was released and sent to Spain, where she may have
26
done more spying
for the Germans.
In 1917 she was
arrested in France and
shot. There’s a story
that she blew a kiss to
the firing squad.
THE ‘WHITE
MOUSE’
Nancy Wake was a special
agent during World War II (1939–1945). She was born
in New Zealand in 1912 and came to Australia with her
family when she was two years old. In the 1930s, she
went to Europe to work as a journalist. The Nazis had
come to power in Germany and when Nancy saw how
cruelly they were treating people, especially Jews, she
was furious.
In 1940 she married a Frenchman, Henri Fiocca.
Six months later the Nazis invaded France and Nancy
joined the French Resistance. She helped British
27
airmen escape after they’d been
shot down in France and smuggled
food and messages to the French
Resistance rebels. The Nazis called
her the ‘White Mouse’ because they
couldn’t catch her. Once, Nazis
actually arrested her, but she
managed to escape. She had to flee
France and go to Britain.
Nancy joined the SOE
(Special Operations
Executive) and trained in all aspects of fighting and
spying. She was parachuted back into France, where she
organised air drops of weapons, clothes and food, and
kept radio messages going back to SOE headquarters.
After the war, she went
back to France to find out
what had happened to her
husband. He had been
Image rights unavailable
tortured and killed by the
Nazis. She received many
medals, but none from
28
Australia. In 2004, the Australian government finally
honoured her with an Order of Australia. The film
Charlotte Grey is based on her adventures.
SZABO SABOTAGES
Nancy Wake survived World War II, but Violette Szabo
didn’t. She was born in 1921, grew up in England and
married a Frenchman, Etienne Szabo. Etienne was
killed fighting in North Africa and Violette vowed to
fight those who had taken her husband’s life. She went
to train with the SOE so she could work with the
French Resistance against the Germans. She was
very good at shooting, but her trainers were worried
because she spoke French with an English accent. If she
29
was noticed and taken prisoner by the Nazis, then
other people’s lives would be in danger. Still, she was
parachuted into France, where she helped reorganise
a resistance network that the Germans had destroyed.
On her second mission, in 1944, she and her comrade,
Jacques Dufour, were ambushed by Nazis when they
were sabotaging telegraph lines. Violette, who was
wounded and exhausted, urged Jacques to escape while
she fired at the enemy. The Nazis captured and tortured
her, but she revealed nothing. She was executed at the
Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. A book,
Carve Her Name With Pride, tells her story.
CLOAK-AND-DAGGER SPIES
In World War II, Special Operations agents were
taught how to use guns and explosives, as well
as Morse code and the art of disguise. They could
blow up a bridge, derail a train, stop a German car
or kill with their bare hands. They could send and
decode messages, make invisible ink, and even get
out of a pair of handcuffs with a piece of thin wire
and a pencil. Once they were fully trained, they’d be
parachuted into enemy territory.
If an agent was captured and questioned by the
Nazis, they had to try not to give away information
for at least 48 hours, so that other agents or
Resistance fighters could cover their tracks.
31
THE OIL SALESMAN
Not all World War II spies were women. One man who
risked his life to get vital information for the countries fighting the Germans (the Allies) was Eric Erickson.
Eric grew up in the United States, but went to live
in Sweden. He wasn’t a professional spy; he was an oil
salesman. The American ambassador to Sweden asked
Eric to go to Germany to find out about German oil
refineries and where they kept their oil supplies. Eric
could travel there on business, to buy oil, and nobody
would suspect he was spying.
First, though, he had to win the trust of the enemy.
Eric put pictures of Hitler in his office. He began
speaking openly in favour of the Nazis and argued
with his friends and family. They all thought he was a
traitor. He persuaded Prince Carl Gustav, the Swedish
king’s nephew, to pretend to be a Nazi supporter too,
so the Prince could help him if he got into trouble.
The plan worked well. Heinrich Himmler, head of
German state security, gave him written permission to go wherever he wanted in Germany, to buy oil for Sweden.
32
At that time, Germany had plenty of oil to spare. Eric memorised the locations and layout of the oil stores.
Travellers in wartime Germany often had to share
rooms in overcrowded hotels. Eric was terrified that he
would talk in his sleep, so he took tablets to stay awake.
He was helped by other spies, including a woman who
became his girlfriend – but she was captured. Eric was
invited by the Nazis to watch the execution of a group
of spies, including his girlfriend. He was heartbroken
but he continued his work. His luck ran out when a
man who had known him before the war spotted him
and went to a phone booth to report his suspicions to
the police. Eric decided he had to kill him.
Now he had to flee! Prince Carl Gustav sent an
official message saying that he must return immediately.
The information that Eric brought back helped
the American army to destroy German oil supplies.
Without oil, the Nazis couldn’t run their tanks, trucks
and jeeps. By 1945, the Nazis had to use horses and
oxen to haul their vehicles!
A film was made about Eric, The Counterfeit Traitor, based on a book of the same name.
33
DEAD DROP
How do people
with secret sneaky
business swap messages
(or money) when they
can’t risk being seen
together? They plan a
‘dead drop’.
First they need a drop location:
‘Leave the money in a parcel under the bridge.
Wrap it in a black plastic bag and cover it with leaves.’
Then they need signals.
‘My signal: one vertical mark of tape on the street sign means I am ready to receive your parcel. Your signal:
one horizontal piece of tape when the drop is filled.
My signal: one vertical mark
of tape when I have received
your parcel.’
A simple plan, no one would
notice the exchang
e, but can
a spy ever trust the
people he is working for?
34
SPOOKSPEAK
Here are some spywords from the
International Spy Museum website.
Babysitter: bodyguard.
Bagman: an agent who pays spies and bribes
authorities.
Bang and Burn: demolition and sabotage operations.
Birdwatcher: British Intelligence term for a spy.
Black Bag Job: secret entry into a home or office
to steal or copy materials.
Brush Pass: a brief
encounter where something
is passed between a case
officer and agent.
Chicken Feed: convincing,
but not critical, intelligence
knowingly provided to an
enemy intelligence agency
through an agent or a
double agent.
Cobbler: a spy who creates false passports,
visas, diplomas and other documents.
35
Counterintelligence:
spy-catching.
Cryptography: the art of
writing or breaking code.
Dangle: a person who
approaches an intelligence
agency with the intent
of being recruited to
spy against his or her
own country.
Discard: an agent whom an intelligence agency
will permit to be detected and arrested so as to protect more valuable agents.
Ears Only: material too secret to commit to writing.
Executive Action: assassination.
Eyes Only: documents that may be read but
not discussed.
Floater: a person used one time, occasionally, or even
unknowingly for an intelligence operation.
Hospital: Russian intelligence term for prison.
L-Pill: a poison pill used by operatives
to commit suicide.
Mole: an agent of one organisation sent to penetrate
another intelligence agency by gaining employment.
36
Music Box: a secret radio.
Pig: Russian intelligence term for traitor.
Pocket Litter: items in a spy’s pocket
(receipts, coins, theatre tickets, etc.) that add
authenticity to his or her identity.
Rolled-up: when an operation goes bad
and an agent is arrested.
Shoe: a false passport or visa.
The spookspeak presented here is drawn
from fact and fiction, from agencies and authors
around the world and throughout time.
For more on the Language of Espionage
go to http://www.spymuseum.o rg/
educate/loe.asp
37
5
SPY GADGETS
AND SECRET
WEAPONS
Have you ever wondered if all the tricky devices they
have in spy movies could possibly exist? Who could
make those tiny cameras disguised as wristwatches,
or hollow coins with ‘microdot’ film hidden inside?
What about guns hidden in a ring or a lipstick?
Actually, some of the technology used in espionage
is every bit as weird as in the movies. Wristwatch
cameras and hollow coins are still
used. The spy agency of the Soviet
38
Union, the KGB, did issue a lipstick gun in the 1960s.
It had only one bullet and was designed to be used in
an emergency, so the spy could escape. And microdot
cameras were very useful. You could take photos so tiny
that they fitted into a full stop at the end of a sentence.
All you had to do then was write a letter or a postcard, insert the photo, and it would be enlarged at spy
headquarters.
SNEAKY TRICKS
Spying went on around-the-clock and darkness gave
spies good cover. Where torchlight or a candle would
give a spy away, night vision goggles meant a spy could
39
watch people in their rooms or read secret documents
by the light of a cigarette. Battery-powered night vision goggles have a light intensifier inside, so that dim light is made much brighter.
In World War II, when SOE agents arrived by boat,
they wore special shoes with rubber soles which would
leave barefoot footprints in the sand. In Asia, local
people often didn’t wear shoes and bootprints in the
sand would have been very suspicious.
The SOE had another cunning plan. They bought
dead rats and filled them with explosive. The rats
were placed on the piles of coal which were to be
shovelled into furnaces in Germany. Boom! But the
exploding rats were discovered. The Germans were
pretty impressed and kept looking for other exploding
rodents, just in case.
BUGS
A ‘bug’ is something used to hear
and record information secretly.
Sometimes it really is disguised as an
insect. A flying ‘bug’ that will stick
to a wall has already been invented. The American
intelligence agency, the CIA, had a dragonfly bug,
which looked real but couldn’t stay on course when it
was windy.
The government of the former Soviet Union
(USSR) gave the American Embassy in Moscow a
beautifully carved wooden reproduction of the Great
Seal of the US. This was displayed proudly . . . until
it was discovered to be a listening device!
For seven years, every word in the
American ambassador’s office
Image rights
was overheard. Still, the
unavailable
Soviet Embassy in
Washington was
probably bugged too,
by the CIA.
41
PLAIN-CLOTHES PIGEONS
The first ‘spy gadget’ was probably the carrier pigeon,
which was used for centuries to carry vital messages
during wartime. Carrier pigeons were still being
used during World War II, to carry messages in
case radio contact failed. In one case, an Australian
pigeon saved the day by carrying urgent information
through Japanese fire to American army headquarters.
The pigeon, known as Number 879, won a medal!
In the 1970s, the CIA found another use for birds:
carrying a camera to take aerial photos. It took a while to get this particular ‘gadget’ right, though. The first camera-carrying pigeon was overloaded and couldn’t
fly far enough to be any use.
42
$7 MILLION
IN ONE NIGHT
In World War II, the beautiful and intelligent actress
Hedy Lamarr was married to an arms dealer who
worked for the Nazis. But she left him and escaped
to America. There she applied to join the National
Inventors’ Council and was told to help raise money
for war bonds by offering kisses! (She raised $7
million by selling kisses for $25 000 each!) Then Hedy
and musician George Antheil developed an idea for
‘frequency hopping’ radio signals in order to stop the
enemy blocking radio-guided torpedoes. The idea
wasn’t used during the
war, but an advanced
version – spread spectrum
technology – has been
used in mobile phones,
wireless Internet, cordles
s
phones and military
communication systems.
43
TIGER POO AND TINNY FISH
Another listening device,
developed for use in Asia,
was a fake pile of tiger
droppings. It came in
handy for Americans
trying to work out
the movements of enemy
troops on jungle trails
during the Vietnam War.
Who, after all, was
going to check out a
smelly pile of poo?
It’s sometimes
important to collect
water samples around
nuclear plants in
enemy territory to find
out what they’re doing with nuclear materials, and
what could be better for this than a fish? Not a real
fish, of course, but the CIA’s robot catfish. This catfish 44
looked so real that it even fooled other animals.
How surprised predators must have been after biting
into a juicy catfish to find it was hard metal!
THE SHOWMAN WHO SAVED A CITY
As well as gadgets, there are tricks to confuse the
enemy. There once was a famous stage magician called
Jasper Maskelyne who joined the British army in 1939,
when Britain went to war against Germany. He wanted
to be an army engineer. Instead, he was sent to North
Africa to entertain the troops.
In 1941, Jasper got the chance to use his skills for
a hugely important task. Rommel, the general leading
Germany’s army in Africa, wanted to attack the British
45
troops in Egypt. His spy planes were scouting the skies
over Alexandria and the Suez Canal. Jasper led a group
of experts known as the Magic Gang, whose job was to
fool the German aerial spies.
They built a copy of Alexandria harbour in a
nearby bay so that the Germans wouldn’t bomb the
real Alexandria. They made fake buildings, a phoney
lighthouse, even fake anti-aircraft guns, which gave
off impressive flashes to make the attackers think they
were being shot at. Revolving mirrors near the Suez
Canal made huge spinning lights so that German
bombers couldn’t find the Canal.
Jasper Maskelyne’s biggest success was in 1942,
when the Germans were expecting a British attack
It's True! Your Cat Could Be a Spy Page 3
