BBC_Suez A Very British Crisis_2of3_Conspiracy
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00On July the 26th, Egypt's charismatic new leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, seized control
00:12of the Suez Canal.
00:18The British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, was determined to get it back, as his wife
00:22recalls.
00:23There was nothing but Suez, Suez, Suez, morning, noon and night in Number 10.
00:31This is the story of how Eden conspired with France and Israel to wage war against Nasser.
00:37I have a plan of action, Sir Anthony, for Britain and France.
00:41Of a secret conference near Paris.
00:43The trip to Paris was to be entirely secret.
00:47Nothing was to be known about this whole arrangement.
00:51It was also a bizarre trip to a cabaret to ease conference stress.
00:54We were young guys, we wanted to see a famous French nightclub.
01:03A conspiracy that caused British diplomats to flounder.
01:08We were left maintaining a story which no one believed.
01:13A conspiracy that surprised Nasser, at least in part.
01:17We were thinking about French collusion with Israel.
01:23We were keeping completely out of mind the British collusion.
01:48The August bank holiday was one of the few hot days that summer.
01:53But while many were soaking up the sunshine, the British bulldog was becoming dimly aware
01:59of an impending call to arms.
02:06Shortly after the bank holiday, Sir Anthony Eden arrived with his wife at the BBC to explain
02:11his tough line on the Suez crisis.
02:17It was producer Alistair Milne's job to supervise the broadcast.
02:22It was very hot, a very hot, humid August day, and we had a problem.
02:27Because shorter studios, we had to take him to the presentation studio, which was a tiny
02:32little box, very narrow, very cramped, and it's awful, really.
02:39Before Britain, the Suez Canal has always been the main artery to the Commonwealth.
02:45He was a great state.
02:46He was very nervous, he was very nervous.
02:49I just can't see these damn words.
02:53Through it travels today about half the oil, which is the industry of this country.
02:59Look, can something be done about these damn lights?
03:03Perhaps, might I suggest, if you try and do the game with the spectacles this time?
03:09I will not be seen on television with spectacles.
03:12Vanity, fundamentally, that he felt that if he put his glasses on, he would somehow be
03:20demeaned.
03:22And I explained to him he wouldn't be able to read the script if he didn't, because the
03:25lights were hot in his eyes.
03:26Unless you'd rather learn the speech, of course, the spectacles really would.
03:31They make me look old.
03:33Well, he was under great strain, and I was just, you know, trying to support him and
03:39sympathise.
03:40Clarissa, actually, she was involved in the discussion, and she was unhappy about him
03:46wearing spectacles.
03:48He was a very good-looking man, and it obviously made him look slightly older than he wished
03:55to appear.
03:57So we spent two or three hours on the glasses, but in the end, we won.
04:03At the heart of Eden's message was his view that Nasser was a dangerous fascist dictator,
04:07a sort of Muslim Mussolini.
04:10The Right Honourable Sir Anthony Eden, KGMC MP.
04:16Our quarrel is not with Egypt, still less with the Arab world.
04:20It is with Colonel Nasser.
04:23He has shown that he's not a man who can be trusted to keep an agreement.
04:28The pattern is familiar to many of us, my friend.
04:35We all know this is how fascist governments behave.
04:41Nasser was able to see clips of Eden's broadcast in the international newsreels.
04:45I talked to President Nasser after he'd seen the clips.
04:54He said, this is not a prime minister, a man who resorts to such a theatrical manner and
04:59gives this kind of speech.
05:03With dictators, you always have to pay a higher price later on, for their appetite grows with
05:13feeding.
05:14Nasser's view was that Eden was a weak man, and a weak man always takes severe measures
05:24to prove himself.
05:30From the start, Eden wanted the option of using force if Nasser would not climb down.
05:36At the beginning of August, 20,000 reservists were called up.
05:41Suez was not a popular destination.
05:45What do you think of the suspects going back there?
05:49I think it stinks.
05:50I wouldn't like to go there at all.
05:51Let's see, what do you think of that as a base?
05:53Well, I just think it's about the worst base in the whole world to go to.
05:58Some reservists found themselves going nowhere very fast.
06:02In a matter of days, we had inoculations kitted us out for desert equipment, and then
06:12they didn't know what to do with us, so we were kicking our heels in the camp.
06:18In fact, huge amounts of men and equipment were being sent to Malta and Cyprus, the obvious
06:23jumping off points for any possible attack on Egypt.
06:27Once again, British troops are sailing away.
06:29We wish our boys a safe journey and a speedy return.
06:34For in the words of Sir Anthony Eden, we have too much at risk not to take precaution.
06:44In a secret underground bunker, planners were working out how to assemble a big enough force
06:49to defeat the Egyptian army and occupy the country.
06:52I think we can consolidate at each stage what...
06:57There was a dual objective, one being, in the case of the Suez operation, to seize the
07:02canal, the other one being regime change.
07:08The planners asked the Bank of England to design and make plates for an occupation currency.
07:18Eden had no problem with the idea of occupation.
07:22I think he did believe in the imperial hand and so on.
07:27Adam Watson was the top Egypt expert in the Foreign Office.
07:32I think Eden had in the back of his mind that there were a great many people in the Arab
07:38world who would welcome benevolent, firm British rule, and that the occupation of Egypt would
07:45be a thing which would come to an end quite quickly, if possible, once a government had
07:51been set up which was reasonable and friendly to us.
07:58The American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, didn't much like NASA either, but he didn't
08:04want one of his closest allies starting what he regarded as a colonial war, particularly
08:09when he was running for re-election.
08:17Right at the beginning of the crisis, he wrote to Eden.
08:21Dear Anthony, early this morning I received the messages telling me on a most secret basis
08:27of your decision to employ force, without delay or attempting any intermediate and less
08:33drastic steps.
08:35I've given you my personal conviction, as well as that of my associates, as to the unwisdom
08:42even of contemplating the use of military force at this moment.
08:48Dear friend, the removal of NASA and the installation in Egypt of a regime less hostile to the West
08:54must rank high among our objectives.
08:57You know us better than anyone, so I need not tell you that our people here are neither
09:01excited nor eager to use force.
09:04They are, however, grimly determined that NASA shall not get away with it this time,
09:10because they are convinced that if he does, their existence will be at his mercy.
09:17So am I.
09:20Eden wrongly thought it was the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and not Eisenhower,
09:24who made policy.
09:28Dulles was the one that Anthony was dealing with all the time, mostly.
09:34Dulles was the one who kept coming over and playing around, you know, initiating things
09:40and then retreating on it and all the rest of it.
09:44Excuse me, sir, would you care to make any statement on the talks for television?
09:48No.
09:49No, thank you very much.
09:50No statement.
09:51No statement.
09:52It was often difficult to know where Dulles stood.
09:54His signals were very often ambivalent, yes.
09:57They implied that he would condone the use of force.
10:04They implied that he was totally with us in wanting to pull NASA down, which in a way
10:11I think he was, but he wasn't prepared to do anything about it.
10:16This ambivalence may have encouraged Eden to believe that he could ignore Eisenhower's
10:21warnings.
10:26The one country which was solidly behind Eden was France.
10:31It was the French who had dug the canal and, before the takeover, run it.
10:36The French Foreign Minister, Christian Pinault, in particular, was enraged by NASA's act.
10:45Pinault's reaction was violent.
10:48He was furious.
10:51He gave a speech in the National Assembly in which he spoke out violently against Colonel
10:55Nasser, as he called him.
10:58I can still hear that harsh, critical voice.
11:04Crucially, the French were angry about NASA's interference in Algeria, then ruled by France.
11:11Half a million troops were fighting a brutal war against a powerful independence movement.
11:16Nasser was supplying the rebels with arms.
11:23He saw himself as the leader of the Arab struggle against colonialism.
11:27It is our responsibility to help our Arab brothers everywhere.
11:47Over the summer, a new player secretly joined the game, Israel.
11:55The Israeli leader, David Ben-Gurion, had a house in the Negev Desert, not far from
12:00the Egyptian border.
12:05In 1948, he had led his country to victory in a bitter war against the Arabs.
12:14Now Ben-Gurion was very worried about the huge number of Soviet arms Nasser was getting
12:18from communist Czechoslovakia.
12:23The reason why we had to acquire arms, because it was after the deal between Egypt and Czechoslovakia
12:29which sold Soviet arms in a very large number to Egypt.
12:36The Israelis quietly turned to the French.
12:40Their approach had a peculiar resonance with the tiny, secretive group of men who controlled
12:44French foreign policy.
12:47All of them had been in the resistance against the Nazis and were very sympathetic to the Jews.
12:54Christian Pinot, the foreign minister, had been held in Buchenwald concentration camp.
12:59This picture was taken shortly after liberation.
13:09He was instructed to carry out the most abominable task of emptying a whole train full of Jews,
13:14two thousand of them.
13:16Three quarters of them were already dead and the others were dying.
13:23That was a memory that affected him profoundly.
13:30The day after Nasser took over the canal, a top Israeli was called in by the French
13:35minister of defense, Maurice Bourget's monary.
13:39He asked if Israel was interested in invading Egypt.
13:42And Maurice says, were you thinking about reaching the canal?
13:48I said yes.
13:49Maurice says, what is the estimate of your army, how long will it take?
13:55I says, I think something like a couple of weeks.
13:59I exchange eyes like, you know, I was not a serious man talking out of there.
14:05And then, you intend to do it?
14:07He says, eventually, yes.
14:12Shimon Peres said, we need a certain amount of arms and they gave us a list, 100 tanks,
14:1760 Mist Air 4s, 50 Mist Air 4Bs, saying this is the absolute minimum.
14:28The French now began to speed up their arms deliveries.
14:32They were done in secret, as the West was supposed to be observing an arms embargo in
14:36the Middle East.
14:40French landing craft brought tanks and lorry loads of arms to a deserted beach near Haifa
14:44in the middle of the night.
14:48The Israeli chief of staff, Moshe Dayan, was present.
14:52So was the head of his office, who took these photos.
14:56It was extremely exciting for us.
14:59It was like redemption.
15:01For many months after the arms deal, the Czech arms deal, we were very worried.
15:06We didn't know what would happen, because we knew that Nasser will attack us as soon
15:11as he's ready and as long as Israel doesn't have a competing force.
15:17The American president realized that he was not getting a complete picture of what was
15:21going on.
15:23I was concerned that there was collusion going on between the French and the Israelis.
15:27He said, I'll G2 my friends if I have to.
15:30Now, G2 means intelligence, that he was going to use intelligence techniques to determine
15:36what was going on, and that was the use of the U-2.
15:41The U-2 was the first spy plane to do what is commonplace now.
15:45It could photograph amazing details from a very high altitude.
15:51Nasser's public posture was that they were only supplying Israel with 12 Mysteres because
15:56of the arms embargo, but the U-2 revealed the truth.
16:02Prior to this time, the Israelis just had a collection of old World War II aircraft.
16:07When we overflew them on the 29th of August, we found not only 60 Mysteres, looking down,
16:15all of a sudden the Israelis had a strike air force.
16:20The French had told Eisenhower that they were going to sell Israel 12 aircraft, 12 Mysteres.
16:29When we saw 60, Eisenhower was livid.
16:39Over the summer, the pressure on Eden had steadily built up.
16:43Two conferences to find a peaceful solution had come and gone.
16:48There was nothing but sooey, sooey, sooey, morning, noon and night in Number 10.
16:55We would go to Chequers, I suppose, for the weekend, but then Chequers is just an office
16:58in the country, so that's no rest at all.
17:04I think we once went to a play, I don't remember any relaxation otherwise.
17:12The stress affected Eden.
17:14His health had been fragile ever since a botched gallbladder operation three years earlier.
17:21I woke with pain just after 3.30 and took some methadone.
17:26I never got back to sleep again.
17:31I could see how many pill bottles there were, and so at that period, I don't think that
17:38he was taking anything he hadn't always been taking since his first operation.
17:44Nasser, by contrast, felt considerably less stress.
17:52The strange thing was that following the takeover of the canal and the threats which were made,
17:57his certainty about an attack began to decrease.
18:02The more time passed, the more he would say that no attack was going to happen.
18:13At the annual party conference, Eden made it clear that he did not rule out the use of force.
18:19Now, ladies and gentlemen, when Colonel Nasser seized the canal, we thought it our duty to
18:26take certain military steps in the Eastern Mediterranean.
18:31The government has no intention of modifying or withdrawing from this decision.
18:39But he was now running out of time.
18:42At some point soon, he was going to have to decide what to do with the large force he was assembling.
18:50The operation either had to be stopped and disbanded, which means the whole crisis would
18:56be over in a sense, but with a total triumph for Nasser, or else it had to go forward.
19:03But to go forward, Eden needed a pretext, and that was lacking.
19:08So there he was with this personal declaration of war against Nasser, but no means of putting
19:13it into effect, because although Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal Company, he hadn't
19:18given us any case dispeller.
19:21He hadn't actually stopped a ship or arrested a British subject or shot anybody or done
19:30anything which would give us the opportunity to go in and invade.
19:37And this was frustrating Eden enormously.
19:44The day after the party conference, an unexpected meeting at Chequers was to give Eden the pretext
19:49he wanted.
19:50This was decisive.
19:53The French had sent General Maurice Schall, their deputy chief of staff, to see Eden.
20:02General Schall unveiled this plan, which was a total surprise to us at the time.
20:10What would be the reaction of Great Britain if Israel were to attack Egypt?
20:19Well, that's a very difficult question.
20:24There's no need to take notes, Guy.
20:29Guy Millard closed his notebook, but he remembers what followed.
20:35We were aware that the French were in very close contact with the Israelis, because they'd
20:42been supplying them with aircraft and with training for their pilots on these aircraft
20:47and so on.
20:49We were not aware that their relations had gone so far, that they'd actually been negotiating
20:55this kind of thing with the Israelis.
20:59So it was a total surprise.
21:01I have a plan of action, Sir Antony, for Britain and France to gain control of the Suez Canal.
21:09Supposing Israel should be invited to attack Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula, then France
21:20and Britain would order both sides to withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal, permitting
21:27an Anglo-French force to intervene.
21:30We occupy the canal on the pretext that we save it from damage by fighting, while actually
21:39seizing control of the entire waterway and all its ports.
21:45Well, of course, I shall give these suggestions very careful consideration and convey my reactions
21:53to your government a couple of days.
21:58It was as if suddenly the heavens had opened and here was the opportunity at last.
22:11The French leaders were hugely relieved to hear Eden confirm that he accepted the Schaal
22:15plan when he visited them.
22:17Schaal deserves credit for convincing Eden, to our surprise, as we thought he would cave
22:28in under American pressure.
22:34And I can tell you frankly that without the English, we would not have gone in.
22:43We were astonished when Eden said, yes, I want to take part.
22:57Eden was well aware that this must all be kept secret.
23:00I remember him discussing with me what would happen if we informed the Americans of our
23:08talks with the French.
23:11And I said, well, quite obviously, they will oppose what is being suggested and they will
23:24do their utmost to prevent us doing it.
23:33The French now took the initiative.
23:36They persuaded their two allies, Britain and Israel, to sit down together with them and
23:39plan a war.
23:41The location they chose was a villa hidden away in the Paris suburb of Sèvres.
23:50Ben-Gurion and his most trusted advisers managed to leave secretly for France.
23:56On our way to the airport, in the car there were the three of us, Ben-Gurion, Diane and
24:01myself.
24:02Diane put in, put on a pair of glasses and Ben-Gurion put on a hat of his head, which
24:09was so famous with, you know, the flowing white hair.
24:15And I was squeezed in the middle between the two of them.
24:20The omens were not good.
24:22Ben-Gurion had very mixed memories from the time when the British ruled Palestine.
24:26Ben-Gurion, at that time, didn't trust Great Britain.
24:33Eden was a little bit of an exception.
24:37He was sitting close to Churchill, but Ben-Gurion wasn't convinced that he's a man that can
24:43make decisions.
24:45Eden sent his foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, a man not always at ease with foreigners.
24:53Nothing was to be known about this whole arrangement.
24:56And we were picked up there and taken to a villa in Sèvres, which was the centre of
25:04during the war.
25:11The Israelis had already arrived after a gruelling 17-hour flight.
25:16Ben-Gurion looked ill and another member of the delegation was asleep.
25:23When Selwyn Lloyd arrived, he was not impressed by what he found.
25:27And it showed.
25:32He was cold like ice.
25:34He wasn't a very charismatic, smiling gentleman.
25:38So it was a dry martini full of ice, coming in and meeting a highly suspicious group of
25:46people.
25:47Too aloof, too strange, that's the way we saw him.
25:55He tried to avoid us as much as he could.
25:58We didn't go into small talks like with the French.
26:11The representatives sat arguing around the dining table from tea time till midnight.
26:17Ben-Gurion wanted the British and the French to attack the Egyptian airfields earlier.
26:22He was frightened that if the time gap between the Israeli invasion and the Anglo-French
26:26intervention was too long, the newly equipped Egyptian air force would flatten Tel Aviv.
26:33Ben-Gurion stayed during the Blitz in 1940-41 in London and had a strong trauma from that
26:40period and he was afraid that something like that might happen to Tel Aviv.
26:46Ben-Gurion put considerable pressure on Selwyn to agree to advance the attack on the airfields
26:57by 72 hours.
26:59And at midnight Selwyn could only say that he couldn't agree to that and he would have
27:05to return to London.
27:07The conference was now at breaking point.
27:12We knocked with his fist on the table and that was that.
27:18He was ready to quit because a priori he wasn't totally convinced.
27:26Very tense.
27:29We thought finally that all this would lead to failure.
27:34Perez was desperate to stop Ben-Gurion leaving, so he arranged for their plane to have a mechanical fault.
27:41Well I told Ben-Gurion, you don't have a plane to fly back so forget it.
27:47The younger members of the Israeli delegation felt they needed cheering up, so they drove
27:51to this nightclub.
27:54We were young guys who wanted to see a famous French nightclub.
28:04A beautiful one, very gallant.
28:11We were sitting in the lodge, watching it a little bit, I went down, I spoke with some of the girls.
28:25But Perez and Diane were worried sick about the negotiations.
28:31Sitting and watching the nightclub, our heart was somewhere else as you can imagine.
28:36We were preoccupied all the time with it.
28:40And finally we lost our patience and went back to the hotel.
28:45And I was very angry. I was a young man.
28:48I wanted to stay there, but of course I couldn't.
28:52The following day, with the talks in abeyance, the French Foreign Minister flew to London to try and find a compromise.
29:13What struck him initially was the solemn and cold nature of the meeting.
29:23He got the impression that he was in front of a sort of jury who were interrogating him.
29:28There were several cabinet ministers surrounding Eden.
29:33He came away feeling that he had finally convinced Eden, but he felt there was still some hesitancy.
29:44In fact, Eden's only condition was that Israel must make an attack which clearly threatened the canal.
29:50The next morning, he sent a new man, Patrick Deane, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, back to France with instructions to sort this out.
30:01Deane put this point to General Dianne when he and Logan arrived in the afternoon.
30:06Dianne picked out of his pocket a packet of cigarettes which were almost empty and scribbled on the packet a sketch map of the canal
30:20and indicated that the main thrust of the Israeli attack, when it was launched, would be westward.
30:30I pressed him again, what is going to be a serious attack on the canal with that scenario?
30:38The Israeli target marked on Dianne's sketch, though vague, seemed close enough to the canal to be a threat, so meeting Eden's crucial precondition.
30:47But the French and the Israelis wanted to get the British agreement in writing.
30:52About now, we heard a typewriter being used in a neighbouring room.
31:02We hadn't anticipated that there would be a record and it hadn't been mentioned.
31:07The French and the Israelis made it clear they expected Deane to sign.
31:12After conferring with Logan, he did.
31:16After the signature, the British just left immediately.
31:20There were no shake hands or something like that, just goodbye, goodbye, and they left.
31:27But the French and the Israelis remained in several and they opened up a bottle of champagne.
31:36There was a very strong mood of fraternity by then.
31:47SCREAMING
32:06In the meantime, Logan and Deane had returned secretly to London.
32:11We were driven to number 10, where Pat Deane presented this document to Eden,
32:18who immediately said, oh my God, I never thought it would be written down.
32:26The next day, Eden sent Deane and Logan to Paris to do what they could to persuade Pinot to destroy the document.
32:33We were a little aggrieved that Eden had made it known through Deane
32:39that he wanted to burn the freshly signed agreement, so as to leave no trace.
32:48We had been conducted into the Grand State Rooms at the Quai d'Orsay.
32:57There we were left from about 11 o'clock until late afternoon.
33:03Of necessity, Pat Deane went to open the door and sample the corridor, but found the door locked.
33:16And there we remained until about tea time, when we were taken in to Pinot,
33:23who said the French government could not agree with the request.
33:29On the same day as Deane and Logan were trying to destroy the incriminating document,
33:33Eden was boasting about its contents to his chief whip, Ted Heath.
33:42Ted.
33:43Good morning, Prime Minister.
33:44We've got an agreement.
33:46Israel has agreed to invade Egypt.
33:49We shall then send in our own forces, backed up by the French of course,
33:52to separate the contestants and to regain the canal.
33:55No need to involve our American friends.
33:59Ted, you must realise, this is the highest form of statesmanship.
34:05Right. Yes, Prime Minister.
34:09But Eden was less confident than he appeared.
34:12There were waverers in the cabinet, and in some ways he was quite isolated.
34:17So he took a step which suggested he needed to boost his authority.
34:24Eden sent for me. He was very friendly, exhilarated, the way the old Eden one remembered him.
34:31Anthony Montague Brown was private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill.
34:35Eden said, if I were to offer Winston a seat in the cabinet without portfolio, would he accept?
34:44And I was astounded. I couldn't imagine anything less likely.
34:48I said, I don't think he'd like responsibility without power.
34:53Montague Brown duly reported back to Churchill.
34:57He listened without comment. I went through things with timing and so on.
35:01And I came to that bit, and then a broad smile spread over his face.
35:06I must say, you do take a lot on yourself.
35:09You would refuse me a seat in the cabinet without even asking me.
35:13So I said, you mean you wanted one? No, I don't want one.
35:24The day before the planned Israeli attack was due to begin,
35:27General Dayan launched an audacious, secret, pre-emptive strike from this airfield.
35:33He hoped it would paralyze the Egyptians before the war even started.
35:37The mission I was briefed on was to shoot down the Egyptian high command aircraft,
35:43an Ilyushin-14, that was due to fly from Damascus to Cairo.
35:49A well-placed Israeli spy in Damascus was sure General Abdel Hakim Amr,
35:54the Egyptian supreme commander, would be aboard.
36:00The moment Amr's plane left Damascus,
36:02the information was relayed back to the control tower at Ramat David.
36:06A chateau prepared to take off at dusk.
36:16By the time he found the Egyptian plane, it was pitch dark.
36:20So I went to fly wing in wing.
36:24It was flying like this, and I was flying like this.
36:27From there, he could look into the plane unobserved and see Egyptian staff officers.
36:32But when he dropped back and fired, he had to fly so slowly that his meteor went into a spin.
36:40It exploded.
36:44Now you have a ball of fire spinning, and a dark aircraft spinning, and it's hypnotic.
36:50You've seen the flames underneath you, above you, and so on, but it's for a fraction of a second.
36:56And then you're out.
37:00Many top officers perished, but Amr did not.
37:03At the very last minute, he'd switched to a later plane.
37:06But General Dayan was still very pleased, as Chateau discovered when he landed.
37:11Dayan was there, waiting.
37:13He was waiting for the plane to take off.
37:17Dayan was there, waiting.
37:20So he poured some cognac and said,
37:23Well, shooting down at General Headquarters is half the war.
37:27Let's drink to the other half.
37:30NASA never found out what happened to his plane.
37:33The story was kept secret for decades.
37:37CYPRUS
37:43In Cyprus, at that time a British colony,
37:46a massive build-up of British and French forces was nearing its conclusion.
37:52Ready for the day when the secret plan was put into action.
38:01George Black was one of the pilots.
38:05By the time we got to Cyprus, the airfield at Akrotiri was very, very busy indeed.
38:11And not just with Royal Air Force aircraft,
38:13but of course we had the French aircraft there as well.
38:17Just hours before the planned Israeli attack on Egypt,
38:2018 French fighter bombers were flown to Cyprus.
38:26The joint Anglo-French Air Force commander, Air Vice Marshal Dennis Barnett,
38:30assumed the aircraft were part of the Allied build-up on the island.
38:37I went down to the beach to look for Air Marshal Barnett.
38:42He was sitting on a rock.
38:46I said to Barnett,
38:47We have a squadron which is going to land at Akrotiri and then fly on to Israel.
38:55He went very pale and said,
39:01He was surprised, very surprised.
39:03It hadn't occurred to him that collusion with the Israelis could be possible.
39:07So he now discovered that alongside the Anglo-French operation,
39:10we had a separate covert operation with the Israelis.
39:17Even the squadron leader of the newly arrived French planes, Marcel Juyot,
39:21was left in the dark about their next destination.
39:25We took off from Akrotiri,
39:27having been given an envelope to open only once we were airborne.
39:37But it was dark when I opened it and I couldn't see a thing.
39:43Finally, I vaguely saw through the light of the instruments the word, Israel.
39:49There were quite a few surprises in store for Juyot when he landed.
39:53First, the Israelis immediately replaced the French markings on his plane with Israeli ones.
39:58Then he was photographed and given an Israeli ID card.
40:05If we were captured and imprisoned, we simply had to say,
40:09I'm Israelian.
40:12Sending the planes was part of his plan.
40:16Sending the planes was part of a secret agreement between the French and the Israelis,
40:21designed to protect Israel from NASA's Soviet bombers.
40:33The conspiracy plan finally went into action late in the afternoon on October 29,
40:38with an Israeli parachute drop in Egypt.
40:42Only 395 paratroopers took part,
40:45landing in the Sinai Desert 20 miles from Suez,
40:48hardly the major threat to the canal which Diane had promised.
40:55But it was to be enough for Eden and the French.
41:01NASA was mystified when the parachute landing was reported to him.
41:05He rang one of his closest associates, Mohammad Heikal.
41:12Something strange is happening.
41:16The Israelis in Sinai are occupying an empty site behind another,
41:20as if they were fighting the sand.
41:24Come here, I need you.
41:35News of the Israeli attack reached the British ambassador to the UN, Sir Pearson Dixon,
41:40while he was at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
41:44Douglas Heard, the ambassador's private secretary, was the messenger.
41:48When this news came through,
41:50it happened to be the first night of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
41:54A very grand occasion.
41:58Callas was singing Enorma.
42:00I remember this very vividly.
42:02Sir Pearson Dixon knew nothing about Britain's collusion with Israel.
42:07I took the message in to Sir Pearson Dixon,
42:11and this one simply said,
42:13don't call a meeting of the Security Council.
42:16Don't go along with that.
42:18This was all we had.
42:20Dixon, known as Bob, usually worked very closely with his American colleague,
42:24Henry Cabot Lodge, during a Middle East crisis.
42:28Cabot Lodge appeared in one of the intervals of the opera,
42:32to see Bob, his old friend, etc.
42:35It was very puzzled,
42:37when all that Bob Dixon could say was,
42:41I'm sorry, Cabot, but my only instructions are
42:44not at this stage to call a meeting of the Security Council.
42:48So it got off onto a start of embarrassment,
42:53we not knowing what was going on,
42:55only having a negative piece of instruction,
42:58and the Americans very baffled and upset and uncertain
43:02as to what the hell was going on.
43:05Eisenhower's reaction was to write to Eden the following morning.
43:12Dear Anthony,
43:14last evening our ambassador to the United Nations
43:17met with your ambassador to the United Nations, Pearson Dixon,
43:20to request him to join us in presenting the case to the United Nations this morning.
43:25We were astonished to find that he was completely unsympathetic,
43:29stating frankly that his government would not agree to any action whatsoever
43:33to be taken against Israel.
43:36All of this development, including the possible involvement of you
43:40and the French in a general Arab war,
43:43seems to me to leave your government and ours
43:46in a very sad state of confusion.
43:55Eden was now approaching the point of no return.
43:59I took him these telegrams and I handed them to him
44:03and he was sitting in bed, you see,
44:07propped up by pillows,
44:10but ready dressed with a tie and collar and everything,
44:14just had to slip on his coat and his trousers
44:17to go across to the House of Commons.
44:19And he did at one point said to me as he was reading this,
44:23because I stood waiting,
44:25he said, you personally do agree that what I'm doing is necessary, don't you?
44:31Well, you see, the Prime Minister oughtn't to ask people like me.
44:37This was the day when Eden told first the Queen
44:41and then the Commons about the steps which would take Britain to war.
44:45The Egyptian and Israeli ambassadors were summoned
44:48and told to withdraw 10 miles on either side of the canal
44:51or face Anglo-French military intervention.
44:55One side awaited its ultimatum with impatience.
45:02I was sitting here in the Ministry of Defence,
45:05waiting for the ultimatum.
45:07It didn't arrive.
45:12And so I called up the French ambassador.
45:16I asked him, sir, do you have an ultimatum for us?
45:21He says, no, no, I'm going to check.
45:23Then I called in the British ambassador.
45:26He says, maybe you have an ultimatum.
45:29Neither of them had.
45:31Except for one or two people,
45:33nobody in the British or French foreign offices
45:36knew anything about the conspiracy.
45:41NASA rejected the ultimatum,
45:43thus giving Eden and the French the excuse they needed to invade.
45:48I haven't thought at all that Britain would begin any attack against us
45:54because it was clear that any attack against us
45:58would affect the British position all over the Arab countries
46:02and would mean the end of the British relations
46:08and influence in the Middle East.
46:11So we were waiting for Israeli attack.
46:15We were thinking about French collusion with Israel.
46:20We were keeping completely out of mind the British collusion.
46:30Meanwhile, at the UN,
46:32the American ambassador proposed a resolution in the Security Council
46:36calling on the Israelis to withdraw...
46:38For those who are in favour of its adoption, please raise their hands.
46:42..and on all member states to refrain from the use of force.
46:47It was almost inconceivable that Britain and France
46:51should cast vetoes in view of their whole record in the UN
46:55and the position that they had there.
46:57And therefore there was a sense of actual amazement
47:01at the physical moment
47:03when Pierson Dixon, Bob Dixon, raised his hand...
47:06Those against. ..to veto the resolution.
47:13Abstention. Abstentions.
47:22After the arrival of reinforcements,
47:24the paratroopers who'd opened the Israeli attack two days earlier
47:28were on the move again.
47:34Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Sharon, their up-and-coming commander,
47:38had ordered his men to occupy the Mittler Pass,
47:41which lay between them and the Suez Canal.
47:46But there was no proper wrecking and his men drove into a trap.
47:55Egyptians were firing from well-protected caves and crevices
47:58on either side of the pass.
48:12We were driving along the road,
48:15getting an almighty barrage from both sides.
48:22The Egyptians were holding positions
48:24between 20 and 100 metres from the road,
48:27along a kilometre stretch of the pass.
48:35Sharon wanted his ambushed men rescued
48:39and another unit was sent up and over a ridge above the pass
48:42to try and reach them.
48:46In this area, there was no place to hide.
48:50So the company commander told me,
48:53if they want me to charge, I will.
48:56He almost cried.
48:59Despite the danger, they were ordered to charge.
49:04When we charged,
49:06a heavy fire was shot against us.
49:12He was my company commander.
49:14He ran nearby myself.
49:18He got a bullet in his chest.
49:21I got a bullet in my helmet.
49:27Lieutenant Dan Ziv saw it all happen from below.
49:36People thought that the Egyptians were near the road.
49:42They didn't realise that they were also in the crevices further up,
49:45until they were shot from behind as they charged past.
49:53We were 21.
49:55Almost half of them were killed or wounded.
49:58We suffered quite a number of casualties,
50:02all in vain.
50:04There was no good game out of it.
50:1038 Israelis were killed during the battle for the Mittler Pass,
50:14dying in an operation which was supposed to be a token battle
50:17for the benefit of Eden and the French.
50:24In the evening, the paratroopers moved along the contours of the pass,
50:27killing the Egyptians in the caves and crevices.
50:30150 Egyptians died.
50:32The rest fled.
50:45A last-minute delay to the start of the bombing of Egypt
50:48almost disrupted the Anglo-French alliance with Israel.
50:52The postponement of the bombing by about 12 hours
50:55was a breach of the secret agreement.
50:59And it awoke Ben-Gurion's fears
51:01that the Egyptians might obliterate Tel Aviv with their new Soviet bombers.
51:05Diane sent Mordecai Bahan to inform Ben-Gurion.
51:09I've never seen Ben-Gurion so angry.
51:12All his fears came true now.
51:15All his suspicions, all his disbelief with the British came to fear.
51:19He said something in Hebrew,
51:21which I never heard him saying such things.
51:24He said something that amounts to,
51:26oh, this wretched old whore, meaning the British.
51:30That's about the same that he exclaimed.
51:33And said immediately, call Diane, tell him to bring back the paratroopers.
51:41Once the RAF bombing started,
51:43no more was heard of Ben-Gurion's order.
51:49When the planes reached Cairo,
51:51Nasser, who'd been entertaining the Indonesian ambassador at home,
51:54went outside.
51:57I listened and there was the jet airplanes.
52:03And I said to the Indonesian ambassador that these are jet airplanes
52:07and the Israelis don't have jet airplanes.
52:10These are British.
52:13I went over to the roof of the house.
52:16I saw the bombardment of the international airport.
52:22I went directly to the army headquarters.
52:26It was clear from the start
52:28that the RAF was trying to destroy Nasser's new air force.
52:32The first raid sent one of Nasser's closest associates,
52:35Major Salah Salem, into a panic.
52:44Salah Salem was the nervous type.
52:47He was always nervous.
52:49He thought with his nerves, not with his brain.
52:55So what did he say to the boss?
52:57He said, let's go and give ourselves up to the British embassy.
53:00We can't resist such force.
53:05But the boss said to Salah,
53:07don't worry, we will resist and resist and we will be victorious.
53:19Ahmad Thawat, the president's doctor, was also there.
53:22And the president said, Ahmad,
53:24please give Salah an injection to calm him down.
53:31If Nasser had accepted Salem's advice and gone round to the embassy,
53:35he would have found the staff there
53:37busily weeding out incriminating documents.
53:40Well, there were so many documents there
53:42dated from way, way back which had not been weeded.
53:45And so, therefore, we had to have a chain of chaps
53:50passing the files out and toss onto the braziers.
53:56And I remember with some feeling of joy
54:02throwing on the file British Middle East policy
54:08onto the brazier.
54:15For Eisenhower, first the Israeli attack
54:17and then the British bombing less than a week before polling day
54:20could not have come at a worse time.
54:23He felt badly let down.
54:26The United States was not consulted in any way
54:29about any phase of these actions,
54:31nor were we informed of them in advance.
54:36As it is the manifest right of any of these nations
54:39to take such decisions and actions,
54:42it is likewise our right
54:44if our judgment so dictates to dissent.
54:47We believe these actions to have been taken in error,
54:51for we do not accept the use of force
54:54as a wise or proper instrument
54:56for the settlement of international disputes.
54:59We were watching it on TV and we kind of smiled
55:02because we knew darn well
55:04that he knew all the time what was happening.
55:07And this was kind of a show on his part, I think.
55:10But it was also to conceal the fact
55:12that we had used the U-2s to obtain the information.
55:22The following day, the British bombing continued in earnest.
55:30Once we got closer,
55:32there was just lines and lines of MiG-15s,
55:35all beautifully spaced outside the hangars.
55:38I mean, if you run down a line of aircrafts
55:41and you just keep the trigger pressed the whole time
55:44and the gun sight on the target,
55:47you're going to destroy a lot of aircraft or damage them anyway.
55:55I would think there was the best part of 50, 60 MiGs on the ground.
56:01There was no attempt to put them onto shelters
56:05or leave them in the hangars
56:07or even disperse them on the airfields.
56:10It was unbelievable.
56:12I just couldn't believe that the aircraft were lined up.
56:23Nasser publicly exuded confidence, but he had moments of doubt.
56:28A popular song at the time,
56:30We Have Entrusted Egypt Into Your Hands, strongly affected him.
56:35He told a friend,
56:37I've been questioning myself.
56:40Have I behaved well towards this trust or not?
56:52On Eden, the pressure was now even greater.
56:55The bombing and the knowledge that an invasion fleet
56:58was on its way to Port Said had aroused the Labour opposition.
57:03But a potentially wounding blow came
57:05at the end of a tumultuous debate from his own side.
57:09William Yates, a Tory well disposed towards Nasser,
57:12had discovered Eden's conspiracy with France and Israel.
57:16I had been to France and I had come to the conclusion
57:20that Abash's government was involved in an international conspiracy.
57:25It was chaotic what happened.
57:29The Labour members yelled, waved all the papers, stood on the benches
57:33and it was really a most extraordinary sight.
57:37Everyone screaming and shouting.
57:40I mean, it was a bare pitch.
57:46It was very calm all through Suez.
57:49I mean, like people are in a great crisis, you become calm, don't you?
57:54But Yates' inability to spell out the details of the conspiracy
57:57saved Eden acute embarrassment.
58:00But he did repeat his accusation to Eden in the lobby afterwards.
58:05To which he looked very, very pale and very, very pale and perspiring
58:12and he said two words,
58:16which means, of course, treacherous Britain.
58:19I never was able to make out whether that was a way
58:23of passing me off as of no consequence
58:26or what was the object of using that expression.
58:35In the meantime, an Anglo-French spy
58:38who had been in contact with Yates
58:42In the meantime, an Anglo-French flotilla
58:45was moving steadily towards the Egyptian coast.
58:51The fates of both NASA and Eden hung in the balance.
59:01Next week in the last episode of the series,
59:04the Suez crisis reaches an explosive climax
59:07as French and British troops invade Egypt
59:10to seize the canal with disastrous political consequences.
59:14And Radio 4 reveals new evidence on the role of MI6
59:17during the Suez crisis, Saturday night at eight.