My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy (11 page)

By early 1942, the trickle of intercepted Abwehr telegrams had become a flood. This was largely the work of Dilly Knox,
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who had succeeded in penetrating the secrets of the cypher machine used by the Abwehr. This comprehensive system of eavesdropping yielded fascinating glimpses of the intimate life of German intelligence officers. There was the case, for instance, of Axel, the German police dog. He had been posted from Berlin to Algeciras, presumably to guard the Abwehr out-station there from British agents sneaking across the bay from Gibraltar. On the last stage of its journey, Madrid sent a warning telegram to Albert Carbe, alias César, the head of the Abwehr post at Algeciras: “Be careful of Axel. He bites.” Sure enough, a few days later, Algeciras came up with the laconic report: “César is in hospital. Axel bit him.”

It was not long before we had a very full picture of the Abwehr in the Peninsula. We knew the names, pseudonyms, addresses, cover functions and real functions of most of the staff at Madrid headquarters and at the many out-stations, such as Barcelona, Bilbao, Vigo, Algeciras, etc. When our knowledge was already as comprehensive as one could reasonably expect, a maddening incident occurred which illustrates the dangers of having two separate organizations working on the same subject in the same area. I have
already said that there were exceptions to the rule whereby service attachés in British Embassies abroad did not engage in secret intelligence work. One of the exceptions was Captain Hillgarth, RN, the Naval Attaché in Spain. There was an arrangement, prompted by Hillgarth’s personal acquaintance with Churchill, by which secret funds were made available to him for undercover activity. A condition of this arrangement was that Hillgarth’s only contact with SIS should be with the Chief himself. The ostensible reason for this was security; Hillgarth’s sources were to be particularly sacrosanct. But the condition also helped to feed the gallant officer’s illusions of grandeur. As a pseudonym for correspondence with the Chief, he chose Armada—natch!

One day, Cowgill asked me to make an appointment with the Chief to discuss an important communication from Armada. It was about the Germans in Spain. It was seldom that I saw the Chief in those days, and I was as shy in his presence as he was in mine. But I found him in a playful mood. He had been poaching on my preserves, he said; doing a spot of counter-espionage in Spain. He had given Armada authorization to buy, “for a very large sum,” details of the leading Abwehr officers in Spain. Those details had been received, and he handed me a telegram—a distressingly short one, containing about a dozen names and a few particulars about each. Gustav Lenz, head of the outfit; Nans Gude, in charge of Naval Intelligence, etc., etc. I remarked, somewhat tactlessly, that the information, so far as it went, was accurate. The Chief’s eyebrows rose. How did I know it was accurate? Because we knew it all already. How much more did I know? A very great deal. Why hadn’t the Chief been informed? But we compiled regular monthly reports of the progress of our investigations, and a copy always went to the Chief. At this point he showed what an essentially nice man he was. “My dear Philby,” he said with his characteristic quick smile, which had gone almost as soon as it came, “you don’t expect me to read everything that’s put on my desk!” We agreed that Armada’s source should be asked for more, but of course nothing came of it. What incensed me was that I soon identified this precious source—a high
official of the Dirección General de Seguridad—and knew that his price would have been very high indeed. And I had to fight to get an extra £5 a month for agents who produced regular, if less spectacular, intelligence!

One problem of intelligence is how to get it. Another, equally important and sometimes much more difficult, is how to exploit it. Picking up enemy agents as they reached British territory was all very well and good. But what about our painstaking analysis of the German establishment in the Peninsula as a whole, and the organization in Germany from which it emanated? It was borne in on me gradually that our comprehensive knowledge called for more imaginative action than had been contemplated in the past. It was not enough simply to warn MI5 of the impending arrival in Britain of Abwehr agents, or to effect the occasional capture in Trinidad. It should surely be possible to put our information to good use in disrupting, or at least seriously embarrassing, the enemy on his own chosen ground in Spain.

These thoughts were spurred by the gradual accumulation of intelligence to the effect that the Germans were contemplating an operation in Spain involving the use of advanced technical devices. The Abwehr code-name for the operation was Bodden. The Bodden is the name of the narrow strip of water separating the island of Rügèn from the German mainland, not far from the wartime scientific research station at Peenemünde. Taken together with additional evidence that the Bodden experts, with their instruments, seemed to be closing in on Algeciras, this seemed a clear enough indication that something affecting the Straits of Gibraltar was brewing. We therefore consulted the formidable Dr. Jones, head of the scientific section of SIS, who studied the evidence, and pronounced fairly confidently that it indicated the installation of a device for detecting the passage of ships through the straits at night. As this would have introduced a serious new hazard into the supply position in the Western Mediterranean, I judged that the time was ripe for a new suggestion designed to scare the daylights out of the Abwehr in Spain.

I had already considered, and discarded, the possibility of putting SOE on to the Germans in Spain. Even if they had had the resources for such an operation, I doubted whether anyone on our side would really welcome a James-Bond-like free-for-all in Spain, where the authorities would have been against us. On reflection, it seemed that the diplomatic approach would be the best. We had a legitimate grievance against the Spanish Government for allowing the German intelligence a free hand on its territory, and a strong protest, based on detailed and cogent evidence, seemed quite in order. I had little hope that General Franco would take any action against his German friends; but I had no doubt at all that he would give them a friendly warning of their nakedness. My thoughts turned to General Westmacott, the Director of Extraordinary Intelligence in Compton Mackenzie’s
Water on the Brain
,
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and his dictum: “After all, the whole point of the Secret Service is that it should be secret.” It was a good assumption that Gustav Lenz, the head of the Abwehr in Spain, would be severely shaken if his secrets could be shown to be no secrets at all.

The first step was to convince Cowgill that the operation was both worthwhile and feasible. Our indictment would have to be based largely on information derived from signals intelligence, and he was jealous of its safe-keeping, even
vis-à-vis
other British intelligence organizations. Yet the whole object of my proposal was that the document should be presented to an unfriendly Spanish Government in the hope that it would be shown to the Germans. To my great relief, Cowgill reacted favourably. He took my draft, in which I had been at pains to conceal our sources, to the Chief, who also approved. Fortunately, the Foreign Office link with SIS at that time was Peter Loxley, who had as much vigour as charm, and he lent the project enthusiastic support. Within a reasonably short space, instructions were sent to Sir Samuel Hoare,
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then British
Ambassador in Madrid, to protest to General Franco in the strongest possible terms. He was to support his protest with a copy of my memorandum.

It is difficult to write nice things about Sir Samuel. But the truth compels me to admit that he rose to the occasion magnificently. He dressed the senior members of his staff in full uniform, and took them in a body to see the Head of State. What Franco then said to whom is not yet known. But the results were gratifying beyond expectation. Within two or three days, panicky telegrams were flying between Madrid and Berlin; all sorts of useless emergency measures were taken. There was even a report, not taken too seriously by us, that some of the chimneys of the German Embassy in Madrid were smoking unduly. The final triumph came in the form of a peremptory order from Berlin to Madrid: “The Bodden operation must be stopped in its entirety.” We continued to get our signals intelligence without interruption. It was clear that the operation had not compromised our main source.

Encouraged by our success in Spain, we then launched a similar operation against the Germans in Portugal, but with only indifferent results. In the case of Spain our problem had been straightforward. General Franco, after all, was a self-declared co-belligerent on the side of the enemy. With very few exceptions, his senior officials sympathized warmly with the Axis. For that reason, we could be pretty sure that, wherever we hit, we would hurt our enemies. The Foreign Office had less than its usual crop of inhibitions about ruffling Franco’s feathers, provided it had a good case; and, on the intelligence side, we had so few friends in Spain that we had little to fear from enemy reprisals. The position in Portugal was significantly different. Far from being straightforward, it was horribly complicated and fuzzy. Dr. Salazar, it is true, sympathized with the Axis. But he was far more cautious than his fellow-dictator in Spain, and pursued a more neutral line. For fear of disturbing Salazar’s balancing act, the Foreign Office shrank from strong action calculated to force him down off his fence. He might only too
easily have come down on the wrong side. We had our own narrower preoccupations on the intelligence side. Several senior Portuguese officials, whom we knew to be receiving money from the Germans, were also receiving money from us. It was usually impossible to assess which side derived most advantage, if indeed any, from this tangle. The last thing I wanted was to have the officials come to us with a request to make good the extra-curricular salaries which they might lose through the expulsion of their German paymasters.

In consequence, the contents of our protest, and the manner of its presentation, were less spectacular than in the earlier case of Spain. There was no full-dress approach of the Embassy to the wily Doctor. Instead, the British Ambassador, Sir Ronald Campbell,
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took the matter up during a cosy meeting with the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Sampaio, who showed considerable diplomatic resources in his responses. It was, he said, extremely wrong of the Germans to abuse Portuguese neutrality in the manner described in our protest. Were we sure of our sources? He himself encountered the greatest difficulty in evaluating intelligence reports. The whole matter was fraught with the most awkward difficulty. For instance, he had heard reports that other nations were not far behind the Germans in illicit activity on Portuguese soil. If the Portuguese Government took action against the Germans, the German Government might insist on similar action against those other nations. Insistence of such a kind would put the Portuguese in a dreadful dilemma. He, Sampaio, would certainly convey Sir Ronald’s protest to Dr. Salazar without delay. But, speaking personally, he doubted whether the Doctor would take the action we requested without a very careful examination of the whole many-sided problem. Having delivered this deft warning, Sampaio concluded with a gem of diplomatic logic. Why, he sighed, must warring powers indulge in
espionage? If only they concentrated their whole intelligence resources on
counter
-espionage, there would be no objection from any quarter!

Although the head of the British counter-espionage organization in Lisbon was an exceptionally able and sensitive man, many of our Portuguese cases ended in the same indeterminate fashion. There was the regrettable case of Stilwell, a British businessman resident in Portugal for many years. His name came to our notice at a time when our knowledge of the German services in Portugal was still rudimentary. We were therefore inclined to regard the German intelligence operatives whom we had identified as much more important than many of them subsequently turned out to be. Among these was a certain Weltzien, a German merchant, who loomed large in our preoccupations. After much endeavour, we succeeded in purloining from Weltzien’s office a card purporting to come from his card-index.

We had apparently hit a bull’s eye. The entries on the card showed, in unmistakable terms, that Stilwell had, until quite recently, been in receipt of regular payments from Weltzien. But our problem was by no means cut-and-dried. In itself the card was no proof; it could have been a forgery. Some of us were struck by the odd fact that the very first specimen from Weltzien’s card-index should have been right on the mark. A year or two later, with more experience to hand, we might have hesitated much longer than we did. But we had few spies actually in the bag, and were anxious for more. In addition, we were so bemused by the mysterious Weltzien that we were ready to take risks to learn more about him. Stilwell was therefore invited to return to England. He was arrested on arrival and brought to interrogation the following morning. His manner under interrogation was dignified and resentful of his treatment. The sight of the famous card shook him just about as much as an innocent man would have been shaken. He was released without a stain on his character amid shamefaced apologies. We never got to the bottom of the Stilwell card, although we staged a raid on Weltzien’s office
with the object of stealing his whole card-index. Weltzien, however, was not caught off his guard, and the raid was as big a fiasco as the arrest of the innocent Stilwell. We soon recovered our poise when an increasing flow of serious intelligence proved that Weltzien was not a key figure after all; on the contrary, a very minor one.

Before leaving Portugal, I must recall a masterpiece of interrogation. A certain lady had entered Britain from Portugal, where she had been known to consort with a number of Germans, including German intelligence officers. Search of her person and effects yielded a small diary kept mostly in the form of cryptic abbreviations. The interrogator took her through the diary, entry by entry, but she proved to be exceptionally quick-witted, stoutly denying with considerable plausibility that any of the entries referred to German acquaintances. Bloody but unbowed, her tormentor tried one last desperate throw. “May I draw your attention, Mrs.—, to your entry of such-and-such a date? It says: ‘Spent all day sitting on my fanny.’ Now,” after a pregnant pause, “
Who
was Fanny? In what way was she yours? and
why
were you sitting on her?” Under the impact of this dreadful inanity, the lady broke down and confessed all.
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Her story showed that her relations with Germans at Estoril had indeed been intimate, but in no way inimical to the British war-effort.