by Nigel West
There were other complications, too. With MI5, SIS, British Security Coordination, FBI and RCMP interests to be consulted, Guy Liddell and Section V were anxious to protect certain very secret aspects of the investigations into Alcazar de Velasco, Luis Calvo and del Pozo, which had involved the highly sensitive TRIPLEX source, and an agent inside the Spanish embassy in London, PEPPERMINT. Additionally, there was anxiety about the codebooks that Kobbe had carried to the United States on the SS Marques de Commilas that had been surreptitiously inspected in Trinidad.
While en poste Kobbe was subject to the most intense surveillance by the RCMP, encouraged by MI5’s liaison officer in Montreal, Cyril Mills, who had a further advantage in his investigation of the diplomat. One of his sources, actually managed by the FBI’s Special Agent John Williams, and code-named ASPIRIN, was a Spanish journalist, José Aladrin, who was in contact with Kobbe, code-named FISHERMAN, using secret writing since October 1942. In August 1943 ASPIRIN returned to Madrid in an effort to be recruited by the Japanese, and he was the source of an incriminating letter, sent through the regular mail, which contained $1,000 and a Japanese code concealed in secret writing. Naturally the RCMP copied the contents, and this and other items, including a microfilm sent from an unknown contact, became the basis of an official protest to the Spanish Foregn ministry from the British ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, in January 1944 complaining about the employment of Spanish diplomats as Japanese agents.
Rather unexpectedly, the Spanish government reacted swiftly to Hoare by recalling Kobbe to face a judicial tribunal in Madrid. Accordingly, he sailed back to Europe from New Orleans on the SS Megalles, accompanied by his daughter, Beatrix, in February 1944.
18
AUGUST 1944, UNDATED
With the invasion troops firmly established in France, MI5’s monthly report concentrated not on the role of the double-agents engaged in deception, but on a scheme for BRUTUS upon his return to Paris, and on updating the Prime Minister on the activities of TRICYCLE and his brother DREADNOUGHT, and on DRAGONFLY who had narrowly avoided being compromised by the British traitor Oswald Job.
AUGUST 1944
A. SPECIAL AGENTS.
1) BRUTUS.
This agent has continued to play an important part in putting across the cover plan of SHAEF. A completely new possibility has however been opened up since we have just learnt that the Germans have been persuaded to deposit a wireless transmitter for him in Paris, should he be able to get to France.
It is hoped to recover this set in the near future, and we shall then be in a position to offer to SHAEF a channel of the highest possible grade at the centre of operations.
2) TRICYCLE.
This agent’s elder brother, DREADNOUGHT, who has been operating against the Germans in Yugoslavia for the past three years and has helped to recruit for us four more special agents, recently escaped from Yugoslavia owing to the attentions of the Gestapo. He is now in this country, and has given us a great deal of information. In particular he has confirmed that as late at the end of July, the Germans appeared to have no suspicions that TRICYCLE was controlled.
3) DRAGONFLY.
An unexpected development in this case which was long thought to be dead shows how slow on the uptake the Germans are in realising when their agents are compromised. A spy of British nationality, Job, was arrested in this country and hanged on March 16th last. He had as one of his missions to this country, to deliver jewellery at an address supplied by DRAGONFLY. At the time of Job’s execution it was felt that the Germans could not fail to realise that this implicated DRAGONFLY, but they have now succeeded in making a payment of £1,000 in favour of DRAGONFLY.
This indication that they still trust him is confirmed from Most Secret Sources. Unfortunately the present confusion in the German Secret Service makes it doubtful whether we can take advantage of this trust to open up the case again.
B. SPIES.
The energies of our special interrogation centre have been almost exclusively devoted in the last month to investigating some nineteen enemy agents taken in the field, and sent back to this country. The qualities of these agents is considerably higher than in the case of those taken during the first month of the operations in France, no less then twelve of the new arrivals were to direct wireless sets, and several of them had long been in the service of the German Intelligence.
The interrogation of Hans Scharf, referred to in last month’s summary, has been completed with particularly satisfactory results. Owing to his extensive knowledge of the German Intelligence Organisation in Paris, he is, by agreement with the French, being kept in this country for a further period for ‘reference’.
C. SABOTAGE.
It has now become apparent that the German Secret Service planned their greatest sabotage effort of the war in Italy. By August 1st, 1944 about fifty saboteurs had been caught, including two Italian Communists, and an Italian Intelligence Service agent, who had deliberately penetrated the German Organisation. The Germans left sabotage agents behind in towns captured by the Allies, and arranged for others to cross the lines and reach Rome and other towns in small groups. The sabotage equipment was usually left buried in, or near, ruins in Rome. One such dump, however, was discovered in the German Embassy to the Quirinal. In this case the explosive had been buried for a considerable time and was in such a dangerous condition that a serious explosion occurred when it was discovered.1
An officer of the Security Service has just returned from a visit to Paris, where large hauls have been made of German sabotage material, besides documents, a detailed examination of which seems likely to yield results that may be of considerable future value.
Director-General
* * *
This report, among all the others, is quite unusual since it appears from a memo left in the file dated 8 August 1944 that it was also read by the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and his Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan. Their reaction is not recorded, but they were probably both surprised to see the extent of MI5’s involvement overseas, such as the visits to Rome and Paris by MI5’s sabotage expert, Victor Rothschild, and the extent of its doubleagent operations, mentioning four different cases. While SIS had played a part in TRICYCLE and his brother DREADNOUGHT, who had been brought to England under SIS’s sponsorship, the references to DRAGONFLY and BRUTUS may have been a revelation.
19
5 OCTOBER 1944
This report appears quite different to Petrie’s other submissions, and may have been written by a different hand. It takes a reflective, somewhat self-congratulatory view of MI5’s adversarial relationship with the Abwehr, and highlights two past milestones in the conflict. The first was an outline of how the Germans had sought to influence British public opinion through such subversive groups as the Anglo-German Fellowship and The Link, organisations which had attracted some political support from such controversial figures as Admiral Sir Barry Domvile and Captain Archibald Ramsay MP, both regarded as right-wing extremists. In 1940 MI5’s Max Knight had successfully penetrated The Link with several agents and Ramsay, though still with a seat in Parliament, was detained at Brixton.
The other major German pre-war objective was access to British manufacturing data, as a means to monitoring the government’s policy of rearmament, and this had been accomplished through a commercial front, Benrath Machine Tools. Through this entity the Germans were able to keep an eye on the speed and scale of industrial mobilisation without having to engage in conventional espionage.
MI5’s strategy of confronting and closing down perceived enemy activity had led B Division to one of the Abwehr’s few assets in England, Arthur Owens, code-named JOHNNIE. A Welsh businessman with a battery business, Owens had been recruited by the Abwehr in 1936, but MI5 had been monitoring his illicit correspondence to a compromised cover address in Belgium so he was detained on the very first day of the war. This intervention led Owens to reveal the existence of a wireless transmitter, and, code-named SNOW, he began
transmitting daily weather reports under MI5’s control. Clearly trusted by the Abwehr’s branch in Hamburg, Owens provided carefully crafted information, such as identification data and home addresses, for subsequent agents who were dropped into the country by parachute, and promptly taken into custody. This, as the report suggests, was the foundation of what became the hugely successful and profitable double-cross system.1 As the anonymous author explains, most of the spies infiltrated into the United Kingdom during the ‘invasion summer’ of 1940 were quickly neutralised, leaving MUTT and JEFF, who landed on the Banffshire coast in April 1941.2
SEPTEMBER 1944
The main objective of enemy intelligence is shifting more and more away from the United Kingdom and towards the Armies in the field, though there have been indications recently that the enemy still hopes to increase the efficiency of his supposed spy service in this country. At this stage therefore it may be of interest to review in bare outline the development of German espionage activities in this country since the period immediately preceding the war.
From about 1936 onwards the German Intelligence machine in this country was mainly directed towards persuading people here that Germany’s expansionist aim on the continent were no concern of ours and in no sense a menace to British security. To this purpose they employed a variety of organisations directed by the Foreign Branch of the Nazi Party. The Party itself had a headquarters in London with provincial branches, and through its outer constellation, which included such organisations as the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Link, endeavoured to recruit a body of opinion favourably disposed towards Germany. On the higher diplomatic level, the Ribbentrop Bureau was engaged in similar activities.
The Germans seem to have been confident right to the last moment that their propaganda through these agencies would be successful in keeping us out of the war, but to reinforce this opinion they thought it expedient to obtain an accurate picture of our industrial mobilisation capacity and so to assess whether in fact we were in a position to engage in active hostilities. The method was simple. They relied largely on German agencies in this country engaged in the supply of machine tools both to Government Ordnance factories and to other factories which were concerned in our re-armament programme.
In Manchester they established a German agency called Benrath Machine Tools representing some thirteen machine tool firms in Germany. As British firms could not give delivery under a year to eighteen months, the business went to Benrath, who were offering delivery in three months. It was essential, therefore, for Benrath to be informed about the design of the article to be manufactured and the number that it was expected to produce per month. Worse than this, it was apparently found necessary for German mechanics to be employed in setting up the machines and in servicing them from month to month. It was therefore not surprising that when a delegation from the German Ministry of War was allowed to visit this country in 1936 it was joined in the Midlands by the head of Benrath’s, who subsequently returned to London with the party and spent the night with them before they returned to Germany. So easy in fact did the Germans find it to acquire information about our inclination and capacity to make war that they omitted to lay the foundation of any underground organisation in this country capable of coming into operation after the outbreak of war. The few agents, or potential agents, left behind were dealt with by the arrests made in September 1939 and during the late summer of 1940. There remained only one active agent who, under our control, established wireless communication with the enemy and ultimately became the corner stone of the intelligence organisation which the Security Service built in this country on behalf of the Germans. More important still, a study of his wireless procedure and observation of his control station led to the discrimination by the Radio Security Service of the wide network of enemy Secret Service communications.
It seems probable that the Germans never seriously considered the invasion of this country until they reached the Channel Ports. If this were so, it might account for the period of comparative inactivity during the early months of the war and for the hastily improvised adventures in the early autumn of 1940 onwards involving the arrival by parachute and rubber boat of a number of agents, both badly equipped and ill-instructed. Their apprehension in a matter of a few hours presented little difficulty in a country which at that moment was vigilant and thoroughly spy-conscious. One party which arrived in Scotland by rubber boat, waded ashore and went to the nearest railway station, where they asked for tickets to London. This unusual request aroused the booking clerk to scrutinise the travellers more closely, and struck by their bedraggled appearance and their poor English, he informed the station-master. The local policeman was summoned and arriving on his bicycle, soon established that all the documents carried by these spies were out of order. Such was the calibre of the first batch of spies who operated during what may be called the period of illegal entry. In the eyes of the Germans all failed except two, whose services were recruited for our double-agent network.
After the enemy’s invasion project had been abandoned, methods improved, and a policy of legal entry was adopted. Spies began to arrive in the guise of refugees wishing to join the Allied Forces and as seamen sailing between this country and the Iberian Peninsula. In some cases, the Germans would penetrate our escape organisations on the Continent and so insert an agent into a bona-fide party of refugees. To meet this situation arrangements were made by which the Security Control Officer at the Port sent certain categories of aliens and listed suspects to a special interrogation centre in London where their cases could be gone into in greater detail, and at this establishment an information index was built up by which the stories of all refugees could be compared and closely checked, It has been possible in this way to track down a large number of spies, totally unaided by information from other sources. Where a confession is obtained or strong suspicion exists, the alien is sent to our special spy camp, for detailed interrogation. The information obtained at these two camps has given not only a complete picture of the German Intelligence organisation, its personnel and methods, but also an immense amount of data about conditions in Occupied Territory which has been passed to the Services concerned.
As a further insurance against penetration the double-agent network was built up on a large scale and reached the point where virtually the whole of the supposed German Intelligence Organisation in this country was under the control of the Security Service. This controlled organisation reached a point of such complexity that, through a series of elaborate cross-checks, it provided almost irrefutable proof that the Germans had not succeeded in building up any other espionage organisation for work in this country. This knowledge enabled the Security Service to state to the military authorities its firm conviction that in the period preceding the Second Front, there were no channels working from this country to the Germans which could jeopardise the operation.
In addition to this a very close watch has all along been maintained on the activities of neutral and Allied diplomats in the United Kingdom, as it was known that information which they sent out to their capitals was in certain cases passed on to the enemy.
Through the feeding of accurate, though unimportant, information to the enemy, the position of the controlled organisation was maintained up to the opening of the Second Front, when in conjunction with Service wireless deception units it was used to implement the Controller’s plan of major deception. Proof is available not only that the reports of our controlled agents backed by the appropriate wireless signals were accepted by the Headquarters of the German Intelligence Service in Berlin, but that the German strategy in the field was based upon them. A German map captured in Italy on May 15th 1944 shows the false disposition of our units in this country precisely as they were reported by us to the enemy, while practical events and the conversations between Hitler and his generals which have recently been published, show that the threat to the Pas-de-Calais caused Rommel to delay committing the full weight of his armour until the bridgehead had
been sufficiently established to enable us to repel his attacks.
Another function which has been discharged by the Security Service during the period preceding and immediately following Overlord has been the preparation of the counter-espionage intelligence policy and instruction for the Armies invading Europe. Not only, however, have we supplied written instructions and information, but we have also held training courses for British and American officers about to undertake counter-espionage work in the field, and have supplied as many as eighty officers from the Security Service itself to act as key personnel in this organisation. These are at present undertaking investigation work, the control of special agents in the field and the interrogation of members of the German Secret Service captured on the Continent. Our special interrogation centre in this country is, moreover, undertaking the detailed examination of such captured agents as are thought sufficiently interesting to be brought back to the United Kingdom. The intelligence thus obtained is immediately distributed to the armies in the field.
The duties of the Security Service are being further extended to the training of officers for counter intelligence work in Germany itself after the cessation of hostilities. These officers, who again include members of the Security Service, are being incorporated in the Control Commission.
5 October 1944
* * *
Churchill was very interested to see evidence of the success of the Allied deception schemes and demanded to inspect an enemy map captured in Italy just before D-Day, which had been marked with the German assessment of the Allied order-of-battle in Great Britain. He also wanted other proof, and Dick White suggested the transcripts of conversations exchanged between senior enemy commanders on and immediately after D-Day.
The Prime Minister, when reading the last Monthly Report on the activities of the Security Service, asked to see certain conversations between German Generals, showing the success of the Deception Plan and the consequent retention of troops in other parts of France which might have been brought into action against our troops in Normandy.
