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284 TURBULENCE AND TERROR
(over 550 Soviet personnel are in the UK). The Ambassador
asked that I convey to you the Prime Minister's sincere
regret. He was unable to advise you in advance as planned.
A press leak broke the story and required the government
to move immediately this morning. IS
*
Kissinger sensed that he had been deliberately kept in the dark,
and was furious. 19 The following week, Denis Greenhill, the
senior official at the Foreign Office, also pondered whether
American sigint flights from bases in Britain should be suspended
until they had seen Moscow's reaction to the expulsion of so
many KGB officers, fearing that the Soviets might retaliate
against one of these aircraft. 20
In Downing Street, discreet resistance to American intelligence
activities was gathering strength. During December 1971
Washington asked for permission to carry out more flights with
super-secret Blackbird SR -71 Mach 3 reconnaissance aircraft
from RAF Mildenhall. Heath took some persuading. However,
Douglas-Home and Carrington argued that the targets were of
mutual benefit. The most important was monitoring the Arab­
Israeli ceasefire agreement reached after the Six-Day War of
1967. The Blackbird SR -71 also offered excellent imagery and
sigint capabilities against any crises in Europe - typically, possible
Soviet action against the more independently-minded parts of
Eastern Europe such as Romania and Yugoslavia. Presciently,
Carrington added that a rejection of the American request might
strengthen the hand of those in Washington who believed that
Britain's entry into the European Economic Community would
'herald some weakening in Anglo-American collaborative
arrangements generally' .21
Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee was acutely conscious
of the tensions between intelligence cooperation with Europe
and its long-established close relationship with the Americans.
Nevertheless, in April 1972 a delegation from the JIC headed
to Paris to meet its French equivalent, the 'Groupe de Synthese
et Prevision'. The French were keen for deep engagement, and