Tar Robertson knew full well. In July 1942 Lily Sophia Bade had married a precision turner named Brian Funnell who worked in a local aircraft factory and took on Jean Louise as his own. Only then was the blushing war bride allowed to leave Homefields, but would remain in Surrey under the watchful eye of the Security Service. Snow would never see his mistress again, nor Jean Louise, the daughter born on Eagle Day in August 1940 as the Luftwaffe opened the birdcage.
With no visible means of support, and nowhere to go, B1A were forced to support Owens for six long months. Released simultaneously with his father, Bob Owens showed greater initiative, setting up home in Kingston and marrying patient Lavinia Cantello at All Saints Church, Norwood, on 21 October. Owens Senior attended the ceremony, acting as a witness under his real name and stating his occupation as ‘retired’.
At the B1A office in St James’s this was all too apparent, since Owens remained resolutely unemployed, and unemployable. ‘Snow has not contrived to find himself a job,’ Tar despaired. ‘I am satisfied that as long as he feels that we shall look after him, he will be content to drift along without making any effort.’
Attempts to place Owens with an engineering or chemical concern came to nothing, and by the end of January 1945 the accumulated cost of maintaining the former Colonel Johnny had risen to £215. His patience exhausted, Tar ran through the accounts from day one, then sought permission to buy Owens off with a lump-sum payment of £500. ‘Snow must stand on his own feet,’ he told Guy Liddell, ‘but not cast on to the world without means. The intelligence dividend we received from the conduct of his case is impossible to express in terms of money, but it was a large one. In addition his case put into our hands the sum of £13,850 in cash. We do not know with accuracy how much money Owens retained for himself by direct appropriation from the Germans, but the payments and expenses we made amounted to less than £4,000. On a pure financial basis the case has been profitable to us.’
These figures were arbitrary at best, and took no account of funds that might have been paid into a secret American account to which Owens occasionally alluded, or of the large debit column opened by his betrayal of radar in 1940. Despite five years of secrets and lies, Robertson, Masterman and Liddell stayed firm in their belief that Hitler’s chief spy in England had passed nothing of value to the other side, and therefore the proposed gratuity of £500 stood approved. It was no humdinger, nor right hot, and hardly compared with the £50,000 offered for a Spitfire in 1939. Yet even a miserly one per cent was better than a poke in the eye, or the disagreeable fate of the sixteen Nazi spies executed under the unyielding provisions of the Treachery Act by the time hostilities ceased.
Idle Arthur Owens was tickled to death.
On the morning of Tuesday, 6 March 1945, as Russian forces bombarded the fortress city of Breslau and American tanks rolled through the shattered suburbs of Cologne, the Little Man reported to Room 055, a forbidding basement deep in the bowels of the War Office. Still personally aggrieved, Tar Robertson did not trouble to attend the final debriefing of Agent Snow and chose instead to delegate the task to Len Burt, a former Scotland Yard detective, and Edward Cussen, recently returned from grilling disgraced Jeeves and Wooster author P. G. Wodehouse in Paris.
Cussen handed Owens a copy of the Official Secrets Act, predicating various felonies and misdemeanours: ‘I undertake upon my honour to abstain from any disclosure which I recognise will entail the risk of jeopardising the interests of Great Britain, her Allies and the Powers associated with her.’
Owens signed without demur, for countries did not matter. This formality complete, Burt presented former Agent Snow with a cheque for £500. ‘I told Owens that it had been decided to give him a gratuity, which it was hoped would assist to establish himself in some future employment. He appeared particularly pleased and said he did not expect it, and in all circumstances felt that he had been generously treated. He intimated that he intended investing the money.’
Burt followed this golden handshake with a cold shoulder. ‘I gave Owens to understand that it was very desirable that he should completely disassociate himself from this department, and pointed out the penalties should he be foolish enough to write his reminiscences.’
The obloquy and odium ran deep. ‘I told Owens that if at any time he should want to contact us, which was most unlikely, he should communicate with me personally and no one else.’
Not Tar.
Not Biscuit.
Not Celery.
Not Lily Bade.
Without further ado, Colonel Johnny was escorted to the doors of the War Office and cast out onto the busy Whitehall pavement.
There, in the pale spring sunlight, Snow melted away.
Epilogues
Arthur Owens (aka SNOW aka JOHNNY aka Thomas Wilson) took up with a woman called Hilda White and moved to Great Amwell in Hertfordshire. The former Agent Snow changed his surname to White by deed poll in October 1946; a son, also called Graham, was born in November. In low water by 1948, Owens borrowed £5 from his eldest son Bob and relocated to the Republic of Ireland, later setting up shop in Wexford to sell radios and batteries. Snow’s birth name and a version of his dubious wartime career were first made public by John Bull magazine in October 1957, though his embarrassment – if any – did not endure, since Hitler’s chief spy in England died of myocarditis (cardiac asthma) two months later, on Christmas Eve. Diligent research by Madoc Roberts traced an unmarked grave to plot 57, Section O, in the cemetery at St Ibar, Crosstown, a few miles outside Wexford. It may be noted, however, that Tar Robertson informed intelligence historian Nigel West that ‘Mr White’ died in Ireland far later, in 1976. And so the mystery continues. In 1992 the BBC broadcast Snow, a television drama based on the scant information then available, with Michael Maloney in the title role. Heavily weeded, the official Snow files were released by MI5 to The National Archives in 2001, 35 volumes having shrunk to just 10.
Lily Bade (aka LILY) continued to live at Homefields under MI5 supervision – and the shadow of detention under 18B. In July 1942 she married Brian Funnell, a precision turner at a local aircraft factory, and subsequently lived quietly, dying (as Lily Butler) in West Ham in 1993. Her daughter with Owens, Jean Louise Pascoe, born in August 1940, is still alive at the time of writing.
Graham ‘Bob’ Owens (aka SNOW JUNIOR) remained close to his father. Soon after the war the pair developed a fuel additive called Wenite, although this failed to catch on despite continued rationing. Following publication of The Game of the Foxes and The Double-Cross System Graham Owens wrote to the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, in a futile effort to restore his father’s reputation. Snow Junior died in Portsmouth in 1981.
Patricia Owens went on to become a moderately successful film actress, often playing American characters on account of her Canadian accent. She relocated to Hollywood in 1956, and under contract to 20th Century Fox starred with Vincent Price in science fiction classic The Fly. Irene, her mother, briefly joined her in America, but soon wore out her welcome. Pat’s movie career failed to catch fire, and by the late 1960s she was day-playing on television serials such as Lassie and Perry Mason. Briefly married to screenwriter Sy Bartlett, Agent Snow’s eldest daughter died in California in August 2000, aged 75. Like her brother Graham, she refused to acknowledge that her father had acted as Hitler’s chief spy in England.
Walter Dicketts (aka CELERY aka Jack Brown) returned to Lisbon in May 1941 in an unsuccessful bid to persuade George Sessler to defect. In July he was offered the choice of an assignment in Brazil, or an SO2 mission to France, though it is unclear whether he undertook either. Following yet another financial scrape Dicketts was declared bankrupt in 1947 and imprisoned at HMP Wandsworth. MI5 declined to provide evidence in mitigation at his trial, having no doubt digested information provided by Ritter and Ruser which confirmed that Agent Celery had been flipped in Hamburg in March 1941. Compounding tragedy with irony, in August 1957 Dicketts followed the example of William Rolph by committing suici
de with the aid of coal gas. Like Rolph, his death certificate was signed by William Bentley Purchase. Like Owens, he would be partially unmasked by John Bull.
Sam McCarthy (aka BISCUIT aka MAC) is known to have been a Canadian named Frank but eludes precise identification. Perhaps Biscuit was a McVitie. In 1951 he was charged with embezzlement at East Grinstead, though the case went unreported. Notwithstanding an ‘excess of zeal’, McCarthy deserved credit for enabling the Snow show to run beyond May 1940, when others – Tar Robertson included – were inclined to throw in the towel.
Gwilym Williams (aka G.W.) died in 1949 at the age of 62. According to John Humphries in Spying for Hitler, the only noteworthy entry in Williams’ police record is that he once stopped a runaway horse.
Nikolaus Ritter (aka DR RANTZAU) ended the war as a lieutenant colonel, still in charge of a flak unit despite the Hanover debacle in 1945. Briefly employed by American forces as a translator, in July 1945 he was arrested by a British Field Security section and held at the CSDIC (WEA) detention centre at Bad Nenndorf, where the commandant was Tin-Eye Stephens. There British interrogators noted ‘a curious lack of knowledge about his own cases’ and made Ritter sweep the officers’ mess. ‘This was not the time to reveal the truth nor his achievements,’ a relative hinted much later. Eventually released from custody in 1947, Ritter returned to Hamburg and scraped a living in various casual jobs, settling on import/export sales, and ended his working life as managing director of a charity. His unpublished memoirs informed They Spied on England (1958) and The Game of the Foxes (1971), and would eventually appear as Deckname Dr Rantzau in 1972. According to his son-in-law, Manfred Blume, the former Doctor Rantzau feared prosecution (or worse), and thus the text omits as much as it covers. Nevertheless, by 1972 Ritter was happy to reveal that which had to remain secret at Bad Nenndorf. ‘Our little Johnny played his unremitting and fascinating game out right to the very end. The British are right to claim that Johnny worked for their intelligence service. But what the British did not know was that he did so only with my agreement and encouragement.’ The dapper, extrovert Rhinelander passed away in 1974.
Thomas Argyll Robertson (aka TAR) retired from MI5 in 1948 with the rank of colonel, unhappy with the new regime imposed by Sir Percy Sillitoe. In the opinion of John Masterman, his decision ‘at the end of the war to leave the service in order to farm was one of the greatest losses which MI5 ever suffered.’ Tar farmed 120 acres near Evesham in Worcestershire, but was not best pleased by Masterman’s decision to publish The Double-Cross System in 1972. He died in 1994, never having been allowed to speak freely about his remarkable double-cross war. ‘It was people that counted with Tommy,’ his brother-in-law Peter Stormonth Darling told author Geoffrey Elliott. ‘They all started equal in his eyes. He saw the best in everyone and rarely disliked anyone, though he could disapprove strongly of other people’s actions or words. He was non-judgemental and had a soft spot for the unusual types, including the odd rogue with a bit of charm.’
Wulf Schmidt (aka TATE aka LEONHARDT) buzzed his last message to Wohldorf on 2 May 1945, after four and a half extraordinary years as a XX agent. Granted British citizenship as Harry Williamson, the well-travelled Dane settled in Watford and worked as a photographer on a local newspaper, later becoming a leading breeder of canaries and other caged birds. Four decades after Schmidt received his Iron Cross, several members of his German family believed that he was still working undercover in England, though media coverage surrounding an unpaid Poll Tax bill led to colourful publicity. He succumbed to cancer in October 1992, aged 80, still under the protection of MI5.
Gösta Caroli (aka SUMMER aka NILBERG) was deported to Sweden in 1945 and took a job with a firm of seed merchants near Malmö. Scarred by his wartime experiences his health gradually deteriorated, condemning him to several years in a wheelchair before his death in 1975. The German government had earlier rejected his claim for a disability pension.
Jan Willem Ter Braak lies buried in an unmarked grave at St Mary’s, Great Shelford, three miles south of Cambridge. The Hinxton Home for Incurables is but an hour’s brisk walk away.
George Hamilton (aka G. C. Hans Hamilton), the wealthy investment banker and company sponsor who brought Snow to London in 1933, introducing him both to NID and the Abwehr, served in combined operations during the Second World War. ‘Hamilton should be interviewed and required to give a full account of his dealings with Snow,’ proposed an MI5 memo in 1944. ‘He may have seen in Snow’s position an opportunity for profitable, if rather sharp, business.’ Evidently Hamilton was cleared of any wrongdoing, and remained on the army emergency reserve list until 1957. He died in 1960.
Guy Liddell retired from MI5 in 1952, afterwards serving as a security adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission. He had been expected to succeed David Petrie as Director-General of MI5 but was passed over in favour of Sir Percy Sillitoe, a decision due in part to Liddell’s friendships with Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, all three of whom were unmasked as Soviet spies. Liddell died of heart failure in 1958. Codenamed WALLFLOWERS, his unique daily journals remained classified until 2002, when – suitably weeded – they were released to The National Archive.
John Masterman left MI5 in September 1945, though not before writing The Double-Cross System as an internal history. One hundred copies were printed, of which 75 were promptly destroyed. Masterman returned to the dreaming spires of Oxford, becoming first Provost of Worcester College, then Vice-Chancellor of the University. He was knighted in 1959. Masterman repeatedly pressed for publication of his official XX history, arguing that confidence in the British secret service had to be restored following the scandal of the Cambridge spy ring. Three successive MI5 DGs declined, after which Masterman arranged to publish The Double-Cross System through Yale University Press in 1972. In a remarkable (but pragmatic) volte-face, the British edition was issued through HMSO – with the Crown retaining a royalty of 50 per cent.
Masterman died in 1977. His oft-quoted statement (that ‘by means of the double agent system we actively ran and controlled the German espionage system in this country’) remains largely – but not entirely – true.
Bibliography and Sources
Detailed chapter by chapter source notes for Double Agent Snow can be viewed online at:
www.ltmrecordings.com/doubleagentsnownotes.html
Please note: some dialogue cited or referred to in official files has been edited to aid clarity.
Archive Sources
National Archives (London): KV2/444–453 (Snow case); KV2/85–88 (Ritter case); KV2/468 (GW case); KV2/674 (Celery case); KV2/60 (Summer case); KV2/114 (Ter Braak case); KV4/13–15 (Camp 020); KV4/185–196 (unedited Guy Liddell diaries); KV2/1452 (Kieboom and Dungeness spies)
Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (Freiburg): RW49/566–567 (Snow/Johnny reports, file copies recovered in 1945 from Bremen stelle)
Books
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Calder, Angus and Sheridan, Dorothy (eds). Speak For Yourself (Jonathan Cape, 1984)
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Elliott, Geoffrey. Gentleman Spymaster: How Lt. Col. Tommy ‘Tar’ Robertson Double-crossed the Nazis (Methuen, 2011)
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Hooper, David. Official Secrets: The Use and Abuse of the Act (Secker & Warburg, 1987)
Jeffrey, Keith. MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 (Bloomsbury, 2010)
Jones, R. V. Most Secret War (Hamish Hamilton, 1978)
Jowitt, The Earl. Some Were Spies (Hodder & Stoughton, 1954)
Kahn, David. Hitler’s Spies (Hodder & Stoughton, 1978)
Kieser, Egbert. Operation Sea Lion (Cassell, 1987)
Knickerbocker, H. R. Is Tomorrow Hitler’s? (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941)
Lampe, David. The Last Ditch (Cassell, 1968)
Lewin, Ronald. Ultra Goes to War (Hutchinson, 1978)
Liddell, Guy. The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol. 1 (Routledge, 2005)
Liddell, Guy. The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol. 2 (Routledge, 2005)
Longmate, Norman. How We Lived Then (Hutchinson, 1971)
Masterman, John. The Double-Cross System (Yale, 1972)
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