Special Counter Intelligence in WW2 Europe. Keith Ellison
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