Students had to devise their own sets of warning signals, that is inconspicuous but unambiguous signs that would warn off others or inform them that it was safe to approach a premises. These signs included flowers, dusters and a variety of objects left in front room windows, curtains and blinds pulled in a certain way, doormats left askew, a thread of wool hanging from a door handle, matchsticks and leaves laid in certain ways; the variations were endless. The problem for the students was to remember their own signals and what they meant.
There was a long list of quite elementary precautions that the students had to learn, like don’t share accommodation with another agent, or commit anything to writing, or talk about operations; don’t go directly to meetings or sit in a public vehicle; stand near the exit. Don’t disclose the name on your identity card or carry more than one identity card. Don’t get drunk in public or chase the girls or sleep with another agent. (Two agents of the French Section are said to have been caught in bed together when arrested – although they denied it – professing afterwards to their captors that they really were husband and wife). And don’t use a two-way dead letter box or somebody may use it to trap you.
Despite all their security training many agents were incredibly careless when they went on operations and were soon caught because they made the most elementary mistakes. The prime example was the arrest of the entire French National Council for Resistance as they assembled in one house on the outskirts of Lyon in June, 1943. One famous radio-operator of the French Section, Noor Inayat Khan, was particularly careless on matters of security and received an adverse report at the end of her training at Beaulieu. Nevertheless, she was sent on operations and, when betrayed, the Germans found not only her radio set but in the drawer of her bedside table was an exercise book in which she had recorded in cypher and in plain language every message she had sent and received! She died a terrible death in a concentration camp.
The subject of Resistance to Interrogation may seem to the uninitiated a matter of keeping one’s mouth shut in the face of persistent questioning under unspeakable tortures. The ultimate form of resistance was the cyanide pill with which every agent was supplied for use if captured. How many of them chose this method of denying the Gestapo operational information is not known. Short of committing suicide there were in fact several things the agents could do besides braving torture to delay or deny the enemy information.
Training in resistance to interrogation has a history dating back to the First World War when our troops were instructed that if captured they were to reveal only their names, rank and number in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Convention. By the outbreak of the Second World War there had been a number of advances in interrogation technology (by which I do NOT mean appliances of torture) which rendered the name, rank and number policy inadequate. Nevertheless, the troops were still indoctrinated in the use of this simple policy and, in addition, were told that if captured it was their duty to try to escape so as to tie down as many enemy personnel as possible in trying to prevent them from doing so and wasting personnel hunting for them if they succeeded. A selected few from all three services, especially aircrew and special service personnel, were given training by an outfit that called itself IS 9 (Intelligence School No.9) in codes, how to organize escapes from prison camps, what was available in the way of escape devices and how these could be introduced into the prison camps.
The majority of our service personnel were not told that a new secret service, MI 9, had been created to organize and run escape lines to help them get away. Worldwide, MI 9 rescued 33,758 evaders and escapers, 12,112 of them from Western Europe; almost half of these were brought out through Switzerland. An interesting statistic is that more officers than Other Ranks evaded capture and more Other Ranks than officers escaped from captivity. The larger number of OR escapers is due to the fact that they were obliged to do work for the Germans outside their prison camps, giving them a better opportunity to escape.
IS 9 was a part of MI 9 and taught servicemen what it called Conduct after Capture, which included resistance to interrogation. MI 9 was itself part of the Prisoner of War Intelligence Directorate, the other half of which was MI 19, which was responsible for interrogating enemy prisoners of war. And it was MI 19 that provided the expertise for training servicemen to resist interrogation and from whom SOE obtained their information for training the students to resist some of the more important aspects of interrogation. These aspects, considered to be top secret at the time, remained so until 1961 when they were revealed in the report of the Privy Council Committee on Interrogation Procedures, the so-called Parker Committee, after its chairman Lord Parker of Waddington. They included the routine use of concealed microphones and stool pigeons. A stool pigeon is a witting or unwitting informer inserted into a prisoner group or into the cell of an isolated prisoner to encourage him or her to talk carelessly.
MI 19 was staffed with experts in the use of these techniques, and it was discovered that the Germans were also using them in their interrogation centres, especially in Dulag Luft, through which they processed captured Allied aircrews.
The use of stool pigeons is a very ancient aspect of interrogation and their use in conjunction with microphones requires a re-definition of the common concept of interrogation.
The popular definition is that it is a process of overt, close, confrontational questioning by an identifiable interrogator empowered to punish his victim for failure to respond. But in fact there is no divine edict which impels an interrogator to reveal his identity as such nor any compulsion to question a suspect in a blatant manner or in circumstances indicative of interrogation. The exclusive use of the confrontational form of interrogation is regarded by many professionals as the hallmark of the amateur and inferior to a number of more subtle methods of ‘questioning’, including the use of the forensic sciences.
Interrogation can be regarded as a state of mind in the person interrogated. Carried out officiously in formal or threatening circumstances, close questioning will be perceived as an interrogation. Effected in a pleasant manner in either formal or informal surroundings, it will be seen as an interview. Conducted in a café or in a club by an acquaintance or by somebody posing as a friend, it may be perceived as an interesting discussion! Yet the same questions may be asked in all three settings. Therefore why hurl oneself at a barricaded front door if there is an option of sneaking round the back? Better still, tap interestingly at the front door while simultaneously effecting an entry at the back, in effect using direct and threatening interrogation as a cover for the use of more subtle methods in innocuous circumstances.
The recruitment, placement and control of the human agent is the nub of the professional interrogator’s skill as well as that of a detective. The human agent, the informer or stool pigeon does not necessarily realize that he or she is being used as such. The study of the experiences of captured agents shows that there were at least four varieties of stool pigeons used by the Germans. The first was a ‘friendly’ guard, doctor, nurse or some other ‘enemy’ official, or an interrogator posing as one, not associated in the prisoner’s mind with the interrogation team, who pretends sympathy while acting as an agent. The second was the specially trained enemy agent, sometimes known as a penetration agent, who poses as a member of the prisoner’s organization or social set injected into the suspect’s company in a fashion that does not arouse suspicion. The third was a volunteer from among the suspect’s acquaintances who, for whatever reasons, agreed to help the interrogators. The Germans promised to spare their lives in exchange for their help but executed them nonetheless once they had served their purposes. The fourth type was an acquaintance of the suspect’s who did not realize that he or she was being used. Types 2, 3 and 4 can be described as clandestine methods of interrogation.
Being a stool pigeon or informer of any category could be a dangerous occupation; mere suspicion was often enough to prompt revenge. If discovered or even suspected of being one, they ran the risk
of being beaten up or murdered. There was an instance of a particularly ruthless group of imprisoned (post-war) terrorists using the corner of an iron bedstead to smash the skull of a member of their group suspected of being an SP. Next morning when the murder was discovered, the culprits commented, ‘Oh dear! What a pity! He must have fallen and hit his head when he got up for a pee during the night!’
It was not unknown for interrogators to throw suspicion on to an innocent party in order to protect the real SP, or to throw suspicion on to the leader of an intractable group in order to destroy the group’s cohesion and get them quarrelling among themselves so that they would talk carelessly in the presence of stool pigeons or microphones. Throwing suspicion on to a prisoner is easily achieved by calling the victim to more frequent interrogations than the remainder of his group and showing him special favours, like giving him cigarettes or chocolate to take back to his cell each time he is called.
The term ‘stool pigeon’ is usually applied to agents used during captivity. But identical types of agents or informers were used on suspects at any time before they were arrested, if indeed they were arrested. They were sometimes left free to lead the counter-espionage agents to other members of the suspect’s circle of acquaintances.
Manoeuvring the suspect into a situation where he or she could be made vulnerable to indirect or clandestine methods, even specially creating suitable situations, is part and parcel of the interrogator’s art. It includes continuing interrogation long after the suspect thinks that it has been completed, long after he or she has been removed from an identifiable interrogation centre to, for instance, a common gaol. These kinds of interrogations through a second party, or by creating a ‘sting’ situation, or continuing during a prison sentence, are omitted from the common concept of interrogation which places total emphasis upon the art of direct questioning by an identifiable interrogator in an identifiable place of interrogation.
Wartime training in resistance to interrogation included warning servicemen to watch out for stool pigeons and hidden microphones. The training at Beaulieu included these warnings, but it in no way prepared the students to identify stool pigeons, nor were they alerted to the possibility that the entire group of acquaintances or ‘fellow prisoners’ might be stool pigeons. Similarly the students were not shown what a microphone looked like, where they were likely to be hidden, how to recognize the circumstances when they were most likely to be used, or how to defeat them by making a background noise to cover whispered conversations. Nor were the trainees warned that every single room or cell or communal room, including the lavatories, were likely to be monitored. People tended to think that microphones, if used, would be used singly rather than in batteries scattered generously all over the place irrespective of the cost and the number of listeners required to do the monitoring.
The microphones used in those days were not recognizable as such to the uninitiated. They did not contain transmitters and batteries as they do today but were wired directly to the listening room. They and their wires were usually hidden. If left visible the microphone resembled a sandwich of bakelite wafers less than a quarter of an inch thick and an inch square and looked like an insignificant component of an ancient wireless set. The only thing about them to arouse a layman’s curiosity was the two thin wires trailing out of the device. They could be hidden in overhead lights and skirting boards and other fixtures and fittings in a room. It needed a small orifice about an inch long and the width of a twopenny piece to let in the sound and could not, therefore, be buried in wall plaster.
As far as is known none of the Beaulieu staff had served in MI 19. The security experts came from Field Security which did not include in its training the use of concealed microphones or the recruitment, control and placement of stool pigeons and all the problems that go with the expert use and control of such devices. The uninitiated might think that microphones are simple to use, but anybody who has tried to use one will know that they create many problems. They are ‘blind’ and ‘dumb’ and, unlike stool pigeons, cannot react by asking questions based upon the information received. They cannot be used in every kind of acoustic environment which means in effect that rooms in which they are used have to be specially built, or specially selected for their acoustics. The older type of microphones were non-directional, leading to problems in identifying the person who was speaking; their lack of clarity also made it hard to identify the speaker. They also posed problems of ‘real time’ listening. In those days acoustic activation of recording equipment had not been invented and an hour of recorded conversation took an hour to play back. Also, anybody who has tried making a live recording will know that much of what is recorded is trivial and of no consequence and several people tend to speak at the same time, making it impossible to untangle who is speaking about what. The novice listener is likely to listen with a pair of headphones all day and not hear anything of significance, which is a waste of time and incurs a massive loss of vigilance.
The task of routine listening would have been delegated to signals personnel who would have had to be briefed on what matters to listen for and record.
In those days the recording equipment was archaic by today’s standards, but both disc and tape recording equipment had long been invented and Germany had the lead in the development of sound recording equipment.
Disc equipment comprised immensely heavy turntables supporting heavy wax discs revolving at 72 rpm. The disc would only record for a short period and hours of conversation would have occupied a pile of discs. The listener would have had to cut a wax disc by lowering the cutting arm on to the disc at the appropriate moment and later the recording would have had to be played back on a gramophone and interesting passages marked on the disc with a coloured pencil! Tape recorders had been invented by the Germans in 1929. Earlier German versions had used wire instead of magnetic tape. Tape recordings were first used by the BBC in 1932. After the Germans had been defeated, the Allies discovered that they had made significant advances in the development of magnetic tape-recording equipment and eighteen pieces of this equipment were seized as reparations. Reel-to-reel tape recorders did not become widely available until the 1950s and stereo decks did not appear until the 1970s.
Whatever type of recording equipment was in use during the war, it was imperative that the listener was highly discriminating in what he placed on record so as to avoid the tedium of real-time playback of hours of useless chatter. By implication he would have had to get to know his suspect’s habits so well that he could guess at what time of day and under what circumstances he was most likely to talk about matters of significance.
Clearly an intelligent interrogator would not waste his time on passive listening. He would study his suspect carefully and manipulate circumstances so as to cause him to confide to his cell mate, who would, of course, have been specially chosen for the purpose, at a convenient time. Equally clearly an interrogator would also have had to have known how to plant and to extricate a stool pigeon for de-briefing and re-briefing and how to put him back again without arousing suspicion.
The overwhelming evidence about the Beaulieu instruction in resistance to interrogation indicates that it stuck to the traditional, antiquated view and gave undue emphasis to the duel of wits and close questioning, to the exclusion of the hidden dangers. Exercises in resistance included some duress. Dressed in Abwehr, SS or SD uniforms, members of the instructor staff barged into the students’ bedrooms in the middle of the night, woke them, hauled them into another room and made them stand in their night attire with their arms above their heads, holding a pile of heavy books or telephone directories while bombarding them with questions to test their endurance and their cover stories. Later in the war the male students were also subjected to the indignity of strip searches and were made to stand naked in the cold while being questioned. There is no record of women students being subjected to such treatment nor is there any evidence of the students ever being subjected to the indecency of a body search, tho
ugh they were told to expect them if captured.
In his book SOE 1940 – 46, M.R.D. Foot stated that in 1943 some of the bedrooms in some of the Beaulieu houses were wired for sound in order to discover if the students talked in their sleep and, if so, in what language. If microphones were used in this way, it was an inexpert use of this facility and would have created problems of real-time listening. Some unfortunate member of the staff, probably a Field Security corporal, would have been stuck on the end of a pair of headphones for countless nights on end on the offchance of hearing something useful. Foot also stated that prior to the installation of microphones a ‘devastating blonde’ named Fifi was used as a stool pigeon to find out if the students talked in their sleep; presumably Fifi was used only on the male students! Some former agents said that seductive women or attractive men were used on them during their field exercises to chat them up on park benches or in pubs to see if they would reveal more than they should. It is known that these questioners were the female secretaries and the male staff of the school, most probably Field Security personnel.
The Beaulieu students were taught that if caught by the Gestapo or the Abwehr they were to endeavour at all cost to conceal operational matters for at least forty-eight hours, to give others time to disappear. They were also told that, even if captured by the Gestapo, all was not lost because the Gestapo men were mostly thugs not noted for their wits and showed little in the way of subtlety and finesse. Some of them could be bribed or blackmailed. In truth, the Gestapo men were often as inexperienced in interrogation as the agents were inexperienced in escaping their attention, and there are many examples of agents outwitting them under questioning and some instances of the interrogators accepting bribes and permitting the release of the suspect. There are one or two examples, late in the war, of them being blackmailed into releasing agents. There are also many examples, far too many, of them torturing their victims to death rather than keeping them alive and trying more subtle ways of making them reveal valuable information.
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