GCHQ. Richard Aldrich
point was the infamous ‘Buster’ Crabb incident. This offered Cabinet Ministers a first-hand glimpse of the sheer scale of political embarrassment that could be generated by bungled surveillance operations.
In April 1956 the Soviet cruiser Ordjoninkidze carried the Soviet Premier, Nikolai Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Communist Party, on a goodwill visit to Britain. Despite some robust exchanges between the Soviets and Anthony Eden, Churchill’s successor as Prime Minister, the visit went well, and the Soviet delegation departed on 27 April 1956. However, even as it left the press had begun to speculate about the mysterious disappearance of a British naval diver, Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb RNVR, in the vicinity of the visiting Soviet cruiser. Fourteen months later, in June 1957, a headless and handless body in a diving suit was recovered from the sea near Pilsey Island in the English Channel. Over the years, lurid tales of possible KGB abduction or beheading have circulated. However, newly released intelligence files show that Crabb was almost certainly killed by being drawn through the ship’s propellers. Churning the propellers at intervals was a standard defence against inquisitive divers whose presence was regularly suspected during such visits.
Buster Crabb had been the lead man on ‘Operation Claret’, an attempt by SIS to gain intelligence from the underwater inspection of the cruiser. He was one of the Royal Navy’s most experienced divers, and despite being demobbed in 1948 he was often recalled to help with difficult dives, including rescue work on submarines lost in accidents. Even at this early stage of the Cold War, such secret operations required political approval. But in this instance the system had broken down. The SIS officer who was tasked with securing the clearance for Operation Claret had suffered a family bereavement and had left the office before it had been obtained. His colleagues presumed that the green light had been given, but in fact it had not. The first rule of intelligence management – having political clearance – had been broken, and the cost for the whole British intelligence community was high.[33]
What mattered to Eden was the public furore and the humiliation he suffered in the House of Commons. Not only had SIS bungled an unapproved mission, it also failed to cover its tracks. Despite the clumsy efforts of the local Special Branch to hide the evidence, including ripping out pages from the register of the hotel where Crabb had stayed, the press was soon on the trail. Journalists quickly established that this was an SIS mission, and that no ministerial authority had been given. Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the opposition, enjoyed taunting his opponent on the issue. Eden was furious and decided to take disciplinary action, telling the Ministers concerned to order their staff to cooperate fully with the ensuing investigation. This process cast a long shadow over all the intelligence agencies, and ushered in an era of closer political control over special operations of every kind.[34]
The head of the inquiry, Sir Edward Bridges, a somewhat nineteenth-century figure, employed the JIC to help him ferret out all aspects of the Crabb incident. As a former Cabinet Secretary, Bridges identified ‘certain questions’ of a broader nature. While intrusive intelligence operations clearly had a capacity to cause international repercussions, the systems for their authorisation were unclear.[35] Bridges recommended a broader inquiry reviewing all of Britain’s strategic intelligence and surveillance activities, and assessing ‘the balance between military intelligence on the one hand, and civil intelligence and political risks on the other’. Eden gave this job to Sir Norman Brook, the current Cabinet Secretary, working with Patrick Dean, Chairman of the JIC.[36] This review had immediate consequences for intelligence. In April 1956, coinciding with Khrushchev’s visit to Britain, some of the first examples of the CIA’s high-flying U-2 spy planes had arrived at RAF Lakenheath. These aircraft were mostly known for their work with high-altitude photography, but some of their missions were also sigint-orientated. Eden now decided that this, and a host of other special operations, had to stop, and the U-2s were sent to alternative bases in Germany.[37]
Eden’s angry response had some unintended benefits. In 1952 Sir Stewart Menzies, Chief of SIS, had retired and was replaced by General Sir John Sinclair. The mediocre Sinclair had previously been Director of Military Intelligence, and while he was more competent than his predecessor, he was not a moderniser. He was now fired as a result of the Crabb incident; after the multiple inquiries he was pleased to go, and confessed to a friend in the sigint community that things were ‘getting too hot for me’. In the summer of 1956 Eden plumped for Sir Dick White, hitherto the Director General of MI5, as the new Chief of SIS.
White was a man of enormous energy, and a forward thinker. Together with his SIS staff officer, Harry ‘Shergy’ Shergold, he set about dragging SIS kicking and screaming into the mid-twentieth century. For the first time in almost two decades the organisation had an effective manager at the top, and it now developed into a really effective service.[38] White’s arrival also marked the formal end of SIS influence over sigint. Sinclair was the last Chief of SIS to chair the London Signals Intelligence Board, Britain’s highest sigint authority; this duty passed to Eric Jones, the Director of GCHQ.[39]
Eden’s review was bad news for sigint special operations. As we have seen, no less secret than the spy flights were the submarine missions. These were now being conducted by the British and the Americans on the basis of mutual exchange, swapping product for product. However, Eden’s anger at the Buster Crabb incident meant that British submarine operations were cancelled. British officers in Washington spoke of their embarrassment that their half of the transatlantic deal could not be delivered on, warning that British efforts would soon be eclipsed by American submarine commanders in the Atlantic, who were pushing ahead ‘so as not to be outdone by the Pacific submariners’. Like Bletchley Park and Enigma a decade before, British Naval Intelligence wanted to keep its dominant position in the game of European submarine sigint. It urged not only that the programme be restored, but that it be followed by ‘a bigger and better operation’.[40]
As predicted, by the end of 1956 the US Navy was indeed beginning its own independent sigint operations off Murmansk. Initially the American Office of Naval Intelligence had decided that the British were not even to be informed. However, they eventually realised that it would be foolhardy not to draw on the more extensive British experience of similar operations in these waters. Commander John Coote, who had been on the Murmansk run several times with the Turpin, and had joined the Americans on the USS Stickleback in the Pacific, was called in to brief the first American crew. This was on the understanding that he told no other British naval officers in Washington. These new American submarine intelligence operations off Murmansk had been triggered by two factors. First, the cancellation of British operations. Second, and ironically, the US Navy had used the reports of previous British intelligence operations in the region to persuade the State Department that ‘the risks of detection are negligible’. Admiral Robert Elkins, the senior British naval officer in Washington, warned First Sea Lord Admiral Mountbatten that British intelligence prestige, which was currently high, would soon suffer ‘unless we resume these activities ourselves’.[41]
In 1957 a new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, came to the rescue. Intrusive operations using British aircraft, ships and submarines for sigint and photography were gradually resumed. Between 1956 and 1960, twenty U-2 aircraft were involved in overflights, often from British bases. Some of these even used British pilots. Most of the deep-penetration flights were launched from Adana in Turkey, staging through Pakistan, and six RAF pilots were based there. By 1957, Britain’s elite Super-T submarines were gradually emerging from under the shadow of the Crabb incident, and were back in action on their perilous runs against the Soviet Northern Fleet.
In September 1957, HMS Taciturn took its turn to head north on what were routinely eight-week secret patrols. Most of the files relating to these highly secret missions remain closed. However, fortunately for us this ‘mystery trip’ was recorded by Michael Hurley, a young submariner, in what was undoubtedly an illegal personal diary. Setting sail from Portsmouth on 4 September, Commander Morris J. O’Connor chose not to tell his crew about the nature of the voyage until they were under way. Two days later, the crew were briefed. They were ‘going to snoop on the Russian Fleet exercises’ in the Arctic, and if they were detected it would be ‘very unpleasant and most dangerous’. O’Connor explained that they would be running submerged most of the time, and would keep radio silence. On their return they were to say nothing of their mission, ‘not even to