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NSA AND THE ZIRCON PROJECT 443
The idea of GCHQ teaming up with the Europeans was not
a bad one. European sigint services such as those of the
Norwegians, the Germans and the Dutch were highly professional,
and had made many important contributions to Western
intelligence down the years, not least during the Falklands War.
They often displayed brilliant lateral thinking. When Soviet
naval ships entered Dutch harbours in the 1980s, their hosts
would often complain that the Soviet radar was interfering with
local television broadcasts and insist on a snap technical inspection.
The crafty Dutch used this opportunity to plant a small
tracking device high up on the Soviet ships that was no more
than the size of a brick. This tracking device was so successful
that it became a standard technique across the Western secret
services. Typically, a small group of British SBS personnel worked
with SIS and GCHQ on similar tasks in the 1990s. 17
GCHQ's relationship with its American partner was about
people as well as projects. General Bill Odom arrived as the
new Director of NSA in March 1985. Odom was a tough-talking
Army officer with an extremely abrupt manner. He saw himself
as a new broom, complaining that his predecessor 'would not
favour radical change' and that the staff at NSA were 'too laidback'.JB
He also looked afresh at the Anglo-American sigint relationship,
and was deeply unimpressed, observing that 'The name
of the British game is to show up with one card and expect to
call all the shots.'i9 Ingenious old-fashioned British cryptanalysis
was being overtaken by the raw power of America's Cray supercomputers,
and this had been underlined by some remarkable
NSA breakthroughs with Soviet high-grade diplomatic traffic in
the late 1970s. 20 Odom noted that, 'What the British brought
in World War II, they do not bring any more ... Today, this
business requires huge investment, and Britain doesn't have
that.' Britain's decision to buy Zircon signalled GCHQ's renewed
commitment to spend big money on sigint. 21
Bill Odom's first year as Director at NSA was a traumatic one.
Washington soon dubbed 1985 'the Year of the Spy', since it
brought the exposure of Ronald Pelton, a damaging mole who