Special Counter Intelligence in WW2 Europe. Keith Ellison
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