Suez - the Missing Dimension

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Eden wanted Nasser murdered as MI6 plotted regime change in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia
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"I was astonished when somebody showed me some document written by an acquaintance of mine in MI6. I wouldn't have recognised it at all as being anything like British policy, but it was set out as being so. These secret people, you see, they get so above themselves, if I might say so."
Evelyn Shuckburgh, Assistant Under Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs at the Foreign Office in 1956
Suez - The Missing Dimension
Archive Hour Interview Broadcast, BBC Radio 4, 28 October 2006

"No MI6 official was punished for the Suez failure, although quietly the service was reorganised to prevent any repetition of its Middle Eastern scheming. Julian Amery became Minister for Air in the Macmillan government, but his true role in the Suez crisis never emerged. Instead Anthony Eden was left to carry responsibilty alone for one of Britain's greatest foreign misadventures ever..... There's one final twist to our tale, however. More than fifty years after Suez, Anthony Eden's call for action against evil dictators is echoed by his successors. Britain is once again involved with regime change in the Middle East, albeit one led by a different imperial power...."
Suez - The Missing Dimension
BBC Radio 4, 28 October 2006

A report on MI6's covert efforts to topple President Nasser of Egypt in the 1950s is airing on BBC Radio 4 Saturday night 8.02 pm.

Details of the MI6 conspiracies against Iran (first disclosed 2000) and Egypt (now reported 2006) surfaced only some fifty years after these events. So what will we learn fifty years from now about the factors that were at play behind the scenes during the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003?

The BBC reports that "For many years, the blame for Suez has been placed on Prime Minister Anthony Eden and his lack of judgement. This documentary will contend, however, that British intelligence was plotting for the downfall of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser long before Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in July 1956 and even before Eden's expressed wish in March that year to get rid of the Egyptian leader."

The potential parallels with the modern day Iraq scandal, and in particular with MI6's alleged involvement in the 'Operation Rockingham' and 'Operation Mass Appeal' covert propaganda exercises against Saddam Hussein, are striking, although the 2003 Iraq war is usually regarded as being led from Washington triggered by the attacks of 9/11 (according to former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer, President Bush first asked Prime Minister Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after 9/11. Meyer, who was at the dinner, claims Blair 'said nothing to demur'.)

A recent article by Newsweek (30 October 2006 issue) cites "two former intel officials" as claiming that the head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, and Prime Minister Blair's national security adviser, Sir David Manning, met with the Director of US Central Intelligence, George Tenet, at CIA headquarters the day after 9/11 (Newsweek says the meeting has also been confirmed by a UK source, but with US airspace closed down it is not clear how Sir Richard Dearlove would have been able to fly to Washington immediately after the attacks, although it is possible he might have already been in America as is known to have been the case with Sir David Manning).

One of the British delegation is reported to have told Tenet "I hope we can all agree that we should concentrate on Afghanistan and not be tempted to launch any attacks on Iraq", although it is not disclosed who said this, and one of Newsweek's sources says Iraq was not discussed..

After more than 70 years of this we can expect little to change unless Britain develops a coherent energy policy which addresses its growing dependence on imported oil as production in the North Sea rapidly declines.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Suez Crisis of 1956, Professor Scott Lucas uses new evidence to uncover the key role played by British intelligence services in "creating" the war with Egypt.

To tell this story for the first time, Professor Lucas presents a number of interviews which he conducted with British officials in the late Eighties. These interviews have never been aired and many were "classified" until the deaths of the interviewees. They include the recollections of Julian Amery, who met the anti-Nasser plotters in Geneva and Athens up to the end of August 1956. He reveals the details of the conversations and only drew the line at revealing the identities of his Egyptian conspirators.

For many years, the blame for Suez has been placed on Prime Minister Anthony Eden and his lack of judgement. This documentary will contend, however, that British intelligence was plotting for the downfall of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser long before Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in July 1956 and even before Eden's expressed wish in March that year to get rid of the Egyptian leader.

"At the beginning of the 20 Century King Edward VII ruled over a vast empire with interests in every part of the world. India became increasingly important because it was the second pillar of British power in the world. Moving the Indian army about was extremely important in extending British interests and British influence across the globe and the Suez canal was of course the quick way to do that. It's very important for the British geopolicital position to ensure the Suez canal remains safe and secure. With this aim in mind Britain had become the only European power to establish a major foothold in the Middle East, in the principalities around the Persian Gulf, in Aden, and in Egypt.... Pouring over a map of the Levant, Sykes and Picot personally drew in the areas they wished to see under their control. Their secret deal amounted to the virtual carve up of the Middle East.... [France was to have Greater Syria and] ... the area... known as Iraq with its strategic ports, railways, and oil... was to be under British rule. ... Palestine.... was envisaged as an international zone, except for Haiffa. What the British wanted was the oil of Iraq and they concentrated on getting Iraq and getting a way from Iraq to the Meditteranian in order to transport this oil. So they got Haiffa on the Palestinian coast and they got most of Iraq. ... Unaware of these secret dealings behind their backs Hussein and Feisal proclaimed independence and in June 1916 attacked the Turkish troops... The Turkish garrason at Mecca was soon overun and the sea port at Jiddha seized... In a pincer movement Britain had launched a campaign from the south west to ensure control of the Suez canal and the Levant, and from the South East it was fighting to secure the oil wells of Iraq... In the east the Ottoman area of Messoptamia, which included the oil fields of Mossul, was given to Britain as the mandate for Iraq. ... this was basically the importance of the Sykes-Picot agreement, to divide what was called the fertile crescent between Iraq and Syria, and let Britain get access to the oil of the area and be able to exploit it in the future.... "
Promises & Betrayals
The History Channel & Gulf Research Center
Content Productions 2002
Broadcast Monday 14th March 2005 on History Channel - 53 Minutes

"At the beginning of the 20 Century King Edward VII ruled over a vast empire with interests in every part of the world. India became increasingly important because it was the second pillar of British power in the world. Moving the Indian army about was extremely important in extending British interests and British influence across the globe and the Suez canal was of course the quick way to do that. It's very important for the British geopolicital position to ensure the Suez canal remains safe and secure. With this aim in mind Britain had become the only European power to establish a major foothold in the Middle East, in the principalities around the Persian Gulf, in Aden, and in Egypt.... Pouring over a map of the Levant, Sykes and Picot personally drew in the areas they wished to see under their control. Their secret deal amounted to the virtual carve up of the Middle East.... [France was to have Greater Syria and] ... the area... known as Iraq with its strategic ports, railways, and oil... was to be under British rule. ... Palestine.... was envisaged as an international zone, except for Haiffa. What the British wanted was the oil of Iraq and they concentrated on getting Iraq and getting a way from Iraq to the Meditteranian in order to transport this oil. So they got Haiffa on the Palestinian coast and they got most of Iraq. ... Unaware of these secret dealings behind their backs Hussein and Feisal proclaimed independence and in June 1916 attacked the Turkish troops... The Turkish garrason at Mecca was soon overun and the sea port at Jiddha seized... In a pincer movement Britain had launched a campaign from the south west to ensure control of the Suez canal and the Levant, and from the South East it was fighting to secure the oil wells of Iraq... In the east the Ottoman area of Messoptamia, which included the oil fields of Mossul, was given to Britain as the mandate for Iraq. ... this was basically the importance of the Sykes-Picot agreement, to divide what was called the fertile crescent between Iraq and Syria, and let Britain get access to the oil of the area and be able to exploit it in the future.... "
Promises & Betrayals
The History Channel & Gulf Research Center
Content Productions 2002
Broadcast Monday 14th March 2005 on History Channel - 53 Minutes

"The Suez Crisis, which occurred 50 years ago, was the full stop at the end of the British Empire. In 1945, at the close of the Second World War, Britain still governed the world’s largest Empire, with an independent Commonwealth of the Old Dominions. The Raj ruled India. Britain enjoyed a strong influence in the oil-rich Middle East and was still a genuine world power, behind the United States and the Soviet Union.... If one had to pick a day for the end of the British Empire, it might be July 26, 1956, the day that President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal.... In 1956 I was writing leaders for The Financial Times. I had been commissioned to write a brief life of the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, a man whom I liked and admired. I had also become involved as an assistant speech writer to Eden, specialising in economic policy..... In July to November 1956 I was a convinced advocate of Eden’s Suez policy.....Middle Eastern oil was as essential, in 1956 as now, to the economy and security of the United States, Europe and world trade. So long as Britain had influence in the Middle East, Britain would remain a real world power. Yet Britain could not maintain that influence without American support. Nasser’s nationalisation of the canal was a direct challenge to the West. Eden believed that the challenge had to be met. Eisenhower and Dulles, his Secretary of State, were not prepared to meet it; at the Suez Canal Users Conference held in London it became apparent that American policy could not be trusted. Dulles promised action, which he failed to take. The shift of Western power in the Middle East should have been a relay race, in which Britain would transfer the baton to the United States. Eden was willing to transfer the baton in August 1956 but Eisenhower, with his re-election campaign much in mind, was not ready to take the transfer. Only in October did Eden adopt the joint Anglo-French-Israeli plan that was indeed a disaster. Eisenhower had made the mistake of leaving Eden with no better option. The world community had an essential interest in the free flow of oil through the canal. That could have been secured only by joint Anglo-American action. Eisenhower decided against such action; Dulles’s conduct convinced Eden that he personally was hostile and untrustworthy. The Suez Crisis was indeed the end of the Empire, but it was a blunder of American policy, for which the United States is still paying a very high price."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Suez: why I blame it on Ike
London Times, 24 July 2006

"Fifty years ago this week, the CIA and the British SIS orchestrated a coup d'etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain's ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [later renamed as BP]. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup... The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah... The author of All the Shah's Men, New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, argues that the coup planted the seeds of resentment against the US in the Middle East, ultimately leading to the events of September 11.... The coup and the culture of covert interference it created forever changed how the world viewed the US, especially in poor, oppressive countries. For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered."
The spectre of Operation Ajax
Guardian, 20 August 2003

"The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran's government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps that derailed its original plans. Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist. The document shows that:

Britain, fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup in 1952 and pressed the United States to mount a joint operation to remove the prime minister.

"For nearly five decades, America's role in the military coup that ousted Iran's elected prime minister and returned the shah to power has been lost to history, the subject of fierce debate in Iran and stony silence in the United States. One by one, participants have retired or died without revealing key details, and the Central Intelligence Agency said a number of records of the operation — its first successful overthrow of a foreign government — had been destroyed. But a copy of the agency's secret history of the coup has surfaced, revealing the inner workings of a plot that set the stage for the Islamic revolution in 1979, and for a generation of anti-American hatred in one of the Middle East's most powerful countries. The document, which remains classified, discloses the pivotal role British intelligence officials played in initiating and planning the coup, and it shows that Washington and London shared an interest in maintaining the West's control over Iranian oil. The secret history, written by the C.I.A.'s chief coup planner and obtained by The New York Times, says the operation's success was mostly a matter of chance. The document shows that the agency had almost complete contempt for the man it was empowering, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, whom it derided as a vacillating coward. And it recounts, for the first time, the agency's tortured efforts to seduce and cajole the shah into taking part in his own coup. The operation, code-named TP-Ajax, was the blueprint for a succession of C.I.A. plots to foment coups and destabilize governments during the cold war — including the agency's successful coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the disastrous Cuban intervention known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961. In more than one instance, such operations led to the same kind of long-term animosity toward the United States that occurred in Iran."
How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in '79)
New York Times On The Web, 2000

1953 US COUP IN IRAN
More Details From The New York Times

TIMELINES

TIMES ARCHIVES

View CIA Document
Click Here

"The Director, on April 4, 1953, approved a budget of $1,000,000 which could be be used by the Tehran Station in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh." — C.I.A. Document, Part I, page 3

"The purpose will be to create, extend, and enhance public hostility and distrust and fear of Mossadegh and his government." — C.I.A. Document, Appendix B, page 15

'Democracy Now' Interviews Stephen Kinzer On The 1953 Coup - 25 August 2003 - Click Here

"British intelligence ran a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a former US intelligence officer has claimed. Former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter said the disinformation drive in the late 1990s was designed to shift public opinion.... He told reporters in the House of Commons that he was involved personally with Operation Mass Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August 1998 when he resigned from the UN. Mr Ritter said the MI6 operation was designed to 'shake up public opinion' by passing dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media. The so-called 'non-actionable intelligence' dealt with Saddam Hussein's alleged campaign to possess and conceal weapons of mass destruction. He said the intelligence was 'single source data of dubious quality'. Mr Ritter claimed this was the first time the existence of Operation Mass Appeal had been revealed. He urged MPs to hold a fresh inquiry in the use of intelligence in the run up to the war against Iraq. He declined to give specific examples of disinformation but said he was prepared to reveal details before a public inquiry. Mr Ritter said: 'I was brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN... I sat on a body of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy that if it could appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a bad way. 'I was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the international media.' 'It was intelligence data that dealt with Iraq's efforts to procure WMDs, with Iraq's efforts to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked veracity. 'They took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on the front pages. 'The government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports, continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an addiction to WMDs.' A spokesman speaking on behalf of MI6 told BBC News Online: 'The allegation that Ritter was using MI6 material is unfounded.'"
MI6 ran 'dubious' Iraq campaign
BBC Online, 21 November 2003

"Britain ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added....Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war....Many in British intelligence believe the planned parliamentary inquiry by MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will pass the blame for the use of selective intelligence to the JIC, which includes senior intelligence figures. Intelligence sources say this would be unfair as they claim the JIC was following political instructions."
Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
Sunday Herald, 8 June 2003

"David Kelly, giving evidence to the prime minister's intelligence and security committee in closed session on July 16 - the day before his suicide - made a comment the significance of which has so far been missed. He said: 'Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell.' Unfortunately nobody on the committee followed up this lead, which is a pity because the Rockingham reference may turn out to be very important indeed. What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war. He has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for Bush, but he distinguished himself in insisting before the Iraq war, and was almost alone in doing so, that almost all of Iraq's WMD had been destroyed as a result of inspections, and the rest either used or destroyed in the first Gulf war. In terms, therefore, of proven accuracy of judgment and weight of experience of the workings of western military intelligence, he is a highly reliable source. In an interview in the Scottish Sunday Herald in June, Ritter said: 'Operation Rockingham [a unit set up by defence intelligence staff within the MoD in 1991] cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when] Unscom was showing the opposite.' Rockingham was, in fact, a clearing house for intelligence, but one with a predetermined political purpose.... Only one other official reference to Operation Rockingham is on record, in an aside by Brigadier Richard Holmes when giving evidence to the defence select committee in 1998. He linked it to Unscom inspections, but it was clear that the Rockingham staff included military officers and intelligence services representatives together with civilian MoD personnel. Within, therefore, the UK intelligence establishment - MI6, MI5, GCHQ and defence intelligence - Rockingham clearly had a central, though covert, role in seeking to prove an active Iraqi WMD programme.... A parallel exercise was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US, named the Office of Special Plans. The purpose of this intelligence agency was the provision of selective intelligence which met the demands of its political masters. Similarly, in the case of the UK, Ritter insists that Rockingham officers were acting on political orders 'from the very highest levels'. Both Ritter and British intelligence sources have said that the selective intelligence gathered by Operation Rockingham would have been passed to the joint intelligence committee (JIC), which was behind the dossiers published by the UK government claiming Iraq had WMDs. ... The other highly contentious item in the dossier was that Saddam tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Africa. How did material that the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded on February 4 was a blatant forgery come to be included in President Bush's January 28 State of the Union address? And, since the British were named as the source, why did MI6 not spot this outlandish forgery? In fact, they alleged that the Niger claim came from another independent source, which has never been identified. Could this be because this disinformation served the Rockingham purpose only too well? It is not only the massaging of intelligence that seems to have gone on, but also the suppression of the most reliable assessment of the facts. David Kelly, we now know, had been advising privately prior to the war about the likelihood of Iraqi WMD. He told the foreign affairs select committee: 'I have no idea whether there were weapons or not at that time [of the September 2002 dossier]'. And to the intelligence and security committee the next day he added: 'The 30% probability is what I have been saying all the way through ... I said that to many people ... it was a statement I would have probably made for the last six months.' Yet this view from the leading expert within government never saw the light of day. Why not?"
The very secret service
Guardian, 21 November 2003

"Weapons expert Dr David Kelly told of 'many dark actors playing games' in an e-mail to a journalist hours before his suicide, it was reported on Saturday. The words appeared to refer to officials at the Ministry of Defence and UK intelligence agencies with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports, according to the New York Times.".
Kelly warned of 'dark actors'
London Times, 19 July 2003

"The United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies, the army general overseeing US operations in Iraq has said. While the Bush administration has downplayed prospects for permanent US bases in Iraq, General John Abizaid told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday he could not rule that out.... Abizaid cited the need to fight al-Qaida and other extremists groups and 'the need to be able to deter ambitions of an expansionistic Iran' as potential reasons to keep some level of troops in the region in the long term.... 'Clearly our long-term vision for a military presence in the region requires a robust counter-terrorist capability,' Abizaid said.... Abizaid also said the United States and its allies have a vital interest in the oil-rich region. 'Ultimately it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else in the world depend,' he said.... Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, questioned 'what kind of signal that sends to the American people and to the Iraqis and the region ... if somehow there is ambiguity on our ultimate designs in terms of a military presence in Iraq'".
US 'may want to keep Iraq bases'
Reuters, 15 March 2006

"... we've been in the Middle East more than 50 years. We've been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like to call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been there either as naval, air or land forces in one way or another for an awful long time. And once the British pulled out the Arabian gulf, it became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force in the region..... And ultimately, it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else's depends upon.... We need to maintain a presence that protects the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our well-being."
General John Abizaid, Commander of the United States Central Command overseeing US operations in Iraq, confirming to a US Congressional Committee that the United States needs permanent military bases in Iraq in order to maintain access to Gulf oil

"Sir Anthony Eden's cabinet openly discussed how to mislead the public and international community over a secret pact with France and Israel to seize the Suez canal, documents released after more than 50 years show. Detailed notes of discussions during the Suez crisis of 1956 taken by the Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook show the extent to which the British Government sought to cover up its 'collusion' with Israel as a pretext for invasion of Egyptian territory after Nasser's nationalisation of the strategically important waterway. Previous documents have confirmed that Eden held secret talks with French officials in October 1956 to formulate a plan in which Israel was to attack Egypt allowing France and Britain to step in, supposedly as peace keepers, to seize the canal. Following Israel's invasion on October 29, Britain and France made a joint move on Port Said in Egypt on the night of November 5 to 6. But the adventure ended in humiliation for the two countries when they were forced to withdraw under pressure from the United States as well as the UN and Soviet Union. The secret Anglo-French plan was concealed from the public at the time and Prime Minister Eden actively denied any knowledge of Israeli action to the House of Commons. But Sir Norman's notes of the cabinet discussions show the extent to which the cabinet was aware of the plan, first fretting over indications that Israel was considering backing out of the invasion and then following its progress closely once it had begun. Details of discussions covering the entire period of the crisis are contained in Sir Norman's official diary, which has been released to the National Archives for the first time. On October 23 Eden told the cabinet that Israel was having second thoughts about attacking, warning ministers that Britain would not be able to hold up its military preparations by more than a week. Then on November 20 1956, at a time when the increasingly ill Eden had left the country suffering nervous exhaustion, ministers openly discussed how to counter suspicions of the Government's active co-operation with Israel. Writing in his own shorthand, Sir Norman recorded: 'DE (Viscount David Eccles, the minister of works): What line do we take on 'collusion'?' Iain Macleod, the minister of labour and national service, took the view that there was little in the public domain to back up suspicions of collusion between Britain, France and Israel. 'The 'evidence' is pretty shoddy,' he is recorded as having said. 'Could we not say: of course we knew of Israel's intentions and took precautions accordingly. But no prior agreement, no promises of territorial changes, no incitement to Israel to attack.'The diaries show repeated blithe assumptions that America would support British military action."
Sir Anthony Eden's cabinet discussed concealing Suez 'collusion', records show
Daily Telegraph, 3 October 2008

"Britain joined forces with France and Israel in an attempt to regain control of the strategically vital waterway in 1956, after it was nationalised by Egypt. The three powers agreed that Israel would start military action against the Middle Eastern nation, paving the way for Britain and France to intervene and seize control of the canal. But this plan was concealed from the public, with Prime Minister Anthony Eden denying any knowledge of Israeli action to the House of Commons. In extracts from diaries kept by then Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook, published for the first time by the National Archives, discussions of the cover-up are revealed. Part of the entry for November 20 reads: 'DE (Viscount David Eccles - Minister of Works): What line do we take on 'collusion'?' ...The diaries are the final instalment of Brook's notebooks, containing handwritten notes taken in Cabinet meetings, to be published. It was agreed in 2004 that they should be transcribed, and they have been released in sections since 2006."
Diaries reveal secret Suez pact
Press Association, 3 October 2008