Spying on Nasser: British Signals Intelligence in Middle East Crises and Conflicts, 1956–67

Abstract

This article examines British signals intelligence on Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1958 Middle East Crisis and the Egyptian intervention in the Yemen. It explains the production of signals intelligence and reviews the evidence that GCHQ could read Egyptian and other Arab communications. It then identifies some of the intelligence provided by GCHQ and considers its influence on British policy.

Notes

¹Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1991) pp.193, 294; Clive Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, 1962–1965: Ministers, Mercenaries and Mandarins: Foreign Policy and the Limits of Covert Action (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press 2004) pp.35, 96, 116. Leading works dealing with British policy towards Nasser are Nigel Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955–59 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press 1996); Stephen Blackwell, British Military Intervention and the Struggle for Jordan: King Hussein, Nasser and the Middle East Crisis, 1955–1958 (London: Routledge 2009); Keith Kyle, Suez (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1991); Spencer Mawby, British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates 1955–67 (London: Routledge 2005); Robert McNamara, Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East, 1952–1967 (Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2003); Simon Smith, Reassessing Suez 1956: New Perspectives on the Crisis and its Aftermath (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008).

²An American National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) guide defined ‘Special Intelligence’ as ‘the unclassified term which is used to identify COMINT in the unclassified environment’. National Reconnaissance Office, Review and Redaction Guide for Automatic Declassification of 25-Year-Old Information, 2008, p.149, <http://www.nro.gov/foia/docs/foia-rrg.pdf> (accessed 5 May 2011). The warning ‘This document contains code word material’ was printed on the front of CIA reports containing Comint. For an example, see CIA, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (CIA FOIA), <http://www.foia.cia. gov/>, Current Intelligence Weekly Review, SC No. 00578/63, 8 February 1963 (accessed 9 September 2011).

³Matthew Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency (New York: Bloomsbury Press 2009); Richard Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harper Press 2010). See also David Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, Intelligence and National Security 23/5 (2008).

⁴The British National Archive (TNA) HW 80/4 British–US Communication Intelligence Agreement, 5 March 1946; HW 80/11 UK–US Communications Intelligence Agreement (UKUSA Agreement), not dated.

⁵TNA HW 80/6 Technical Conference for the Implementation of the US–British Communications Intelligence Agreement 11–27 March 1946, Appendices C, E and F, not dated.

⁶Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, pp.683–5; TNA T296/279 Memorandum ‘Concept of Integration’, Appendix B, by Deputy Director GCHQ, 24 August 1961; Aldrich, GCHQ, pp.161–3.

⁷Aid, The Secret Sentry, p.135.

⁸Letter from Frank Brenchley to the author, 12 July 2007.

⁹James Bamford, Body of Secrets: How America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ Eavesdrop on the World (London: Arrow Books 2002) pp.585–9.

¹⁰Abdel-Khaleq Farouk, ‘Memoir of a Collapse’, Review of The First Story, by Gamil Matar, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, No. 671, 19–25 December 2002, <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/617/bo3.htm> (accessed 17 January 2011).

¹¹Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, pp. 691–2.

¹²Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London: Harper Collins 1996) pp.217–8; Peter Wright, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (London: Viking Penguin 1987) pp.79–80.

¹³Victor Hamilton, ‘I Chose Freedom’, Izvestia, 22 July 1963, p.6.

¹⁴Wright, Spycatcher, pp.83–4.

¹⁵Ibid., p.84. Egypt broke diplomatic relations with Britain during the Suez War but the Egyptian ambassador and his staff were still in London until at least 8 November 1956. See TNA FO 371/119335 Minute Ramsden to Newsam, 8 November 1956.

¹⁶TNA CAB 176/59 Minute Goodman to Dean, 7 December 1956.

¹⁷Lucas, Divided We Stand, pp.109, 116–7; Scott Lucas and Alistair Morey, ‘The Hidden ‘Alliance’: The CIA and MI6 Before and After Suez’, Intelligence and National Security 15/2 (2000) pp.101–2.

¹⁸Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (New York: Overlook Press 2002) pp.482–3; Wright, Spycatcher, pp.84–5.

¹⁹TNA ADM 116/6136 ‘Naval Report on Operation Musketeer’, Appendix IV, Intelligence, 15 February 1957.

²⁰TNA AIR 20/10621 Lloyd to Jones, 20 September 1956.

²¹Aldrich, Hidden Hand, p.489; TNA AIR 24/2426 Report by Barnett on Operation Musketeer, Appendix I, ‘Intelligence Section’, 27 November 1956.

²²TNA WO 288/97 War Diary G(Int) HQ 2 Corps, ‘Aug 56 – Dec 56’, 5 November 1956.

²³Wright, Spycatcher, p.85.

²⁴Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1955–1957, Volume XV, Arab–Israeli Dispute, Document 395, Memorandum of Conversation between Hoover and Makins, 13 June 1956.

²⁵Mohamed Heikal, Sphinx and Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Arab World (London: Collins 1978) p.71.

²⁶Kyle, Suez, p.457.

²⁷Wright, Spycatcher, p.85.

²⁸FRUS 1955–1957, Volume XVI, Suez Crisis, Document 518, Memorandum of a Conference with the President, 6 November 1956.

²⁹Ibid.; Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (London: Heinemann 1966) pp.90–1.

³⁰FRUS 1955–1957, Volume XVI, Suez Crisis, Document 517, Telegram London to State Department, 6 November 1956.

³¹TNA CAB 195/15 CM (80) 56, 6 November 1956.

³²TNA CAB 128/30 CM(80) 80th Conclusions, 6 November 1956.

³³Lucas, Divided We Stand, pp.291–5; Kyle, Suez, pp.464–6.

³⁴Wright, Spycatcher, pp.85–6.

³⁵Heikal, Sphinx and Commissar, p.72.

³⁶TNA DEFE 11/122 Telegram JIC(ME) ISUM No. 11, Mid East Main to Ministry of Defence, 9 November 1956; Telegram JIC(ME) ISUM No. 12, Mid East Main to Ministry of Defence, 10 November 1956.

³⁷TNA AIR 20/10046 Telegram CS767/13 Air Ministry to HQ MEAF, 13 November 1956.

³⁸Aldrich, GCHQ, p.159.

³⁹Aid, The Secret Sentry, p.50.

⁴⁰TNA DEFE 13/47 Minute Head to Lennox-Boyd, 16 November.

⁴¹CAB 195/ 15 CM(83)56, Item 5, 13 November 1956.

⁴²Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 84, 109.

⁴³David Mowry, ‘Betrayers of the Trust’, Cryptologic Almanac 50th Anniversary Series, May–June 2002, <http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/crypto_almanac_50th/Betrayers_ of_the_Trust.pdf> (accessed 24 January 2011).

⁴⁴James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1983) p.190.

⁴⁵Thomas Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, Book II Centralization Wins, 1960–1972 (Fort Meade, MD: Centre for Cryptologic History NSA 1995) p.472, <http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_histories/cold_war_ii. pdf> (accessed 12 December 2011); Bamford, Puzzle Palace, pp. 201–2; Hamilton, ‘I Chose Freedom’.

⁴⁶TNA DEFE 13/615 Minute DCDS(I) to Healey, ‘Release of Sigint Records’, 15 May 1969. Aldrich suggests that the three defectors referred to were Martin, Mitchell and Jack Dunlap. However, while Dunlap was a Soviet agent within the NSA he did not defect to the USSR, choosing instead to kill himself upon discovery in 1963. Aldrich, GCHQ, p.355.

⁴⁷Graham Fry, ‘The Uses of Intelligence: The United Nations Confronts the United States in the Lebanon Crisis, 1958’, Intelligence and National Security 10/1 (1995) p.64.

⁴⁸Ibid., p.73.

⁴⁹TNA CAB 158/33 JIC(58) 83 Lebanon and Jordan, 8 August 1958; FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, Document 60, SNIE 36.4-58, 5 June 1958.

⁵⁰Fry, ‘The Uses of Intelligence’, pp.69–78; Irene Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press 1997) pp.248, 264–72; Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press 2004) pp.214, 218; Wilbur Eveland, Ropes of Sand (London: W.W. Norton and Co. 1980) p.279.

⁵¹TNA FO 371/134126 Memorandum ‘The Lebanon’ by the Levant Department, 24 June 1958.

⁵²FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, microfiche supplement, Document 123, 369th Meeting of the National Security Council, 19 June 1958.

⁵³TNA PREM 11/2387 Telegram 3884 Foreign Office to Washington, 19 June 1958.

⁵⁴TNA PREM 11/2387 Telegram 1844 Washington to Foreign Office, 8 July 1958; FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, Document 116, Memorandum of a Conversation, 7 July 1958.

⁵⁵TNA PREM 11/2387 Telegram 1844 Washington to Foreign Office, 8 July 1958.

⁵⁶TNA FO 371/134133 Beeley to Hayter, 29 August 1958; Letter marked ‘Personal and Secret’, 19 August 1958.

⁵⁷TNA FO 371/134133 Letter marked ‘Personal and Secret’, 19 August 1958.

⁵⁸FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, microfiche supplement, Document 160, Minutes of meeting in the president's office, 14 July, attached to Minute Cutler to Dulles, 14 July 1958.

⁵⁹TNA WO 216/930 Note on ‘Middle East Crisis 1958’, not dated.

⁶⁰Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser, pp.171–5; Blackwell, British Military Intervention and the Struggle for Jordan, pp.110–11, 116–17.

⁶¹Ibid.; Nigel Ashton, ‘A Microcosm of Decline: British Loss of Nerve and Military Intervention in Jordan and Kuwait, 1958 and 1961’, The Historical Journal 40/4 (1997) pp. 1074–75.

⁶²Nigel Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press 2008) pp.75, 77.

⁶³TNA CAB 128/32 CC(58) 58th conclusions, 16 July 1958.

⁶⁴TNA CAB 195/17 CC(58) 58, 16 July 1958.

⁶⁵Ibid.

⁶⁶TNA WO 216/930 Note on ‘Middle East Crisis – 1958’, not dated.

⁶⁷TNA WO 216/930 Minute of meeting held by CIGS, 16 July 1958; Note ‘Para I of minutes of meeting held at 1700 hrs on 16 July ’58’, 18 July 1958.

⁶⁸TNA WO 216/930 Note ‘Para I of minutes of meeting held at 1700 hrs on 16 July ’58’, 18 July 1958.

⁶⁹FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, Document 179, Memorandum of a conference with the president, 16 July 1958; Document 181, Telegram Amman to State Department, 16 July 1958.

⁷⁰Ibid., Document 181, Telegram Amman to State Department, 16 July 1958.

⁷¹TNA CAB 21/3252 Telegram 857 Amman to Foreign Office, 16 July 1958.

⁷²TNA CAB 128/32 CC(58) 59th conclusions, 16 July 1958.

⁷³FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, Document 179, Memorandum of conference with the president, 16 July 1958; Document 184, Telephone Conversation Macmillan and Dulles, 16 July 1958.

⁷⁴Ibid., Volume XI, Document 182, Telephone Conversation Macmillan and Dulles, 16 July 1958.

⁷⁵TNA CAB 128/32 CC(58) 59th conclusions, 16 July 1958.

⁷⁶FRUS 1958–1960, Lebanon and Jordan, Volume XI, Document 150, Telegram State Department to UN Mission, 16 July 1958.

⁷⁷Alistair Horne, Macmillan, 1957–1986 (London: Macmillan 1989) p.96.

⁷⁸Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90 (New York: St Martin's Press 1995) pp.243, 246. White was the Head of SIS from 1956 to 1968.

⁷⁹TNA DEFE 13/398 Telegram MIDCOS 69 Aden to London, 5 October 1962; Telegram MIDCOS 70 Aden to London, 6 October 1962.

⁸⁰TNA DEFE 13/398 Tel MIDCOS 78 Aden to London, 22 October 1962; ‘Yemenis' Bombing Raid on Aden Amirate’, The Times, 23 October 1962.

⁸¹TNA CAB 159/38 JIC(62) 47th Meeting, Item 1, 8 October 1962.

⁸²TNA DEFE 4/148 COS(62) 66th Meeting, Item 2, 23 October 1962.

⁸³TNA DEFE 13/398 Telegram COSMID 62 London to Aden, 24 October 1962.

⁸⁴TNA DEFE 4/148 COS (62) 67th Meeting, Item 4, 25 October 1962.

⁸⁵TNA DEFE 13/398 Telegram 893 Colonial Office to Aden, 26 October 1962.

⁸⁶Bower, The Perfect English Spy, p.246.

⁸⁷Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, pp.35, 115–16.

⁸⁸TNA FO 371/168833 Minute by Brenchley, 21 May 1963.

⁸⁹Jesse Ferris, ‘Soviet Support for Egypt's Intervention in Yemen, 1962–1963’, Journal of Cold War Studies 10/4 (2008) pp.22–3, 31–2.

⁹⁰FRUS 1964–1968, Near East Region, Volume XXI, Document 464, Memorandum from Davies and Saunders to Rostow, 8 December 1967; Bower, The Perfect English Spy, p.250.

⁹¹TNA DEFE 13/15 Minute Fraser to Douglas-Home, 19 March 1964.

⁹²Ibid.; DEFE 25/129 Telegram MIDCOS 110 Aden to MOD, 1 April 1964.

⁹³TNA DEFE 25/129 ‘Chief of Staff Committee Meeting Thursday 2nd April 1964 Yemen – Special Flights’, not dated.

⁹⁴TNA DEFE 13/15 Draft minute on ‘Photographic Reconnaissance of the Yemen’, Secretary of State for Defence to Prime Minster, attached to minute Ridsdale to Secretary of State for Defence, 2 April 1964.

⁹⁵Letter from Frank Brenchley to the author, 12 July 2007.

⁹⁶Aid, The Secret Sentry, p.134.

⁹⁷TNA CO 1035/183 Telegram Personal 1018 Colonial Office to Turnbull, 8 November 1965.

⁹⁸Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, pp.97–8; TNA CO 1055/133 ‘Notes toward a Definition of a policy for South Arabia’ by da Silva, not dated.

⁹⁹Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, pp. 97–98; TNA CO 1055/133 ‘Notes toward a Definition of a policy in South Arabia' by da Silva, not dated; Peter Hinchcliffe, ‘The Political Officers in the Western Aden Protectorate’ in Peter Hinchcliffe, John Ducker and Maria Holt (eds.) Without Glory in Arabia (London: IB Tauris 2006) pp.98–9; Mawby, British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates, pp.140–1.

¹⁰⁰Bower, The Perfect English Spy, p.254.

¹⁰¹Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, pp.697–8.

¹⁰²Andrew Terrill, ‘The Chemical Warfare Legacy of the Yemen War’, Comparative Strategy 10/2 (1991) pp.110–15.

¹⁰³TNA DEFE 55/418 Minute Potts to DCS(Army), 18 December 1967.

¹⁰⁴Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, p.697.

¹⁰⁵CIA FOIA, Scientific Intelligence Digest, SC/67-3, March 1967.

¹⁰⁶TNA FCO 8/710 Telegram JICTEL 60 Foreign Office to Beirut, 26 January 1967; Minute by Brenchley, 20 January 1967.

¹⁰⁷TNA FCO 8/710 Minute by Brenchley, 3 February 1967; CIA FOIA, Scientific Intelligence Digest, SC/67-3, March 1967. On 10 January a Ministry of Defence official asked the Director General of Intelligence for further information on Egyptian use of a toxic blistering agent in Yemen. This minute was marked ‘TOP SECRET – TRINE’. TRINE was a Category III Comint codeword used to mark out documents which contained high level Comint or revealed success or processes in the production of Comint. TNA DEFE 31/31 Minute Ellis Rees to DGI, 10 January 1967.

¹⁰⁸CIA FOIA, Scientific Intelligence Digest, SC/67-3, March 1967; CAB 159/47 JIC(67) 20th Meeting, Item 1, 11 May 1967.

¹⁰⁹TNA FCO 8/712 Draft telegram Foreign Office to Washington, 2 August 1967.

¹¹⁰CIA FOIA, Scientific and Technical Intelligence Report, OSI-STIR/SC/67-6, 31 August 1967.

¹¹¹TNA FCO 8/710 Minute by Brenchley, 20 January 1967; FCO 46/97 Minute Barclay to Clive, 24 January 1967.

¹¹²TNA FCO 8/710 Minute by Brenchley, 20 January 1967.

¹¹³Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, pp. 698.

¹¹⁴TNA FCO 46/97 Cooper to Rennie, 20 January 1967; DEFE 24/569 SAAG(67) 5th Meeting, 4 April 1967; Rene Sicart, ‘Dans la guerre oubliee du Yemen des bombes a gaz’, Paris Match, no. 934, 4 March 1967.

¹¹⁵Bamford, Puzzle Palace, p.495.

¹¹⁶Easter, ‘GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s’, pp.694, 698–700; Aldrich, GCHQ, pp.164–8.