Confronting the Colonies (21 page)

Indicative of this, some succeeded whilst others fell by the wayside. The LIC did successfully take over responsibility for the region from the JIC(ME)—but the local committee's intelligence reports continued to be somewhat suspect, as discussed below. Meanwhile, in August 1964 Jack Morton, an experienced MI5 officer seconded to the Colonial Office as security intelligence adviser, told the JIC that whilst the military intelligence officer had arrived in the AIC and was proving ‘most useful', the proposed Arab intelligence officer had not been appointed. Again indicating a lack of conviction, he criticised the length of time it took to issue directives agreed in London in the theatre. Similarly, Morton warned the committee that whilst the AIC had moved to its new premises, security arrangements were not satisfactory and MI5's officer on the ground had been forced to investigate.
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This problem dragged on throughout the following months and hindered the effective implementation of JIC reforms. Due to security concerns, certain categories of intelligence could not even be distributed to the Aden Intelligence Centre.
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A further problem, according to Jones, was ‘the bloody removal of experienced personnel and the lack of suitable replacements'.
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This was certainly the case regarding the chief of intelligence position. The incumbent, H. Colville-Stewart, was, despite being an experienced Arabist, regarded as a weak link and ‘not up to it'.
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The post was upgraded and he was subsequently demoted to deputy but his replacement,
Tony Cowper, was not appointed until a few months later. Yet Cowper too was later criticised. However, Daniel McCarthy, the outspoken political adviser to Middle East Command, argued that it was not the man but the JIC terms of reference for the post that were to blame for the failings. They were impossible for any incumbent to meet. McCarthy praised Cowper for his progress regarding Special Branch and interrogations but felt that he had not been able to do much about political intelligence. McCarthy strongly recommended to the JIC that the chief intelligence officer should be a ‘roaming advisor' keeping an overall eye on the state of intelligence.
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Despite these shortcomings, the Colonial Office reflected in late 1964 that ‘this extensive reorganisation has [caused] a marked improvement in the quality of the assessments and reports produced for the High Commissioner, the C-in-C(ME), and the JIC'.
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This proved optimistic, if not complacent. A year later, a senior Defence Intelligence Staff official lambasted what he saw as ‘interdepartmental rivalry and jealousies' within the South Arabian intelligence machinery.
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Undeterred, the JIC undertook a second examination of the intelligence organisation as Aden began its approach to independence. Two factors rendered this necessary. Firstly, the intelligence structure needed adapting to meet Britain's supposed post-independence role and requirements. Secondly, the reforms instigated in 1964 had not worked as effectively as intended. The security situation had deteriorated.

From the start of 1965, the JIC had hoped to examine the intelligence structures in the FSA. The committee hoped to ensure that any intelligence organisation necessary to meet Britain's post-independence requirements would be ready immediately after independence was declared. The committee's planning was, however, fundamentally flawed. The JIC wrongly assumed that Britain would be keeping a base in Aden. This impacted upon the intelligence planning until the end of the year and made the work conducted throughout 1965 in Aden and London irrelevant. Once the reality became apparent to the committee in late 1965, revised planning needed to be rapidly employed.
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Additionally, the violence intensified throughout the year. Echoing similar difficulties in Malaya and Cyprus, intelligence soon dried up owing to a lack of
Arab cooperation. Locals held little confidence in British security and protection post-independence and thus became less inclined to risk assassination by supplying British authorities with information. Indeed, the campaign of violence and assassination against informants and the police effectively crippled the Adeni Special Branch.

This was crucial and forced the JIC to revise its expectations. Given the security situation, the JIC's initial designs for British intelligence requirements post-independence proved both irrelevant and unobtainable. Burrows began to feel that the ‘overriding objective' was becoming simply to safeguard the British withdrawal.
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This in itself required a substantial intelligence effort involving the creation of a second JIC working party and additional reforms to the local intelligence apparatus.

The JIC oversaw the long overdue appointment of John Prendergast as director of intelligence in 1966. Demonstrating its oversight role, JIC involvement was required as Prendergast's was to be a new position combining the roles of chief of intelligence and head of Special Branch. It therefore impacted upon the organisation of intelligence overseas. Moreover, the JIC had been putting ‘very strong pressure' on the Colonial Office to poach the vastly experienced Prendergast from his current role in Hong Kong from the autumn of 1965. Interestingly, the JIC's requests briefly materialised in October 1965 when Prendergast, who had earlier been head of intelligence in Kenya and Cyprus, visited Aden to compile a report on the intelligence organisation. His report was one of the key factors behind the subsequent creation of the second JIC working party.
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This is an opportune place to elaborate on this little-considered aspect of the JIC's role. During the Adeni insurgency, the committee was used as a body to help find the intelligence personnel required on the ground. This included, for example, a team of trained interrogators, extra officers for Special Branch and a military intelligence officer. As had happened regarding Cyprus, the JIC injected a sense of urgency and coordination into laborious discussions between the Colonial Office, military, MI5 and SIS.
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The committee also attempted to get involved in deciding who should be appointed to certain positions. In addition to the example of Prendergast above, the JIC put pressure on the Colonial Office regarding chairmanship of the LIC in 1965. Committee members were unhappy at the choice put forward but were effectively told to ‘butt out' and leave the matter to the high commissioner.
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In addition, the committee was also mobilised and used as an authoritative body to
add a degree of interdepartmental credibility to negotiations with the Treasury. On one occasion, for example, the Colonial Office cited JIC approval of a request for extra Special Branch personnel in a note to the Treasury—but those in charge of the nation's purse strings were left unconvinced. At this point Bernard Burrows waded in personally to pressure the Treasury on behalf of the Colonial Office. Burrows' intervention (partially) succeeded and the Treasury begrudgingly sanctioned temporary approval.
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In addition to the appointment of Prendergast, other organisational reforms were deemed necessary. Although the JIC working party's remit was to examine intelligence reform in light of developments regarding independence, it swiftly recognised the weaknesses of the previous reforms against the backdrop of escalating violence. In a damning testimony to the working party, Daniel McCarthy criticised the local intelligence machine as being ‘ramshackle and running down' and lacking ‘most elements of a basic infrastructure'. He argued that despite a ‘mass of intelligence material' being available, bureaucratic friction undermined assessment and dissemination so that comparatively little intelligence ‘reaches a central point for collation and assessment'.
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Despite the 1964 reforms, working party officials also criticised the Local Intelligence Committee. In 1964, the JIC had recommended that the LIC chair be a senior member of the high commissioner's staff but should have sufficient time to devote to intelligence matters. Whilst the former had been achieved (the deputy high commissioner now chaired the LIC), this had come at the expense of the latter (as the chair had a number of other non-intelligence duties). Officials also criticised LIC membership in that it did not, for the most part, consist of persons trained in intelligence.
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Yet the working party concluded that there was little point in dispensing with the LIC: there was no time to replace it at this late stage in the countdown to Adeni independence—although local officials were warned not expect too much from it.
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Similarly, High Commissioner Richard Turnbull agreed that although the LIC ‘did not work smoothly', reform was ‘far more trouble than it was worth'.
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The LIC, therefore, remained—albeit with a far from ringing endorsement. Similarly, despite ongoing problems the Aden Intelligence Centre also stayed, again for want of a better alternative.
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The conclusions of the JIC working group leave the distinct impression that the existing intelligence organisation was increasingly becoming a lowest common denominator stopgap until British withdrawal. Authorities
lacked the time and political will to implement substantial changes, leaving McCarthy to condemn the ‘British political machine [as] the debris of colonial administration'.
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Intelligence deemed the Aden police and Special Branch as being ever ‘less capable of handling internal security', and there grew an increasing feeling of hopelessness that the situation had escalated beyond British control. Indeed, as security continued to deteriorate throughout 1966 and 1967, the committee system, which had earlier proved reasonably effective became too unwieldy and of ever less importance in the months prior to independence.
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Even as late as July 1967, when it was apparent that the British were going to evacuate and not maintain the base, the committee operated under the flawed assumption that a friendly regime would acquire power. Again, this significantly impacted upon the JIC's ability to plan for post-independence intelligence requirements. Many of the relevant files regarding post-independence requirements remain classified. However, planners assumed that some sort of British intelligence organisation would have to be set up as part of an offshore naval task force or in the new embassy. This was designed to build up intelligence relations with the nascent South Yemen agencies, to monitor radio stations in Yemen after independence and to enable the collation and collection of intelligence on South Arabia (as happened regarding any foreign country). To meet such requirements, political and military intelligence liaison officers were deemed necessary, as were intelligence officers with recent Aden experience.
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Yet confusion reigned. The JIC (and others) appeared unsure of the withdrawal date, who would be the new government and whether the task force (and the accompanying intelligence organisation) would even be needed. Intelligence requirements and the planned links with the new regime were increasingly scaled back as the reality of the ignominious scuttle hit home. In November 1967 the JIC conceded that ‘whatever the arguments needed in connexion with the naval force that would be standing by immediately after independence to evacuate British subjects if necessary, the requirement for intelligence cover of South Arabia would probably decrease sharply once this force had been withdrawn'.
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In addition to being interested in Aden itself, intelligence also closely monitored events in Yemen and the Federation of South Arabia. The
complex and evolving threat to British interests involved all three. Security in Yemen impacted upon South Arabia, which in turn impacted upon Aden. Once the Yemeni conflict settled into a pattern of violence, one of the primary tasks for intelligence actors was to monitor the situation and to assess the severity and nature of the threat to Aden and the FSA. Influenced by the same Cold War mindset that originally shaped the committee's understandings of the insurgencies in Malaya and Cyprus, the JIC initially looked to external communist intervention in the years before the coup. The JIC quickly recognised Soviet support to Egypt in the immediate aftermath of the coup, noted the involvement of Soviet personnel in Egyptian supply operations and warned of impending Soviet military aid. From 1964 however, assessments were planted firmly within the external context of the Egyptian and Yemeni threat. By 1966 the JIC had grown sceptical of reports of direct Soviet involvement or pressure on the UAR to maintain offensive operations against British interests.
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Firstly the JIC assessed the type of threat. Was it overt, conventional and military? Or was it covert, underhand and subversive? This was a fairly straightforward assessment. Intelligence swiftly concluded that there was no conventional military threat posed so long as British forces remained in Aden. Instead, the JIC believed the threat was primarily subversive. At the outbreak of the conflict, the committee assessed that with Egyptian and Soviet assistance a Republican regime in Yemen was likely to ‘increase support for dissident elements'. It would ‘encourage nationalists in Aden to intensify their opposition to the merger [of the colony into the FSA] […] and to the retention of the British base'. In fact, the JIC warned that there were already ‘indications of a more truculent attitude on the part of Yemeni labourers in Aden', who, combined with the People's Socialist Party (PSP), ‘constitute a potential fifth column'. Consequently, the JIC urged policymakers to beware of Yemeni encouragement of terrorism and sabotage. Intelligence warned of the possibility of an all-out campaign to unify Aden with Yemen, backed by Egyptian propaganda and material assistance.
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