Read Hitler's Spy Online
Authors: James Hayward
4. Owens (left) pictured with one of his several families, and beloved Jaguar Roadster
5. Pullman Court, the modernist development on Streatham Hill completed in 1936
6. Thomas ‘Tar’ Robertson, Snow’s long suffering case officer at MI5. Early mistakes made with Owens would ensure that the double-cross systemfunctioned effectively after 1941
7. Edward Hinchley-Cooke, Snow’s first handler at MI5 in 1937, and later an interrogator at Camp 020
8. Snow’s first German transmitter, delivered to Victoria station in January 1939. Some in the Abwehr referred to these early sets asklamotten(‘junk’)
9. Maxwell Knight, the MI5 counter-subversion specialist who brought agents G.W. and Biscuit to the Snow case during the Phoney War period (West)
10. John Masterman, chairman of the Twenty Committee. An Oxford history don in peacetime, Masterman was also a first class cricketer
11. Nikolaus Ritter, Owens’ Abwehr case officer from 1937 onwards, known to MI5 only as ‘Doktor Rantzau’ when this candidate portrait wasadded to the Snow file
12. Hilmar Dierks, the Abwehr veteran who recruited Owens as a German spy as early as 1936. Here he inspects wrecked shipping at Dunkirk
13. A sketch map of RAF Odiham prepared by Owens circa 1938. His betrayal of radar to Germany was far more damaging
14. Abwehr transcripts of signals buzzed by Owens between 28 August and 3 September 1939, none of which were controlled by MI5
15. Gwilym Williams (aka G.W.), the former Swansea policeman recruited as Snow’s first MI5 sidekick in October 1939
16. Abwehr reports on two of Snow’s crucial betrayals of radar, made duringtreffsin Rotterdam on 18 September 1939 and Antwerp on 5 April 1940.MI5 were unable to monitor his personal meetings with Ritter