Fighting to Lose (56 page)

24. Miranda Carter,
Anthony Blunt: His Lives
(London: Macmillan, 2001), 253; Andrew,
Authorized History
, 231, says (without attribution) the doors were locked.

25. Curry,
Security Service
, 378.

26. Before the fire, it was normal for an MI5 officer to check a newcomer’s background through the Registry: Montagu,
Beyond Top Secret U
, 48. Liddell himself acknowledged that “every communist must be regarded as an enemy agent”: Liddell Diary, 21 Mar. 1940.

27. West and Tsarev,
Crown Jewels
, 138. Maurice Dobbs was a notorious Cambridge communist and agent-recruiter for the Soviets. There should have been quite a file on him, too.

28. For confirmation that the names and dossiers of Burgess and Maclean were no longer in the Registry: “Blunt had been the only one of the Cambridge Five to attract the pre-war attention of the Security Service”: Andrew,
Authorized History
, 268. Obviously, this cannot be so. Recall also that Liddell’s diary has the date wrong for this incident (Note 20 above). The diary is in two-ring binders, so pages written later could have been inserted at any time.

29. Knightly,
Philby
, 57, 181, citing David C. Martin,
Wilderness of Mirrors
(New York: HarperCollins, 1980), 56. See also, Andrew,
Authorized History
, 267, n. 26; and Liddell Diary, Jan.–Feb. 1940.

30. Andrew,
Authorized History
, 266.

1. Lord (Earl) Jowitt,
Some Were Spies
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1954), 32–34. He was the prosecutor during their trials so he is an especially reliable source for these details.

2. Gwyer to Robertson, 30 Sep. 1942, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1497b. See also, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1433B.

3. Fritz Künkele, a pre-war specialist in “criminal chemistry,” described his job at I-G in Berlin, 1939–40, as a kind of quality control officer responsible for “[e]xamination and evaluation of counterfeited documents, e.g., exchange of passport photographs, exchange of pages in agents’ passports, additional counterfeit visas, and endorsements.” He was involved in managing the files that were maintained for the various seals, stamps, and signatures used on foreign documents, including foreign driving licences: Ayer to Director re Künkele, 12 Sep. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 184, 65-56228. MI5’s nearest equivalent was the secret-writing detection facility of Mr. S. W. Collins: Curry,
Secret Service
, 371. Collins was a relic of the First World War: Herbert Yardley,
Secret Service in America
, 1st British Edition (London: Faber & Faber, 1940), 28–42. For German First World War false document capacity: Nicolai,
German Secret Service
, 213.

4. Ritter,
Deckname
, 216.

5. PRO, KV2/14–16, 85.

6. Jowitt,
Some Were Spies
, 18–31; and Stephens,
Camp 020
, passim. Major Sensburg, IH at Ast Brussels, became notorious in the Abwehr for sending untrained and unqualified agents to England and certain death: PRO, KV2/275.

7. Liddell Diary, 8 Sep. 1940.

8. “The officers of Abt I recruited their own agents from Regt 800, PW cages, convicts and from pro-Nazis in occupied territories”: USFET interrogation of Ast Brussels Leiter I Major Karl Krazer, 12 Jul. 1945; reprinted in John Mendelsohn, ed.,
Covert Warfare
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1989).

9. Interrogation Report on Andeas Folmer, TIC No. 865, 28 Jun. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 210, 65-56014.

10. Gunter Peis,
Mirror of Deception
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), 138–39. Peis interviewed one of the unfortunate eight still in prison.

11. Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 49.

12. PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1433B. Others who were found to have documentation traceable to the information provided by SNOW were: Joseph Jacobs (landed 1 Jan. 1941); Helga Moe and Tor Glad (MUTT and JEFF, 7 Apr. 1941); and Karl Richter. See also, Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 53.

13. Ayer to Director, Interrogation of Fritz Künkele, 12 Sep. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 184, 65-56228. Künkele worked for Abw I/G in Berlin in the counterfeit documents section.

14. Liddell seems to have suspected this, but did nothing about it. Liddell Diary, 2 Feb. 1941.

15. Interrogation of Major Julius Böckel, CSDIC(WEA), 8 Nov. 1945, PRO, KV2/1333. See also, Interrogation of Dr. Friedrich Praetorius, Oct. 1945, 40, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 169, 65-56466-3.

16. Richard Bassett,
Hitler’s Spy Chief
(London: Cassell, 2005), passim. Despite the misleading, this author presents convincing evidence of Canaris’s opposition to Hitler.

17. A-1304 first began transmitting such commodity information in August. See his message on food prices and shortages: Hamburg to Berlin, 12 Aug. 1940, NARA, T-77, 1540.

18. NARA, T-77, 1541, 1540. A 1939 Street Directory and a 1940 patent application by co-owner Frazer Nash place Nash and Thompson on Oakcroft Road, off Kingston bypass, midway between the intersections with the bypass of Hook Road and Ewell Road. The Abwehr may have already had this information but because these messages went directly to the Abw I Luft/E desk at Abwehr headquarters in Berlin, and the officer in charge was Major Friedrich Busch, a fervent Nazi, Canaris could not have prevented it from being passed on to the Luftwaffe.

19. Christopher Shores and Hans Ring,
Fighters over the Desert
(London: Neville Spearman, 1969), 217–20, 255. This is an authoritative study of the air battles over the Western Desert from both sides. The authors do not give the losses for the Me 109s but it appears they were disproportionately less than those of their adversaries.

20. U.S. Navy Advanced Base Weser River to British Army of the Rhine, 19 Jan. 1946, re captured German documents, PRO, KV3/207. The Americans borrowed the documents and microfilmed them. They are the core of the NARA, RG242, T77 collection. A search did not turn them up at the National Archives at Kew.

21. The W-Board, unsigned photocopied summary, (not dated, but from a reference to Masterman’s
Double-Cross System
it must have been done after 1972, probably by someone who had served on the committee), PRO, KV4/70. The following quotations and descriptions of the Wireless Board are from this document unless otherwise noted.

22. Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 61.

23. Ibid., 62.

24. Curry,
Security Service
, 250.

25. B.2a, Memorandum on the Double Agent system, 27 Dec. 1940, PRO, KV2/63. Section B2 was Maxwell Knight’s, and it is either he who wrote this or Major Sinclair, who was in charge of double agents up to about this time. Masterman,
Double-Cross System
, 8–9, plagarizes from this document. Robertson was still B3 at this time: Curry,
Security Service
, 287.

26. W-Board, PRO, KV 4/70. See also, Howard,
BISWW
, V, 7–8. However, Masterman,
Double-Cross
, 61 states, “At a higher level the W. Board was established in September 1940, and it appears from the minutes of the first meeting (30 Sep. 1940) that …” It is clear, looking at the other sources, that this is wrong and very misleading.

27. NARA, T77, 1540. The documents on this reel and others in the series were photographed by the U.S. Navy in 1945, when the originals were on loan from the British Army, which had captured them at Bremen. This means the scissoring was done by someone on the British side.

28. Liddell Diary, 13 Jan. 1941; and Stephens,
Camp 020
, 138–39.

29. Hinsley and Simkins,
BISWW
, IV, 96–97.

30. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 155–6.

1. J.C. Masterman, Conference notes, 10 Apr. 1941, PRO, KV2/86, Doc. 39a. He identifies those present by their initials — Liddell, Robertson, White, Masterman, and Marriott. This document is marked as being copied sometime in Jul. 1944, from an original in the file PF 66315 CELERY, Vol. 3, serial 124a. This file could not be found at PRO. However, Masterman’s Memo to File is reproduced verbatim in Liddell’s diary as though Liddell himself wrote it: Liddell Diary, 10 Apr. 1941.

2. Michael Howard,
BISWW
, V, 14, 47.

3. Chapter 19. See also, Andrew,
Authorized History
, 255.

4. PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1803a. This anonymous postwar after-action report was written in 1946; it is reproduced largely verbatim in Masterman’s
Double-Cross System
.

5. MI6 officer (name illegible) to Robertson, 21 Mar. 1941, PRO, KV2/449. MI5’s double agents when overseas normally reported to the MI6 officer at the British embassy. See also, Liddell Diary, 22 Mar. 1941.

6. JHM, Extract of memo, ca. Apr. 1941, PRO, KV2/849, Doc. 218b. The “only one” remaining was DRAGONFLY, an English businessman recruited through Ast Hamburg but reporting to the Abwehr in Paris; he made wireless contact on 1 Mar. 1941. See also: PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1330c.

7. For this list of blown agents, see Partial memo, ca. 1 Apr. 1941, PRO, KV2/449, Doc. 1075a. For an analysis of Midas and its consequences to the named double agents, plus BALLOON and GELATINE, see J.M. Gwyer, memo. 28 Oct. 1941, PRO, KV2/849. For the timing of Midas, see R.G. Fletcher, Dusan Popov, Brief Synopsis of the Case, 15 Jan. 1944, NARA, RG65, WW II FBI HQ Files, Box 11(17), Dusan Popov.

8. Marriott and Gwyer, Dr. RANTZAU’s meeting with SNOW and CELERY in Lisbon, 17 Nov. 1941, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1360b. This is an eleven-page analy-sis. Note the reference to “Major Ritter’s Final Report (Attached).” This is an imagined scenario; it was not based on an actual German report or document.

9. B3 (Robertson), Note to File, 9 Mar. 1940 and 4 Apr. 1940, PRO, KV2/447; Liddell Diary, 7 Apr. 1940; and W-Board meeting re Dicketts, 5 Apr. 1941: PRO, KV2/70.

10. PRO, KV2/674 (as of 2008). See also, “CELERY was a nominee of this office with whom, however, SNOW had sometime before struck up an acquaintance”: KV2/451, 1803a. This, and subsequent wording, makes it clear he was originally recruited for his air intelligence experience.

11. Chronological report dictated by CELERY, 28 Mar. 1941; KV2/86. This is an “extract” taken 26 Jul. 1944, from an original document in CELERY, Vol. III PF 66315, which was not found in the MI5 files released as of 2008. It was extracted for PF 62876 “VON RANTZAU” by “RB,” for an analysis section of B1A/B1B informally operated by Captain Gwyer: Curry,
Security Service
, 297–99.KV2/86 is the PRO file for Nikolaus Ritter. “Baron X” was Canaris’s closest confidant, according to Lahousen: PRO, KV2/173. Ruser could have known this, but not Dicketts.

12. PRO, KV2/86, Doc. 37a. This extract has on it the handwritten notation “by Mr. White,” as if to indicate that it was he who did the interrogation. This should be taken cautiously since it might have been added later. Otherwise, none of the extracts in this file indicate who did these interrogations.

13. Ibid. Note that at about this time MI6 stopped using the MI5 Registry as its exclusive library/archives and opened its own “registry.” Curry,
Security Service
, 56–57, 202. The extracts were taken 26 Jul. 1944. PRO, KV2/86. This opens the possibility that the original documents were in an MI6 file, and are still withheld.

14. R.T. Reed, Ruser interrogation, 20 Dec. 1943, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1660; and Report on Dr. Friedrich Karl Praetorius, 20 Aug. 1945, 39, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 169, 65-56466-5. CELERY reference to SNOW as the “little man” in these documents shows that he learned that the Germans called him, “DER KLEINER.” The Hamburg-Berlin routine weather reports from A-3504 end on 13 Apr., NARA, T-77, 1540. SNOW’s “last message” is not in this collection. There are many gaps in the numerical sequence of messages on Reel 1540, probably because Ritter did not normally copy Berlin on his spymaster-to-spy exchanges.

15. Liddell Diary, 23, 25, 27, 29 May, 1941, PRO. Ritter remembered the incident slightly differently in his postwar account: “In the newspaper that Hansen (Schmidt) received was a gift of twenty thousand marks in English pound notes, a part of which admittedly was counterfeit — enough to keep Hansen looked after for the rest of the war”: Ritter,
Deckname
, 241. See also, Masterman,
Double-Cross System
, 93; Stephens,
Camp 020
, 164–66; and TATE case summary for B1A, 15 Jun. 1942, PRO, KV2/61, Doc. 306a.