GCHQ. Richard Aldrich
secret joint group from the CIA, NSA, the State Department and military intelligence to watch the Middle East round the clock.[37] Its main source of information was an expansion of the U-2 spy plane operations from Wiesbaden covering the Middle East. The CIA’s own U-2 official history claims that this allowed them to predict the attack on Egypt three days before it took place.[38] This is probably an exaggeration: the U-2 evidence of growing forces on the ground was not precise enough to make such a forecast. Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, told Eisenhower he believed the Israelis were about to attack Jordan. Eisenhower attached special significance to NSA reports of an increase in signals traffic between Tel Aviv and Paris.[39] Almost certainly from sigint, the Americans had also picked up news of a secret meeting between the British Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, and the French in Paris on or about 15 October. This was the very sensitive meeting that sealed the deal over the Suez invasion. Allen Dulles recalls: ‘I remember I had a long talk with Foster [Dulles] about what this might mean in view of the fact that we were not otherwise informed about it.’[40] But Eisenhower personally dismissed the significance of the military build-up on Cyprus, refusing to believe that Britain would be ‘stupid enough to be dragged into this’. Remarkably, six weeks after the invasion of Suez, many in the CIA were still uncertain whether the British had colluded directly with the Israelis.[41] Both NSA and the CIA had also failed to predict the Russian invasion of Hungary, so 1956 was not their best year.[42]
What is remarkable is the rather poor performance of policy makers, despite the availability of excellent sigint. Regarding Egypt, GCHQ code-breakers were probably aided by awful Arab security mistakes. Outrageously, Cairo sent the frequent articles by Nasser confidant Mohamed Heikal in the Al-Ahram newspaper to Egyptian embassies via secret code. This was extremely helpful to GCHQ cryptanalysts who were able to compare the encoded messages with the open source articles in Al-Ahram and accordingly derive intelligence on the Egyptian encryption setting. Moreover, the work of the cryptanalysts was also accelerated in various mischievous ways. The Western allies appear to have supplied various Middle Eastern countries with code machines which had vulnerabilities known to NSA and GCHQ. Alongside this technique, that involved a weakened key length, British and American agents also bugged the various cipher rooms in foreign embassies, suborned cypher clerks and therefore saw their cryptographic documents.
Yet this had an unexpectedly helpful impact on the Soviet position. On 2 November 1956, the Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev told the Egyptian ambassador in Moscow, el-Kouni, that the USSR would stir public opinion against the Western invasion but no military aid would be forthcoming. However, after the Soviets successfully suppressed the uprising in Hungary, Khrushchev altered his view and became more bullish. On 5 November, the USSR despatched threatening messages to Britain, France and Israel insisting they terminate their invasion. The telegram sent to London hinted at nuclear missile attacks and warned that Moscow was ‘fully determined to crush the aggressors by the use of force.’ The next day Eden and the British cabinet opted to halt the Anglo-French operation and decided on a ceasefire. Peter Wright, in his controversial memoir, insists that Sigint convinced the Joint Intelligence Committee that Moscow was about to intervene. Apparently, one message acquired by GCHQ suggested that there had just been a meeting between the Soviet Foreign Minister and el-Kouni at which Moscow explained their plans to mobilise aircraft ready for a confrontation with Britain. Wright insists that: ‘The panic provoked by this cable … did as much as anything to prompt Eden into withdrawal.’ Meanwhile the CIA warned Eisenhower that the Soviets might intervene, most likely via Syria.
Fascinatingly, this was probably a Soviet deception. As David Easter has shown, the USSR may have exploited their knowledge that Britain had broken Egyptian high-level cyphers to project these threatening signals to London. Peter Wright explains that soon after the GCHQ listening device was installed in London’s Egyptian London, MI5 observed a Soviet team of ‘sweepers’ checking out the embassy for bugs and microphones. They seem to have found the listening device next to the cypher machine but curiously they did not address it or deal with it. Khrushchev later admitted to the Egyptians that he had used them as a channel of confusion, explaining: ‘we had to use you as a tool in this deception’. This referred to reports that Moscow was preparing to act in the region.[43]
Deliberate American pressure on the pound also eventually forced Britain’s ignominious withdrawal from Suez, and contributed to Eden’s sudden resignation in January 1957. Eden’s foreign policy may have failed, but the intelligence support he received had been excellent. In the wake of Suez, Selwyn Lloyd wrote to Eric Jones, the Director of GCHQ, congratulating him on the torrents of Middle East intelligence that sigint had provided during the crisis, particularly after the seizure of the canal. ‘I have observed the volume of material which has been produced by G.C.H.Q. relating to all the countries in the Middle East area,’ he wrote, suggesting that the traffic of many countries was being read, and added: ‘I am writing to let you know how valuable we have found this material and how much I appreciate the hard work and skill involved in its production.’ Jones passed on these congratulations to units such as the Army’s 2 Wireless Regiment on Cyprus and the RAF’s 192 Squadron.[44] There had also been shipborne signals interception by the Royal Navy. The RAF airborne signals element was especially important during the invasion. The ageing RB-29 Washingtons had been despatched from Watton to map the characteristics of Egyptian anti-aircraft defence. This included the habit of shutting down air-defence radar routinely just after midday – a priceless piece of information.[45]
At a higher level, GCHQ read much of Cairo’s diplomatic traffic with key embassies in the region during the mid-1950s, such as those in Amman and Damascus.[46] It also read traffic with Egypt’s London Embassy.[47] No less importantly, GCHQ stepped up its watch on the Soviets. On 15 November 1956, Britain’s leaders were reassured that there was ‘still no evidence from signals intelligence sources of any large-scale Soviet preparations to intervene by force in the Middle East’.[48] However, there had been problems. Some of the newly civilianised sigint sites had complained about working round the clock during the crisis, causing managers to wonder about the wisdom of non-military intercept operations.[49]
Despite GCHQ’s operational success, the Suez Crisis left a problematic legacy. It led directly to the eviction of GCHQ from some of its more valuable real estate in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. In December 1956 GCHQ was just opening a large and well-equipped secret sigint station covering the Indian Ocean at Perkar on Ceylon, which had been constructed at a cost of close to £2 million. The Ceylonese government had wanted to free up access to the old sigint site at HMS Anderson for redevelopment. The purpose of the GCHQ site at Perkar was hidden from the Ceylonese, requiring the British to generate a cover story. Much debate had taken place in London over whether to let the Ceylonese Prime Minister, Solomon Bandaranaike, in on the real function of the station. GCHQ decided against candour, fearing ‘leakage’.[50] British officials had always been convinced that ‘the real purpose could be easily disguised’.[51]
Endless effort had gone into the Perkar site. The base had been upgraded to monitor signals traffic from ‘all bearings’, and boasted a vast aerial farm that covered more than four hundred acres.[52] Yet the Suez operation effectively destroyed this expensive new facility almost as soon as it was completed. The Ceylonese were incensed at Eden’s imperial escapade, and believed the British had refuelled ships in Ceylon en route to the invasion of Egypt. They now demanded a schedule for the removal of all foreign bases, without exception. The Treasury was aghast, stating that even a brief visit to Ceylon ‘brings home the complexity of these installations’ and ‘their vital importance’. Officials came up with the preposterous idea of using service personnel in civilian clothes in the hope of assuaging the Ceylonese.[53] Bandaranaike stamped his foot, insisting that all the British, however attired, had to go. A compromise was agreed: ‘The GCHQ station can be given up entirely, but we should like to keep it in operation for five years.’ Ultimately, Britain had lost the best site in the Indian Ocean.[54]
GCHQ felt the reverberations of Suez elsewhere. In Iraq, Britain enjoyed a good relationship with the ruler King Faisal. As a result, the British had been allowed to retain a number of bases. One of these was RAF Habbaniya, not far from Baghdad. Superficially this looked like so many military aerodromes in the Middle East, but in fact it housed 123 Signals Squadron, later 276 Signals Squadron, which ran a large sigint monitoring station. Airborne sigint flights from Habbaniya