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322 TURBULENCE AND TERROR
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 Lomber 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. Tvventy 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