l4sfdrx

NSA AND THE ZIRCON PROJECT 449
commanders on the front line. The lack of current sigint support
for front-line units was not only causing problems in Germany.
One of the commanders of the main US sigint station in South
Korea confided to Odom that there too, 'The requirements of
the field commander were their lowest priority,' and that 'NSA
fought every attempt to collect and disseminate "tactical" intelligence'
to military formations. Bill Odom was a soldier at heart,
and he wanted current sigint to reach those who would be in
the front line if a major war ever broke out. 37
In the early summer of 1985 Odom set out on a European
tour to press this personal agenda. He took with him Peter
Aldridge, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, the
agency which provided America's spy satellites. On 7 June they
met Peter Marychurch in Cheltenham, and discussed progress
on Britain's Zircon sigint satellite. Marychurch was forced to
admit that GCHQ was hitting problems, partly of cost and partly
of competency. This was likely to delay the project, and also
pushed the British towards the use of more US contractors, for
which he needed to ask their permission. 38 One of the ironies
of so-called 'British' space defence projects was that while they
were supposed to increase national independence, they often
needed backdoor American technical support to get them off
the ground. 39 There were other irritants in the relationship.
NSA's largest base overseas, Menwith Hill, set as it was on a
remote spot on the Yorkshire moors, was proving to be an especially
unpopular posting with NSA personnel, and Bill Odom
noted that there were too few volunteers and too many
draftees. 4o The substantial cost of NSA sigint bases in Britain
was a further factor that pushed him towards Continental
Europe, since the price of operating from West Germany was
lower. 41
Britain's Zircon satellite was also rattling Odom's cage. A few
days after his meetings with Marychurch he chewed over the
whole matter of Anglo-American cooperation in a discussion
with Dick Kern, NSA's liaison officer in Britain. Odom expressed
the view that the relationship with GCHQ 'had grown too big',