Double Cross in Cairo

by Nigel West

  In more general reporting from ‘Greek circles’, CHEESE reported that they had been astonished by the landings in Sicily and anticipated the approaching invasion of Greece or the islands. Some Greek officers said the RAF Regiment was leaving, and that no attack on Greece would take place without the Straits of Otranto. They also referred to aerodromes at Lecce. A New Zealand sergeant was described as a member of the 2nd New Zealand Division, and part of the 12th Army. He said that a unit leaving Cairo was part of the 16 Corps. Another acquaintance, a Greek sergeant pilot, mentioned that he had seen landing craft along the coast of Cyrenaica. The Chief Clerk of the Greek legation talked of landing exercises, morale among the Greek troops, anticipating operations in the autumn.

  Between October and December 1943 CHEESE sent six messages based on own observations, which reported

  Polish airmen but no troops here; An increase of South African troops here. Few Greek soldiers but many sailors in Alexandria. Still many South Africans in Cairo; Trucks with a fig-leaf sign; Trucks with a sign of a blue band on yellow with white felucca imposed; Large number of paratroops in Cairo; Cars bearing ‘GO’ sign; More cars in Cairo bearing 12th Army sign.

  Although not having claimed to have seen them personally, CHEESE also stated that ‘many Poles arrived recently near Cairo, wearing sign of green fir tree on red and white’.

  CHEESE also relied on newspaper articles for eight messages:

  Ten Italian warships arrived in Alexandria; The King of Greece is now in Syria; An advertisement for radio mechanics; The arrival of the King of Yugoslavia and government in Egypt; Photos of Indian troops in Italy; General Smuts in Cairo visiting troops of the 6th South African Armoured Division; The occupation of Cos; The Americans built Payne Field aerodrome; Indian troops of the Jodphur Sardar Regiment now in Italy.

  Three of CHEESE’S messages reflected rumours that were alleged to be in current circulation:

  The war in Italy will be shortened by a landing near Bologna; There will be no invasion of Greece this year; The Indian division which sailed from Port Said has gone to Italy.

  CHEESE also sent two messages based on information he had received from a source described as his ‘ESR friend’: ‘An Indian division recently left Port Said, probably for Italy; Goods trains guarded by airborne troops went towards Palestine.’

  Another of his sources was a corporal in the 6th South African Armoured Division who was credited with messages mentioning that ‘his camp was on the other side of the Pyramids; he belongs to the Durban Regiment; he thinks that the 1st South African Division has returned to the Cape.’

  A New Zealand sergeant asserted that his unit was part of 16 Corps which was soon to leave Cairo. His unit in the 2nd Division left Cairo for Byrg el Arab.

  The net effect of this deluge of detailed information was to demonstrate the wide range of CHEESE’S informants, and the detailed nature of their reports. These were the building-bricks of the Allied Middle East order-of-battle under construction by Fremde Heere West, and they were really nothing more than a plausible fiction. What the Allied deception planners did not yet suspect was CHEESE’S growing primacy within the Abwehr. In a relative vacuum of sources, and under pressure from OKW, the enemy’s apparatus was coming to not just believe in the CHEESE organisation, but to rely on it when making critical strategic decisions.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1944

  The great event of 1944 was D-Day, to which CHEESE made a significant contribution. Having pioneered the concept of strategic deception, ‘A’ Force, which had by now grown to a staff of forty-one officers and seventy-six NCOs, was asked to develop FORTITUDE, the cover-plan for the invasion. Accordingly, in December 1943, Clarke’s deputy, Noel Wild, was posted to Norfolk House in St James’s Square to head ‘Ops B’, the SHAEF deception cell.

  The deception scheme for the largest amphibious landing ever contemplated in military history was suitably comprehensive, supported by a Whitehall bureaucracy that, dictated by the need for secrecy, was top-level, highly influential but compact in size. Soon after the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff had approved the creation of a London Controlling Section (LCS) to coordinate all deception plans, a sub-committee, codenamed TWIST, was established as an interdepartmental coordination agency with a membership of ten, drawn from MI5 (T. A. Robertson, Anthony Blunt and J. C. Masterman) and SIS (Frank Foley and Martin Lloyd) with representatives from the LCS (Ronald Wingate and Harold Petavel), the Foreign Office (Sir Reginald Hoare), the Naval Intelligence Division (Ewen Montagu) and Lionel Hale from Economic Intelligence. At the end of February 1943 TWIST supervised what amounted to a full dress-rehearsal for D-Day by drafting a blueprint to protect HUSKY, the planned invasion of Sicily with ‘an invasion of the Balkans. This version the Germans also took to be highly credible; they assumed that a base was being built on Cyprus for the invasion of Crete and Rhodes and then of the Balkan Peninsula.’

  The threat to Crete and Rhodes, as a prelude to a supposed offensive in the Balkans, was the foundation of the deception strategy which, in the following months, would become more elaborate.

  Around November 1943, British troops, notably the 50th and 51st Divisions, began to move from the Mediterranean to Britain. In order to disguise the true objectives of this move, the TWIST Committee proposed spreading rumours that this transfer was taking place so that battle-hardened troops could pass on their battle experience to younger soldiers at home.

  In January 1944 a plan relating to the eastern Mediterranean was drafted by the LCS, which was approved by the TWIST Committee in February and the accompanying memorandum noted that

  since major cross-Channel landings will not be possible before the end of the summer, the Allies’ main military efforts in the spring of 1944 will be directed against the Balkans. The following operations will be carried out:

  (a) An attack by British and American troops on the Dalmatian coast

  (b) An attack by British troops on Greece

  (c) Landing operations by the Russians on the Bulgarian-Romanian coast

  Turkey will be invited to join the Allies; this will increase available operational resources, including airfields, to be used to seize the Aegean islands as a precondition to an invasion of Greece. Pressure on the German satellites to break away from Germany will be intensified.

  The Anglo-American operations in Italy will continue. Landing operations will be carried out in the northwest and northeast. If these are successful, the 15th Army Group will move east through Istria to support operations in the Balkans.

  Simultaneously, the LCS memorandum cited a recent newspaper article published in London about a genuine event, the appointment of General Wilson which had been interpreted to reinforce the overall strategy.

  On 2 January of this year, the well-known journalist [James] Garvin wrote in the Sunday Express that the appointment of Wilson to the post of Commander in Chief, Mediterranean, dispelled the last remaining doubts that a front was going to be opened in the Balkans in the air, at sea and on land. This event was bound to have a decisive influence on Turkish policy [he wrote]. Moreover, ‘when the Western powers make contact with the Soviet armies via the Balkans, the last hour of Hitlerism has come’.

  One part of the OVERLORD cover-plan was ZEPPELIN which was required to keep a threat from the Mediterranean alive until at least D+25.2 ZEPPELIN comprised of TURPITUDE, which concentrated on the Balkans, and anticipated a future Allied offensive in the Adriatic, and VENDETTA, which was designed to pin down the ten German divisions in the South of France and encourage them not to move north to reinforce the Normandy defences. This latter task was undertaken by the imaginary 12th Army and the authentic US 7th Army from Algiers, but the Balkan ruse fell largely to CHEESE who described the preparations for operations in Greece, and detailed the training in amphibious landings being given to Greek troops in Egypt. This aspect of the deception kept twenty German divisions tied up in the Balkans, troops that otherwise might have been available for a counter-attack
in Normandy.

  In January 1944 the DSO in Damascus, Douglas Roberts, provided SIME’s Captain McElwee with some very unwelcome news.

  Joseph Weiser, an Austrian Jew, and a member of a gang of money counterfeiters and passport traffickers, who was interned in June 1942 at Mieh Mieh, told the Field Security sergeant attached to the camp last May … that a certain Renato Levi who was supposed to have worked for the British in Genoa, received a number of forged passes from a person called Silbermann. Levi paid a very large sum for these passes, and he had had this money changed by Heim and Silbermann. Weiser was of the opinion that these passes were from a South American state, probably Cuba.

  Further enquiries by SIME revealed that the counterfeiters were mainly Jewish refugees who had set up a business in Milan before the war to sell forged visas and travel documents of all kinds. When Italy joined the war the gang moved to Turkey where in 1941 Weiser had betrayed his confederates to the police in Istanbul. As a result Alfred Heim had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for forgery. His 32-year-old mistress, Elfrieda Berger, whom he had allegedly lived off, then went to live with another member of the gang, Anton Raab, who moved to Palestine, and she finally made her way to Berlin. Another conspirator, Robert Silbermann, was a friend of Heim’s and had lived at the Hotel Modern in Milan. According to Weiser’s testimony in June 1942, Silbermann travelled on a forged Norwegian passport and had moved to Sofia with Lotte, described as his German Ayrian wife.

  Other members of the gang were identified as Martin Sands and Jacob Weiss, who were interned with Weiser at Mieh Mieh, and four others: Joseph Buchegger, Eugen Kienast, Arno Gutentag and Rudolf Bodner. Their significance was that this was the same group that had been involved with Fulvio Melcher, Levi’s radio operator, who had been arrested with them in 1940. SIME’s fear was that perhaps inadvertently the gang had implicated Levi and led the Abwehr to conclude that their supposed star agent had been compromised by his previous relationship with the British in Genoa.

  The first news from Levi himself consisted of a letter dated 10 February 1944 which was addressed to the British Passport Office in Istanbul, and eventually relayed to SIME in Cairo. Headed as having come from ‘care of Captain Cooley, 7th Division Headquarters’, Levi described his harrowing experience.

  As I have not been able to communicate with you since I last left Istanbul on 4 June 1941 for Italy on my return from Egypt, I feel it is my duty, now that it is possible for me to do so, to let you know the cause of my silence up to date.

  You have only to look up my file to know that I went to Egypt and was returning to Italy. There is no need for me to let you have any further as to what had been arranged in Cairo with Captain Jones of the Intelligence Department Headquarters. My reports which you will find in my file contain any information you may require. At your embassy I was generally interviewed by [XXXXXXX] at the Passport Register Office.

  I arrived in Italy without any difficulty on 12 June 1941 after having travelled through Burgas, Sofia, Belgrade, Vienna, Munich and the Brenner Pass on to Venice. I have nothing of importance to report in reference to my voyage to Italy, except that on my arrival in Vienna, I was handed a message to go on to Munich and report at Marien Theresien Strasse No. 4. Here I was interviewed by Major Travaglio to whom I handed my report as arranged with Captain Jones and [XXXXXXXXXXXX].

  On 14 June 1941, [the] date of my arrival in Rome, I immediately got in touch with Colonel Helfferich, Chief of the German Wehrmacht Nachrichtendienst for Italy, who had his headquarters at the Ministry of War in Via XX Settembre. After having given Colonel Helfferich detailed information in reference to my trip to Egypt, he highly congratulated me for the successful work I had been able to carry out. On his request I also handed him a written statement similar to the one I gave to Major Travaglio in Munich. Colonel Helfferich there informed me that they had not yet been able to connect Rome and Naples with Cairo, although according to my report, which had been sent ahead through the German embassy in Istanbul, they should have been able to do so since the 26 May 1941, which was the date fixed by Cairo headquarters. He told me that he was very pleased I was back, so that I could immediately try to get in touch with Cairo through Istanbul, find out what had happened in order to obtain contact as early as possible. He further instructed me that should I not succeed I was to return again to Egypt to make sure the thing would be set going.

  Unfortunately each trial remained unsuccessful for another two or three weeks when connection was finally obtained following instructions received by wire from Cairo via Istanbul in reply to my second telegram. I was then requested to report immediately to Colonel Helfferich. He gave me a wonderful reception. He told me of being extremely pleased that such an important and dangerous mission had been successfully carried out. I was asked whether I was prepared to undertake another trip to Egypt, as it was most urgent now that news could be got through, that someone should go once again in order to bring the necessary funds to the men I had engaged and organise a chain of new agents in different parts of Palestine and Egypt for the supply of any valuable information which was badly needed by the German HQ, otherwise the work done by me would become practically useless. To reply, I pretended that I had no desire to undertake a second trip as it carried too great a risk and I could easily be suspected if I was seen again in Egypt. I told him I rather preferred if he could send someone else. I would be very pleased if he could oblige me by giving me a different mission. He pointed out that unfortunately I was the person he knew capable to go through such an important task successfully and insisted on me going back once more successfully with the promise that on my return I would be highly compensated. I finally accepted, pretending I was a great deal displeased. He wanted me to leave in 48 hours, but I insisted on fifteen days’ leave before going back in order to see my family and settle certain private business matters which badly needed my personal attention. I was finally granted fifteen days’ leave, while the date of departure from Italy was fixed for 5 August 1941.

  Before taking leave from Colonel Helfferich, I was handed the necessary instructions which included a long list of information required by them, a new cipher code, timetable and a large sum of money in American and English currency which would have been wanted for the purpose. I was also given a few names of persons living in Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria with whom I should have got in touch, as valuable help could have been obtained from them. One person particularly was recommended to me, for he should have put me in touch with a high Egyptian Government official.

  After this interview I left for Genoa to meet my family.

  On the 2 August 1941, quite unexpectedly, six persons attached to the Italian CS (Contro Espionaggio) came to see me at my house. I was told they had received instructions to search my house, which was immediately carried out without giving me any explanation. A few private papers of no importance, besides the documents handed to me in Rome, were seized, including the funds which had been given to me by Colonel Helfferich. I was then requested to accompany them to a waiting car with which I was brought straight to the gaol, Mnrassi, in Genoa.

  The same night I was accompanied handcuffed by two Carabinieri to the railway station, put on the train to Rome where I arrived the following day after a journey of eighteen hours and was brought immediately to the prison Regna Caoli. I would like to point out that during the whole trip, not even for a minute was I ever relieved of my handcuffs.

  A few days later started my first interrogatory and [I] was finally charged. The charge brought against me was that I had cooperated with the British Intelligence Service in Belgrade (Yugoslavia) and in Cairo. No mention was made then or at any other time interrogations about Istanbul.

  The first question put to me was ‘why the radio receiving and transmitting set erected by me in Cairo was at the moment working under the control of the British authorities?’ My reply was that I was greatly surprised and stated that I had never had any connections with the British Intelligence Service, but o
nly with the British embassy in Belgrade and Istanbul for purely personal reasons with reference to my British passport to obtain the necessary visas in order to be able to reach Palestine and Egypt. I further stated that if his statement referring to the radio transmitting set was true, either the man I had engaged had not been acting secretly enough and had been arrested, or they themselves, for a lack of funds, must have sold the show to the British authorities for the purpose of making money. As no questions were put to me by any of my interrogators referring to my activities in France from December 1939 to June 1940 while I was working under instructions by the Deuxième Bureau by order of Major Knowles of the British embassy in Paris, I stuck firmly to the story arranged in Cairo and acknowledged in Istanbul by Captain Whittal. I supported my defence by stating that should I have had any connection with the British Intelligence Service I would not have insisted with Colonel Helfferich on being granted fifteen days’ leave, but would have without delay left Italy in 48 hours as had been requested by him.

  I was not permitted any lawyer for my defence although my family had already appointed one.

  The judge who had my case in hand told me that probably I would be tried by the Tribunale Speziale (Special Court). This to my great relief did not happen and, after a great many interrogations made over a period of several months, he did not think there was sufficient evidence available for me to be brought before the special court. However, instead of being released, the judge on 17 October decided to sentence me to five years to be served as a political prisoner on the island of Tremiti (Adriatic Sea) and provided at the same for the confiscation of $3,801 and £100 found in my private safe which belonged to me.