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A FORCE

During WW2 the British developed a system of deception to convince the Axis powers that they were better armed and had more armed forces than they in fact had at their disposal, in order to deter the enemy from attacking. This evolved first in the Middle East in late 1940, where an organization called A Force was used for both tactical and strategic deception. The organization was operational well before the London Controlling Section (LCS) came into existence, and it was mainly because of the success of A Force that the LCS was created. Col Dudley W Clarke arrived to work under Gen Wavell in September 1940, and was given the title “personal intelligence officer (special duties) to the commander in chief”. His role was to formulate deception for General Wavell, but in January 1941 he also became head of MI9 for the Middle East, responsible for helping Allied PoW to escape and obtaining intelligence from them.

A Force officially began on 28 March 1941. Even the unit title was aimed to deceive, intending to hint that an Allied (A)irborne force existed in the Middle East. Over the next several years Clarke was to have a number of colleagues and subordinates whom he had known for many years – his first deputy, Noel Wild; his successor in 1944, Michael Crichton; Col AC Simmonds, A Force’s Deputy Head overseeing MI9 operations, and Oliver Thynne, who joined A Force in 1942. [1]

The staff of A Force needed the means to deliver the main thrust of their lies and stratagems to the enemy. They used physical deception – dummy tanks and trucks, fake tracks, fake formation insignia – to sell the story on the ground, and audio deception - sound trucks broadcasting the sounds of equipment and battle. They also created false radio traffic to give the Germans and Italians more evidence for the existence of these units. At the same time they were asking higher authorities back in London to use their deception channels to sell their part in these deceptions. A channel available both locally and back in London was the use of controlled enemy agents (CEAs) and double agents (DAs) to pass parts of the deception story to the enemy.

SIME and CHEESE

Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) was created in December 1939, tasked to monitor enemy agents in the ME, coordinate action against them, organize security services throughout the theatre, and work with other intelligence services and military organizations. In the spring of 1940 when the GSI (General Staff, Intelligence) was formed in GHQ, SIME was reconstituted as GSI(b) to provide a framework for its functions to which senior staff officers were already accustomed – so, unlike its UK counterpart MI5, it was therefore firmly under the control of the military, and military operations were given more priority than general Middle East security.

The Head of SIME was Brigadier Raymond Maunsell, a former Defence Security Officer (DSO) based in Cairo since 1935, with much experience and a wealth of important contacts in the region, as well as controlling an existing database of casework within the DSO area of responsibility. SIME was instructed to get approval from MI5 and MI6 where new casework impinged on areas under their control. This did not prevent a degree of duplication of effort with MI6, who created a regional organization named the Inter-Services Liaison Department (ISLD), based in the same building as SIME. In November 1941 MI6(V) deployed Major Rodney Dennys to Cairo to take charge of all MI6 CE operations in the theatre, and to be the sole recipient and disseminator of ISOS material, also becoming the person to authorize any action based on ISOS. [2] Until the arrival of Dennys, ISOS had been sent only sporadically to Cairo, in an abbreviated and paraphrased form due to being passed via radio. Dennys was given ISLD cover and worked under Cuthbert Bowlby, the MI6/ISLD head in Cairo. A report on the MI6(V) use of ISOS claimed that

“Deception of the enemy for strategic purposes – i.e. the dissemination of misleading information about the strength, disposition and intended movements of Allied Forces – was carried out with considerable success in the Middle East. This success was largely due to ISOS. We received daily from ISOS several reports from German agents on Allied Armed Force activity often with comments on the agent’s supposed reliability by the controlling German station. These helped the strategic deception experts in the Middle East to discover what the Germans knew of Allied Order of Battle and strategic intentions and o prepare their deception material accordingly.” [3]

According to “Security and Counter-Intelligence in the Middle East in the Second World War (to September 1943)”, a report dated 14 Sep 1943, the first Middle-East DA arrived in Cairo in summer 1941. He had been recruited by the Germans while already in contact with an Allied intelligence organization, which was kept informed of these developments. The GIS’s intention was for the agent to set up a W/T link in Cairo operating to Athens and to provide them with military information. [4] The case was directed in Cairo by a SIME Case Officer.

This agent profile has similarities and contradictions to both CHEESE and STEPHAN (see below for details); CHEESE arrived in February 1941 and operated initially back to Bari in Italy rather than Athens, and STEPHAN was operational from 1940 rather than 1941. There are also similarities with QUICKSILVER (see below), except he operated from Beirut. As the handling of CHEESE traffic was later moved to Athens, and MI5’s CHEESE file stated that the case had been run from July 1941, it is most probably his case which is mentioned in the report.

"In the operation of all these DA cases SIME’s part is to carry out the initial detailed interrogations of agents, and provide for each case an officer who attends to all its preparation and administrative running, including the fabrication of a plausible ‘notional’ story for the double-cross agent to tell to the enemy and the physical control of the agent during and after the course of the operation.”

As at September 1943

“three of the five W/T double agent channels now running in the Middle East are wholly maintained by SIME, apart from the provision of deception material for communication to the enemy. This also applies to the sixth channel of this type, which was recently closed down after being successfully operated for four months.” [5]

(The latter channel was probably the DA codenamed SLAVE, see below). SIME was responsible for running DAs in areas under Allied control. In the Middle East the best such channel for deception purposes was the CHEESE/LAMBERT case.

The employment of Controlled Enemy Agents was an expensive exercise in time and manpower. One author described the process in the UK in the 1944 period, though doubtless those “in the field” would have had to make do with the resources available, which would usually not be so extensive:

“A ‘turned’ agent would be provided with two guards, a radio operator, a house and housekeeper. His wallet would be stuffed with an identity card (in some plausible name) and the essential ration book and clothing coupons. There were ‘businesses’ on obscure streets where visitors would be interviewed and their comments recorded. In addition to these groundling, housing, and paperwork, the system required a surprising number of MI5 officers: case officers, who dealt with reports and messages sent and received, questions, and instructions, and another who followed up on what was learned from these agents. Say nine men and women to support each agent.” [6]

CHEESE/LAMBERT/ROBERTO

Renato Levi, an Italian Jew based in Italy, was born in Split in 1902. Blue eyed, with light brown hair and 5’ 6” in height, with “typically Jewish appearance”, Levi had been recruited by a member of the German Intelligence Service in Genoa in November 1939 to spy for them in France. Levi was by profession a commercial agent, and by nature an “international adventurer”, who had lived in India, Switzerland and Australia as well as his native Italy, and possessed an Australian passport valid to 1940, which was replaced with a British passport.

An acquaintance in Genoa introduced Levi to his chief, Travaglio, who recruited Levi to work for the GIS in France. He immediately reported the approach to the British Consulate and the information was passed to MI6 in Paris. Levi was instructed by them to operate in France under the control of the French Deuxième Bureau. [7] One reference to his work in France in public British files stated that “the French are said to have mishandled his case, but detailed information is lacking." [8] Another document mentions a micro-photographed questionnaire concerning British or French military and air force dispositions.

Levi apparently failed to accomplish his mission, which he described as “a wild goose chase” to his German superiors in Italy when he returned on the fall of France in 1940, but he was soon approached again by the GIS. His original recruiter introduced him on to Lt Col Otto Helfferich (Abwehr liaison to the Italian SIM) and Sonderfuehrer Clemens Rossetti (real name Kurt Clemens von Rabe or Raabe) [9], who ran a spy ring aimed at the Middle East, and as a result Renato Levi was recruited to set up a spy network in Egypt. Rossetti was a very active agent, travelling widely in the Middle East and involving himself in numerous cases, which made him a target of interest to the British, though they understood both from ISOS and from defector and agent reports that he and his former superior in France were not well regarded within the Abwehr.

Levi, using a German passport in the name of Renato Ludovici, set off for Cairo on 7 December 1940 with fellow agent Gioyanni Magaraggi, alias Fulvio Melcher, who was to provide the radio contact back to their control in Bari, Italy. Travelling via Belgrade, Sofia, and Turkey, they were held for three weeks in Istanbul by the authorities for passing counterfeit money, requiring covert British intervention with the Turks to secure Levi’s release. Melcher, however, returned to Italy upon his release.

Levi continued on to Haifa, now using a British passport, and was welcomed in February 1941 by the British, who had been informed by London back in June 1940 to expect his arrival, and he was debriefed by SIME in Jerusalem on his tasking and the potential contacts provided by the enemy. This provided no new information, so Levi was then flown by the RAF to Cairo. The original Case Officers for CHEESE were Mr WJ Kenyon-Jones of SIME (later Capt, then Col and Deputy Head of SIME), and later Capt Evan John Simpson. Kenyon-Jones was described as “over six foot tall and broad for his height, a very good rugger [sic – rugby] player, remarkably original for an HQ officer in his ideas of dress... the brains and the organizer” of SIME. [10]

To build up the agent and make his communications more efficient for deception purposes, SIME came up with the idea of having CHEESE recruit a malcontent called Paul Nicossof (a notional character) to buy and operate a radio (the original Axis W/T set was supposed to have been provided through the Hungarian diplomatic bag to Cairo, but was never sent). Levi returned to Italy in April 1941 in order to give his spymasters the code which he had supposedly devised with Nicossof, arriving in Rome on 14 June 1941. The W/T link between Cairo and Bari was established in July, following an exchange of commercial telegrams between Levi and the notional Nicossof (codenamed ROBERTO by the Germans) to arrange transmissions on alternative signal settings.

Initially Levi was greeted with acclaim by the Abwehr, who wanted him to return immediately to Cairo with funds for the network. Levi feigned reluctance and then demanded two weeks leave with his family before returning, agreeing to a departure date of 5 August. He had apparently successfully fought an accusation, based on the interrogation of a captured French penetration agent, that he had been working for the Deuxième Bureau when he had been operating as a GIS agent in France. However, it was reported that his German Case Officer, Rossetti, was also employed by the Italian SIM (as was Rossetti’s assistant Elizabeth Tabbo @ ANNABELLA, according to the SD chief in Rome, Kappler), and presumably was passing everything obtained from CHEESE to them, and they proved more suspicious of the agent. [11]

After an approach by a SIM agent-provocateur named Alessi, Levi was detained on 2 August by the Italians and later charged with co-operating with the British Intelligence Service in Belgrade and in Cairo. The Italian CE service claimed during their first interrogation of Levi that they knew his Cairo W/T set was under Allied control, though this appeared to be based on suspicion rather than confirmed fact. How much of their suspicions they shared with the Abwehr is unclear. The Abwehr only began reporting from November 1941 that “the intrusion of the enemy Intelligence Service into the ROBERTO network is becoming clearer and clearer”, indicating that the Abwehr thought there was some penetration of ROBERTO’s network, but not necessarily suspecting ROBERTO himself. Sentenced to 5 yrs prison for being a danger to the state, Levi was released by the British 8th Army in October 1943. He was then employed by the local AMGOT as an interpreter, and connected with the British authorities in Turkey and Cairo in order to establish his claims for compensation for his detention and the loss of personal funds at the time of his arrest. [12]

There is a possible further chapter to this story. Captain Rene “Mac” Kisray of the British Intelligence Corps was active in Italy, helping to send agents behind enemy lines. One such agent was a “Renato Levy”, described as a former member of the French Foreign Legion. Levy was parachuted with a young man from Genoa behind the lines near Turin, but they were seen descending. To escape the search party the agents split up, Levy stripped naked and gave his clothes to his partner while he hid in a drainage culvert with his W/T set. After the search party moved on, Levy emerged to find his partner had disappeared with his clothes! Naked, he approached a farmhouse occupied by an old lady. He explained his condition by saying he had been found in bed with another man’s wife and had to escape naked. Lacking trousers in her house, she provided him with a gown. He was captured shortly afterwards, but repeated the story to the Italian officer in charge and deployed part of his cover story, claiming to be an Italian officer. His captor believed him, provided him with clothes and set him free.

Levy had been ordered to contact and work with an existing group led by a man called Luciano. He did so, but they soon clashed as Luciano provided no information to send back and spent most of his time in clubs, drinking with women. When Luciano returned to Allied lines he made allegations against Levy, accusing him of cowardice and disobeying orders. When Levy returned to Allied lines he was put into prison in Rome. Kisray saw him in prison and got his side of the story. He succeeded in getting Levy released and Luciano was confronted with Levy and his version. According to Kisray, Levy ended up living in Trieste with the Military Medal and one million lire. Whether this Renato Levy is the same man as CHEESE is not clear, but the similarity in name makes for a strange coincidence. [13]

In the meantime his notional radio operator Nicossof - a role played by a British Signals sergeant [See Footnote a] - continued to provide doctored information (“chicken feed”) to the Abwehr. This W/T channel (known in British radio traffic as LAMBERT) was available to A Force from July 1941, and played an important role in A Force deceptions in October that year to mask the beginning of the Western Desert campaign known as Operation CRUSADER. A telegram sent to SNUFFBOX, Oxford (MI5 covername in radio traffic) in January 1942 reported:

“LAMBERT was the main source by which successful deception recently achieved, resulting in complete strategic surprise at outset of Western Desert Campaign....LAMBERT still in touch but doubt further utility”. [14]

The reliability of ROBERTO’s reporting was not restored in his German controller’s eyes until November 1942, though from July onwards the enemy was requesting daily transmissions in place of the twice-weekly schedule, and his reporting was being assessed as “credible” and “trustworthy” from about this period. Nicosoff was able to claim that original network members responsible for the faulty intelligence of October 1941 had either been interned or had split from the group, disgusted at the lack of monetary reward from the Germans. The handler for the ROBERTO network, Rossetti, moved in late 1941 to Abwehrstelle (Ast) Athens and took control of the case with him. He later moved again, to Istanbul, but the case stayed under Athens’ control.

It has been suggested that the main reason for the rehabilitation of ROBERTO in the eyes of the Germans was the fact that their other, better sources had been closed down. [15] They had been intercepting and decrypting the telegram traffic of the US Military Attache in Cairo, Col Fellers, a fact which eventually became clear to the British through ISOS. After the codes were changed, the leakage stopped. Rommel had also been benefitting from an excellent wireless interception unit which was reading much of the lax British military radio traffic in the field. This stopped when the unit was captured by the British with its records intact, and its leader, Capt Seebohm, was killed.

Through 1943 CHEESE was used to sell a number of deceptions successfully, but by 1945 A Force became concerned that they had little further use for his services in deception work, while his possible use in penetration of the GIS might compromise all A Force deceptions if he were to be blown. By early 1945 Nicosoff was notionally in Greece and his mistress MISANTHROPE was controlling the CHEESE W/T link. The Germans had left behind money and a W/T set for Nicosoff in Greece, and MISANTHROPE in due course informed the Germans that this had not been found. They then proposed for another stay-behind agent in Athens to provide Nicosoff with a W/T set. According to a SIME letter to MI5,

“it was apparent that the longer we continued, the greater would be the difficulty of avoiding the development of CHEESE on penetration, as opposed to deception, lines. ‘A’ Force no longer had an operational use for the link.”“‘A’ Force were very loath to allow CHEESE to become entangled in penetration activities, arguing (quite rightly, in my opinion) that however carefully SPECIAL SECTION and S.I.M.E. Detachment in ATHENS (KLINGOPULOS) handled the case, there was always the possibility that unforeseen complications might lead to German suspicion that CHEESE/MISANTHROPE were working under British control. This in turn might lead the Germans to re-examine all past CHEESE traffic wth a more critical eye than they have done in the past. As far as ‘A’ Force are concerned, it is imperative that CHEESE must not run any risk of being blown; having been running since July 1941, any suspicion falling on this link might ultimately jeopardise the security of all ‘A’ Force activity in the MEDITERRANEAN theatre during the past three years. This is the ‘A’ Force view, and, in my opinion, a very logical one”.

Against the highlighted section in the letter, a comment was written in the margin: “This is contrary to what Harmer told me last year. J.M.” [16] Harmer, presumably, had either been told otherwise or had reviewed the case himself. As Harmer was the DA expert assigned by MI5 to both liaise with G Ops in SHAEF and to become the OC of 104 SCIU [See Footnote b], the section chosen to run DA deception cases in 21st Army Group (21 AG), his opinion must carry some weight in the discussion. “J.M.” was presumably John Marriott, who succeeded Lt Col T A Robertson as head of B1a in MI5 (the Section running all DAs in the UK). The CHEESE case was closed in early 1945. MI5 were keen for the case to be reopened in case the German Mil Amt organization tried to continue its operations outside Germany, but the views of A Force prevailed.

As the case shows, A Force was able to determine the use of a long-term CEA case even when they had no further use for the channel and it may have provided an important CE avenue to post-war operations of the GIS, and this happened in the final stages of the war, when the potential implications for GIS suspicions regarding CHEESE as a CEA would have been negligible.

Although SIME was responsible for running LAMBERT and other DA deception channels, they came under the strategic control of A Force, which was responsible for creating and approving all “chicken feed” and determining policy on the employment of specific agents as channels for deception. This changed slightly with the creation of the Thirty Committee (see below), but A Force still had the main say in how agents were to be used.

Other enemy agents were not as productive as LAMBERT. In February 1941 a Rumanian Vice-Consul destined to work in Alexandria was detained with three diplomatic bags, as diplomatic relations between Rumania and Britain had just been broken off. The bags were searched and revealed a W/T set, operating instructions and ciphers and a questionnaire on Allied military forces in Egypt. The Vice-Consul, Eugen Tanasescu, was initially given a death sentence, but this was commuted to life imprisonment after Rumania threatened reprisals against British citizens.

In Syria the first espionage case in that newly occupied region was that involving Captain Ollion of the Vichy French Deuxième Bureau. He had been left behind to report back to Vichy Intelligence in Turkey by W/T. He was arrested in autumn 1941 and was subsequently exchanged.

More potentially dangerous were some ten Syrian and Palestinian extremists based around Aleppo. Their leader, Jalal Latifi had been recruited by the GIS in Turkey in 1941 – and then reported to British Security in Istanbul, who recruited him as a double agent before he returned to Syria. The group’s mission was to collect military information and pass it over the frontier to Turkey. Tried in French military court, four were executed and four others given long prison sentences. [17]

Another unsuccessful German operation was the insertion into Egypt of two German NCOs, Johannes Eppler and Heinrich Sanstede, by a desert expedition led by the Hungarian Count Almasy. As well as ISOS leads, the British captured two German NCO W/T operators who betrayed the mission and their own intended role, which was to run a W/T relay station at Cyrenaica. After a six-week investigation the two spies were located at the end of July on a houseboat on the Nile at Cairo. They had been unable to make radio contact thanks to the arrest of the two NCOs intended to man the relay station. They had therefore decided to fake their spy work records and spend their funds, but meantime they did contact several dissident Egyptian army officers, three of who were interned and the two more junior were also dismissed from the service by court-martial.

Almasy had also been the initiator of another operation, which had involved the recruitment of two Egyptians in Paris. Mohsen Fadl had been the head of the Egyptian Tourist Office in Paris, and Elie Haggar had been a student there. Haggar was the son of the head of the Egyptian Police Force. They were recruited to set up a spy ring named the Pyramid Organisation. Both were sent back to Cairo via Istanbul in October 1941 to collect political information, but had no means to communicate their findings. They were caught by the British in 1943. [18]

The London Controlling Section and Subordinate Committees

Col Dudley Clarke visited London in September-October 1941 to sell the idea of global strategic deception, and was asked to write a paper on Middle East Deception operations, which drew favourable attention from the top. He was able to meet with the XX Committee on 2 October and spoke to both the Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Subcommittee. He also met the Chiefs of Staff on 7 October. [19] As a result, the Joint Planning Committee on 8 October endorsed his proposal for a central Deception Control officer to coordinate deception operations worldwide, develop cover plans for operations and use “existing services to help implement them, including the Army, the Security Service, the political Warfare Executive (PWE) and the camouflage and decoy units”. [20] On 9 October the Chiefs of Staff approved the proposal. Clarke declined a proposal that he fill this new post, and it was given instead to Col Oliver Stanley, MC. Unfortunately, Stanley was not effective in this role and resigned. As a result, the London Controlling Section (LCS) was given a new head, Lt Col John Bevan, who proved to be the right peg in the right hole. It is from this point onwards that British DA operations in Europe began to concentrate more upon strategic deception rather than the counter-espionage benefits.

Part of the control mechanism that was subsequently set up was the creation of committees in Allied theatres to work both locally and in coordination with the XX Committee and the LCS in London. Lt-Col Oliver St. Maur Thynne became the A Force Chairman of the Thirty (30 or XXX) Committee in Cairo in 1942. This Committee now became the authorizer for “chicken feed” sent by controlled agents. The Thirty Committee was based on London’s XX Committee, as were other similarly numbered committees in other theatres – 29 in all. Each Committee consisted of at least three officers, with an A Force officer as chairman, an MI6 officer as secretary and a third officer, usually from MI5/SIME or the French CE service. MI5 officers ran the DAs and MI6 provided staff, finance and enciphered communications, as well as controlling any agent operating outside Allied-controlled areas. In Algiers, because the Committee had an additional member from the French Deuxième Bureau, it was known as the Forty Committee. The addition of this French officer was in recognition of the fact that the French played a significant role in providing and running the DAs in that part of North Africa. [21] A “41 Committee” was also formed in Oran, consisting of Lt Arne Ekstrom, US Army, for A Force; Capt Bobby Barclay of MI6(V), and Eduard Douare for the French CE. [22] For these committees, the deciding body on whether an agent was used for deception or penetration was the French CE, as this was their area of responsibility.

Some Middle East CEA Cases

From Cairo, A Force controlled a number of enemy agents in Egypt and elsewhere. They included agents destined for Lebanon and Syria, such as a team led by a Greek Air Force Officer codenamed QUICKSILVER, and groups like a three-man team codenamed the PESSIMISTS (who provided an important deception channel throughout the war). Two other groups (codenamed the LEMONS and the SAVAGES) had been landed in Cyprus by caique in 1943, ostensibly as refugees, and were under control and were being played back to Athens for deception. Another A Force deception agent was SLAVE (mentioned earlier), an Egyptian journalist who operated briefly between May and July 1942. [23]

The controlled CHEESE W/T channel was used by A Force to sell several major deceptions, including Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. The deception in the lead up to Operation CRUSADER had caused a major loss of confidence within the GIS for CHEESE’s sub-agent, but the link had been maintained. Nicossof continued to provide information and slowly regained the trust of the Abwehr. He continued as a major means of feeding deception material to the Abwehr for the rest of the war. However, it is possible he was only one of a group of controlled agents who were all used under the umbrella codename CHEESE by the British.

David Mure, who served as an A Force officer in Beirut and Baghdad, reported that SIME had three excellent channels for deception. One, of course, was CHEESE/LAMBERT. Another he called the Gauleiter of Mannheim. A German, claiming to be a part-Jewish GAF aerial navigator, was arrested after having jumped (he said) from an Italian bomber to escape the Nazis. Unfortunately, his story failed to explain the W/T set he was found with, as well as a pile of Palestinian cash. While he was being interrogated in London and then by SIME in Palestine, SIME had succeeded in making contact with Italy using his W/T set, and a cover story was provided for the agent’s current access to information. David Mure called this W/T channel the Gauleiter. Thaddeus Holt, in his book “The Deceivers”, links this agent nom de guerre to “Ernst Paul Fackenheim, a Jew working for the Abwehr, who parachuted into Palestine in October 1941, intending to be a triple agent”. [24]

Unfortunately for both these scenarios, neither Fackenheim nor his W/T set had been used for deception, as was made clear in a USFET Re-Interrogation Report of Walter Sensburg [See Footnote c] in 1946. Fackenheim’s MI5 file confirmed that he had been a professional Abwehr agent before being sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis, but after he was dropped into Palestine in early October 1941, AST Athens had heard nothing further from him. [25] Fackenheim had, in fact, surrendered himself at a British military barracks in Haifa on 10 October 1941. He was sent to Cairo for questioning, where he offered to become a DA, but made the mistake of telling a “stool pigeon” of his intention to double-cross the British. The C-in-C Middle East reported that he was to be returned to Palestine to be tried for espionage. [26]

The third channel was an agent Mure called STEPHAN, an Austrian Jew who had arrived in 1940 in Cairo, complete with W/T set, and offered to become a deception link. This agent worked at least until after the surrender of Italy, and Mure believes he was highly regarded by the Germans, in part because he was one of their own nationals. [27] Thaddeus Holt linked the codename STEPHAN to an agent called Klein, working back to the Abwehr in Athens, who had surrendered himself and his transmitter to the British. [28] According to David Mure, in early 1942 CHEESE became the codename for the A Force network of deception agents (LAMBERT, the Gauleiter and STEPHAN) rather than for a single agent (the original CHEESE by this time was languishing in an Italian prison). [29] Some historians doubt whether the Gauleiter and STEPHAN ever existed. [30] They are not mentioned in the MI5 Double Agent files so far released to the public.

QUICKSILVER and PESSIMIST

QUICKSILVER and the PESSIMISTS were operational from October 1942 to 1944. QUICKSILVER was George Liossis, Greek Air Force officer and possibly a British Intelligence contact since April 1941. He volunteered in Athens to work for the Abwehr under the codename LAOS and was trained, then dispatched to work in Beirut with 2 other agents, the Greek seaman Bonzos, codenamed RIO by the British, and Anna Agiraki codenamed GALA. The party was picked up by the Royal Navy on 20 Aug 1942. While Liossis was recruited by SIME as a Controlled Enemy Agent (CEA) W/T operator, his companions were in fact arrested, while “notionally” assisting Liossis. On 16 October QUICKSILVER became an A Force asset, transmitting several times weekly over the following two years and frequently receiving questionnaires from his Abwehr control. In September 1943 they were still in regular communication and were considered reliable by the enemy. David Mure became chairman of the 31 Committee in Beirut from mid-1943, moving from a similar role with Baghdad’s 32 Committee.

The PESSIMISTS (‘X’ was the Swiss/Italian team leader, ‘Y’ was the Alexandrian Greek W/T operator for the team; and ‘Z’ was a former drug-smuggling Alexandrian Greek) were ordered to set up in Damascus. Alerted through ISOS, SIME arranged to have them picked up on arrival by submarine by the French Sûreté Générale and handed over to the British. PESSIMIST ‘Y’, officially known to the Abwehr as agent MIMI, had been a contact of MI6 in Athens before joining the Abwehr, so he was soon working as a CEA while his companions in the COSTA team went to prison. Radio contact was established with Athens on 14 Nov 1942.

Both QUICKSILVER and PESSIMIST ‘Y’ were handled by Capt John Wills (17th Lancers) under the eye of the 31 Committee in Beirut, which also guided the work of “a number of travelling agents under the control of ISLD’s Michael Ionides” [31]. Ionides was described by David Mure as “a remarkable officer of wide experience in Middle Eastern affairs, having as a civilian engineer, been responsible for much of the irrigation system of Iraq.” [32] He had invented a couple of “notional” agents, HUMBLE and ALERT, who were used for deception in Syria from summer 1942. Also available to A Force from November 1942 was DOLEFUL/DOMINO, a Wagon-Lit attendant on the Taurus Express between Istanbul and Baghdad, made available by the Turkish secret services and believed to be in fact a Turkish agent. His German codename was ARTHUR. [33]

ISLD, SIME and the Provision of ISOS

The deployment of ISOS-indoctrinated MI6/ISLD officers to Cairo, Istanbul and Algiers in late 1941-1942 provided the access to decrypts essential in playing back both deception and penetration agents, and the improved access to such material must have been a major factor in the development of DA work in the Mediterranean region. As mentioned earlier, MI6(V) sent ISOS information by radio, and their disguising of the material for security reasons resulted in SIME being unable to adequately understand it. “The circumstances were even considered by B Division officers to constitute a danger of misdirection as well as causing SIME to be badly informed”. [34] To improve this situation, MI5 provided B Division officers to assist SIME.

ISLD started up its Counter-Espionage section in December 1941, and in the spring of 1942 an MI5 specialist in DA casework (Col TAR Robertson) visited Egypt to review and advise on casework, so it was decided in March 1942 to create a joint Special Section in SIME to handle jointly all further casework of this type, and the section expanded to a half dozen officers in just over a year. Capt James Robertson of SIME became head of the DA section (consisting of two officers!) for the Middle East, being subordinate to the joint Special Section. The Special Section became the official forum for distribution of ISOS and the analysis of double agent operations, eliminating competition between SIME and the ISLD by centralizing such operations, and was an important step for the Middle East Double-Cross system.

From mid-1942, the various interested agencies held Special Activities Meetings regularly to discuss casework. The arrival of several new enemy agents (see above), some of whom were judged suitable as deception channels, and a report by Capt Robertson on the lack of progress by the Joint Section in counter intelligence operations, led to the creation of a joint committee in December 1942. Col Dudley Clarke hoped to control all new DA cases through the committee, and to have sole authority to decide on usage of DAs. Maunsell of SIME managed to retain the deciding role on agent usage, but the Thirty Committee which was subsequently created did end up being responsible ultimately to A Force. The Special Section was replaced by the new Thirty Committee as the inter-agency body responsible for handling double agents in March 1943. A number of DAs were chosen to work solely for deception purposes, with SIME controlling the actual agent activity, so that A Force officers need not be involved in the physical running of the agents.

If an agent became a deception asset then the deception organization A Force became the final authority for deciding future case handling. This was because in the Middle East, as an area of active operations, “it has been desirable that the operational advantages of successful strategic deception – and the successes have been very considerable – should take precedence of the narrower aims of counter-intelligence.” [35]

According to the minutes of the Thirty Committee, Cairo had a separate Penetration Committee, which probably had an overlapping membership with the Thirty Committee - but it would have had a different chairman, as the emphasis for these cases differed from those controlled for deception. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the various Thirty Committees covered both types of agent. [36]

Double-cross agents used for penetration rather than deception were handled by SIME and ISLD jointly via the Special Section, with liaison and input from A Force. Even where penetration was the main aim, A Force still had a large say in the cases, as they needed to ensure the chickenfeed the agents passed did not conflict with that passed by the deception agents. These cases were not regarded as the primary task of SIME, however; that was operating DA channels for deception. As the MI5 Official History clearly states,

“A number of secondary double-agent channels were also developed with the object of penetrating enemy intelligence organisations operating against the Middle East, including Iraq and Persia from Turkey.”[37]

A visit by Dick White, Deputy Director of MI5’s B Division, in February and March 1943 provided some encouragement to SIME, helping the organization to get recognition of counter intelligence as an accepted goal of the new double-cross system. He arranged for an MI5 team to be sent from London to streamline SIME CI operations and improve ISOS usage, even appointing an MI5 officer (a Major Stephenson) as permanent ISOS representative at SIME to provide analysis and help utilize the decrypts. The Special Section became the SIME Double Agent Section, and Capt Robertson went to London to learn from the MI5 DA experts. [38]

A new ME Section was set up in MI5 to liaise with SIME and ensure a steady flow of ISOS. This was another example of MI5 encroaching onto the turf of Section V’s control over ISOS, though the claim could be made that SIME, based in Cairo, was within British territory. The MI6(V) officer under ISLD cover was responsible for the distribution of ISOS, but the ME section would have ensured that all ME-related ISOS was being sent to SIME, even when MI6(V) might have had reason to withhold certain material for its own reasons. In fact, one of Brigadier White’s recommendations following the visit to Cairo was for SIME to be amalgamated with MI5. This decision, was however, postponed by MI5’s Director General, who foresaw difficulties arising out of “the assumption of responsibilities outside the three-mile limit and outside British territory which would involve adjustment with higher military authorities and with SIS”. [39]

Organizing Deception Across the Mediterranean

As the number of deception channels grew, so did A Force, with Col (subsequently Brigadier) Dudley Clarke being given control of deception for the whole Mediterranean. It was decided by Clarke that he would remain with “Main HQ A Force” in Cairo, now under the control of Col Noel Wild; “Advanced HQ A Force” was opened in Algiers with a US complement under the joint control of British Lt Col Michael H Crichton and Lt Col Carl E Goldbranson, US Army. British Lt Col David Strangeways was responsible from February 1943 for tactical deception in the field, commanding “Tac HQ A Force” under General Alexander’s 18th Army Group, [40] while “Rear HQ A Force” was based in Nairobi, responsible for Indian Ocean matters.

General Eisenhower’s AFHQ had appointed Lt Col Carl Goldbranson, a National Guard officer, as “Cover Officer” to liaise with the LCS on deception. Goldbranson and three other American officers formed part of the new Advanced HQ A Force. Although they had arrived in Algiers in January, Clarke was unable to visit them and help start up the new unit until 15 March, so Goldbranson spent some time learning the ropes with Main HQ A Force in Cairo. He then returned to Algiers to acquire several low-level DAs from the French who might be built up for use in deception. [41] These agents were later discarded as being unsuitable. Goldbranson’s first few months in Algiers proved frustrating as he was not yet aware of ULTRA, and therefore had to be kept in the dark on some of the deception planning. It has been suggested that this lack of progress was a deliberate design by Dudley Clarke to scotch a plan for separate, American-led deception units at AFHQ. It certainly resulted in Goldbranson being posted back to the US in August 1943. [42] It did not however prevent the creation of an all-American unit. No 2 Tac HQ A Force was created from the AFHQ unit for deployment with 7th Army to Southern France.

The French Services worked in clandestine CE units called Travaux Ruraux (TR), since the cover organization for the CE service was the "Societe des travaux ruraux" (Rural Works Company), set up in July 1940 under Commandant Paul Paillole of the Deuxième Bureau. Col Eddy, who was head of OSS in North Africa in 1942, liaised closely with Breitel of the French TR120, and they cooperated on penetration operations and feeding deception to the Abwehr in Tangier and in Tetuan, Spanish Morocco. This deception work was being handled without coordination at a higher level, which was a concern to Commandant Paillole when he learned of it during a visit to TR120. The French unit had several successful wiretaps and bugging operations working - in Casablanca, where Capt Parisot was listening to the German Consul-General’s private conversations, and in Fez, where German and Italian Armistice Commission meetings were being overheard. [43]

When A Force extended its remit to include the newly occupied areas of North Africa following Operation TORCH, the joint CE work with CEAs and DAs was run through the Forty Committees. As well as the Algiers Committee, there were others in Oran (41 Committee), Casablanca (42 Committee) and Tunis (43 Committee). Deception agents run by 41 and 42 Committees included:

ARTHUR – a rich Spanish Jew in Oran who had links with the Spanish Consul in French Morocco. He passed information picked up in high circles by weekly letter between March and October 1943.

CHER BÉBÉ - a Spanish mechanic hired by the Germans as an agent, run through the Spanish consul in Oran. A reluctant CEA, he worked on deception for some months from May 1943. He had initially been intended as a penetration agent, but the apparent confidence placed in him by the Germans made him a suitable deception channel.

CUPID - a young, attractive German Jewess, running a bar in Casablanca and corresponding by SW to the Abwehr in Barcelona. She was run for deception between March and June 1943.

DAVIL – one of the more important deception channels, he was a French penetration agent who was employed by the Germans in Madrid and sent to Casablanca with a W/T set. He sent information on aviation, military order of battle and shipping from January to June 1944, while employed at the Casablanca Air Base.

EL GITANO – Based in Oran, this Spanish hairdresser, smuggler and pimp was a German (1942) and later an Italian agent (1943), used for low-level deception until February 1944. [44]

Double agents and CEAs run by the Forty Committees were used only for deception purposes through 1943, and a study of ISOS in June 1942 concluded that, while there was a lot of uncontrolled leakage in AFHQ’s zone, only about 10% was true and the number of bad reports only served to build up the controlled sources, who were passing accurate but inconsequential chickenfeed. Opportunities to expand the double agent stable in North Africa were rejected by the Forty Committees because they lacked the chickenfeed to build up and sustain new agents. An example of this was the decision of the 41 Committee not to pursue orders from the Germans in March 1943 to two double agents, EL GITANO and LE PETIT, to recruit more sub-agents (LE PETIT was a Spanish secret service agent, employed as an interpreter for the Americans at the Oran docks and used from April 1943 to August 1944 to pass high-level deception material via the Spanish vice-consul at Oujda). [45]

This restriction of the size of the DA stable was an indication of the influence of A Force policy, which was concerned with controlling deception agents rather than using DAs and CEAs for penetration purposes. The French authorities remained the controlling body for CE work in their North African territories, and they may have continued to operate other cases for this purpose unilaterally. It does serve as a reminder, however, that different agencies pushed their own agendas, and in the Mediterranean, A Force was in the driver’s seat.

The final word on the Middle East specifically, should be a quote from an official post-war report by MI6 on the use of ISOS:

“For a considerable part of the war five British controlled German agents or groups of agents regularly transmitted by W/T to their German controlling station reports prepared by the Middle East strategic deceptionists. After the British entry into Greece two British-controlled Abwehr agents transmitted similar reports from Athens. Their reports often elicited from the enemy useful directives and questionnaires – and occasionally large sums of money as payment.Apart from these, there were in various parts of the Middle East and Turkey numerous British controlled agents through whom deception material was passed to the enemy. ISOS was the only sure check of their good faith. Sometimes it revealed interesting sidelights, e.g. that the Turks for reasons of their own were planting false information on the Germans on a very wide scale. ISOS also made clear when apparently straight British intelligence agents were in fact controlled by the enemy. These were then used for deception purposes by being given suitably misleading questionnaires.On a small scale British controlled German agents and German controlled British agents were also used to penetrate the German intelligence organizations. Information obtained in this way proved a valuable supplement to ISOS as ISOS proved a valuable check on its veracity.” [46]

Footnotes

a) In both “Deceiving Hitler” by Terry Crowdy (p 138), and also in “Master of Deception” by David Mure (p 68) the NCO is identified as Ellis; in “A Force” by Whitney T Bendeck (p 116) he is called Shears. In Thaddeus Holt’s ”The Deceivers”, p 40n, Holt confusingly attributes the W/T operation of LAMBERT aka Nicossof to both Ellis and Shears, but also claims that Shears was the radio operator for the agent STEPHAN. The MI5 file (KV 2/1133) states that there were a couple of operators at the start of the operation, but Shears was the longest- serving.

b) See Chapters 7-11 for more on Harmer, G Ops SHAEF (which ran deception means in NW Europe) and 104 SCIU.

c) Sensburg was the controller of a number of Allied Double-Cross agents based in the Middle East while working at AST Athens.