IN WHAT WAS STILL A comparatively early stage of development, B1a was hit with another blow that could have effectively spelled the end of the organization before it moved onto the offensive in the war of deception against Nazi Germany.
With the demise of Snow, the cases of Biscuit and Charlie were also lost, as was that of Celery not long afterwards. Some attempts had been made to run Celery with the view of enticing Georg Sessler to defect, but these had come to nothing and Celery passed from the pages of espionage and into the world at large. Of the original ‘Welsh’ ring the only agent to survive the spring of 1941 was the former policeman, Gwilym Williams, or GW as he was codenamed. Fortunately GW had branched out away from Snow and had begun to build his own independent network of sub-agents. His principal contact was Piernavieja del Pozo, a Spaniard who allowed him to pass bulky documents unsuitable for wireless transmission to the Germans through diplomatic bags from the Spanish embassy in London. Del Pozo had materialized on the scene in September 1940. He came to Britain as a press correspondent for the Spanish Institute of Political Studies and was sponsored by the British Council. Ten days after his arrival in Britain, he had contacted GW and gave a prearranged password that the Welshman had agreed with the Abwehr. Snow contacted the Abwehr to establish his credentials and was told that del Pozo was bringing him some money. GW went off to meet the Spaniard and received ?3,500 in cash, along with instructions to provide weekly reports on the Welsh National Party and armament production in Wales. When MI5 took this large sum of money away from GW the Welshman was outraged and threatened to resign. It was only after a visit by Marriott that GW calmed down and agreed to continue his deception.
Del Pozo was codenamed Pogo by the British and put under close observation. It was discovered that he was writing espionage reports in secret ink on the back of articles he wrote for the Spanish press. His telephone calls were tapped and Liddell’s diary from October 1940 also revealed that MI5 were contemplating putting microphone bugs in his apartment and were trying to get a Spanish-speaking stooge to move into the same block of flats. The bug plan initially stalled after MI5 failed to get Pogo out of the flat by having
Malcolm Frost invite him to lunch with the BBC. The idea was that MI5 technicians would break into the apartment and do the necessary, but on the day in question Pogo failed to materialize for lunch with Frost and so the plan was scrapped, although they did manage to set up a telephone tap.
While Liddell was wondering what to do with the Spaniard, he learned Pogo had been making enquiries about writing an article on Bomber Command and about accompanying a British crew on a Berlin raid. Liddell’s eyes lit up at the idea of this and decided that once GW had no further use for him Pogo would be allowed to go up in a bomber. If he returned from the raid, and there was a fair chance he wouldn’t, Pogo would be interned for the rest of the war. To cover his disappearance, it would be put out that several bombers had been lost on the raid, including the one carrying Pogo.
Alas, the opportunity to carry out this ruse was snatched from MI5. In December 1940 the Ministry of Information decided they’d had enough of Pogo, who had got drunk and told the Daily Express he was hoping Germany would win the war. The Ministry made moves to have the Spaniard sent home and there was little MI5 could do to prevent this. They did not intern Pogo as this might compromise GW at a time when Snow was still very active. Pogo was thus allowed to return to Spain in February 1941.
Under MIS’s prompting, GW found a new contact at the Spanish embassy, which allowed him to continue passing the secret documents. GW contacted the embassy porter, who suggested that he might like to contact Luis Calvo, a noted Spanish journalist who had been working for Spanish and Argentine newspapers in London since 1932. Calvo had not cropped up on MIS’s radar until that point, and they found his involvement surprising. Calvo’s flat was bugged and, along with certain obscenities in which he engaged with his Russian mistress, MIS were able to build up a picture of the journalist’s contacts.
In the meantime, in July 1941 a Spaniard named Angel Alcazar de Velasco was admitted into the United Kingdom by the Foreign Office, despite MIS’s protests, which were delivered through Lord Swinton. Although he was officially a press attache, it was believed that Alcazar was a German agent. This was confirmed when Alcazar handed GW ?S0 which Pogo had owed him. This established a link between Pogo and Alcazar, which was further confirmed when Alcazar paid GW an additional ?160 for a bogus document showing divisional markings.1
On 4 November Guy Liddell had a meeting with Robertson and Dick Brooman-White, head of B1g (Spanish espionage). Brooman-White wanted Calvo arrested, but Robertson disagreed, claiming that this would cause an
Adverse action against GW. With the collapse of Snow and the uncertainty over Tate, Robertson again described B1a’s position as ‘slightly dicky’ and he did not want anyone to throw a spanner in the works.
The pressure to have Calvo arrested began to mount. On 6 November the subject was raised at a Twenty Committee meeting. Ewen Montagu said that the DNI would be extremely upset with this, because both GW and Calvo had been used to transmit false information to the Germans. If Calvo was arrested then it might make the Germans suspicious about the traffic provided by GW’s Spanish network. This meeting was attended by Valentine Vivian, who sat in for Felix Cowgill. He told Montagu that everyone present had to accept there was a certain risk in putting information through these channels as agents were notoriously liable to be compromised at any time.
After this meeting Lord Swinton came to see Liddell to discuss the Richter case. Earlier in the summer, pressure had again come from the top to see German spies put on trial and executed. On 15 August Josef Jakobs had been executed by firing squad and the demand for additional victims was growing. Since then Richter had been put on trial in camera and had been sentenced to death.
Liddell had written to Swinton and urged him not to carry this sentence out. He wanted the chairman of the Security Executive to put out a statement to the House of Commons that it was government policy not to comment on the capture and execution of spies and that the House should not assume that just because nothing was being publicized, nothing was happening. Although Swinton saw sense in the arguments, he was afraid that if Richter was granted a reprieve, people would wonder why, and subsequent enquiries might be detrimental to B1a.
At that, Swinton left and Robertson came into Liddell’s office. Liddell had a gut feeling that if the Germans read about Richter’s trial in the press they might reassess all the traffic coming out of Britain. Richter was closely linked with Tate, who was linked to Tricycle and Rainbow. In turn Tricycle was linked with Balloon and Gelatine. There was also the problem that Richter knew Tate was working under government control and had made an appeal based on that information. Faced with the risk of even worse publicity if Richter was allowed to appeal, Liddell and Robertson decided it was probably best for justice to take its course and to allow Richter to face execution. Karel Richter was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 10 December 1941, at the age of 29.2
With the end of Richter, focus now swung back to the Spanish ring. On 5 January 1942 Liddell revealed that two documents planted on Calvo had
Been discovered by a secret source. The nature of that secret source was deleted in this diary, but was undoubtedly a practice known as Triplex.
To digress for a moment, the sanctity of diplomatic bags is accepted as an inviolable courtesy between states. Nonetheless, the British intercepted them and opened them as often as possible. Information derived from this illegal censorship was codenamed Triplex. In his memoir My Silent War, former MI6 man Kim Philby described the system in detail. The diplomatic bags of neutral states and some of the ‘minor’ Allies like the Poles, Czechs, Greeks and Yugoslavs, along with the Spanish, Portuguese and the South American states, were considered fair game for interception. The trick was to persuade the carrier of the bag to part with it long enough for it to be opened in secret. During the war, all diplomatic bags were carried by air. If the British wanted to look inside a particular bag, they would engineer a delay in take-off. The courier would arrive at the airport to be told there was likely to be a lengthy delay — for one reason or the other, but usually blamed on the weather or a technical fault. Faced with an infinite wait, the courier could either sit hen-like on the diplomatic bag at the airport, or go to a nearby hotel. If the courier opted for the latter option, a security officer would offer to lock the diplomatic bag up for safe keeping and would even extend the courtesy of allowing the courier to watch it being placed in a secure locker. Philby recorded that a ‘surprising number’ of couriers fell for this trick, especially when the airport security had fixed them up with a prostitute at the hotel. As soon as the courier was safely out of the way, a team of experts would descend on the baggage, measuring and photographing every knot and seal, before opening the bag, photographing the contents and replacing everything as it had been found. Philby reported that the Russians were exempt from this treatment because they always sent two couriers with the luggage and because the bags were thought to contain bombs. Perhaps suspecting what the British were doing, the Polish chemically treated their seals so that they changed colour when opened and nothing could be done to reverse the effect. Fortunately for the British, when they first fell foul of this trick the bag in question had been entrusted to them for transport without a courier. The Polish were duly notified that bag had unfortunately gone missing in transit!3
Returning to Calvo, it slowly dawned on the British that Calvo was part of a major Spanish espionage organization controlled by Alcazar, who was feeding information to the Germans, and also the Japanese, who entered the war on the side of the Axis after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The growth of this network was further highlighted by MI6’s theft of Alcazar’s diary
With a list of names and addresses of contacts. Although the diary turned out to be a fraudulent description of Alcazar’s activities used to extort money from the Abwehr, it pointed the finger at Calvo and Jose Brugada, the Spanish press attache in London.4
Liddell believed that an attack on Alcazar’s network had to be mounted, and Calvo was the obvious weak link. Unfortunately this put Liddell at odds with B1a, who were using Calvo as a means for GW to pass over bulky documents that were unsuitable for radio transmission. Robertson and Masterman argued vociferously against their chief, but in vain.5
Calvo had returned to Madrid in January, but was expected to come back after being put in direct contact with two German agents by Alcazar. MI5 learned about this contact through ISOS intercepts and arranged to arrest the Spaniard as he landed at Bristol airport on the evening of 12 February.6 Before that night was out, Calvo found himself at Camp 020, apparently stripped naked and facing the fury ofTin-Eye Stephens in full flow. At 6.45am Calvo signed his first confession, admitting that he had been an ‘unwilling intermediary’ in espionage. Within a few days of incarceration Stephens reported that Calvo was ‘a broken man’. The Spaniard saw out the rest of the war as the prison librarian.
After the arrest of Calvo, pressure was put on the Spanish embassy to stop using diplomatic bags for espionage purposes. Pressure was also put on Brugada, who was recruited and given the codename Peppermint. However, the arrest of Calvo spelled the end of GW. Masterman described this loss as a ‘disaster’. Firstly they lost an important means of getting documents across the Channel; secondly his elimination put the other agents in jeopardy.7
The crisis led Robertson to draw up a memorandum on the possible ramifications of Calvo’s arrest.8 Writing on 26 February, Robertson tried to look at the arrest from the point of view of a German intelligence officer. The Germans knew Calvo was linked to GW. The Germans should assume that Calvo would talk, and this would lead to GW’s arrest. In a bid to spare his own neck, GW would then reveal he was in touch with Snow and that he received large sums of money from Pogo in September 1940. This information would almost certainly lead to the arrest of Snow. If Snow was arrested then he could finger Tate. In turn, Tate could give away an address used by Rainbow, 166 Lordship Road. He could also mention that he was given almost ?20,000 by a certain Eric Sand in an office in Piccadilly. This lead might take the British to Tricycle. If the Yugoslav was picked up then that would blow Balloon and Gelatine. Calvo’s arrest really did threaten to send the whole double cross system tumbling down like a house of cards.
T. A. Robertson, 1945. (Private collection)
The indomitable Colonel Robin ‘Tin-Eye’ Stephens, commandant of the secret interrogation centre Camp 020 at Latchmere House. (HU66769, IWM)
The first of a remarkable series of photographs: captured spy Karel Richter is led back to his landing ground to recover his parachute and equipment. Dressed in civilian clothes Richter is led to Colonel Stephens (in forage cap, right foreground). (HU66762, Imperial War Museum)
Richter looks for his parachute under a hedge. (HU66763, Imperial War Museum)
While Richter looks away, the parachute and equipment is recovered by the 020 team. (HU66764, Imperial War Museum)
Richter points in the direction he travelled after stashing his equipment. Unfortunately for Richter, his detention raised too many difficulties. He went to the gallows on 10 December 1941 struggling to the last, breaking the leather straps binding his wrists. (HU66766, Imperial War Museum)
Tate posing with his radio set. (National Archives)
Norwegian spies John Moe (left) and Tor Glad (right), better known as Mutt and Jeff. (National Archives)
John Moe (right) receiving radio training in a house in Oslo. Taken by Tor Glad. (National Archives)
There was a silver lining in Robertson’s memo, on which all their future hopes were based. He wrote: ‘There is, however, a fairly good chance that we may be able to rely on the German psychology to assume that we shall not be able to find Tate, and that if Tate’s traffic continues rou ghly on the same level as is the present moment, this factor should help them to reach the conclusion that he remains undetected. It must also be remembered that anyone running an agent will defend that agent against criticism through thick and thin and unless he has definite proof that he has gone bad, will always believe in his integrity. One can only hope for the best.’ What Robertson could not have realized was that all these difficulties were about to be dispelled by the arrival of another agent. This new agent’s career would become the crowning glory of the double cross system, making all the teething troubles of the previous year worth the effort.
World History
