58. Memorandum From the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Read) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1

SUBJECT

  • Rising Tensions Among Officials in Aden and Latest Report on European Mercenaries Fighting with Yemeni “Royalists”

Our Consul at Aden reports that local conservative Arab leaders, as well as British colonial officials, have been rudely awakened by the revelation that they stand isolated and insulated from the currents of world opinion. The recent Security Council vote following the British attack on Harib and the recent resolution of the anti-colonialist Committee of 24 have been contributing factors. This, added to an almost pathological fear of infiltration from Yemen, has brought on what our Consul characterizes as “local jitters”. The trouble is that rather than inducing the British officials to accommodate themselves increasingly to the forces of change at work in South Arabia, there has been an intensification of their garrison mentality. A demand for immediate independence by two of the leading Shaikhs, whose territory borders Yemen, derives purely from a desire for more drastic retaliatory action across the border. Since it is not clear how the removal of the British colonial umbrella would enable them to perform such action with impunity, it is probable that their demand for independence is designed as a stratagem to get the British to take more drastic retaliatory action.

Our Consul believes that U.K. policy in South Arabia has been one of “temporizing and muddling through”. He notes that nothing has been done to seek to reconcile opposing factions inside the South Arabian Federation and that former plans for “constitutional advance” for Aden have been shelved. In our Consul’s view the best way for the British to preserve their base in Aden is to accelerate the process of “constitutional advance” leading to self-government.

Meanwhile, a principal reason for the intensification of pressures on the British position in Aden is illustrated by a report just received from Cairo. It states that U.A.R. intelligence has documentary evidence that the number of European mercenaries recruited and organized by [Page 140] a British reserve officer for service with the Yemeni “royalists” is now forty-two.

Benjamin H. Read 2
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Yemen, Cables, Vol. I, 11/63-6/64. Secret.
  2. Signed for Read in an unidentified hand.