A success story of security and protection dates from the 1970s, when governments responded to a rising international trend of hijackings of passenger aircraft, as a file at the National Archives at Kew shows.
The file BT 394/26 opens with a British Embassy official in Washington DC writing to the Department of Trade in London, about a ‘somewhat informal’ meeting, by the United States federal federal aviation administration (FAA). The Americans wanted to require foreign (that is, non-US) air carriers to provide uniformed armed law enforcement officers as part of the passenger screening at airports. The embassy official got in touch with a British Airways security man based in New York, and suggested that he come down to Washington DC for the meeting. At the meeting, the embassy official gave the UK view; that it would certainly back up the FAA; ‘but we were strongly opposed to the idea of our carriers having to pay for the presence of law enforcement officers at the departure points’. The embassy was claiming it was a matter of principle; because the UK provided ‘adequate security arrangements’. If the FAA had their way, British Airways would have to pay at JFK Airport in New York, while American carriers got services provided for them by the British government. An American security services man responded that the US required armed officers at its domestic carrier airports.
As this suggested, a perennial problem was that aviation crime crossed borders; yet hijackers and other criminals could exploit the weakest places.
In the EEC
Another arena for Britain was the EEC, since named the European Union, that it had joined in 1973 (making nine members). That meant UK ministers could meet their European fellows; the Home Office meeting interior ministries for example, including to explore exchanging information about suspected terrorists; and to exchange ideas, such as against aircraft hijacking. Also for discussion was cooperation on police training, and reciprocal access to (paper) records.
At Interpol
Another avenue was the international police body Interpol. An air transportation security committee meeting during the Interpol assembly in Buenos Aires in October 1975 noted that security and other measures of the early 1970s had had an effect. The US and Canada for example had signed an agreement with Cuba whereby the Communist island would not tke hijackers as refugees. The US had begun searches of passengers and their hand luggage in 1972, and had not had hijackings since. An Argentinian delegate noted that ‘a reasonable balance had to be maintained in airports between security and travel facility’, while the Venezuelan delegate noted problems of theft of luggage and forged (paper) tickets.
A September 1974 meeting of EEC members towards a working group against terrorism included a man from Britain’s security services. As a paper written before the meeting put it, how were the authorities to translate ‘political aspirations into concrete achievements’. Put another way, how to do ‘more than just face-saving platitudes’? Hijackings were in fashion, and not only in aviation (Heathrow had a case in 1975); police in London in 1975 had to manage the ‘Spaghetti House siege’ after a robbery went wrong; and weeks later the siege in Balcombe Street when four IRA Irish republican terrorists holed up in a flat and held the occupants hostage. The paper noted about the exchange of information on terrorist plans, and suggestions of mutual aid, and that ‘the security services have close relations with their counterparts in most other EEC countries’. The UK, Germany and France were working as a unit on the ‘Carlos case’ (presumably the high-profile terrorist ‘Carlos the Jackal’) while other EEC members didn’t know; as the paper put it, the cooperating countries ‘would have to tread carefully …. to avoid upsetting sensibilities’. The Minsitry of Defence was anxious for the SAS to invite French, German and Dutch ‘colleagues’ to the SAS’ base at Hereford, and for the SAS to make visits on the Continent.
Numbers and kinds
An undated paper in the file, presumably from 1975, gave a high of 87 hijackings in 1969, many successful; compared with 35 in 1968. The year 1974 saw only 22, and only four of them successful. The threat was of three kinds: the ‘politically inspired cause’; the extortion of cash; and the ‘mentally deranged’. Her
The political ones might be highly trained, even assisted by a government. The international civil aviation body ICAO had held three conventiuons on hijacking: at Tokyo in 1963 (ratified into British law by Act of Parliament in 1967), The Hague in 1971 (ratified into British law the same year) and Montreal in 1973 (ratified into British law the same year). Besides, according to the paper, Britain made ‘intense effort’ of security surveying of airports, which led to fencing of perimeters and physical security in terminals, the guarding of aircraft ‘and above all by the formation of contingency plans to deal with various situations’, from the ‘petty bomb hoax upwards’. Progress was described as considerable. For example, from ‘primitive’ search by hand; ‘there is now a move towards sophisticated devices for metal and explosive detection together with the x-ray which is becoming more prevalent. However …. Gadgetry tends to breed an undue reliance upon the machine and manpower must be continually motivated towards ceaseless vigilance’. In other words, x-ray machines were a ‘very fallible aid’.
Police
The present position was that hijackings were less fashionable; but personalities might be kidnapped in their own homes, or at embassies. Under the Policing of Airports Act 1974, the police had become responsible for policing of larger British airports. The paper noted that the police ought to become familiar with those airports; in other words, police on duty ought not to be temporary; and that police would have to listen to their ‘clients’, the airlines, and not only about crime but aviation safety. The paper added that ‘a policeman was observed recently kicking a metal object to and fro on an airport apron. An airport employee would have picked it up as a precaution against jet ingestion and damage’.
Devices
Detection devices in regular use at British airports cost as much as £27,000 (in an era when you could buy a car for three figures) or a hand-held, battery-operated metal detector, described as effective, that cost £38.
The US suggested a NATO Council meeting on terrorism for April 1973. A confidential check of open source material from January 1968 to October 1972 came up with 320 cases of ‘international terrorist activity’, such as assassinations, letter-bombs and hijackings. About 550 were dead or injured as a result. A paper summed up that political terrorism presented ‘a serious threat to the internal security of some NATO nations’. The paper noted that terrorist groups had false identity papers, and hiding places and diplomats might be used as couriers, out of sympathy with the terrorists (perhaps in the name of anti-imperialism, or national liberation; perhaps Arab countries sympathetic to anti-Israeli terrorism). But, there was no evidence of an ‘international conspiracy’ or ‘central command’. That NATO Council meeting heard that Germany, after the Munich Olympic terrorism against Israelis in 1972, had been in touch with Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, namely Arab countries that had helped Palestinian terrorists; but those countries were ‘reluctant’ to discuss the problem with outsiders. Similarly, a US special representative, though saying there had been no question of threatening Arab countries, sounded like in fact the US did threaten, telling Lebanon that business might suffer if that country continued to allow terrorists there.
