GCHQ

by Richard Aldrich

  For two decades, Cyprus had not only been a superb source of intelligence on events in the Middle East through comint, it had also provided spectacular intelligence on Soviet strategic weapons and been the West’s most important source of war warning. What had long bothered Britain’s intelligence experts most was the possibility of surprise attack. If the Soviets opted for full mobilisation, or if they involved the rest of the Warsaw Pact in war preparations, Britain expected to know about it at least a month in advance, since such activities would be hard to disguise. However, if they launched a surprise nuclear attack with missiles and aircraft, the chances of warning about this were poor. The JIC had warned:

  We could be certain that a decision to attack had been made only if we succeeded in intercepting the decision. We have virtually no chance of doing this and we must, therefore, rely on interpreting the significance of military and other moves and preparations: in the event of a surprise attack we may never obtain such information.

  In other words, sigint was not expected to offer reliable advance warning. However, British intelligence was working on a top-secret solution to this seemingly impossible problem, code-named ‘Project Sandra’.2

  Project Sandra was a highly classified facility that was being developed on Cyprus. The equipment involved was partly a form of sigint collection and partly a kind of Over the Horizon Radar.3 It bounced radio waves off layers in the upper atmosphere and down onto its target well beyond the horizon, as would later be unsuccessfully attempted at Orford Ness. However, in Cyprus, unlike Suffolk, conditions were perfect, giving a range of as much as two thousand miles. This offered the possibility of looking deep inside southern Russia, the heart of the missile- and aircraft-testing area. With many operational rocket sites and bomber bases, this region was also the most likely source of a sneak attack by Russia. The prototype was code-named ‘Zinnia’, and was initially developed by the Division of Scientific Intelligence with assistance from GCHQ. Begun in its earliest form in 1955, Zinnia was originally intended for the surveillance of aircraft, but by 1959 it had been extended to missiles. Its radar used a constant wave rather than pulsed transmissions to avoid disclosing its purpose.4 The scientific intelligence branch of the CIA became a development partner, and in late 1960 new versions of Zinnia were tested at Cape Canaveral, detecting the full range of American rocketry, including Atlas, Jupiter, Thor, Titan and even an early version of the Polaris missile. Twenty missiles were fired in all, and Zinnia performed brilliantly.5

  The final decision to initiate Project Sandra, taken on 1 November 1961, was a difficult one, since Britain enjoyed other secret sources of intelligence on Soviet missiles.6 The previous year, SIS had achieved one of the greatest agent recruitments of the Cold War. This was Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a Soviet Army missile expert who was providing superb intelligence on Moscow’s strategic forces. Burke Trend, the Cabinet Secretary, explained the complex relationship between Project Sandra and the material provided by Penkovsky: ‘Sited in Cyprus…it would afford a check on intelligence obtained from another source and in the event of the failure of the latter, would become much more important. But in addition it would provide significant intelligence which the other source could not.’7 Trend understood that the situation of any agent inside the Eastern Bloc was perilous, and indeed his observations turned out to be all too prescient. Penkovsky was caught meeting a go-between of SIS in the autumn of 1962. Arrested by the KGB and put on trial, he was shot the following year, even before the construction of Sandra was completed.8 Work now accelerated, with Sandra’s transmitter located in the west of Cyprus at RAF Akrotiri, while the receiver was located in the east, at the RAF sigint base at Pergamos.9

  Project Sandra provided early warning to all of NATO, and had a top-secret link to the American Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Its success was the inspiration for further stations in Pakistan and Taiwan in the 1960s, as well as the failed experiment at Orford Ness in the early 1970s.10 Sandra’s high performance had much to do with the peculiarly beneficial location of Cyprus for the reception of signals, and for this reason the island simply bristled with aerials.11 However, by 1970 the nature of the intelligence stations on Cyprus was changing. Alongside the veteran Project Sandra, the Americans had been permitted to construct their own special installation, code-named ‘Cobra Shoe’, to improve early warning to the US Sixth Fleet.12 Cobra Shoe was a more powerful and up-to-date version of Sandra. The Americans also built a new missile-early-warning system alongside it.13 This was the most advanced intelligence site covering Russia, and was ‘run by the RAF for the USAF’, although that fact was hidden from the Cypriot government.14 Indeed, the island’s authorities were highly allergic to any US intelligence presence, so American technicians visiting the twin sites had to keep a very low profile.15

  All through the early 1970s there were signs of inter-communal trouble on Cyprus. On 8 March 1970 the President, Archbishop Makarios, escaped an assassination attempt by a whisker. A few days later, Polycarpos Georkadijis, the long-serving Minister of the Interior, was killed in a similar attack. Georkadijis’s death was perhaps not surprising, since he was, according to local American diplomats, ‘the arch-conspirator’ of Cyprus, a ‘survivor of many plots and gun battles’ and ‘the repository of many dark secrets’. The attempt to kill Archbishop Makarios was more shocking, since he was widely accepted as the political, emotional and indeed religious leader of all Greek Cypriots. These dramatic events brought into question many of the fundamental assumptions about the island’s politics. In the short term, the position of Makarios had strengthened, but the future was uncertain. British and American officials thought it not unlikely that Greek officers dreaming of union with Greece might have been behind the attack, and concluded that the renegades might well try again.16

  On the morning of 15 July 1974, the Greek junta in Athens launched a surprise coup attempt against the government of Makarios, who was opposed to enosis. The junta’s chosen instrument was some officers they had loaned to the Greek Cypriot National Guard, which served as a focus for the radical pro-enosis faction. Under orders from Athens, they stormed the presidential palace in an attempt to kill Makarios. Despite the fact that the CIA was close to the junta, American intelligence received no warning. Athens claimed, implausibly, that its hand had been forced by impetuous local officers, but its CIA patrons did not believe this for a moment.17 The British rescued Makarios by helicopter, and whisked him away to safety on Malta. Fighting now developed across the whole island, threatening the status quo between the two communities. All sides recognised that this reckless move was likely to trigger a Turkish military intervention. The British Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, hoped to persuade Henry Kissinger that it was worth putting pressure on the Greek junta to end their ill-considered adventure, but Washington was treading carefully for fear that Athens would retaliate by withdrawing base rights for the American Sixth Fleet.18

  On Cyprus, British commanders were initially faced with the task of trying to return some 3,500 local civilian base workers from RAF Akrotiri to their homes in the capital of Limassol. Officers thought they had negotiated safe passage for them, but as they made their way along the road towards Limassol, there was renewed fighting. By late afternoon the convoy had become stranded, and was unable to turn around. A large band of Greek irregulars had drawn up alongside it, ‘armed with anything from muzzle-loaders to World War II Japanese field guns’. Heavy fighting was developing only a few hundred yards away, and the convoy eventually retreated back to Akrotiri. In Limassol, some British married quarters were commandeered by the various factions as machine-gun positions. ‘One wife who suffered such an intrusion recovered several hundred expended cartridge cases from her living room carpet next morning.’19

  The initial coup against Makarios took British intelligence by surprise: the Foreign Secretary at the time, James Callaghan, recalled that he had no idea what was about to unfold.20 However, coverage of the subsequent crisis was good, partly from inter
ception of high-level Turkish military communications.21 On 17 July the JIC provided a clear forecast of the Turkish response, which was a large-scale invasion. More than two days before the Turks landed, it warned: ‘We believe that the Turks are now militarily ready to intervene if the Turkish Cypriot community is physically threatened or if Enosis is declared, but will try for the moment, through diplomatic efforts, to bring about a solution by other means.’ Diplomatic efforts failed, and the Turkish invasion was triggered.22 In fact, Turkish emissaries had arrived at Downing Street on the evening of 17 July, hoping to persuade the British ‘to declare war with them’ and intervene jointly. Bernard Donoughue, Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Senior Policy Adviser, noted in his diary that when the British refused the Turkish delegation left, saying ‘they would do it themselves anyway’. His impression was that ‘they would not take long’. Sigint from GCHQ relating to the crisis was quickly forwarded to Washington, but the Americans were not in a position to make good use of the material. At the end of the month Richard Nixon would resign his presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal. Indeed, the fact that Turkey knew the White House was in turmoil contributed to its decision to invade.23

  On the morning of 19 July, British sigint reported that the Turkish 39th Division, which had long been earmarked for possible intervention in Cyprus, was getting ready to move. At 2.50 that afternoon the JIC issued what the British commander on Cyprus, Sir John Aiken, called a ‘remarkably accurate assessment’ of Turkish objectives in Cyprus and capabilities.24 Thirty minutes later came reports of a large force sailing from southern Turkey.25 The progress of this armada was tracked by Nimrod sorties over the night of 19–20 July. After an ‘extremely tense night’, the Nimrod detected the main force of thirty-four vessels off the north coast of Cyprus, and at 4.30 a.m. it reported that the Turkish fleet was turning towards the coast. Meanwhile, ground stations captured sigint from Turkish strike aircraft lifting off from Antalya and Incirlik. These planes were on an attack course. ‘The Nimrod was speedily withdrawn and actually cleared the area only a minute or so before the first wave of Turkish aircraft arrived.’26 This sigint was being shared in real time with Washington. On the evening of 19 July – early in the morning of 20 July on Cyprus – US Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger phoned Kissinger and reported: ‘Turks took several F-100s off about 3 hours ago from one of their bases in Turkey – they were loaded up…My own guess is they have a notion that before you land on a beach you are supposed to drop bombs on it.’ By daylight a major Turkish offensive was in progress, with a large parachute drop north of Nicosia.27 Kissinger had done all he could to prevent the crisis, but now lamented that ‘The animals are out of their cages.’28

  Heavy fighting developed over the next ten days, and at the end of July, with things hotting up, Aiken, the British commander in chief, decided to cease British reconnaissance flights over Cyprus for fear of an incident.29 Britain’s SIS remained active because of its large station on Cyprus, and was at pains to keep the senior CIA officers at the American Embassy in London supplied with up-to-date reports. The CIA’s own sources on Cyprus were rather thin, so on 31 July Bill Colby, who had just taken over as Director of the CIA, wrote personally to the British to express his thanks for the detailed reporting.30 During August the Turks consolidated their hold on the city of Famagusta, at the eastern end of the island. The biggest problem for the British was the threat to the GCHQ’s large sigint base at Ayios Nikolaos, not far away on the edge of the eastern Sovereign Base Area of Dhekelia. As the Turks advanced, thousands of Greek refugees fled for the protection of the British base. Aiken recalled that they came on foot, in smart cars, on tractors and mule-drawn carts. Local commanders found it ‘a daunting experience to see so many people with dazed and fearful expressions peering through the windows’.31

  On 14 August, as Turkish ground forces continued to advance towards the sigint base, the Foreign Office made urgent representations to the Turkish Ambassador in London, stressing the ‘specially sensitive problem of the British units at Ayios Nikolaos’. The Turks reaffirmed their respect for the British bases. However, assurances in London were one thing, and action on the ground was another. Dawn on 15 August heralded a major upsurge in violence, with mortar and heavy-machine-gun fire and large artillery explosions all around the old city. ‘The atmosphere was very tense,’ since no one knew if the Turks would stop at the boundary of the British bases, or encircle them. The perimeter of Ayios Nikolaos was being defended by the 3rd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. At about 1.30 p.m. they spotted thirty-five Turkish armoured vehicles three miles north of the base. Some headed south, and ‘At 14.26 hours one of a group of seven Turkish tanks, which had approached to within a few hundred yards of the NW corner of the Ayios Nikolaos perimeter, fired three shells into the base area, narrowly missing a Ferret Scout car of the 16/5 L[ancers] and a white van belonging to Thames TV.’ The television crew all scrambled aboard an exceedingly crowded Ferret scout car, which then ‘hastily withdrew’.32

  The day was saved by heroic action on the ground. At 4 p.m., Colonel Hugh Johnstone, Commander of 9 Signals Regiment, the main sigint operators at Ayios Nikolaos, accompanied by Colonel Ian Cartwright, the commanding officer of the Fusiliers, walked out from the base towards the Turkish forces. An hour later they encountered three squadrons of tanks and some armoured personnel carriers, which appeared to have stopped for a ‘brew-up’. A happy accommodation was reached after the British officers explained the demarcation of the boundary. Magically, the local Turkish commander then appeared and gave assurances that there would be no further trouble. As dusk approached, just as the situation appeared to be calming down, a lone Turkish tank appeared menacingly at a checkpoint at the entrance to the base. It transpired that its crew ‘were totally lost, they had no radio, they had run out of main armament ammunition, their 0.5 machine gun had jammed and they had run out of fuel’. Petrol was ‘hurriedly produced’ and the tank was sent lumbering back towards Famagusta.33

  By the end of August things were looking up, and a ceasefire was in place. Turkey had halted its forces, having occupied the eastern third of the island, and although ‘the difficulties ahead were very great’, Aiken noted that the long, slow diplomatic haul towards peace had started. Ironically, the security of the Sovereign Base Areas was ‘firmer than it has been for some time’, and apart from the ongoing refugee problems the situation was quiet. In London, intelligence chiefs had worried about Turkish attitudes towards Britain’s secret listening units. But the local information was reassuring, and Aiken explained that contrary to what he had been told, ‘the longer-term security of the signal unit and Ayios Nikolaos would seem to be better guaranteed by the close presence of the Turkish Army than it had been under the Makarios administration. The Turks understood – and approved! – its function in the NATO context.’34 In fact, during the crisis Britain had passed almost no intelligence to NATO, given that ‘both contestants are members’. Sigint personnel now resumed their normal duties, although NSA decided to abandon Yarallakos and join the British inside the safer Sovereign Base Areas.35

  Surprisingly, the main threat to the sigint sites now came from London. During July 1974, officials had agonised over what to do about Cyprus in the long term. Two problems had now converged. First, the sprawling nature of the sigint sites on Cyprus, which needed vast aerial farms, made them hard to defend. Second, the increasing troop requirements generated by the growing troubles in Northern Ireland meant that strategic reserves earmarked to reinforce Cyprus in a crisis were being depleted. In short, there was no longer a ‘fire brigade’ to come to the rescue in a future crisis.36 This coincided with a major defence review, begun by Harold Wilson, reflecting the dire state of the British economy. The Cabinet decided that British forces, including the sigint units, should be withdrawn completely from Cyprus as soon as possible. Wilson’s objective was that this should be carried out by 31 March 1976, saving £60 million. Senior officials, including the Cabinet Secre
tary Sir John Hunt, warned that Washington ‘will press us hard not to withdraw from Cyprus’, but hoped that it could be dressed up as ‘an integral part of the settlement of the Cyprus problem’. However, they also observed that: ‘The American Intelligence Community is a powerful lobby in Washington. So our eventual decisions on Cyprus may affect not only the continuance of the present valuable Anglo–American intelligence relationship but also the general American reaction to our overall Defence Review proposals.’37

  Wilson pressed on with his decision to leave Cyprus, and Hunt travelled to Washington to break the bad news as gently as possible. On 12 November 1974 he met privately with Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger and William Colby. The meeting did not go well. Kissinger’s reaction was especially explosive, involving a remarkable stream of expletives.38 Indeed, the Americans objected so strongly that the British decision was put on hold.39 Kissinger, worried about the loss of the intelligence bases and thinking withdrawal would have a destabilising effect on the region, was determined that the British ‘continue to occupy this square on the world chessboard’. London eventually capitulated, ‘given the global importance of working closely with the Americans’.40 Two weeks later, Foreign Secretary Jim Callaghan formally assured Kissinger that ‘We shall not in the present circumstances proceed with our preferred policy of withdrawing from the Sovereign Base Area altogether.’41