Special Counter Intelligence in WW2 Europe. Keith Ellison
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