BRITAIN: Former British prime minister Mr Edward Heath's anger when the Americans staged a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union without informing Britain or other NATO allies is disclosed in secret files made public yesterday.
The decision by President Nixon to put US forces on worldwide nuclear alert after the Soviets threatened to intervene in the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 marked one of the gravest moments of the Cold War.
It took the superpowers closer to nuclear conflict than any time since the Cuban missile crisis - the only other occasion during the Cold War when US forces were put on "Alert Stage 3".
Nixon, already mired in the Watergate scandal, and his secretary of state, Dr Henry Kissinger, had wanted to send a clear signal to the Russians not to intervene on the side of the Arabs.
However, documents released to the National Archives show the crisis marked a low ebb in the "special relationship" between Britain and America. The files suggest Kissinger apparently misled the British ambassador in Washington, Lord Cromer, over the US alert, even though it covered American troops stationed in Britain. Mr Heath only learned what had happened from news reports several hours later while sitting in the Commons alongside Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home who was preparing to make a statement on the crisis.
His embarrassment was compounded by the fact that GCHQ - the secret "listening" agency - had discovered what had happened but the information was not passed on to No 10 or the Foreign Office because it was assumed that they already knew.
"Personally I fail to see how any initiative, threatened or real, by the Soviet leadership required such a worldwide nuclear alert," Mr Heath wrote at the time.
"We must not underestimate the impact on the rest of the world: an American President, in the Watergate position, apparently prepared to go to such lengths at a moment's notice, without consultation with his allies bound to be directly involved in the consequences, and without justification in the military situation at the time. - (PA)