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282 TURBULENCE AND TERROR
for which they ask us' The unhappy recipients of this question
were Alec Douglas-Home, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord
Carrington, the Defence Secretary. They were uncomfortable
for two reasons. First, the question touched on almost every
aspect of British intelligence and defence planning. Drawing up
an effective summary kept several luckless defence officials busy
for two solid weeks. Second, it revealed Heath's temperamental
dislike of the special relationship.
Carrington explained that the Anglo-American partnership
was perhaps a natural one, given that the two allies' 'geography
and size are so different'. Although the scope and scale of
Britain's residual empire was continually declining, the small
remnants were nonetheless supremely valuable. Carrington
continued:
*
Because of the number of our remaining island dependencies,
we are able to provide the Americans with facilities
which they would get from no one else on a comparable
scale. Indeed, the very fact of our possession of these
dependencies enables us to make a considerable contribution
to an alliance which is important to both of us but in
which otherwise our respective contributions might be very
ill-balanced.
*
All this allowed Britain to benefit from what he called 'the
massive American military technological and intelligence
machine'.14 Carrington argued that the hidden reciprocal benefits
to Britain were in three areas: nuclear weapons, research
and development, and intelligence. While these things were
relatively invisible compared to the requested British real estate,
they were nonetheless extremely valuable. Without American
intelligence, he argued, 'and particularly that derived from the
NSA/GCHQ Agreement', Whitehall would be unable to assess
the key military developments inside the Eastern Bloc and China,
and indeed would struggle even to produce good intelligence
on lesser threats in the Middle East. However, the relationship