24 October 1956-UK Defense Minister Sir Walter Monckton Resigns Over the Upcoming Israeli/French/British Attack on Egypt

On 24 October, 1956, the Israelis, French and British Foreign and Defense Ministers concluded their secret meeting at Sevres, France by signing the Protocol of Sevres. The Protocol stated that Israel would attack Egypt in the coming week, prompting an Egyptian response. As Israel and Egypt clashed in the Sinai, the UK and France would issue ultimatums to both countries that they both withdraw 10 miles from either side of the Suez Canal and cease fighting. Israel would comply, and Egypt would refuse, giving the UK and France the causus belli they needed to invade Egypt and re-take the Suez Canal from Nasser’s nationalization.

As the British Cabinet was briefed on the Sevres protocol, UK Defense Minister Sir Walter Monckton was the only member to state that he could not go along with this plan. He resigned in secret, but the secret wasn’t too well kept, as the U.S. Ambassador to the UK, William Aldrich, had a private meeting with Monckton. Monckton stated that the official reason for his resignation was health, but unofficially he was resigning due to his opposition to the use of force to regain British and French control of the Suez Canal. Aldrich immediately cabled this news to Washington, were it was turned over to CIA Director Allen Dulles, brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Aldrich’s cable fit nicely with another piece of intelligence concerning the possible use of force against Egypt: the National Security Agency’s (NSA) discovery of a sharp increase in diplomatic cable traffic between Paris and Tel Aviv over the last 48 hours. Since the traffic was encrypted, NSA couldn’t tell what the two nations were discussing, but the increase in traffic between France and Israel was totally out of the norm. Earlier in the year Israel had reached a purchase agreement with France for Mirage and Mystere fighter-bombers to compensate for the growing Soviet arms flowing into Egypt, but this increase in diplomatic traffic seemed far more voluminous than traffic associated with a routine arms purchase. Additionally, arms purchase traffic should have been flowing between the countries’ defense ministries, not the foreign ministries.

President Eisenhower was briefed on all aspects of the growing crisis, but there was one fatal flaw in the briefing: little to no intelligence on how, if at all, the UK fit into this plan. Throughout the summer months after the seizure of the canal, Eisenhower had been in regular contact with British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden about how to deal with Nasser. Eisenhower had told Eden that the best way to deal with Nasser was isolation and possibly a coup along the lines of the one the CIA had executed in Iran in 1953 to unseat Prime Minister Mossadeq and return the Shah to his throne and dictatorship. Eden had seemed to agree with this proposal, but when he hinted at the use of armed force, Eisenhower rejected that line of thinking. In Eisenhower’s world view, the West had the high ground over the Soviet Union in that the West didn’t invade and conquer nations that “stepped out of line”. Eisenhower also felt that the use of force would make Nasser a martyr to other Arab nations while at the same time undermining our credibility in the region. Eisenhower’s blind spot was that he simply couldn’t believe that his closes allies in World War II would lie and betray him by colluding with France and Israel to attack Egypt.