Double Cross in Cairo

by Nigel West

  That night CHEESE rushes on the air in a panic. What is he to do? He won’t be able to pass any more information – he won’t get his money – it’s a disaster. Presumably the enemy will be a bit upset too.

  A few days later CHEESE says – ‘Here is a perfectly good channel and a perfectly good set, can they send someone else to operate it? (NOTE: I believe Amie was once trained to operate – this might be worked in).’ As and when necessary boss sends for CHEESE and says that he has worked the miracle and that he is to remain with OETA. Panic subsides.

  Comment:

  1. We push the point that we have an interest in Greek-speaking countries. (Admittedly this includes Crete but is a step in the right direction).

  2. We get a very interesting reaction from the other side.

  3. It is completely under our control and could be killed instantly if it gets difficult.

  Note: What about factually publishing in General Orders a demand for Greek interpreters. It would start a ‘buzz’ in the right direction.

  Meanwhile, TRIANGLE revealed in August that Rossetti had applied for permission to travel to Rome, and had given one of his reasons ‘to try again through Col S for the Italian War Ministry to send money to ROBERTO’. The analysts studying the traffic, who knew ROBERTO to be the enemy’s codename for Levi, suggested that ‘Colonel S’ was probably Count Scirombo, but the important issue was that the Abwehr was still determined to send money to their agent in Cairo.

  In operational terms, ‘A’ Force provided ‘purely military information (this includes Naval and Air Force items and movements of highly important individuals). Special Section SIME provides domestic items, “build-up” of sources and deals with wireless problems.’

  CHEESE’S alleged employment at the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration gave him a salary which enabled him to ‘pay his daily way but also benefit from the indiscretions of his employing officers who have a way of leaving their diaries about and discussing secret matters at the top of their voices’.

  A review undertaken of the period 1 August 1942 to 16 February 1943 studied the work of the ‘A’ Force committee which was really what CHEESE actually was, concluded that it had ‘passed over successfully no less than six major items. These, we believe, engendered six major headaches!’ Despite these items, most secret sources inform us that CHEESE is still quoted as ‘reliable’ and ‘authentic’. In addition, CHEESE maintains a steady stream of low-level information, of which a high proportion is true. The following analysis shows the volume of wireless traffic in which the Abwehr was involved:

  Month Messages Sent Messages Received Nights ‘On the Air’

  1942

  August 21 6 21

  September 15 7 21

  October 20 10 25

  November 13 7 26

  December 13 6 27

  1943

  January 2 7 28

  February (to date) 3 2 13

  TOTAL 87 45 161

  Levi was flown back to Palestine, and sailed on the SS Talodi from Haifa to Mersin on 19 April 1941. In Istanbul he was interviewed at the German consulate-general by an Abwehr officer identified only as ‘the Admiral’ and Kurt Zähringer, when he revealed only very vague details of Nicossof, and then submitted a report on the event to the local SIS station. According to MI5, ‘the Admiral’ was probably Kontor Admiral Buerkner, a senior personality responsible for liaison with the Abwehr’s offices in Axis cities such as Rome and Budapest.

  Levi was deliberately opaque about the non-existent Nicossof but suggested that he was in his mid-thirties and before the war had worked as a half-commission agent on the Alexandria Cotton Exchange. Later some of these details would be repeated when the Abwehr arranged in July for funds to be delivered to him by an intermediary named Fummo at his Cairo apartment at 20 Sharia Galal.

  Levi’s encounter with Zähringer was an opportunity to pass on some misleading information and to explain that Nicossof would begin transmissions on 25 May and continue twice a week. He accounted for his original £500 by saying that after he had paid £200 for the transmitter, incurred various incidental expenses, had made a payment to George Khouri and given the remainder, £150, to Nicossof.

  On his visit to Turkey Levi had been accompanied by his girlfriend, Azeglia Socci, a cabaret artiste, who was to act as his motive for returning to Italy where supposedly he intended to get his wife Lina out of the country. This was the narrative that he told the Germans had been enough to persuade the British authorities to grant him the necessary travel documents. In reality, Levi’s courage in going back to Italy placed him in extraordinary jeopardy, but also served to convince the Abwehr of his continued loyalty.

  On 4 June 1941 Levi left Istanbul for Italy, travelling to Burgas, Sofia, Belgrade, Vienna and finally Munich where he reported to Major Hans Travaglio on 14 June at the Marien Teresienstrasse. His safe arrival was conveyed to Colonel Otto Helfferich, the Abwehr chief in Rome at his office in the Italian Ministry of War in the Via XX Settembre. Levi then went to Naples where he was met on 17 June by Major Clemens Rossetti who revealed that adverse reports had been received from Belgrade regarding Levi’s relationship with British intelligence, and explained that the issue would be pursued the following week in Venice where they would be met on the Lido by Helfferich.

  According to his SIME dossier, Helfferich was aged ‘about fifty. Height 5ft 10in. Very well dressed. Autocratic Prussian personality, military bearing, a strict disciplinarian. Dark brown hair, greying slightly. Weather-beaten face. Clean-shaven. Thin nose. Thin mouth. Sharp pointed chin. Apaprently very strongly Nazi. Speaks German, Italian and French.’

  Rossetti was identified by SIS as a German intelligence officer, fluent in Italian, who had served in the Great War and in 1912 had been expelled from Switzerland. He had also been arrested on 30 October 1928 when he had been acting as a courier for the Italian intelligence service on a route between Lyons and Geneva.

  Age about thirty-eight. Height about 5ft 9in. Normal build. Well-dressed appearance. ‘Prussian’ type. Round head. Fair hair, very thin in front. Clean-shaven. Straight nose. Speaks German with Prussian accent. Calm, unruffled manner. Heavy cigarette smoker. Very ardent Nazi. In peacetime travelled extensively as a merchant in North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iran and Iraq, possibly on behalf of the Abwehr. Speaks German, French, Italian and Arabic. Married to a German, age about thirty. Has two daughters, the eldest being about sixteen. Is devoted to his family.

  In Venice Levi was challenged that he had been linked to an agent known as JEAN who had been arrested in Paris after he had been discovered to have been working for the French Deuxième Bureau. Under interrogation, JEAN had denounced Levi as a British agent who had often visited the British embassy in Paris. Apparently JEAN had been employed by Travaglio in Holland before the war even though he had actually been working for the French, and Travaglio had later re-engaged him in Genoa. Somewhat embarrassed, Travaglio had been keen to have the accusations dismissed.

  This subject had been a sensitive one for Levi because in February 1940, while in Genoa, he had been approached by a German or Polish Jew named Hermann who had expressed the wish to work for the British. Satisfying himself that Hermann was genuine, Levi had introduced him to Travaglio and persuaded him to send Hermann to Paris. There he had worked for Monsieur Petit of the Deuxième Bureau as a double agent. Levi recalled that he had later heard that Hermann had recruited two other Jews in Paris, including the drummer in a dance band in Paris, named Jacques, and that Hermann had been given a French passport in recognition of his work. Apparently, upon the fall of France, the trio had fled to Casablanca.

  JEAN’S second arrest had happened soon after the detention in 1938 of a German from Alsace, Karl Kurt (alias Charles Masson), who had been sentenced to death after a lengthy trial. Miraculously, Kurt had escaped from French custody as he had been escorted on a train into the unoccupied zone, and had been rescued by the Germans. When questioned Kurt claimed that he and fourteen of his net
work had been betrayed by an unnamed Frenchman, and later had gone to work for Travaglio in Italy. He was distinctive because he wrote his reports in characteristically microscopic handwriting, and in October 1940 in Rome Kurt and Travaglio had heard that JEAN had been arrested in Paris. Although Kurt had urged his execution for treason, Travaglio later mentioned that JEAN had been sent to a concentration camp.

  According to Levi, he learned a week later in Rome that Kurt had been sent on a mission to Palestine via Syria to sabotage Allied oil pipelines. He was described as an experienced wireless operator and mechanic, of medium height, heavily built and with brown eyes. Levi encountered Kurt again in Rome in June or July 1941 when he learned that the original plan had been delayed because of his arrest, with another agent, in Tripoli while preparing for a mission behind enemy lines in Libya. Both men were then returned to Italy in handcuffs.

  Radio contact with Cairo was finally established in July 1941 after a lengthy exchange of telegrams with Rome and Istanbul, and Helfferich urged Levi to return to Cairo to pay his agents and recruit another network in Egypt and Palestine and, feigning reluctance, Levi agreed to depart on 5 August. He underwent a briefing in Rome on 16 July, and was then granted leave so he could settle some family affairs in Genoa before his departure. He was given a new cipher, a radio schedule, a questionnaire and a large amount of British and American currency. He was also given a list of useful contacts in Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria, one of whom was alleged to be in touch with a high Egyptian government official. On 18 July the CHEESE wireless set received a signal that Levi ‘leaves for Istanbul at the end of the present month with sufficient money’. This message was followed on 27 July by an instruction to CHEESE to ‘tell GEORGE that Levi will arrive soon with funds’.

  While in a hotel in Genoa awaiting his departure, Levi met Captain Alessi, a Regia Aeronautica Italiana pilot who claimed to have been sent by Major Rossetti’s secretary, Annabella. During some long conversations with Levi, Alessi declared himself to be an anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi who had resigned from the air force after an incident with a Fascist official, stating that he had been friendly with an American, Charles A. Livengood, the economic counsellor, at that US embassy in Rome, and intended to stay away from Italy for the remainder of the war if the opportunity arose. He asked Levi to exercise his influence with Rossetti to have him sent abroad, and begged him not to reveal his disaffection. In a telephone conversation with Annabella on 1 August she urged Levi to consider taking Alessi on his mission, but he demurred, saying he preferred to operate alone. Then, on 2 August, Levi was arrested at his hotel, taken to the Regina Coeli prison in Rome and accused of collaborating with British intelligence. The evidence against him was the assertion that his network in Cairo was now operating under British control. Naturally, Levi denied the allegation, suggesting that perhaps his subordinates had sold out to the enemy. Although his girlfriend was also taken into custody briefly, she said nothing to incriminate him.

  Levi was questioned for two and a half months, but not by the notorious Special Tribunal and, having concluded that a case of treason had not been proved, was sentenced on 17 October to five years’ imprisonment on the island of Tremiti, a penal colony in the Adriatic, as a political prisoner, and a fine.

  Meanwhile, of course, CHEESE had grown impatient about the Abwher’s failure to pay him, and on 25 September he was asked to inform them ‘if the money has arrived’. Then, on 16 October, he was assured that much money was ‘en route … sur un autre chemin’.

  On 20 October, Nicossof sent a critical signal:

  Very important message. PIET is desperate for money. He visited us yesterday. According to him Wavell visited Cairo secretly yesterday having come from Tiflis. Auchinlek under pressure from Churchill has consented against his better judgment to send one armoured division and three infantry divisions to help the Russians in the Caucasus. Wavell is going back to Iraq immediately to make the necessary plans for their reception.

  This signal had a profound impact on the Germans who appeared to accept the underlying implication that a weakened British army was in no condition to launch an imminent offensive. On 11 November, just a week before the CRUSADER campaign, the Akrika Korps advised that there ‘are no apparent signs of preparations for an attack on Cyrenaica’ and in explanation directly referred to the Nicossof message:

  Abwehr reports state that there are also differences of opinion between Generals Wavell and Auchinleck concerning strategy in the Middle East. Wavell advocates an attack into the Caucasus, but Auchinleck does not wish to move any more troops or equipment out of Egypt.

  In a later assessment dated 6 January 1942, SIME reported in a telegram to MI5’s headquarters at Blenheim Palace, with the address ‘Snuff-box, Oxford’, that CHEESE/LAMBERT

  was the main source by which successful deception recently achieved, resulting in complete strategic surprise at onset of Western Desert campaign. Without LAMBERT, main theme of the deception plan which was put over on 20/10 and 27/10 could not have reached enemy before 18/11. This very satisfactory and completely justifies care and trouble taken. LAMBERT still in touch but doubt further utility.

  In November 1941 the network in Cairo appeared on the verge of collapse because of lack of promised funds and George Khouri’s (authentic) internment. Nicossof protested that he was merely the radio operator, unable to recruit and pay for agents, and himself heavily in debt. SIME had anticipated that after CRUSADER his value to the enemy would diminish, but despite having been patently wrong, his standing appeared initially to be unaffected. This created a further opportunity to be exploited, but exacerbated the problem of Nicossof’s finding. Without sufficient cash, it was hardly credible that the improvident spy would continue to put his life at risk for an ungrateful employer. This issue had been considered several times, but SIME had assumed that Nicossof would be abandoned after the full scale of the CRUSADER debacle emerged, and the general view was that this sacrifice was probably worthwhile. Now the priority was to support Nicossof by transferring any blame to Nicossof’s unreliable informants (whom he had been unable to pay) and assist the enemy by providing a suitable channel for passing the money he demanded. One reassurance was a message sent on 18 December promising that more than enough money had been in a neutral country ‘for a long time’ although there was no explanation for what had happened to it.

  One obstacle was some evidence which emerged in TRIANGLE traffic in November 1941 and again January 1942 that Nicossof had come under suspicion and the Abwehr had begun to lose confidence in an agent codenamed ROBERTO, an individual who strongly resembled CHEESE. The first sign of trouble was a text which included the ominous comment that ‘the intrusion of the enemy Intelligence Service into the ROBERTO network is becoming clearer and clearer.’

  As well as the TRIANGLE material, there was other evidence of German suspicions. SIME noted ‘after the New Year message of good wishes, there was a marked change’.

  The enemy frequently failed to reply to, or even acknowledge our signals, and contact was seldom established more than once a week. His messages showed far less interest in military matters, and few questions were asked on military subjects. Traffic continued sporadically on the subject of the money which was said to be on its way, but enemy messages were such as to lead us to suspect that traps were being set. It was for instance proposed that the enemy should send the money to Istanbul and we should send someone to fetch it. This looked very like an attempt to kidnap a British agent on the Venlo pattern, or at least learn more of our organisation. We toyed with the suggestion over some messages, pleading lack of money for the journey and suggesting that we might find a ‘neutral merchant’ to act as an intermediary. A scheme was tentatively laid on for action at Istanbul, but the enemy appeared to lose interest, and it was not thought wise to persevere.

  Perhaps because of this shadow cast over the channel, between 1 January and 25 June 1942, only three items of any significance were conveyed to the enemy. They were reports th
at an American aircraft factory was being planned to be constructed just outside Cairo; that American military personnel had been seen in Cairo’s streets, together with a description of three different shoulder-flashes; and the correct location of the GHQ Middle East building in Cairo. Requests for specific military information, such as the location of the 23rd Infantry Division and various Polish, Free French and colonial troops, and details of shipping in the Suez Canal, were simply ignored.

  As an expedient on the issue of the factory, ‘enemy enquiries about site, capacity, etc. were first evaded then answered with the excuse that the agent who supplied the original information had disappeared’. On the American military personnel, ‘enemy enquiries for further details were met with a brief reply giving three shoulder-badges noticed’. As for the address of GHQ, it had actually been supplied several months earlier. SIME noted that

  this had been asked for, and correctly answered, nearly a year before. The address is such common knowledge throughout the Middle East that a trap was suspected. But it is possible that the enemy is even more ignorant of conditions in Egypt than we suspect. His second enquiry may imply that he had lost record of the first, or that he thought there had been a move.