l4sfdrx

450 INTO THE THATCHER ERA
and 'needed to be managed better'. They agreed that the Zircon
programme was an unwanted intrusion into the realm of space,
which they did not want to share with any of their allies, and
this was viewed as a problem. Ultimately, NSA wanted to monopolise
the Western flow of sigint from space, giving America the
'potential to turn off the flow in future'. adorn and Kern both
felt that they needed to reconsider certain areas of cooperation
with GCHQ, including the 'integration of personnel'. All this
was to be offset by improving relations with third parties like
the Germans.42
A week later, Bill adorn headed to Bergen in Norway for a
'European Principals Meeting', an annual gathering of all the
sigint chiefs in Western Europe, hosted this year by the Norwegian
Chief of Intelligence, Rear Admiral Jan Ingebrigtsen. Significantly,
the members of this elite club only stretched as far south as
France, since NSA equated the reliability of sigint partners in
Europe with their distance from the Mediterranean. The Greeks
ranked bottom in this hierarchy, since their communications
were known to be horrifically insecure. adorn was like a social
anthropologist, and enjoyed recording the 'traditional national
suspicions and jealousies' displayed by the cast of characters at
the meeting in his daily log. He liked his Norwegian host, who
he found 'pleasant, dignified, and pro-American'. He also warmed
to the Germans, who had come forward with a 'most constructive
proposal' which most of the group was ready to accept.
However, the British, he noted, 'can't accept happily their own
loss of pre-eminence in this business' .43 adorn was especially
fond of the German chief, Eberhard Blum, remarking that they
'had a good talk, some good laughs, and a few reminiscences'.
Blum, he noted, was inclined to defend NSA, even when other
West German officials complained of the Americans' 'Big Brother'
approach, arguing that in fact they had always dealt fairly and
generously with their smaller sigint . partners. However, Blum
was coming up for retirement, and adorn recorded sadly that
while his German colleagues shared his views, they were rather
more hesitant when it came to 'putting down the British'.44