Sunday, August 1, 2010

ADEN

This strategic territory at the entrance to the Red Sea was a British colony until November 1967, when a  lengthy Egyptian-backed insurgency concluded with independence. During and after World War II, a series of MI5 defense security officers was posted to Aden, but when the disparate  terrorists combined in 1966 to  form the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY), the local intelligence structure—represented by  MI5’s Sandy Stuart and the  Secret Intelligence Service’s John da Silva—established the Aden Intelligence  Centre (AIC), which concentrated the limited resources of the local police Special Branch with the garrison and  the governor’s administration. Headed by Jack Prendergast, the AIC pooled information, ran double agents, and attempted to penetrate FLOSY, but it was frustrated by a ruthless campaign of assassination that eliminated  most of the locally recruited Special Branch officers.