain faced; often the challenge to British interests came not
from communism but from Third World anti-imperialists like Nasser and Sukarno. It
must be noted though that GCHQ freely targeted Western allies as well. The case of
Malaysia illustrates the ambiguous nature of alliance outside the charmed circle of
UKUSA members. Britain and Malaysia were bound by a defence agreement and they
fought together against Indonesian Confrontation. Malaysia also hosted a British
Sigint base in Singapore. But despite this closeness there are signs that Britain
33
withheld intelligence on Indonesia from the Malaysians during Confrontation,
probably because it was based on Sigint.144 And Britain may even have spied on
Malaysian communications from 1965.
Most information about GCHQ’s codebreaking successes is still retained but there is
evidence that Britain could read the codes of France, Indonesia and the UAR, and
perhaps some of the military codes of the Soviet Union. This was a significant
achievement for these states were key actors in Britain’s international relations in the
1960s and high priority targets. Almost certainly many other target countries’ ciphers
were vulnerable to the work of GCHQ’s cryptanalysts and a former official has
claimed that Britain was able to read the codes of several Arab states apart from the
UAR.145 However, GCHQ’s impressive ability to break codes and gather high quality
Sigint did not necessarily enable Britain to achieve its diplomatic or military goals
and the period illustrates the limitations as well as the strengths of intelligence. In
dealing with France and Egypt Britain derived tactical benefits from Sigint but it was
still unable to enter the EEC, influence the Middle East crisis of 1967 or retain
possession of the SAF and Aden. It was only in the Confrontation with Indonesia that
Britain could use the advantages given by Sigint to defeat an opponent.
1
P. Fitzgerald and M. Leopold, Stranger on the Line: The Secret History of Phone Tapping, (London:
Bodley Head 1987); N. West, GCHQ: the Secret Wireless War, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
1986); R. Aldrich, ‘GCHQ and Sigint in Early Cold War, 1945-70’, in M. Aid and C. Wiebes (eds),
Secrets of Signals Intelligence during the Cold War and Beyond, (London: Frank Cass 2001); J.
Richelson and D. Ball, The Ties that Bind, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin 1985).
2
R. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, (London: John Murray 2001).
34
3
Ibid p. 541.
4
The British National Archive (TNA), Kew, London, DEFE 4/135 COS (61) 29th Meeting, Minute
1B, Annex JCE(60) 55 , 9 May 1961. DEFE 4/157 COS (63) 51st Meeting, Minute 2, Annex,
Amendments to JP 74/63, 27 Aug. 1963.
5
Aldrich, ‘GCHQ and Sigint in Early Cold War, 1945-70’, in Aid and Wiebes, op cit, p. 67.
6
TNA PREM 13/1203, Wigg to Wilson, 17 Aug. 1966.
7
TNA DEFE 24/165 Minute D/DS6/138/44 England to MS, attachment ‘Executive Committee of the
Army Board, Management of Army Intelligence’, 16 Dec. 1965.
8
TNA DEFE 23/23 Letter U.F 130 ‘J.A.D.’ to Secretary, 3 Feb. 1961; TNA DEFE 24/444 Minute
Devereux to Head of DSI, 5 Feb. 1965
9
TNA DEFE 24/444 Minute Peck to VCDS, 30 Dec. 1964; Minute DAC/P(65) 2 by Melville, 18 Jan.
1965; Minute Devereux to Head of DSI, 5 Feb. 1965. Wright claimed that Britain was spending over
£100 million a year on Sigint in the mid 1960s but this seems an overestimate. P. Wright, Spycatcher,
(New York, Viking Penguin1987), p. 246-247.
10
Ray Card, a former RAF Russian linguist, reminisces about serving at the Sinop GCHQ site in 1959
at www.rafling.co.uk/raflingnews.htm
11
In 1985 Richelson and Ball listed current and some historic British overseas Sigint bases, although
they did not disclose the source of this information. Richelson and Ball, op cit, p. 335-336.
12
TNA ADM 1/27870 Draft memo ‘Future of Malta as a naval base’ by VCNS, not dated; DEFE 4/212
COS(67) 11th Meeting, Minute 1B Annex DP Note (67) 3, 10 Feb. 1967; DEFE 4/115 COS(59) 4th
Meeting, Minute 7 Annex JP(59) 2 Appendix, 13. Jan. 1959; DEFE 7/2239 COS(61)19, Appendices B
& C, 19 Jan. 1961.
13
TNA DEFE 4/147 COS(62) 57th Meeting, Minute 2, Annex JP(62) 105, 20 Sept. 1962.; DEFE 5/138
COS(63) 152 Appendix F, 30 April 1963.
35
14
The army complement in Bahrain included 54 ‘Y’ ‘SIGS’. Y signals was another euphemism for
intercept units. TNA DEFE 5/165 COS(66)3 Annex A, Appendix 4, 12 Jan. 1966.
15
TNA DEFE 6/64 JP(60) 103, 14 Dec. 1960.
16
TNA DEFE 4/157 COS(63) 51st Meeting, Minute 2, Annex JP(63) 74, 27 Aug. 1963; DEFE 4/140
COS(61) 76th Meeting, Minute 3, Annex JP(61) 148, 14 Nov. 1961.
17
TNA CO 968/763 Black to Wallace, 16 March 1964; www.littlesaiwan-367su.org.uk/history.html.
18
TNA DEFE 25/74 Memo ‘Hong Kong - No 117 Signals Unit’, not dated; DEFE 13/534 DP59/66, 6
Oct. 1966.
19
Websites of former workers at CK2 provided most of this information. See
www.eropa.net/3telu/html/history.htm; www.freewebs.com/roverjag/;
www.minister.defence.gov.au/2000/sea.html.
20
Aldrich, op cit, p. 401.
21
TNA FCO46/3 Minute Sykes to Private Secretary, 14 Nov. 1967; DEFE 6/105 DP Note 28/67, 8
Nov. 1967; AIR 2/17628 ‘Air Ministry Signals Plan No. 126/63 by Street, 29 July 1963.
22
DEFE 13/311 JP(61) 91, 14 Sept. 1961.
23
TNA CAB 159/36 JIC(61) 42nd Meeting, Minute 4, 17 Aug. 1961; CAB 158/44 JIC(61) 63, not
dated.
24
Relevant unreleased documents are TNA CAB 159/36 JIC(61) 43rd Meeting, Minute 7, 24 Aug.
1961; CAB 158/44 JIC(61) 63, not dated; CAB 163/19 (whole file). Richelson and Ball list Gibraltar as
a Sigint base. Richelson and Ball, op cit, p. 335.
25
TNA DEFE 7/1836 Draft brief for Minister ‘Strength of Forces in Cyprus’, 16 Sept. 1959;
DEFE 7/2239 COS(61) 19, Appendices B and C, 19 Jan. 1961; ADM 1/27870 Draft Board Memo
‘Future of Malta as a naval base’ by VCNS, not dated; DEFE 6/93 DP 140(64) , 7 Jan. 1965.
26
TNA DEFE 7/1728 JP(62)59, 4 May 1962; DEFE 7/1730 JP(63) 11, 18 Feb. 1963.
36
27
TNA CO 968/831 DP11/65 Draft memo ‘Defence Review 1965 – coordinating study’, 19 Feb. 1965.
28
TNA CO 968/764 DP(64) 137, 20 Jan. 1965; DEFE 13/534 DP 59/66, 6 Oct. 1966.
29
TNA CAB 163/70 Memo ‘Points arising from DCDS(I)’S Far East Tour 31 Oct-26 Nov 68’ by
DCDS(I), 2 Dec. 1968.
30
E. Peck, Recollections 1915-2005, (New Delhi: Pauls Press 2005) p. 232.
31
Fitzgerald and Leopold, op cit, p. 90.
32
Richelson and Ball, The Ties that Bind, op cit, p. 335-336.
33
J. Bamford, Body of Secrets, (London: Arrow Books 2002) p.161-162; Time Out, No. 664, May 13-
19 1983, ‘Private ears lopped off’.
34
M. Aid, ‘The National Security Agency and the Cold War’ in M. Aid and C. Wiebes (eds), Secrets of
Signals Intelligence during the Cold War and Beyond, (London: Frank Cass 2001).
35
J. Bamford, The Puzzle Palace, (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1983) p. 401-402, 411-413.
36
New York Times, 7 Sept. 1960
37
TNA DEFE 31/9 Carey-Foster to Bristow, 22 March 1968.
38
TNA FCO 46/3 Minute Sykes to Private Secretary, 14 Nov. 1967; DEFE 4/115 COS(59) 4th
Meeting, Minute 7 Annex JP(59) 2 Appendix, 13 Jan. 1959; United States National Archives and
Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, (NARA) Record Group 59, National Security Action
Memoranda Files, 1961-1968, NSAM 71, Memo Battle to Bundy, Attachment Tab C, 7 Sept. 1961.
39
NARA, Record Group 59, National Security Action Memoranda Files, 1961-1968, NSAM 71,
Memo Battle to Bundy, Attachment Tab C, 7 Sep. 1961.
40
TNA CAB 159/39 JIC(63) 53rd Meeting, Minute 10, 24 Oct. 1963; NARA Record Group 59,
Diaries of David Bruce, Diary October 1 1967 to December 31 1967, entry for 8 Dec. 1967.
41
TNA DEFE 25/11 Extract from COS(58) 9th Meeting, Minute 1, 4 Dec. 1958.
42
TNA CAB 159/39 JIC(63) 53rd Meeting, Minute 10, 24 Oct. 1963.
37
43
Peck, op cit, p. 233.
44
TNA CAB 159/38 JIC(62) 37th Meeting, Minute 8, 2 Aug. 1962; DEFE 25/74 Memo ‘Hong Kong –
No 117 Signals Unit’, not dated.
45
Cmnd 263, (London: HMSO 1957); Cmnd 2094 (London: HMSO, 1963).
46
TNA DEFE 4/244 COS(69) 47th Meeting, Minute 1, Annex DP Note 216/69, 25 Nov. 1969; CAB
163/93 Paper DOP 527/68 by the Defence Operations Staff, 5 Nov. 1968; Cmnd 3629 (London: HMSO
1968); TNA DEFE 4/157 COS(63) 51st Meeting, (2) Annex JP74/63, 27 Aug. 1963; CO 968/769
Telegram LONSOS 174 London to Commonwealth Secretary, 6 Sept. 1963; Telegram TS02/CDR HQ
RAFEA to MOD, 16 Sept. 1963; PREM 11/4889 Telegram 98 London to Nairobi, attached
‘Memorandum of intention and understanding’, 26 May 1964; ‘Copy of letter dated 3rd June 1964’
Stanley to Aspin, not dated.
47
TNA CAB 159/36 JIC(61) 42nd Meeting, Minute 1, 17 Aug. 1961.
48
TNA CAB 159/38 JIC(62) 42nd Meeting, Minute 2, 6 Sept. 1962.
49
TNA DEFE 5/140 COS(63) 262, 24 July 1963.
50
Wright, op cit, p. 246-247.
51
Ibid. p. 247.
52
H. Lanning and R. Norton-Taylor, A Conflict of Loyalties, (Cheltenam: New Clarion Press 1991),
p. 31.
53
In 1971 the signals centre in Bahrain transferred to Masirah and Richelson and Ball list Masirah as a
GCHQ Sigint base. TNA AIR 29/4338 Operation Order 1/71 by Stubbings, 25 June 1971; CAB
163/116 Minute COS 1237/17/4/19 MOD to Chiefs of Staff, 17 April 1969; Richelson and Ball, op cit,
p. 192, 335.
54
Aldrich, ‘GCHQ and Sigint in Early Cold War, 1945-70’, in Aid and Wiebes, op cit, p. 90-91.
55
D. Campbell, ‘Spies who spend what they like’, New Statesman, 16 May 1980.
38
56
West, op cit, p. 249-250.
57
D. Cole, Geoffrey Prime: the imperfect spy, (London: Robert Hale, 1998).
58
TNA DEFE 23/23 Review of Service Intelligence by Templer, 16 Dec. 1960; CAB 159/41 JIC(64)
41st Meeting, Minute 9, 13 Aug. 1964; CAB 159/45 JIC(66) 1st Meeting, Minute 13, 6 Jan. 1966.
59
TNA DEFE 25/105 Record of a meeting between Mountbatten and Menzies on 3 March 1964, 4
March 1964.
60
TNA CAB 159/45 JIC(66) 1st Meeting, Minute 13, 6 Jan. 1966; CAB 159/47 JIC(67) 27th Meeting,
Minute 1, 29 June 1967.
61
R. Mobley, ‘Deterring Iraq: the UK Experience’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol 16, No 2,
Summer 2001.
62
C. Aubrey, Who’s Watching You, (London: Penguin 1981) p. 142; D. Campbell, ‘Official Secrecy
and British Libertarianism’, Socialist Register, 1979; TNA CAB 159/43 JIC(63) 3rd Meeting, Minute
9, 21 Jan 1965; AIR 20/12133 Flight Approval Form, 13 July 1967; AIR 20/12134 Flight Approval
Form, 21 Feb. 1968
63
TNA CAB 159/44 JIC(65) 34th Meeting, Minute 9, 19 Aug. 1965; JIC(65) 35th Meeting, Minute 1,
26 Aug. 1965; JIC(65) 36th Meeting, Minute 2, 2 Sept. 1965, JIC(65) 37th Meeting, Minute 1, 9 Sept.
1965; JIC(65) 39th Meeting, Minute 4, 23 Sept. 1965. Some minutes are still retained.
64
TNA CAB 159/44 JIC(65) 46th Meeting, Minute 2, 28 Oct. 1965
65
TNA DO 169/438 Draft telegram 1397 London to Kuala Lumpur, 13 Oct. 1966. This could of course
have come from a human source rather than Sigint.
66
Wright, op cit, p. 110-112.
67
G. Robertson, The Justice Game, (London: Vintage 1999), p. 110; Aubrey, op cit, p. 142.
68
TNA DEFE 13/577 Minute Gibbon to ‘PS/SofS’, 30 Oct. 1966.
69
TNA DEFE 11/669 Brief by Lewis for COS meeting on 16 March 1965, 15 March 1965.
39
70
TNA DEFE 11/603 Begg to Elworthy, 3 Nov. 1969.
71
‘U.S. Electronic Espionage: A Memoir’. Ramparts, Vol 11, No. 2, Aug. 1972.
72
David Kahn, book review, ‘Enigma Unwrapped – The Ultra Secret by F.W. Winterbotham’, New
York Times, 29 Dec. 1974.
73
T. Bower, The Perfect English Spy, (New York: St Martin’s Press 1995) p. 250.
74
TNA DEFE 32/18 Burroughs to Ryland,, 3 June 1969, attached ‘Report of the CESD Working
Party’.
75
D. Kahn, The Codebreakers, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1966) p. 685-687.
76
Ibid; Aid, ‘The National Security Agency and the Cold War’ in Aid and Wiebes, op cit, p. 41.
77
Wright, op cit, p.82-84, 109-113.
78
TNA AIR 19/978 Letter JIC/1482/60 Hunt to Bufton, attached minute ‘Comments on J.I.B.’s
Memorandum’, 9 Sep. 1960.
79
Aid, ‘The National Security Agency and the Cold War’ in Aid and Wiebes, op cit, p. 43-45.
80
J. Young, ‘Britain and LBJ’s War, 1964-1968’, Cold War History, Vol. 2, No. 3, April 2002.
81
M. Urban, UK Eyes Alpha, (London: Faber and Faber 1996), p. 6.
82
Wright, op cit, p.109-112.
83
Bower, op cit, p. 349.
84
Wright, op cit p.109.
85
New York Times, 7 Sep. 1960.
86
This official did not wish to be identified. Henceforth he will be referred to as Official A.
87
TNA DEFE 13/398 Telegram MIDCOS 70 Aden to London, 6 Oct. 1962.
88
TNA DEFE 4/148 COS(62) 66th Meeting, Minute 2, 23 Oct. 1962.
89
TNA CAB 159/38 JIC(62) 47th Meeting, Minute 1, 8 Oct. 1962.
90
TNA DEFE 25/128 Telegram COSMID 62 CDS to CinC Middle East, 24 Oct. 1962.
40
91
TNA DEFE 25/129 ‘Chief of Staff Committee Meeting Thursday 2nd April 1964 Yemen – Special
Flights’, not dated.
92
TNA DEFE 13/569 Minute Fraser to CAS, 8 April 1964.
93
TNA DEFE 4/203 COS(66) 35th Meeting, Minute 1, 19 July 1966.
94
Wright, op cit, p. 113. Letter from Anthony Golds to author, 17 June 2000. The second official did
not wish to be identified. Henceforth he will be referred to as Official B.
95
TNA DEFE 25/166, Minute Wright to Acting Chief of Defence Staff, 26 July 1965.
96
Wright, op cit. p. 113.
97
C. Wiebes, ‘Dutch Sigint during the Cold War, 1945-94’ in Aid and Wiebes, op cit, p. 257-259.
98
TNA CAB 150/59 Burrows to Trend, 23 Dec. 1965
99
Wright, op cit, p. 111.
100
Ibid, p. 112.
101
Letter from Official A to author.
102
Aubrey, op cit, p. 142; Robertson, op cit, p. 110.
103
TNA FCO 46/30 Minute Sykes to Allen, 23 June 1967.
104
Letter from Official A to author.
105
Through bugging the SIS station in Beirut the KGB learned that in 1967 SIS had ‘an important
agent’ in Egypt ‘with access to President Nasser’. C. Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive: the KGB in
Europe and the West, (London: Allen Lane 1999) p. 443.
106
TNA DEFE 4/218 COS(67) 42nd Meeting, Minute 1, 29 May 1967.
107
Bower, op cit, p.349; F. Brenchley, Britain, the Six Day War and its aftermath, (London: IB Tauris,
2005), p. 140; Foreign Relations of the United States, Vol XIX Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967,
(Washington: US Government Publishing Office 2004), p. 239, Memorandum of Conversation, June 2,
1967.
41
108
R. McNamara, Britain, Nasser and the balance of power in the Middle East, (London: Frank Cass
2003), p. 245-261.
109
Bower, op cit, p. 246;
110
P. Hinchcliffe, ‘Robin Young’s Diaries’, in P. Hinchcliffe, J. Ducker and M. Holt, Without Glory in
Arabia, (London: I.B. Tauris 2006), p. 165.
111
Bower, op cit, p. 246; TNA CAB 130/189 GEN 776/ 2nd Meeting, 31 Oct. 1962.
112
TNA FO 371/174635 Telegram 670 FO to Cairo, 4 May 1964
113
C. Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1965, (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004);
S Mawby, British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates 1955-67, (London: Routledge 2005).
114
TNA DEFE 25/129 Minute PM/64/52 Butler to Home, 21 April 1964; DEFE 13/570 Minute
Mountbatten to Thorneycroft, 3 July 1964; Memorandum ‘Aid to the Royalists’ ‘Annexed to CDS
copy of Aide Memoire’, 19 July 1964.
115
TNA DEFE 13/570 Minute Fisher to Sandys, 14 July 1964.; CO 1055/133 ‘Notes toward a
Definition of a policy for South Arabia’ by da Silva, not dated; P. Hinchcliffe, ‘The Political Officers
in the Western Aden Protectorate’, in P.Hinchcliffe, J. Ducker and M. Holt, Without Glory in Arabia,
(London: IB Tauris, 2006), p. 98-99.
116
Bower, op cit, p.254.
117
TNA CO 1055/133 ‘Notes toward a Definition of a policy for South Arabia’ by da Silva, not dated;
CO 1055/62 Telegram Personal 907 Aden to JIC, 5 Nov. 1964.
118
Mawby, op cit, p 141.
119
TNA FCO 8/710 Minute by Brenchley, 20 Jan. 1967.
120
TNA DEFE 55/418 Minute Potts to DCS(Army), 18 Dec. 1967.
121
TNA DEFE 13/572 Minute CDS to Healey, 19 May 1967.
122
Ibid; FCO8/710 Minute by Brenchley, 20 Jan. 1967
42
123
TNA DEFE 11/529 SAAG(67) 9th Meeting, 21 June 1967; DEFE 11/533 SAAG(67) 13th Meeting,
28 Sept. 1967.
124
TNA FCO 46/97 Cooper to Rennie, 20 Jan. 1967; DEFE 24/569 SAAG(67) 5th Meeting, 4 April
1967; Paris Match, No 934, 4 March 1967.
125
TNA CAB 148/78 OPDO(AS)(67) 1, 1 Feb. 1967.
126
D. Easter, Britain and the Confrontation with Indonesia, 1960-66, (London: Tauris Academic
Studies 2004), p. 195.
127
Letter Golds to author, 17 June 2000.
128
NARA Record Group 59, Box 3334 UN 6-2 Withdrawal, Exclusion, Indon, 1/1/64, Telegram 1222
Jakarta to State Department, 4 Jan. 1965.
129
U. Sundhaussen, The Road to Power, (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press 1982) p. 187-189;
H. Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1978), p. 70-75.
130
TNA DEFE 4/ 214 COS(67) 18th Meeting, Minute 2, 7 March 1967.
131
Easter, op cit, p. 94, 115-116.
132
Archives New Zealand (ANZ), Wellington, ABHS 7148 ACC W4628 Box 115, LONB 106/2/7 Part
3, Telegram 458 Singapore to Wellington, 24 Dec. 1964.
133
Letter from Official B to author.
134
ANZ, ABHS 7148 ACC W4628 Box 115 LONB106/2/7 Part 4, Telegram 20 Singapore to
Wellington, 17 Jan. 1965.
135
Easter, op cit, p. 123-124.
136
Ibid, p. 124-125.
137
Ibid, p. 125.
138
TNA DEFE 4/198 COS(66) 18th Meeting, Minute 2, COS 1394/30/3/66 Minute Lapsley to Chiefs
of Staff, 31 March 1966; DEFE 32/18 Cheyne to Bayne, 8 Jul. 1969; Easter, op cit, p. 194.
43
139
TNA DEFE 24/648 Minute by Carver, 24 April 1973.
140
TNA FO 1101/5 Minute Reddaway to Tovey, 30 Oct. 1965.
141
P. Lashmar and J. Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, (Sutton Publishing: Stroud, 1998), p. 9;
TNA FO 1101/12 Reddaway to Hopson, 11 Feb. 1966; FO 1101/7 Telegram 92 Singapore to Hong
Kong, 8 Dec. 1965.
142
D. Easter, ‘British Intelligence and Propaganda during the ‘Confrontation’, 1963-1966’, Intelligence
and National Security, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 2001, p. 94-99.
143
TNA CAB 159/42 JIC(64) 61st Meeting, Minute 5, 17 Dec. 1964.
144
ANZ, ABHS 7148, Acc W4628 Box 115 LONB 106/2/7 Part 4, Letter Wade to Secretary External
Affairs, 3 Sept. 1965; TNA DEFE 4/184 COS(65) 21st Meeting, Minute 1A, 27 April 1965; CAB
159/43 JIC(65) 8th Meeting, Minute 3, 28 Feb. 1965.
145
Letter from Official A to author.
44