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GEOFFREY PRIME - THE GCHQ MO~E 369
documents that were no longer required. However, this concept
was completely unwcrkable within GCHQ, since there was just
too much such material. One of GCHQ's key customers, the
Warsaw Pact order of battle cell within the Defence Intelligence
Staff, handled 'about 10,000 CODEWORD signals' each week.
It was impossible to record all of these signals, still less to certify
their destruction. 6
There had been countless security reviews during the 1960s
and 1970s, yet all had missed the most important chink in
GCHQ's armour: the armed services personnel who worked for
the sigint arms of the military. Somehow, because they wore a
uniform, these individuals were thought to be more reliable
than civilian staff. Yet they were harder to vet because of their
itinerant backgrounds, undertook the most repetitive and demoralising
work, and were often posted to inhospitable locations.
At these far-flung military outstations morale was often low,
and operators were vulnerable to KGB recruiters. Berlin and
Cyprus were subject to frequent KGB predation, and it is unlikely
that all the Soviet recruitment successes have yet come to light.
Brian Patchett and Douglas Britten were examples of this, and
there were others yet to be uncovered. 7
Growing up in Staffordshire, Geoffrey Prime suffered a difficult
childhood. His mother and father had an unhappy relationship,
and Prime had problems making friends at school. He was sexually
assaulted by an adult relative, which probably left lasting
effects upon him. After securing good '0' levels, mostly in
languages, Prime left St Joseph's Catholic College, Stoke-on­
Trent, and began dull work at a factory as a junior wages clerk.
Two years later, in 1956, National Service in the RAF offered
him a happy escape from this existence. He nurtured ambitions
to train as flight crew, hoping perhaps to serve as a Radio
Operator, but due to colour blindness he was relegated to duties
as a storesman. Eventually his talent for languages was spotted,
and he was sent to RAF Crail in Scotland to begin the Russian
Language course. The fact that he was required to sign up for