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In this conversation between Jane Craigie and her father, Iain Craigie, the discussion centres on Iain’s posting to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia between 1979 and 1980. Iain was based there as one of five GCHQ operatives. Their role was to train Saudi Arabia’s national guard - mainly Bedouin - on how to set up the country’s own intelligence systems. 

The posting was challenging, because most of the tutees were near illiterate, and the subject matter was highly technical. The time there was volatile and part of their work was to try and intercept transmissions and movements across the 1,100 mile border with Yemen. 

This longer episode sets the context of the region back to WWI and Lawrence of Arabia, Kemal Ataturk, Gallipoli and the ANZACs. It also touches on the countries and the origins of the Sunni/Shia divisions, as well as the border areas and power in the Middle East.

Iain talks of his time living in the country, the Saudi culture and his adventures into the desert with the immensely kind Bedouin and their families of nomadic camel herders.

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In this episode Iain Craigie talks to daughter, Jane Craigie, about his posting to Hong Kong with a secondment to Labuan. It was in the late 1950s, so WWII was still fresh in minds and diplomacy. Iain’s bases were Direction Finding (DF) Stations - rudimentary huts using HF radio. His Hong Kong posting was near the Chinese border. The conversation will take you through the importance of DF stations, how they were connected, the British intelligence interest in, and the secrecy of the Chinese; and the ‘fun’ these young RAF men had aged early 20s. Iain’s lucky still to be with us - one of their pranks was setting light to old WWII munitions’ dumps left behind by the Japanese on Labuan.

*please excuse the slight outages in audio - one of the dual mics I’ve been using has a fault. Must buy some new ones - any recommendations for an iPhone? 

Thank you so much for listening, Jane Craigie

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In this first episode, Jane Craigie talks to her father, Iain Craigie, about his early life in Intelligence in the 1950s. His career started when he signed up for voluntary service as a Radio Officer in the RAF. His preliminary training was at Beaumanor Hall and Bletchley Park. The primary targets for surveillance, the Russians.