by John Bryden
I remember walking out of a bar and into the night air and him suddenly stopping and saying: “You are very young. I can only rely on the impression you have made on me. But I think you are sincere. George, my life is in your hands!”
I shook his hand and said, “I shall bring you back safely. You can rely on that!”
At the time Dicketts was about forty. He was wearing an English suit. His eyes and his voice betrayed fear when I took him back to his hotel and said goodbye to him at three in the morning.18
The pair travelled across Portugal, Spain, and France by train, and Sessler remembered that when they reached Hamburg, Dicketts was questioned behind closed doors by several senior Abwehr officers. Included was Major Ritter, who had been in North Africa but flew back for the meeting.19
Whatever Dicketts said, it apparently satisfied his inquisitors. He was allowed to return to Portugal and go on to Britain, arriving in London on June 12. The next day, Menzies sent out an advisory saying that the Germans were likely to invade Russia toward the end of the next month. Churchill ordered the Soviets and President Roosevelt be warned. “From every source at my disposal, including some most trustworthy, it looks as if a vast German onslaught on Russia is imminent,” the prime minister told the president.20
At least one of these “most trustworthy” sources must have been Dicketts. Until his departure for Portugal, the War Office and the Foreign Office had been at loggerheads over how to interpret the massive movement of German troops and air formations into eastern Europe. Army Intelligence — MI14 — and the Joint Intelligence Committee argued that Russia was to be attacked. The Foreign Office said it was a bluff; it did not make sense for Hitler to take on a new enemy before defeating Britain. Besides, Germany was receiving essential war commodities from Russia and hostilities would interrupt the flow indefinitely. This was logical; Dicketts confirmed that Hitler was not always logical.21
This incident also appears to mark the point at which MI6 began deliberately to withhold significant information from MI5. According to the strict division of responsibilities between the two services, when out of England, MI5’s double agents reported to and took direction from the MI6(V) officer at the embassy. If Dicketts followed his standing instructions, he would have taken his news immediately to Ralph Jarvis, the MI6(V) officer for Portugal, who would have relayed it to London.
Ordinarily, despite the rule, MI6 would keep MI5 posted on the doings of one of its double agents while abroad. Not this time. Liddell apparently was not told that Dicketts had been tipped off to the attack on Russia, and he definitely did not learn about a second trip to Germany at the time; he only learned of the trip in late 1943, when Ruser defected. Even after the war ended, MI5 was still trying to confirm Ruser’s disclosure from prisoner interrogations. Clearly, Dicketts had been ordered to tell his MI5 bosses just so much, and no more.22
As for Major Ritter, the hazards of war finally caught up to him. On June 17, the aircraft that was bringing him back to North Africa from the Berlin meeting made a forced landing on the sea near Derna, Libya. Ritter suffered a bad fracture on his upper right arm and was evacuated to hospital in Athens.23 Five days later, on June 22, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. On a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, 4.5 million German and Axis troops with thousands of panzers lunged east into Russia. Moscow was the goal.
The Russian forces were taken completely by surprise. Stalin had ignored Churchill’s warning. Like the mandarins of Britain’s Foreign Office, he had assumed Hitler was logical.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1941, when no one dreamed Hitler would be so foolish as to attack the Soviets, MI5 was finally getting its house in order. The new director-general-to-be, sixty-two-year-old David Petrie, arrived in January and began an exhaustive overhaul. He had been forty years in India, twenty of those with the Department of Criminal Intelligence, and most recently had briefly headed MI6 operations in the Middle East. He was a capable administrator, and when he formally took over in March, he quickly swept up the plethora of special sections and sub-sections of MI5 into one tightly designed organization. On the negative side, his contact with international espionage during the First World War had been minimal. Most of his career had involved counter-insurgency work in India, mainly against the Sikhs.
Petrie’s most dramatic move, at the very beginning of his mandate, was to back transferring the Radio Security Service to MI6, where it was put under the direction of Richard Gambier-Parry, whose secret wireless section had grown substantially in size and sophistication. The Gill/Trevor-Roper team was broken up, the former being abruptly reassigned to a training school and oblivion and the latter taken on at MI6 as head of his own ISOS-traffic analysis section, MI6(Vw), the w standing for wireless. Henceforth, MI6 would have sole responsibility for extracting and sharing intelligence from intercepted Abwehr messages — ISOS — and sole responsibility for deciding who outside MI6 should see the decrypts.24
It was a surprising thing to do, even though joint direction of the Radio Security Service by the army, Post Office, and MI5 was never a satisfactory arrangement. None of the three had any significant expertise in modern military radio communications, the Royal Navy before the war being the miles-ahead leader through its “Y” service in direction-finding and enemy wireless operator identification. The army (the War Office), on the other hand, began the war with little direction-finding capacity, which was why the RSS was set up based on Post Office fixed receiving stations and civilian “volunteer interceptors.” MI5 was not solely at fault for its many failures to observe the basic security procedures appropriate to clandestine wireless operations.
One wonders, however, whether there were deeper reasons behind MI6 taking over the RSS. Both Petrie and Menzies were competent intelligence officers of long experience. It may have been apparent to them that with the destruction of the Central Registry card index, MI5 could never be trusted. The administrative chaos and rapid expansion of the previous year, combined with the loss of more than two decades of dossiers on individuals of interest, mostly communists, guaranteed that there would be little chance of determining whether MI5 had been penetrated, either by the Soviets or the Germans. Up to the middle of June 1941, when Hitler and Stalin were still allies, one was as bad as the other.
MI6 also at this time set up its own counter-espionage registry, exclusive of the Central Registry, and the report prepared by Dicketts on his second trip to Lisbon/Germany went there, as did those pertaining to Dusko Popov, when he was in Portugal and the United States. MI6 also began its own collection of files on the enemy personalities who appeared in the intercepted Abwehr messages.25
Taking over the Radio Security Service and distribution of the ISOS product also breathed new life into MI6’s counter-espionage section, MI6(V). Headed by Colonel Valentine Vivian, it was actually run by the deputy section head, Felix Cowgill, another former India intelligence officer. He promptly set up his own field officers in the embassies in Portugal and Spain, and sent them those intercepts that might help them identify Abwehr spies about to embark from the two countries. These special Section V officers were to answer to him directly. The existing MI6 heads of station — the passport control officers — were not to have anything to do with ISOS, or even to know about it.26
As for MI5, the loss of the Radio Security Service, and Major Gill in particular, cut the remaining lines between its wireless double-agent program and the service’s military professionals with at least some expertise in enemy wireless communications. The Wireless Branch was dissolved and Robertson was given his own section — B1A “Special Agents” (the 1 and the A placing it in the position of honour at the very top of B Division’s counter-espionage roster). While the rearrangement looked fine on paper, the practical effect was to even further isolate Robertson and how he chose to run his wireless double agents from the rest of MI5, and from mainstream British intelligence.
The result was that there was no one to question it when Robertson — now
Major Robertson — decided to put a radio technician recently recruited from the BBC in charge of the wireless communications of his double agents. Twenty-five-year-old “Ronnie” Reed was also an amateur ham-radio enthusiast, but that was as far as it went in terms of experience relevant to clandestine wireless operations. Much, much more was needed if MI5 was to stand toe-to-toe against the German army signals personnel backing up Ast Hamburg’s Major Ritter.
Meanwhile, MI6(VIII), Gambier-Parry’s secret wireless communications section installed near Bletchley Park continued to grow, and grow, and flourish.
11
January–August 1941
It was Dusko Popov who made the collapse of the SNOW network in the spring of 1941 so exquisitely awful for the MI5 double-agent managers. He held promise of becoming a super-spy who would earn the Security Service the secret thanks of the nation and a smattering of knighthoods. All this was now in jeopardy.
First code-named SKOOT and then TRICYCLE by the British, and IVAN by the Germans, the twenty-nine-year-old Yugoslav with the easy smile and a knack with women was destined to be one of the more famous spies of the war. His exploits as a double agent became legendary, for he mixed espionage with wining, dining, sex, and the good life on a grand scale. Popov eventually wrote his own story nearly thirty years after the war, the popular Spy/Counterspy (1974), which was endorsed as “true” by one of Britain’s leading wartime intelligence officers. In the book’s introduction, Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu wrote:
Yet he also had the steel within, the ruthlessness and the cold-blooded courage that enabled him to go back to the German Secret Service Headquarters in Lisbon and Madrid time and again, when it was likely he might be “blown”; it was like putting his head in the lion’s mouth. Bravely, in cold blood, he risked torture and death to re-establish German confidence in him so that he could make his great contribution to the Allied victory.
And further:
Having worked with Dusko Popov (then known to me as Tricycle) from the time he arrived in war-battered London, I have read with absorbing interest his angle on the exploits of which I knew…. From the start, I fell under the spell of his personality, his sincerity, his gaiety, and his courage. I am sure he will have the same effect on all those who read this book.
There surely could be no better testimonial to his success than such lavish praise from an opponent still deceived after so many years: Popov was, in fact, another one of Major Ritter’s triple agents, as later evidence will prove.
The Germans gave warning of Popov’s impending arrival in Britain in a way that was to become standard for agents to come. The Government Code & Cipher School had only just broken the “main Abwehr hand cipher” when the following messages were intercepted and deciphered:
13.12.40 — Lisbon-Berlin.
POPOV from Belgrade has reported here. He claims to be employed by ÖLSCHLAEGER and JEBSEN of SCHLOSS (Berlin) for GOLFPLATZ (Great Britain). I request urgent information. POPOV also is in need of money.
18.12.40 — Berlin-Lisbon.
Radio your view as to when our agent POPOV can leave for GOLFPLATZ (Great Britain). His JEBSEN telegram has arrived, but is unintelligible. Refund his expenses.1
An MI5 officer awaited Popov when he flew into Whitchurch on December 20, 1940, and for the next ten days he was put through an intensive series of interrogations by various MI5 officers, Major Robertson included, and by Colonel Oreste Pinto, the ace spy catcher of the Dutch government-in-exile. He sailed through it all, for the wireless intercepts confirmed a cover story that had been months in the making.2
Popov first came to notice some months earlier when he called on the British embassy in Belgrade to inform officials that he was a lawyer from Dubrovnik and he had been approached to spy for the Germans by a friend from his student days in Germany. The MI6 station officer there encouraged him to develop the contact, so Popov went back to the friend, Johann Jebsen, and indicated his interest. This led to his recruitment by an Abwehr officer named Major Ölschlaeger, who arranged for him to go to England under the cover of a businessman with shipping interests. All this Popov reported to the MI6 officer. The mention of Ölschlaeger and Jebsen in the intercepted messages clinched the truth of his story.3
During his vetting on arrival in England, MI5 interrogators did notice one oddity. Popov had been given a surprisingly “primitive” invisible ink, one based on a popular headache remedy called Pyramidon. The secret messages to be written on the letters he was to send to cover addresses in Portugal could be developed by heat, a routine test for secret writing used by all wartime postal censorship agencies. When this observation was put to Popov, he deftly explained that at their last meeting Jebsen had taken away the ink he originally had been given and replaced it with one he said was better, which obviously it was not. This explanation was accepted.4
According to what Popov remembered nearly three decades later in Spy/Counterspy, Jebsen introduced him not to someone named Ölschlaeger but to a Major Munzinger, “who took orders directly from Canaris.” Popov also has Jebsen explaining that he joined the Abwehr because he was an admirer of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, and Schacht “was on very close terms with Canaris.” Jebsen also mentions that he was personally introduced to Canaris by his aide, Colonel Oster, “whose political ideas and philosophy are identical to mine.” These statements, if true, put Jebsen firmly on the inside of the army/Abwehr conspiracy against Hitler.5 Popov implies in his book that he did not know this at the time.
If Popov reported the Schacht-Oster connections during his 1940 interrogations, the significance would have escaped MI5, but not MI6. Because of the Abwehr’s secret peace overtures in the fall of 1939, Schacht was known to be a serious opponent of the Nazis, and Oster was known for tipping off the Dutch and the Belgians to Hitler’s 1940 invasion plans. This was probably why, after having been cleared by MI5, Popov received an invitation from Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, to spend the weekend at his brother’s stately home in Surrey. There they could talk.
It was quite incredible. Menzies was head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. That made him one of the most powerful persons in the country. It put him at Churchill’s elbow almost daily, and he was privy to the deepest secrets of the state. Popov was just a lowly Abwehr spy turned double agent. The closest Popov should have got to Menzies was as a name on a piece of paper voyaging across his desk.
They spent a few hours alone in the library of the house. In telling the story, Popov paints a picture of a white-haired and fatherly Menzies, sunk deep in an armchair, eyes on a line of the flames in the fireplace, quietly talking encouragement and advice to the young spy. Then:
“Now,” Menzies paused, put a match to his pipe, apparently collecting his thoughts — “to get to the point, we already have a fair amount of information about many officers in the Abwehr, including Canaris, but I want to know much more about everybody who is intimately connected with Canaris, and also with Dohnányi and Oster. I think you could get that information through Jebsen.”
“He’d probably know,” I agreed.
“It may be helpful if I explain the reasons behind this request. We know that Canaris, Dohnányi and Oster are not dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. They are what might be termed loyal officers, or patriotic Germans. In 1938 Churchill had a conversation with Canaris. Unofficially — he wasn’t in office then. Churchill came to the conclusion that Canaris was a sort of catalyst for the anti-Hitler elements in Germany. That’s why I want to know more about the people he attracts. Eventually, I may want to resume the conversation that Churchill initiated. In that event, I must be in a position to evaluate the strength of those around Canaris.”
I nodded my understanding. Menzies was contemplating a dialogue with Canaris or those close to him with a view to ousting Hitler.
“I am handling the matter myself,” Menzies stressed. “All information you pick up is to come directly to me with no intermediary….”6
No solid evidence has ever been found that Ca
naris and Churchill met before the war, although there is one tantalizing clue. In August 1938, Canaris sent a one-man secret mission to Britain on behalf of the chief of the general staff, General Beck, asking for assurance that Britain would intervene if Hitler carried out his threat to invade Czechoslovakia. “Bring me certain proof that Britain will fight if Czechoslovakia is attacked and I will put an end to this regime,” Beck was reported as saying. The emissary was an obscure landowner-politician named Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, and he made no progress whatever with the officials of Chamberlain’s government. Churchill, however, also received him and was sympathetic, giving him a letter agreeing that a world war would ensue if German troops crossed into Czechoslovakia. As an opposition politician he could do no more than that.7
Chances are the officials seen by Kleist-Schmenzin did not know what Canaris looked like. Faking a passport would be nothing to the Abwehr, and Canaris was known to enjoy going around in disguise. With a little hair whitener and a false moustache, Canaris could have been made to look like Kleist-Schmenzin.8
Popov said nothing of his meeting with Menzies to anyone. As far as MI5 was concerned, he was simply another turncoat spy whose arrival was especially timely because the XX Committee had only just been set up. The committee’s initial membership comprised J.C. Masterman (chairman), Major Robertson, and Flight Lieutenant C.C. Cholmondely for MI5; Felix Cowgill for MI6(V); intelligence officers from the Admiralty, Air Ministry, and Home Forces; and someone from the Home Defence (Security) Executive. Ewen Montagu, then a lieutenant-commander in the naval reserve, represented naval intelligence.
The discussion at the XX Committee’s first meeting on January 2 soon turned to how best to use Popov to baffle the Germans.9
