A HOLIDAYMAKER cut his way into the top secret United States spy base at Menwith Hill and sparked a full-scale security alert by phoning Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch to tell officers he intended to plant a bomb, a court heard.

Steven John Evans rented a cottage at nearby Darley with his wife and two friends for a week earlier this year. While the others were in bed, he made the ten-minute walk to the base and made more than 30 cuts in the perimeter fence, prosecutor Peter Scott told Harrogate magistrates yesterday.

When his actions - which resulted in a rectangular hole big enough to climb through - triggered an alarm he spotted torches carried by Ministry of Defence police and hid from them until it was safe to make off.

Mr Scott said Evans, aged 50 and without previous convictions, had struck during the war with Iraq at a time of heightened security.

Four days later, after Evans had returned to his home in Long Drive, Burnham, Bucks, anti-terrorist police received an anonymous phone call - made at 11.30pm, about the same time as the Menwith Hill incident - which had been traced to a public telephone in Slough.

When Evans made a subsequent call, police were ready and when they dashed to the phone box he was still talking to a detective constable. He was found to be in possession of a blank-firing 8mm handgun with a cartridge in the chamber.

Evans pleaded guilty to giving false information with the intention of inducing the belief "something liable to explode or ignite was present at Menwith Hill''. He also admitted criminal damage and was sent for sentence at Leeds Crown Court on June 10.

He was granted conditional bail.

Evans' solicitor, Caroline McAdam, said he had not intended any sabotage or an attack on the United States and had not been making a protest. He had acted in an implausible and bizarre way, probably as a result of two years of depression brought on by the collapse of a business, illness and a death in his family.

Updated: 11:15 Wednesday, May 07, 2003