ALTHOUGH THE IMMEDIATE THREAT OF invasion appeared to have passed as the autumn of 1940 approached, the change in season did not bring about an end to the arrival of enemy spies. In fact, as the Germans switched their tactics from invasion to air bombardment and U-boat blockade, it became even more imperative for them to have spies working in the United Kingdom. Although aerial reconnaissance might reveal something of the damage being caused by air raids, the effect of bombing and blockade on civilian morale could be accurately gauged only by people on the ground. Other than sympathetic staff working in neutral foreign embassies, notably the Japanese and Spanish legations, the only other means of gauging this information was from spies.
On 30 September there was report of another landing, this time on the east coast of Scotland. Two suspects – a man and a woman – turned up at Portgordon railway station shortly after 3am, dripping wet. As a precaution against invasion, all railway station signs had been removed, and the two strangers were forced to admit to the stationmaster that they had no idea where they were. The stationmaster sold them two tickets to Forres and then reported them to the local police station.
The two suspects were taken in and questioned. They gave their identities as Vera Erichsen, a Dane, and Franziskus de Deeker, a Belgian. They claimed to have travelled up from London on a visit, but then quickly retracted this, saying they were refugees from the Nazis who had sailed from Bergen in a fishing boat 12 days before. The police were not impressed and searched the couple’s baggage. In Deeker’s bag they found a two-way radio set, a loaded revolver, a cipher disk and a list of locations that included RAF bases.
A short while later an inflatable dinghy was found on the shore. It appeared to be the type used by the Luftwaffe, indicating that it might have been carried by a seaplane and was large enough for four passengers. A manhunt began for the other spies.
At 6pm a porter at Waverley station, Edinburgh, contacted the police saying that a man with a wallet stuffed with banknotes had deposited a suitcase that was wet and had sand and seaweed on it. The man said he had come from Aberdeen and would be back later that day to pick up the case. The police put the station under surveillance and when the man returned and offered his luggage ticket, the police pounced. In the struggle the man tried to pull a Mauser pistol from his pocket but was overpowered.
A search revealed a Swiss passport in the name of Werner Heinrich Waelti, £195 cash, maps of the east coast, a compass, codebooks, a cipher disk, graph paper and a wireless transmitter. Waelti feigned surprise at the find – the police did not.
The three suspected agents were quickly transferred to Camp 020. Interrogations proved complex and tiresome and there appeared little opportunity to use the spies for double cross work. Through information given by Tate and Summer, the group were definitely linked to the Rantzau (Ritter) stable. Vera Erichsen claimed she had been married to Dierks, the first Abwehr controller of Snow. In reality it appears the two were lovers after Dierks walked out on his wife – in any case their romance had recently been ended by Dierks’ death in a road accident.
While the interrogations were taking place, there was an intervention from 10 Downing Street regarding the handling of spies. On 7 October Lord Swinton asked why none of the captured spies had been brought to trial and shot. Liddell explained to Swinton that his understanding was that MI5 had been given a free hand to grant the life of a captured spy in return for information. Swinton took exception to this omnipotent attitude and instructed that no one was to be offered their life without his express authority. This put Liddell’s nose out of joint. He rather snottily recorded in his diary that he was not sure what rank Swinton held, but that he appeared to think he was head of both MI5 and MI6. Liddell should have remembered that, with the Prime Minister’s backing, Swinton technically was just that.
But in the circumstances, Swinton’s attitude is perhaps understandable. As 1940 was drawing to a close, any sign of British success against the Germans was good news. Therefore on 24 October the four Brussels spies – Meier, Waldberg, Pons and Kieboom – were sent from Camp 020 to stand trial for espionage under the Treachery Act at the Old Bailey. Somewhat unexpectedly, Pons was found not guilty after he argued that he had been coerced into becoming a spy. There was a certain irony in the fact that Pons, who had earlier been reported as being shot, was the only one of the group not to receive a death sentence.
While Pons was interned for the rest of the war and handed over to the Dutch authorities at the end, Meier, Waldberg and Kieboom were executed at Pentonville Prison. First to the gallows were Waldberg and Meier on 10 December. Kieboom appealed against his sentence, but then changed his mind. He followed his comrades to the gallows seven days later.
The case of the Brussels spies was fed to the press, although no mention was made of Pons, and only the three condemned men were exposed. Photographers were even allowed to snap the spies’ equipment to increase publicity and demonstrate to the population at large, albeit somewhat ghoulishly, that the security services were doing their job.
XX
About the time of these executions, a long-anticipated Yugoslavian double agent arrived in London as a guest of both MI5 and MI6. Dusko Popov was one of the more flamboyant characters at work in the secret services of any nation during World War II, and with a reputation enhanced by his colourful memoirs, he is often credited as being one part of the inspiration for the fictional spy James Bond. Popov was a business lawyer, and unlike most spies, who are often attracted into the profession by money, he was already rich and lived a playboy lifestyle of fast cars, casinos and glamorous women.
He had first been sounded out by the Abwehr in February 1940. A friend from Popov’s university days, Johann ‘Johnny’ Jebsen was at best a lukewarm Nazi who had joined the Abwehr in order to avoid being drafted as cannon fodder into the army. He asked Popov to prepare a report for him on French politicians who were likely to collaborate when the Nazis conquered France. Popov complied, but also engineered a discreet meeting with the First Secretary of the British embassy at an official reception. Taking the official to one side, Popov explained the Abwehr’s approach and handed over a copy of the report he had given to Jebsen. The British official quietly told Popov to keep him informed if there were any more approaches in the future.
Later in the summer, in mid-July, a more formal approach was made to recruit Popov. France had fallen and everywhere the Germans were behaving smugly, predicting the fall of England any time soon. What the Germans were looking for was someone who could mix with the upper strata of British society, report on possible opposition to Churchill and identify people who might be willing to negotiate with Germany. Popov asked for a short time to consider and went back to the British embassy for advice.
He was told to contact a man named Spiradis at the British Passport Control office. Popov went along and met the man, who was in fact an SIS agent. The agent – Spiradis was his cover name – told Popov to accept the German offer and advised him to set up a legitimate business reason to travel from neutral Yugoslavia to Britain. He then instructed Popov to tell his Abwehr contacts that he was friendly with a Yugoslav diplomat in London who was short of cash. Of course the man did not exist, but he would be a notional source of intelligence that would no doubt be fed to Popov by the British secret services.
When Popov explained this to the Germans, they were naturally suspicious and asked Popov to reveal the diplomat’s name. Popov refused to do so at the present time and his standing was high enough because of his earlier report for Jebsen not to push him too hard on the matter. They handed him a phial of secret ink and an intelligence questionnaire, both of which Popov passed on to his MI6 contact.
Unknown to Popov, the Abwehr had put a tail on him and very soon Jebsen had a list of every movement he made over many weeks. Although the majority of addresses visited were those of his girlfriends, Jebsen noted that Popov had been a frequent visitor to the Passport Control office. Popov tried to explain this away by saying it was for his visa, but Jebsen told him it was common knowledge that the British secret service always based their agents in these offices abroad.
Popov was crestfallen. He had blown his cover as a double agent before he had even started his mission. Curiously, though, Jebsen was still willing to keep him on. Popov was unsure to what extent Jebsen was anti-Nazi, but his friend was so desperate to maintain his position in the Abwehr and avoid service at the front that he was prepared to tolerate Popov’s flirtation with the British. The only problem was that the existing report could not be doctored as long as the informant – one of Popov’s domestic servants – was left alive. Popov made the necessary arrangements with a gang of hoodlums he found in a local bar. One night he sent the servant out on an errand and the hoodlums did the rest.
The only trouble now was the need for Popov to receive a signal from Berlin to begin his journey to Britain via Italy and Portugal. Again, Popov went to his British contact for help. The MI6 agent arranged for a bogus letter to be sent from the fictitious London-based diplomat friend to Popov asking for him to come to London in person and to bring money with him. Popov told the Germans his friend must have gathered important intelligence and so they sped him on his way to Lisbon.
In the Portuguese capital Popov was met by the head of the Abwehr in Lisbon, Major von Karsthoff. While waiting for a flight to Britain, Popov became genuinely close to von Karsthoff, who personally took him through his training. He was taught about codes and mail drops and given a Leica camera and instructions to use it. The Abwehr man gave Popov a sound piece of espionage advice, telling him to have a girl pose in the picture when he was taking photos of installations. When not training he whiled away his hours like so many transient foreigners, blowing money in the casino.
Eventually on 20 December Popov managed to get a seat on board a KLM flight to Britain. To avoid the Luftwaffe, KLM flew a route that went out into the Atlantic and then came in towards Britain from the west. As the plane approached the British coast, wooden panels were placed over the portholes to prevent spies seeing anything of the island’s defences.
At Bristol’s Felton Airport Popov was met by MI5’s top chauffeur, the racing driver Jock Horsfall. When something or someone needed to get from A to B in a hurry, Jock Horsfall was the man for the job. As the car sped off, Popov thought he was going faster than the aircraft he had just climbed out of.
Around ten miles from London the driver began to slow down and allow Popov to witness London in the Blitz. In the distance the Yugoslav could see mushroom clouds shooting up into the sky, marking the detonation of Nazi bombs. Horsfall sped up, travelling straight into the heart of the burning British capital.
Popov was dropped off at the Savoy Hotel, where he was amazed to see a crowd of people utterly indifferent to the bombing. Out of the group of people milling around, Tommy Robertson came and introduced himself to Popov. As he was taken to the Savoy bar Popov thought Robertson looked like something out of a Hollywood movie – a typical ‘English dashing type’. Over a sandwich and a beer Robertson explained that they would get down to business in the morning, but he just wanted to have a chat first and get acquainted.
Later, Popov went to his room, but could not resist looking out of the window to watch the drama in the skies to the east of him. For a couple of hours he listened to the pounding anti-aircraft fire and the whistling of falling bombs and awful crump as they landed. The Yugoslav found the whole experience slightly disconcerting. Everyone seemed to be getting on with life as if it were normal to be under attack, making small talk and polite conversation while bombs rained down outside. That night he became utterly convinced the British were going to win the war.
In the morning, his introduction to the secret world of double cross began. Technically Popov, or Skoot as he was first codenamed, was the property of MI6 because he was recruited abroad. However, now that he had moved to the United Kingdom the natural place for him to fit into the pantheon of secret agents was among the double agents of MI5. In fact Popov would have a foot in both camps, because it was intended for him to travel back to Lisbon – thus he would be working overseas, which was MI6 territory.
Although Popov had been well treated since his arrival, he came to realize that the Savoy was, at this stage, not much more than a comfortable prison. True, he had been spared the rigours of Camp 020, but his interrogation at the hotel was in-depth and intense. Popov was interviewed by, one after the other, MI5, MI6, Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and Cavendish-Bentinck, the chairman of JIC.
Slowly, as his case was trawled over, suspicions towards him began to lessen. On Christmas Day 1940 Robertson took Popov out for a traditional festive lunch. They met at the exclusive Quaglinos restaurant and then went off to spend the afternoon playing billiards at the Landsdowne Club in Berkeley Square. Having worked up an appetite at the Landsdowne, Popov and Robertson returned to the Savoy for dinner. By now well lubricated with champagne, they joined a couple and went off to the Suivi nightclub to dance towards the morning. Needless to say, both returned to the Savoy in the early hours somewhat the worse for wear but in excellent spirits.
Popov next found himself invited to London’s oldest gentleman’s club – White’s, in St James’s Street. Here he was introduced to Stewart Menzies, the head of SIS, who did much of his work there. Menzies was informally known as ‘C’ for chief, but more properly ‘CSS’, Chief of Secret Service. The SIS chief invited Popov to spend New Year’s Eve with him at his brother’s home out in Surrey. It was not really the sort of invitation Popov could refuse.
A bachelor, Menzies often used his brother’s house as a venue for social gatherings, in which business would invariably come to be mixed with pleasure. Arriving at the house, Popov was introduced to the other guests including Friedl Gartner, whom Popov would later describe as ‘the most glamorous creature’ he had clapped eyes on since his arrival in Britain.
Ms Gartner was an interesting prospect for the Yugoslav spy. Her elder sister had come from Austria to London in 1937 and had worked at the London Casino posing in an enormous sea shell, clad in a flesh-coloured body stocking. Following the unification of Germany and Austria in 1938, Friedl arrived in Britain and was registered at the German embassy as a Nazi sympathizer. In fact she had little time for the Nazis and instead worked for MI5, penetrating and reporting on right-wing high society.1
Popov had to be literally prised away from Gartner by Menzies, who took the Yugoslavian into a study where they sat in armchairs by the fire. After the joviality of the last week, Popov now found himself under the intense glare of Menzies’ intuitive character assessment of him. Drawing on a tobacco pipe, with a whisky and soda at his side, Menzies dissected Popov’s ego, concluding: ‘You have the makings of a very good spy, except you don’t like to obey orders. You had better learn or you will be a very dead spy.’ With this advice ringing in his ears, on 2 January Popov took a flight back to Lisbon to meet up with von Karsthoff.
The British had provided Skoot with a number of answers to the complex questionnaire he had brought with him. He had been required to obtain samples of ration cards and ID cards, and supply details of the location of food depots, the morale of the working classes, the measures in place against parachutists and the organizations responsible for investigating and countering Fifth Column activities. He was to provide a detailed order of battle for the British Army, the details of coastal and anti-aircraft defences, and information on aircraft construction, the reserves of raw materials, damage to shipping by mines or torpedoes and where goods from the United States were being unloaded. He was also told to get in touch with a number of members of the House of Lords who were believed to favour a negotiated settlement with Germany and the entourage of Admiral Sir John Tovey, Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet. Such a level of detail was beyond MI5’s scope and Popov was given only sketchy details, for which he was admonished by the Germans and told to do better the next time.2
XX
Popov’s arrival in London coincided with a key moment in MI5’s development. In order to accommodate the growing number of double agents in the MI5 stable, a system for managing them and the flow of traffic they required was at last close to being finalized.
A month before Popov’s arrival, on 18 November 1940, Liddell had attended a meeting of the W Committee – the body responsible for providing operational intelligence for the spies to report to Germany. He set out some constructive proposals for running what he called ‘our XX system’ – ‘XX’ representing a ‘double cross’. In his mind the three main objectives were:
1. to keep our agents sufficiently well fed with accurate information so as not to lose the confidence of the enemy,
2. to control as many of the enemy’s agents in this country as we can in order to make them feel that the ground is covered and they need not send any more whose arrival we might not be aware of and,
3. by careful study of the questionnaires, to mislead the enemy on a big scale at the appropriate moment.3
For this purpose, Liddell argued that the seniority of the members on the W Committee was such that they needed to delegate the day-to-day control of the double cross system to a sub-committee on which all the services were represented, along with the various branches of Home Security. A similar proposal had been put forward by Godfrey, the DNI. The weight of traffic required was taking up too much of the service chiefs’ time. Godfrey wanted a subordinate body set up called the W Section, which would deal with the business of collecting, handling and disseminating false information. This proposal met broad agreement and so, over the coming weeks, positive steps were taken to have this new W Section created.
The function of the new section was to discuss the questions set to the agents, and act as a clearing-house for double agent information and as a liaison centre for the various departments concerned. Shortly before its inaugural meeting it was aptly named the Twenty Committee – the Latin numeral for twenty being ‘XX’. This body would meet weekly and would report to the W Committee, which would be henceforth known as the W Board and only meet when required to make the most important decisions. At first this would still be on a fairly regular basis, but as the sub-committee found its feet the former’s meetings became less frequent.
The chairman of the Twenty Committee was selected by the Director General of the Security Service from among the increasing numbers of ‘amateurs’ looking to join the war effort. John Cecil Masterman was a tutor of modern history at Christ Church, Oxford. A few months short of 50 when he was assigned to MI5, Masterman had sat out World War I interned in Germany, where he had been a student. A keen sportsman, in his earlier days Masterman had represented England at cricket and hockey and played cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club. He had also successfully dabbled in writing crime novels.
He was assigned to MI5 on 2 December after being interviewed by the DMI. Liddell was immediately thrilled at the news and recorded Masterman had ‘a very good brain’ and that he looked forward to his putting forward some very good suggestions regarding the planning of double cross work. Masterman, on the other hand, was initially disappointed with the news and could see only problems in working for the Security Service, but his attitude soon changed and he was pleasantly surprised by the nature of his work and his new colleagues.4
Of these new colleagues, Masterman was already on intimate terms with Dick White. Liddell’s deputy had once been one of Masterman’s students at Christ Church and it was Masterman who had nominated White as a potential MI5 recruit in 1935.5 White was MI5’s first graduate recruit. He had arrived at a time when the main threat to Britain was perceived to be the Soviets and the Communist Party of Great Britain. At the time he arrived there were only 29 officers, most of whom were from the Indian police force, or, for various reasons, former soldiers.
Perceiving that the Nazis might be more of a threat, White’s first task before being accepted fully into the MI5 fold was to visit Germany, not as a spy, but simply to immerse himself in the Third Reich, learning as much about Hitler’s regime as possible, allowing him to gain an insight into German thinking. If war with Germany did materialize, such knowledge would prove invaluable to an intelligence officer. As part of his mission, he had attended the 1936 Berlin Olympics and had witnessed Hitler’s discomfort at Jesse Owens’ four gold medal wins. White could not believe how far the Germans had been taken in by Hitler simply because he provided them with jobs.6
Masterman was full of praise for White, crediting him with having the idea of the double cross set up.7 According to Masterman, ‘in the early days’ White had written a memorandum pointing out that it was more profitable to turn spies round than to have them shot.8 He had come to this conclusion in 1939 after visiting Paris on his way home from a second spell living in Germany. In the French capital, White met with his opposite numbers in the French Deuxième Bureau intelligence service and was shown how they had been attempting to persuade captured German agents to send false information back to their German controllers. Returning to Britain, White wanted to take the idea further and so approached Vernon Kell, who explained how he had tried to use double agents for deception purposes in World War I. Encouraged to find out more, White returned to France in October 1940 and met with the Deuxième Bureau for a second time to discuss using agents doubles.9
This French influence on the early origins of the XX system is further confirmed by Masterman. In his report on the wartime double cross system, he revealed that on 5 May 1939 a member of the Deuxième Bureau had given a lecture to MI6 officers on the value of double cross agents.10 Although the Oxford don states that the British were already alive to such possibilities, it is perhaps not amiss to credit the French secret service with having some influence on what occurred in Britain. It is interesting that under the Vichy regime the Deuxième Bureau was one of the hotbeds of active resistance and, when working as part of the Free French under de Gaulle, ran double agents of its own for deception purposes; more of which later.
Masterman was also immediately taken with his direct chief, Tommy Robertson. Although ‘Tar’ was not an intellectual type, in Masterman’s opinion, he found in him ‘a born leader’, possessing ‘extraordinary flair’ for his secretive profession. After the war, a critic of Masterman, David Mure, argued that it should have been Robertson who chaired the Twenty Committee. Mure was opposed to so-called amateurs being brought into service and believed that Robertson, who had a military background before joining MI5, should have been given the job.
In his 1980 book Master of Deception, Mure put this argument to Robertson and published the former MI5 man’s reply. In Robertson’s opinion, Masterman was a ‘first-class choice’ for the role of chairman as he had a knowledge of German and an understanding of the German character from the time he was interned at Ruhleben in World War I. More importantly, Masterman had a wide range of friends in the academic world and in sport and was in a position to approach almost any Ministry at the highest level if need be, because he happened to know someone (an old pupil) there. Robertson concluded that his lack of military training was no handicap, because he was surrounded by military personnel on the Committee, which was after all, primarily an ‘intelligence body’.11
In the reorganization, Robertson was placed at the head of B Division’s section B1a, which was exclusively concerned with the actual day-to-day management of the agents and the administration that went into keeping them. They had to organize not only the agents’ real lives, but also the ‘notional’ lives that the Germans believed they were living. For this an agent would need a case officer, guards and a wireless operator. He would also need to be lodged securely and given a housekeeper to take care of his daily needs. Occasionally case officers would have to procure female companionship for their charges – anything to keep the case alive.
In order to discuss the cases, usually each day at noon Dick White would chair a meeting of all the B1a case officers.12 The object would be for everyone to draw information together and for guidance to be issued. If a problem arose, or a major decision had to be taken on the cases, this would then be brought up at the weekly meeting of the Twenty Committee.
Moving into the New Year, with the new administrative and decision-making structures in place, the first meeting of the Twenty Committee was called for 3pm on 2 January 1941 in the hospital block atWormwood Scrubs. From the fifth meeting onwards, they were every Thursday afternoon at 3.30pm in MI5’s offices at 58 St James’s Street, Mayfair. Present at the first meeting were representatives from the War Office (MI11), General Headquarters (GHQ), the Home Forces, the Home Defence Executive (HDE), Air Ministry Intelligence, NID, MI6, Colonel Turner’s deception department and of course, MI5, represented by Robertson, Masterman and Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley, who acted as secretary.
Despite his rank of captain, taking a look at the ‘brass’ around him, Masterman later admitted he found it embarrassing to announce that he had orders to take the chair and preside over the meeting. He was relieved when all the members agreed and noted that the committee benefited from an absence of ‘red tape’ and a certain informality, so much so that it was known as the ‘Twenty Club’ by its members.13
As chairman, Masterman explained that his role was to ‘harmonize the interests and demands of different services and different departments – or, to put it shortly, to make the machine work’.14 His first decision was that at every meeting tea and a bun should be provided for every member. Although this may appear a seemingly insignificant decision, it was nevertheless important as it created a congenial atmosphere that promoted cooperation. If the project was to work, cooperation would be the key and there was no room for egos and prima donnas – everyone would have to contribute openly. Masterman believed that in ration-hit Britain the provision of such small luxuries contributed to a 100 per cent attendance rate at the Twenty Committee’s eventual 226 weekly meetings.
There is an amusing anecdote from the first meeting told by the representative of the DNI, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu. Fearing that Montagu would be outranked and marginalized by higher-ranking Army and Air Force representatives, Admiral Godfrey had sent along a chaperone in the guise of Commander Halahan RN – Montagu’s boss. It was not being outranked that concerned Montagu, however; it was the fact that his younger brother Ivor was a member of the Communist Party and he was concerned that MI5 might run a check on his background and mistake their identities.15
After the meeting he confided in Masterman over a cup of tea. He admitted having little faith in MI5’s record keeping and thought that the two brothers might be confused. The Oxford don told him not to worry, and that he would not dream of checking up on someone vetted by the DNI. However, a week later, at the second meeting, Masterman went up to Montagu and, implying that a check had been made, asked: ‘How is the table tennis going?’ Masterman was left red-faced when Montagu’s lack of faith in MI5’s filing system proved itself justified. It was Ivor, not Ewen, Montagu who was a noted table tennis player.16
The main thrust of the first meeting was Masterman’s decision to present a memorandum that echoed the concerns given by Liddell at the first meeting of the W Committee in relation to MI5’s running of the double agents (see Appendix A). Masterman revealed to the assembled members that a stable of double agents had been secretly built up by MI5, but, unless everyone was willing to support it by providing traffic, it would be very difficult to keep the double agents in operation for much longer. However, if the services could provide this information there was the potential for a very useful instrument. Through the double agents MI5 would be able to keep abreast of what the Germans were planning. If, for instance, they were asking their agents for information on foodstuffs, it was because they were leaning toward a blockade; if, however, they were looking for landing beaches, it would indicate that an invasion was back on the cards.
By controlling German espionage, they could control the flow of information back to Germany and, by studying the questionnaires sent to the agents from Germany, make an assessment of what the Germans already knew, and what they were keen to find out. Incidentally to this they would also be diverting money from the German secret service into British coffers. The radio traffic to and from the agents would help the cryptographers break German ciphers. Lastly – and in the still dark days of early 1941 this must have appeared a very distant prospect – there was the possibility of deceiving the Germans about British intentions operationally. If the credibility of the double agents could be built up through the provision of mostly true and accurate information, one day they might be able to drop a large-scale deception on the Germans at a critical moment. If that meant losing the agent, it was a sacrifice the secret service would not hesitate to make. The committee members agreed to this document as a policy statement and referred a series of questions to the W Board relating to questions set by the German secret service to the controlled agents.17
The W Board met on 8 January to discuss the meeting of the Twenty Committee. This body now comprised the three Directors of Intelligence, Stewart Menzies, Guy Liddell and Ewen Montagu who acted as secretary. Its chairman was the new DMI, General Davidson, who had taken up the post on 16 December after Beaumont-Nesbitt was sacked, apparently for being perceived as too weak.18
During this inaugural meeting, the DNI expressed his keenness for the use of double agents and took the line that the fewer people who knew about the double agent system the better. He considered that knowledge of the double cross system should be limited to MI5, MI6 and the three Directors of Intelligence – otherwise it might become the ‘plaything’ of higher authorities. He was critical, therefore, and objected to the participation of the HDE, the Home Forces, and Turner’s deception organization in the Twenty Committee.
The DNI had a point, but at the same time, information given by the double agents might lead to attacks by the Germans, so it was important that the civilian agencies and Home Defence people had some inkling of what might come. In fact, at the Twenty Committee meeting the HDE representative had stated that some civil authorities, including the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Home Security, would expect to be consulted if air raids were diverted from one place to another. Davidson smoothed things over with the DNI, who eventually came round to the majority view that these departments merited their representation.
Next came Liddell’s turn to present the questions set for approval by the Twenty Committee. The three Directors of Intelligence said they would accept responsibility for answering these questions, but that in cases of major policy they might have to consult with the Chiefs of Staff before giving final authorization.
In the first instance, their general advice was that information passed by the double agents regarding air raid damage and public morale should be more or less accurate, but it should provide no information on the comparative effect on morale by the bombing of rich and poor areas, something in which the Germans appeared very interested. Wherever possible the double agents were to ensure bomb damage was spread as evenly as possible and that no particular area should be singled out as more deserving of German bombing than any other. The agents were also to discourage German invasion by emphasizing the strength of Britain’s invasion defences.19
At the second meeting of the Twenty Committee on 9 January, Sir Findlater Stewart, the senior civil servant on the HDE, questioned whether the findings of the Wireless Board ought to be implemented without referring to the relevant civil authorities. It was his opinion that there might well be repercussions for ministers who were responsible to Parliament. For example, the information passed by the double agents might have an influence on the German bombing policy on industrial and civilian targets. Although Stewart accepted the need for secrecy, he believed that someone appointed by the Prime Minister should give approval before information was passed to Germany. His recommendation was to approach Sir John Anderson, the Lord President of the Council, a former Home Secretary, who had been responsible for air raid precautions.
This approach was agreed at the second meeting of the W Board on 10 February. Eight days later Stewart met the Lord President and explained the XX system. The proposition raised all sorts of implications. The key difficulty was having someone officially act on behalf of the various Cabinet ministers without consulting them first. This could give rise to any number of problems where a minister might be held accountable for something he knew nothing about. An important member of Churchill’s Cabinet himself, the Lord President told Stewart that neither he nor the Prime Minister could offer any official seal of approval, but they did back him unofficially to act as an adviser to the W Board on behalf of all the civilian ministries. From that point on, Findlater Stewart attended every meeting of the W Board.20
On the afternoon of 10 February, Lord Swinton paid Liddell a visit to enquire about the activities of the Twenty Committee. Liddell had Dick White and Masterman give him an appraisal of the situation with which he, thankfully, appeared quite satisfied.
Liddell used his visit to raise the matter of what he called the ‘incurables’ – those detainees that were not fit for XX work, or who had been blown. His argument was that purely from an intelligence point of view they should stop ‘bumping off’ captured enemy agents. Liddell argued he wanted to keep the agents alive to retain them as ‘reference books’ since one never knew when they might turn out to be useful or might need to be interrogated again. Swinton told him to present a case for the matter, although personally he did not hold out much hope for it as the Prime Minister was eager for trials and, if necessary, executions. Swinton fudged the issue somewhat by sending out a memorandum in March saying it was the Prime Minister’s policy that in all suitable cases spies should be brought to trial, unless that course conflicted in ‘any serious manner with the interests of intelligence’. With hindsight the bloodletting was probably necessary. If no German agents had been brought to trial and executed, surely the Germans would have grown suspicious.21
The fate of the agents led to another issue. Liddell wanted a home for the ‘incurables’ a mile or two away from Latchmere House, which Tin-Eye Stevens could run as an annexe to Camp 020. Swinton agreed in principle to this and a reserve camp was built at Huntercombe, designated Camp 020R.
This second camp was of double importance since Latchmere House was twice struck by bombs in the winter of 1940–41 and Commandant Stephens was asking for a second camp where he could relocate in an emergency. In the first attack on 29 November, an aerial mine hit the roof and caused enormous material damage. The secret listening devices wired into the cells were knocked out of action and the officers’ mess was destroyed, along with their offices and living quarters. In January 1941 a second raider came out of the clouds and dropped a stick of four bombs on the camp. According to Stephens a sentry had a miraculous escape when a bomb exploded 2ft (0.6m) from his sentry box. The only damage sustained was the loss of the man’s cap badge, which earned him a ticking off from his regimental sergeant major, who thought he was improperly dressed! Above all Stephens was suspicious about the second attack. Did the Germans know about Camp 020 and its inmates? As Stephens remarked, ‘a reccurring accident ceases to be an accident’.22
The last consideration that needed to be addressed in formalizing the XX system concerned the promulgation of secret decrypts from Bletchley Park. Before meeting Swinton, Liddell had visited Camp 020 and had dinner with Stephens on 3 February. One of the topics in their wide-ranging discussion touched on the importance of making decrypts of Abwehr hand ciphers (ISOS) relating to XX cases available to the interrogators at Camp 020.
The decrypts coming out of Bletchley Park were classified as information covertly derived from a foreign source. In that case the correct body to handle such material was MI6. In November 1939 MI6 had been dealt a paralysing, if not fatal, blow by the German secret service in what was known as the Venlo incident. Two MI6 officers working in Holland, Captain Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Stevens, were kidnapped by a Nazi snatch squad on the Dutch–German border, having gone to meet what they thought was a group of disaffected German officers preparing to overthrow Hitler. From the interrogation of the two officers in Berlin, the Germans were able to mop up the bulk of SIS’s operations in Europe just on the eve of their spring offensives. The only real prestige SIS had left after this debacle was its control over the flow of secret information derived from Bletchley – and it was something it guarded with the utmost jealousy.
Material derived from the ISOS was passed to MI6’s Section V (Counterintelligence) under Felix Cowgill. In theory he should have passed the relevant information on to MI5, but, such was the desire for secrecy, it appeared that Cowgill was at best being uncooperative, or at worst deliberately withholding information that could have been put to good use in the war effort. Liddell raised the matter of ISOS with Cowgill and was told that Tin-Eye would be provided with the gist of the messages, but that even this edited information was not to be shown to the officer carrying out the interrogation in case he inadvertently let the code-breaking secret slip.23