My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy (14 page)

With respect to my own work in the Iberian Peninsula, the arrival of OSS was a pain in the neck. Apart from the time wasted in putting our information at the disposal of the newcomers, a host of problems arose from the appointment of their men in Lisbon. The first was a certain Ray Olivera, who soon made his dreadful mark. His opening move was to call on our own man, without warning, and ask for co-operation. Our man naturally asked for his credentials, in reply to which Olivera opened his bag to display its contents: God knows how many wads of dollar bills. Apart from this show of brashness, Olivera’s arrival caused great confusion in the United States Embassy. Immediately after America’s entry into the war, the Military Attaché in Lisbon, Colonel Solborg, had started sending agents through Spain into Occupied Europe. The Naval Attaché had naturally concentrated on shipping, and someone else started in on economic intelligence. By the time Olivera arrived, all these fields had been pre-empted, and no one was willing to withdraw in his favour. Prolonged muddle was eventually sorted out by George Kennan, then Counsellor of the United States Embassy in Lisbon. He decided that the best course was to keep the intelligence flowing and not to worry about jurisdictional disputes in Washington. Thus Solborg and the rest were confirmed in their undiplomatic activity, while counter-espionage, which no one had yet thought of, was thrown as a sop to Olivera.

The unfortunate Olivera, however, was given little time to settle down to his restricted field. He succeeded without delay in making himself so generally unpopular in Lisbon that he had to be replaced. The new man was a certain Di Lucia, who was soon giving us an immense amount of trouble. Within a very short time, he was claiming to have amassed a card-index of so many thousand suspects, a feat which never seemed to yield any positive benefit. More to the point was the discovery that one of his principal sources was an obscure and noxious person who went, in Portugal, under a false name. We knew, from the wireless traffic, that he was passing information to the Abwehr. We had also learnt, by opening the Czech diplomatic bag, that he was working for Colonel Pan, then Czech
intelligence representative in Lisbon. We had spent many months devising means of warning Pan, without disclosing to him the guilty source of our knowledge. He resisted our sincere endeavours with remarkable density; “Ivory from the neck up,” as Dick White tersely remarked after an unsuccessful meeting. It was a little too much when Di Lucia also put the Abwehr agent on his payroll. When, after endless prodding from us, OSS decided that Di Lucia must go the way of Olivera, they asked us to write to our man in Lisbon for a statement of the qualities desirable in an OSS representative in that hot spot. He cabled back at once: “For God’s sake tell them to send a man called Smith.” Against Cowgill’s wishes, I showed the message to Pearson. He pretended amusement.

In the second half of 1942, news reached us that the invasion of North Africa had been decided in principle. The duty imposed on us in St. Albans was the timely provision of intelligence to the staffs of the invading armies. The intelligence particularly concerning us related, of course, to the activity of the Abwehr and the Italian military-intelligence service in North Africa, and that of their sympathizers among the special services of the Vichy regime. Cowgill saw in the development both a problem and an opportunity. The problem was to ensure that SIS intelligence was transmitted to army staffs in such a way as to safeguard the security of our sources, including wireless intercepts. Cowgill successfully argued the view that this could only be done by the attachment of the staffs of special units composed of Section V officers, or officers trained in Section V. Having won this point, he was well placed to show that his existing resources were adequate, and that he could fulfil his new duties only if he received substantially increased appropriations. From this battle, too, he emerged victorious, with the result that he was able to recruit additional staff as well as giving most of us, if not all, a welcome rise in pay.

In passing, I should mention that this increase in staff led to two wholly delightful associations. Graham Greene was brought back to reinforce Section V from Freetown, where he had been supposedly watching the intrigues of the Vichy French. He will forgive
me for confessing that I cannot recall any startling achievements of his in West Africa; perhaps the French were not intriguing? I do remember, however, a meeting held to discuss a proposal of his to use a roving brothel to frustrate the French and two lonely Germans suspected of spying on British shipping in Portuguese Guinea. The proposal was discussed quite seriously, and was turned down only because it seemed unlikely to be productive of hard intelligence. Happily, Greene was posted, where I put him in charge of Portugal. He had a good time sniping at OSS, and his tart comments on incoming correspondence were a daily refreshment. At about the same time, Malcolm Muggeridge swam into our ken, wearing his usual air of indignant bewilderment. He was despatched to Lourenço Marques, too far away for my liking, where his principal adversary was the Italian Consul, Campini, an assiduous reporter of British shipping movements. I was glad when our interest in Campini died, and Muggeridge was brought back to deal with various aspects of French affairs. His stubborn opposition to the policy of the day (whatever it was) lent humanity to our lives.

Some weeks before the North African invasion, Cowgill asked me whether I would take over responsibility for the area. It had previously been included in the French section, but for reasons not very clear to me it had been decided that the transfer would be beneficial. I had no hesitation in accepting. We had achieved a fair stranglehold on the Abwehr in Spain and Portugal, and were regularly picking up its agents. There was no reason why I should not shoulder additional responsibilities. It was also satisfactory to me personally to get nearer to the active conduct of the war, and the enlargement of my field at that crucial stage suggested the hope of further extensions as the Allied armies progressed. That hope was fulfilled in due course.

My duties involved politics rather than intelligence work. The special units mentioned above were duly formed and attached to the army staffs under the title of Special Counter-Intelligence Units (or SCI units). The term, of course, was an Americanism—a
concession to the fact of an American being in supreme command. We were also issued with new stamps marked Top Secret instead of Most Secret. It was a foretaste of things to come, but we were innocent enough then to feel enthusiastic about our precious Eisenhower. But the bulk of what I call, for want of a better term, our work, concerned relations with the French. For some time, there had been attached to Section V a Gaullist counter-espionage officer with ill-defined functions. Apart from giving him our most attractive secretary, on the grounds that she spoke French, we had kept him at arm’s length. I do not know what obscure reasons promoted Cowgill’s reserve towards Passy’s Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action, the Gaullist intelligence organization. But when the political situation burst in our faces, when Darlan and Giraud became friends, not enemies, Cowgill passionately embraced a certain Commandant Paillole, a Vichy counter-espionage officer. In fact, Paillole proved to be a most attractive character, and his anti-Axis feeling was beyond reproach. Yet I could never understand what good intelligence purpose was served by the mountain of work involved in Cowgill’s self-imposed commitment to defend Paillole against all comers. It was probably just that he could not adopt any attitude falling short of total involvement. What came of it all in the end, I do not know. Before the issue was resolved, if it ever was, I was immersed in the problems of the Italian campaign, and the Paillole Affair reduced itself to its proper parochial level.

The fact that in the year 1942–3 Cowgill had enlarged my field of responsibility to include first North Africa, and then Italy, suggested to me that I was beginning to make a career in the secret service. This was confirmed shortly after our move to London. Until then, Cowgill had delegated his work, during his rare absences on leave or duty, to his deputy, Ferguson. Ferguson had also come to us from the Indian police, though at one or two removes, and had impressed chiefly by his terror of taking decisions. It was time for Cowgill to pay an official visit to the United States, where he proposed to spend two or three weeks. On the eve of his departure, he
circulated a minute to all officers in Section V. It informed them that during his absence, Ferguson would act as deputy in administrative matters, myself in the same capacity in all intelligence matters. This was the first formal intimation that I was on the ladder for promotion. Poor Cowgill!

V. O
N THE
U
P AND
U
P

A shrewd MI5 officer once minuted a paper: “This case is of the highest possible importance and must therefore be handled on the lowest possible level.” During the two or three weeks of Cowgill’s absence in the United States, when I sat in his chair, I had good cause to reflect on that dictum. It was not an auspicious introduction to the higher levels. Most of the routine work was relatively simple. The other heads of sub-sections seemed well on top of their intelligence problems, and required little guidance from me. But when I turned to Cowgill’s own work, I ran straight into a horrible muddle, which proved an object lesson on the malign influence of office politics on intelligence. It was a foretaste of headaches to come, and is therefore worth notice in some detail.

Some weeks before his departure, Cowgill had summoned a special meeting of his sub-section heads. He informed us that he was working on a case in conjunction with Claude Dansey. The case was of great potential importance, with such marked political overtones that he proposed to go on handling it in person. But he thought that we should know the general outline, in case our own work threw up anything which might have a bearing on it. The
outline given us by Cowgill was exceedingly blurred. He was obviously tired and rambled on without making much sense. It appeared that some hostile service was preparing, or had prepared, a gigantic plant. The nature and purpose of the plant was obscure. “My own view,” Cowgill concluded with a sudden flash of life, “is that it has something to do with the Arabs. Whenever I look at this case, I see Arabs!” Richard Hannay was with us again.

In an hour or two I had forgotten all about the case, but Cowgill reminded me of it when briefing me immediately before his departure. From his private safe he produced a fat file, and handed it over. He asked me to go into it during his absence and “see what I made of it.” I was told that it would be advisable to keep in touch with Dansey, as he was taking a personal interest in the matter. I thought it better not to ask why Cowgill was hand-in-glove with Dansey in relation to the case, though the connection was puzzling in view of Dansey’s contempt of counter-espionage and all its works. I guessed that the battle-scarred Cowgill was beginning to feel lonely, and that even Dansey might prove an acceptable ally. Perhaps they were ganging up against Vivian and MI5, a combination that would have made sense in terms of office politics. When I opened the file, Dansey’s interest immediately became clear, and I read on with increasing relish. It will be simpler for the reader if I tell the story in chronological order, not in the order which emerged from the file. Indeed, it took me a long time to unravel the essential threads.

By the end of 1943, it was clear that the Axis was headed for defeat, and many Germans began to have second thoughts about their loyalty to Hitler. As a result, a steady trickle of defectors began to appear at the gates of Allied missions with offers of assistance and requests for asylum. These offers and requests had to be treated with care for a number of good reasons. Himmler could have sent us a spy disguised as a defector. It would have been dangerous for the Russians to think that we were dickering with Germans; the air was opaque with mutual suspicions of separate peace feelers.
We could not encourage a flood of last-minute converts hoping to escape the war tribunals. There were strict standing instructions to British missions that no assurances should be given to any German without prior reference to London. One day, a German presented himself at the British Legation in Berne, Switzerland, and asked to see the British Military Attaché. He explained that he was an official of the German Foreign Ministry, and had brought with him from Berlin a suitcase full of Foreign Ministry documents. On hearing this staggering claim, the Attaché promptly threw him out. The German’s subsequent attempts to see the Head of Chancery were likewise rebuffed. The attitude of the British officials cannot be condemned out of hand. It was barely credible that anyone would have the nerve to pass through the German frontier controls with a suitcase containing contraband official papers.

The German, however, was determined to get results. Having failed at the British Legation, he tried the Americans. Their regulations, it seemed, were more flexible than those of the British. A Legation Secretary, deciding that this was cloak-and-dagger stuff, told the visitor that he should address himself to Mr. Allen Dulles
^*
—“four doors down on the left.” Dulles, who was then head of the OSS office in Switzerland, heard the stranger’s story, and sensibly asked to see the contents of the suitcase. Without hesitation, he decided that the goods were genuine. They shocked him into a lyrical state which was still on him when he drafted his official report to Washington. “If only,” he wrote, “you can see these documents in all their pristine freshness!”

The documents were copied and sent to Washington, and OSS loyally made them available to SIS. Because of the Swiss angle, they were sent in the first place to Dansey. I have explained that Dansey had taken a personal interest in Switzerland since before the war. That interest had become a fierce proprietary obsession. He had resented the installation of OSS in Switzerland, and had lost no
opportunity of belittling Dulles’s work. The sight of the Berlin papers must have been a severe shock to him; this was evident from his recorded comments. But Dansey seldom stayed shocked for long. It was clearly impossible that Dulles should have pulled off this spectacular scoop under his nose. The stuff was obviously a plant, and Dulles had fallen for it like a ton of bricks.