The War that Never Was

by Duff Hart-Davis

  Within the BFLF every effort was still being made to preserve the security of the operation. No word of the Israeli involvement had got out, but rumours were flying, and on 14 May in the House of Commons the Prime Minister had to skate across thin ice when, in reply to a question from the Labour MP Michael Foot, he replied:

  Our policy towards the Yemen is one of non-intervention in the affairs of that country. It is not therefore our policy to supply arms to the Royalists in the Yemen, and the Yemen Government have not requested these or other forms of aid.8

  When pressed to confirm that this policy would not change in the future, Sir Alec agreed, but sought to divert the enquiry by saying, ‘It must be remembered that the Yemen is filtering people into the Arabian Federation, and this is becoming a very dangerous state of affairs.’ Then, in response to a question from George Wigg, another provocative Labour MP, he confirmed that ‘at no time in the last eighteen months have British arms been supplied to the Imam’s Government’.9 This may have been strictly true; but had Wigg pursued his enquiries, he might have discovered that a great many weapons of non-British provenance had been spirited into the Yemen through Jim Johnson’s machinations.

  8

  Breach of Security

  Once again the BFLF had escaped exposure; but in fact a dangerous hole had already been punched in the organisation’s cover, when five letters written to Johnny Cooper the previous November had fallen into enemy hands. The Egyptians claimed that a helicopter crew, on a reconnaissance flight, had spotted a man moving near the Beihan border, and because he had been scrambling across rocky terrain, not on any known track, they had landed, arrested him and taken possession of his rifle and dagger – only to find that he was carrying messages from London, Aden and Beihan to people living in caves in the area of the Khowlan tribes. Because of the long delay before the content of the letters came to light, Johnny himself suspected that they must have been bartered through many hands before they reached the Al-Ahram newspaper in Cairo and were broadcast on Cairo radio on 1 May 1964.

  The author of the article (and editor of the newspaper), Mohamed Heikal, a close associate of Nasser, concluded that:

  There is undoubtedly a military and political set-up operating, directed from Britain and most probably under the command of British Intelligence. The set-up includes a number of British volunteer officers and soldiers, a number of Frenchmen, mainly pilots, who are obviously remnants of the Katanga army and the OAS [Organisation Armée Secrète], and a number of Germans who used to be in the French Foreign Legion. Many of the foreign sources in Sana’a, who are doubtless well informed, estimate the number of all these at over 300 officers.

  Heikal added that the set-up had ‘unlimited funds at its disposal’ and ‘a well-designed plan for propaganda’, and claimed that its presence had ‘almost become notorious in all South Arabia’. He doubted that the United Nations mission could be unaware of its existence, and suggested that the mercenaries had tried to get UN observers to ‘turn a blind eye to the passage of certain caravans’.

  In England, on 5 July 1964, after intensive research, The Sunday Times’s Insight team published a full-page article, reproducing the letters in facsimile. One – a communication to Johnny from Barclays Bank in Ongar, about personal matters – was almost innocuous, except that it mentioned that a sum of £400 was being sent monthly to his wife. Also harmless was a handwritten note from Lady Birdwood, which thanked Johnny for a letter he had written about medical supplies and sympathised with him for suffering such hardships:

  You must be having a very tough time of it, and I hope the Yemenis will at least offer you a seat in any future cabinet! Seriously, they must be tremendously grateful to you and I look forward one day to meeting you and hearing a full account of your work.

  The third letter baffled the Insight team. It began with ‘Dear’ and a squiggle – and even if they had deciphered this as ‘Abdullah’, they could not have known that it was Johnny’s alias; the place of origin was given as NORMAL, and the signature was such an illegible scrawl that they failed to realise that the author was Peter de la Billière. Nevertheless, one unfortunate phrase – ‘congrats on the mineing’ (sic) – made the document suspect. The two remaining letters were from Tony Boyle and gave away dangerous secrets: they mentioned parachutes and dropping zones, showed that the writer was sending soldiers out to the Yemen, and revealed that he was involved in some covert operation, working from 21 Sloane Street.

  The journalists were onto a red-hot story. In an introduction to the article they wrote that their investigations had produced a picture ‘of a small – but apparently most effective – group of Britons combating Egyptian tanks among the rugged Yemeni mountains’. But they had also stumbled on:

  a startling link between these Buchanesque freebooters and a man who, until January 29 this year, was a serving officer of the RAF: Flt Lt Anthony Alexander Boyle, a son of Marshal of the RAF Sir Dermot Boyle. Until October 1, 1963, Boyle was serving in Aden as ADC to the British High Commissioner – the official charged with implementing Britain’s policy in the area.

  British policy, the introduction went on, had always been ‘not to get involved in this business’, and the Foreign Office, in response to enquiries, had assured the newspaper that ‘any activity by individuals in the Yemen is entirely unauthorised’.

  The article gave a detailed outline of Johnny’s military career, and linked him with David Stirling, but did not follow up a mention of ‘Jim’ in one of the Boyle letters. Having failed to discern Jim’s identity or involvement, the Insight team concluded that it was Cooper who had ‘decided to organise his own military-aid programme for the Royalists’ and had ‘built up’ the mercenary organisation, with ‘some advice, at least, about recruiting from his old CO, David Stirling’. Stirling, for his part, seems to have been decidedly economical with the truth, and told the newspaper, ‘Any suggestion that this was organised by an ex-SAS caucus would be completely wrong.’

  Other newspapers seized on the story. AIR FORCE OFFICER IS ACCUSED OF ARAB ARMS DEAL, bellowed the front-page headline in the Sunday Mirror, which reported that Richard Marsh, the Member of Parliament for Greenwich, had tabled a question for the Prime Minister and demanded an immediate inquiry about ‘shock allegations’ that an RAF officer had been involved in deals to supply men and arms to the Royalists. GUN RUNNING STORM, cried the Daily Express on Monday morning. Reporters called at 21 Sloane Street, only to be told that Boyle ‘had been there but wasn’t now’, and that Stirling was in Hong Kong. Tony’s brother, Patrick, was quoted as saying, ‘We have lost touch with him. We haven’t seen him for some time.’ The press also drew a blank at the home of Boyle’s parents in Hampshire, and Lady Birdwood, run to earth in Kensington, staunchly maintained that she knew of ‘no arms smuggling or secret army’.

  By the time the first article appeared, Cooper happened to be on leave, at home in Essex, having just returned from the Yemen, and when he awoke that Sunday morning he did not see a newspaper until he went to his local pub, the White Hart, opposite his house, which was easily identified by its colours – white with yellow shutters – and in any case gave itself away by being named Cooper’s Court. By mid-morning a swarm of journalists had begun to gather, setting up telephoto lenses outside his home, so he decided his best option was to stay put in the bar, shielded by a crowd of friends, who told reporters that he was ‘still away on holiday’. As he himself recorded:

  Some of the stories that appeared in the Monday papers were like comic strips and were certainly written under the influence of too much drink. One or two stated that Major Cooper’s country headquarters was manned by strong-arm men from the SAS . . . Lady Birdwood even stood accused of gun-running!1

  It was Jim who got Cooper out: over the telephone he told him to stay in the pub for the time being, and said he would send Fiona Fraser to collect him. Early on Tuesday morning a little red Mini drove into the car park at the back and he slipped into it. At the same time his brot
her-in-law took his own car out from his house and drove off in the opposite direction, pursued by a press convoy. Fiona took him to the nearby village of Fyfield, where clothes and other kit that he needed for his return to the Yemen had been deposited, and from there she drove him straight to Sloane Avenue, and then to Heathrow to board the BOAC flight to Aden.

  Another brief panic ensued when she and Jim heard a man, or possibly two, chattering excitedly in what they took to be Arabic, in the passage outside their Sloane Street office. Unable to stand it any longer, she opened the door – and there was Colin Campbell, a brilliant mimic, who worked for TIE in the office above, winding them up by pretending to be two Egyptians, but in fact talking to himself.

  Tony Boyle also had to take evasive action. One of The Sunday Times reporters had sent him a draft of the article two days before publication, asking for his comments; but the envelope had been addressed to him at the Royal Air Force Club in Piccadilly, and he had not received it. As he landed back at Heathrow after one of the Israeli parachute-drops, he found an anonymous message awaiting him: ‘Don’t go home. The Press are camped outside your house.’ He therefore stayed overnight with his uncle in London, then drove down to hide with friends at Porlock Weir in north Devon, and made no contact with anyone save family and office; but, knowing that questions would be asked of the Prime Minister and the Colonial Secretary in the House, he waited nervously, close to a telephone.

  At last it rang. Laurie Hobson, a friend from Aden days, now working in Duncan Sandys’s office, had broken through his protective wall. He explained that the Secretary of State had to make a statement in the House of Commons. What was Tony going to say to the press?

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But you can’t avoid them.’

  ‘I have and I will.’

  ‘Does Charles Johnston know what was going on?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him.’

  ‘He’s on a plane that doesn’t land until after parliamentary question time.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry – I can’t answer for him.’

  Boyle soon came to the conclusion that his ‘head was on the block’ – but he resolved that he would not ‘be crushed by this steam roller’. He had met Sandys several times, and found him arrogant and overbearing; but he knew that, as Defence Secretary, he had tacitly authorised the Yemen operation in the first place. He also knew that Sandys knew that he knew, as Sandys had been present on one occasion when he went to brief Julian Amery in the House of Commons, and now Boyle determined to use that knowledge to stop Sandys throwing all the blame on him. So he called the Colonial Office back and told Laurie that his undertaking to avoid the press would be conditional upon the answers given by the Prime Minister and Mr Sandys. A chuckle at the end of the line affirmed his tactics. The questions were duly asked, and answered impeccably. The newsmen moved out of Boyle’s garden, and he went home.

  In the House of Commons on 21 July the Prime Minister was at his most equivocal. When asked about Tony’s activities, he said: ‘Both the present High Commissioner [Trevaskis] and his predecessor [Johnston] have assured us that they were not aware that the person in question was involved in any way.’2 When Richard Marsh suggested that even if Johnston had not known exactly what was going on, ‘he had a pretty good idea’, Sir Alec replied:

  No. The Hon. Gentleman has no right to make that kind of insinuation. Both Sir Charles Johnston and the High Commissioner have assured me that they had no idea at all that Mr Boyle was engaged in these activities – and I must take their word for it, and I do . . . Our policy is one of non-involvement in the civil war in the Yemen.3

  The left-wing Sidney Silverman, MP for Nelson and Colne, referring to ‘these very extensive, very dangerous and very mischievous activities’, asked the Prime Minister if he did not consider that Johnston and Trevaskis – if they had been unaware of what was going on – had committed ‘a gross dereliction of duty in not knowing what was completely obvious’. Sir Alec, however, was not to be shifted: ‘I cannot say whether they should have noticed this. The fact is that they did not.’4

  The furore soon died down – and might have been a great deal more damaging. But, as Johnny remarked, it ‘gave Nasser a valuable propaganda victory and even soured relations between the Americans and the British Government – who naturally denied all knowledge of our activities.’5 The sudden exposure gave everyone in the BFLF a jolt, and showed how fragile their security arrangements were. But the article did no mortal damage: Jim merely kept his head down, and carried on as before. Luckily, he had never had any direct contact with the Prime Minister, or with his predecessor, Macmillan.

  As for Lady Birdwood: no matter how much she knew or did not know about the activities of the BFLF, she rose majestically to the occasion in a letter to the Daily Telegraph that extolled Johnny’s virtues to an embarrassing degree. Major Cooper, she wrote, had gratefully acknowledged receipt of the medical supplies sent out by the Yemen Relief Committee, telling her of the ‘long, weary hours in terribly difficult terrain’ that he spent moving from one village to another:

  The enormous amount of Major Cooper’s medical work in Yemen can have left little time for other activities . . . Major Cooper has performed miracles of treatment, and long ago he wrote to me: ‘I only wish you could see the relief on the sufferers’ faces and the great joy we both get from curing these people . . . I would like to take this opportunity personally and publicly to thank him.

  In the Khowlan, meanwhile, Jack Miller and his colleagues had been doing their best to bolster the morale of the Imam, who had sent out an alarmist message to the Aden Government, saying that many Royalist positions had been lost, that El Qara was surrounded, and that the whole of the north-west was in grave danger, all due to the lack of money, rifles, artillery and ammunition. ‘Can you please send any help or supply as soon as possible, before all lost?’ the ruler pleaded. ‘Can you deliver us?’

  At the same time, high-level diplomatic meetings were taking place, as the Saudis put pressure on Britain to send the Royalists official aid. When Sir Colin Crowe, the British Ambassador to Jeddah, had an interview with Feisal at Taif on 28 July, the Saudi Crown Prince told him sharply that the Yemenis were ‘crying out for help’ from the United Kingdom, and ‘mocked the apparent weakness of such a ‘strong nation’ in supporting its position in South Arabia’.

  In Crowe’s despatch to London, he noted Feisal’s attempt to invoke the spectre of a wider geo-political threat. Nasser’s agents were everywhere undermining the area, the Saudi Prince had told him. The Egyptians were a spearhead for the Russians, who were putting in help secretly. Surely the British could likewise help the Royalists?6

  In fact official British policy was veering in the opposite direction. In London the exposure of the letters had made HMG even less inclined to support the mercenaries openly – although Billy McLean and Nigel Fisher continued to press hard for money, weapons and food to be sent to the Royalist armies. The wrangling between Foreign Office, Colonial Office and Ministry of Defence reached such a pitch that on 22 July, in a memorandum to Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec decreed that the United Kingdom should ‘make life intolerable’ for Nasser, ‘with money and arms’, and that this ‘should be deniable if possible’.7 This led to the creation of a Joint Action Committee (JAC), charged with the task of coordinating policy towards the Yemen.

  9

  Business as Usual

  At the office on Sloane Street, or at haunts such as White’s and the Hyde Park Hotel, Jim was receiving a continuous stream of visitors: Ahmed al-Shami, Billy McLean, Dan Hiram, Rupert France – and occasionally a member of Mossad, disguised in his diary by the cryptic entry ‘The boy’. Paul Paulson (of MI6) was another frequent caller. In the early days of the operation Jim had been required to deliver copies of his regular reports to an anonymous address in Paddington; but as the SIS gained confidence in him, Paulson disclosed his real name and job, and started coming in twice a week for a drink and to pick up
the latest news.1

  In the running of the BFLF it was generally Jim who had the ideas and made the diplomatic or political contacts, but it was Tony Boyle who kept the engine of the organisation going. Nahum Admoni, who was posted to Paris in 1966 as Mossad’s representative in western Europe, developed a great admiration for the courage and professionalism of both. Jim he saw as a natural leader of men, who could be tough and demanding, but at the same time was outgoing and had a strong sense of humour; whereas he found Tony ‘more of a loner, very straight and proper’. Their personalities, he thought, were reflected in their military experience: Jim was a field commander, Tony a fighter-pilot.

  Jim did a good deal of entertaining – and none of it was skimped: lunch at Scott’s or L’Escargot, dinner at the Savoy. Whenever he and Tony were in London they helped with the day-to-day administration, but a great deal of intricate secretarial work was carried out by the excellent Fiona Fraser – as one typical letter (to Chris Sharma, on leave, and about to return to the Imam’s headquarters at El Qara) will show:

  Dear Chris,

  Enclosed with this note you will find:

  Your ticket to Jeddah