By later standards, COCKADE was far from sophisticated, and got off to a bad start. Of the fourteen FORFAR raids planned, only eight were mounted, and only one actually made contact with the enemy. The combined operations team was spotted by a German trawler on his way ashore so the entire plan was abandoned. Of the forty-two aerial operations planned in support of STARKEY, only fifteen were completed in full, mainly thanks to the vile weather, which also delayed the actual mock invasion twenty-four hours. This was eventually carried out on 9 September 1943, and although no less than twenty-one ships congregated ten miles off Boulogne, the Germans appeared not to notice. Even at the sight of such a tempting target the German coastal batteries remained quiet. When no enemy aircraft ventured over the fleet to investigate it turned around and steamed back to port.
STARKEY’s failure was mirrored by the enemy’s lack of interest in either TINDALL or WADHAM. Some half-hearted efforts had been made in Scotland to simulate the preparations of an airborne raid on Stavanger but the RAF could only spare a few dummy gliders. Such measures that were taken – for example, the creation of a notional Fourth Army at Edinburgh – failed to provoke the expected German reconnaissance flights. The only consolation from these two failures was the knowledge that the Germans had been told that WADHAM, the American assault in Brittany, was only scheduled to go ahead if STARKEY had succeeded in achieving a beachhead. Since STARKEY’s puny invasion force had not even been fired on it was agreed that WADHAM, which had been intended for the Bay of Biscay, could be abandoned without further ado. Instead, a couple of Canadian wireless vans cruised along the south coast, simulating the signals traffic of convoys of landing craft returning to their dispersal areas, which the Germans monitored through their high-frequency direction-finding apparatus.
The COCKADE fiasco taught the deception planners many lessons, not the least of which was the importance of involving the three services at an early stage in a campaign. STARKEY had collapsed because the navy had refused to use any major ships as decoys, and the RAF had condemned TINDALL as ‘play-acting’. Nevertheless, the whole deception plan had had some useful repercussions. A short newsreel had been made of American personnel practising amphibious landings ‘somewhere in England’ and had been released to certain neutral distributors. The film depicted an exercise with what were claimed to be combat-trained units, and apparently demonstrated that the Allies were really far further advanced in their preparations than they actually were. The film was only completed in August 1943 but, according to a calendar carelessly left in sight on an office wall, the exercise had taken place months before, in the early spring of 1943. Trees in the film were carefully pruned to give the impression that they had not yet come into leaf. These somewhat amateur ploys were to be the basis of the ambitious fabrications that were to follow.
COCKADE’s failure created one major problem for GARBO. His network had been responsible for transmitting most of STARKEY, and the caves at Chislehurst had been transformed (according to the NAAFI waiter and his friendly guard) into a huge depot for small arms and a communications centre. If the Germans believed for one moment that Chislehurst was to control the invasion they gave no sign of it. The chief victims were Agents ONE and SIX: ONE was required to resign in November and was heard no more of; Agent SIX, an NCO in the Field Security Police, was reported transferred and then killed in North Africa. By making these two subagents take the blame for STARKEY, GARBO himself survived intact, ready to take a more important role. While the Twenty Committee and the LCS had been wrestling with the problems of COCKADE, the chiefs of staff had been adding the finishing touches to a new plan, code-named OVERLORD.
The COCKADE post-mortem identified any number of short-comings which had served to undermine the operation’s credibility. Analysis of the ULTRA decrypts showed that the Germans had never been taken in, and had even reduced their strengths in Brittany, the target area for WADHAM. One armoured panzer division and two infantry divisions had actually been withdrawn in the period leading up to the alleged ‘invasion’. Perhaps, more seriously, the expectations of many underground Resistance fighters in occupied France had been heightened, and it was feared that some lives might have been jeopdised. Another concern was the reputation of the BBC, which had speculated about the STARKEY invasion in several broadcasts.
The conclusion reached by Tommy Harris was simply this: there was no point in exaggerating the Allies’ strength unless there was some genuine military build-up. He was convinced that GARBO still had an important role to play, provided the deception planners could persuade the service chiefs to take deception seriously and recognise its advantages. Fortunately, the creation of SHAEF Ops B heralded new opportunity and apparently offered a guarantee of cooperation from the departments that had so effectively undermined COCKADE. SHAEF (the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) was also to benefit from the transfer of a number of experienced deception specialists from the Middle East, who had achieved some notable successes in the desert campaign. They were optimistic about their chances of building a workable system to exploit GARBO’s network which, in spite of the loss of Agents ONE, TWO and SIX, had acquired several new sources.
Agent TWO had been the Bootle man who had been eliminated to safeguard the embarkation of the Allied force destined for TORCH, the invasion of North Africa. On 10 March 1943 GARBO reported that his widow, Mrs Gerbers, had volunteered to take his place.
Another, more important source was the woman designated J(5), whose existence was first revealed on 4 September 1943. GARBO reported that she
is far from beautiful and rather dowdy in her dress. Although in her early thirties she is clearly unaccustomed to attentions from the opposite sex. This makes her all the more accessible to mine. Already she is delightfully indiscreet.
In an internal Security Service memo dated February 1944, J(5) was described by Tommy Harris as
a secretary in the Ministry of War, probably working in the office of the War Cabinet. She is carrying on an affair with GARBO, who she believes to be a Spanish Republican. Unconscious collaborator who has already been very indiscreet and could pass on very high grade political information. This source has been quoted by Madrid, when reporting to Berlin, as ‘the Secretariat of the Ministry of War’.
It is possible that GARBO and Harris may have had Sarah Bishop in mind when they invented J(5), since she had indeed once worked as a secretary in the office of the War Cabinet. But there the resemblance ends, for Sarah Bishop was neither dowdy nor in her thirties. Apparently playing the ‘sex card’ was sufficiently controversial to provoke a discussion on the merits of such Mata Hari tactics. The American representative on the Twenty Committee, Norman Holmes Pearson, actually warned Harris that he was straying into dangerous territory and might even force the Abwehr to make unwarranted demands on her, which would lead to her demise, like Agent TWO. Pearson was a delegate from the American Office of Strategic Services; a professor of literature at Yale, he had been granted the unique privilege of sharing Masterman’s office in St James’s Street and was, therefore, privy to all the Twenty Committee’s secrets.
Another important unconscious source, who was reported on in a message from the Welsh seaman DAGOBERT, dated 16 September 1943, just a week after the STARKEY fiasco, was 7(1), a soldier in the notional British 9th Armoured Division. This particular unit had been disbanded, but for deception purposes it was kept ‘alive’ with the aid of an ingenious device which enabled a single wireless set to simulate the transmissions of six. As we shall see, this project gradually turned the imaginary 9th Armoured Division into the entire Fourth Army, notionally stationed at Currie, near Edinburgh, which created enough wireless traffic for it and two army corps, the 7th British Corps at Dundee and the 2nd British Corps at Stirling, all apparently under the control of Scottish Command. The 2nd British Corps had actually once existed and had participated in the evacuation from Dunkirk. The Germans had taken so many prisoners from these corps that it was bound to be well known to th
em. The SHAEF planners had simply resurrected it on the assumption that the enemy were unlikely to have discovered that it had actually been disbanded in 1940. In reality, there were only a handful of signallers moving round the Scottish Highlands in radio vans to give life to the ‘ghost’ units.
According to BENEDICT, GARBO’s deputy, he had made a useful contact while travelling on the same train as a young army lieutenant. This officer, who was serving in the 49th British Infantry Division in Scotland, apparently had no idea that BENEDICT was an enemy agent and was somewhat indiscreet about the assault training he had undergone. The purpose behind this exercise was the development of specialist unit which might be expected to take part in any major amphibious landing. If the lieutenant and his division was still reported in Scotland after D-Day, the Germans might reasonably deduce that a further attack was scheduled. MI5 designated the officer as 3(2).
Early the following month, the network was expanded further by CHAMILLUS, the NAAFI waiter. On 4 November 1943, he reported having met a garrulous American sergeant, GARBO described the sergeant as
anti-communist and, to a lesser degree, anti-English Imperialist, following in part the ideas of Randolph Hearst, sustaining an admiration for Franco as Catholic crusader and first leader in the struggle against the Bolshevik.
As well as being ‘sociable, jocular and fairly talkative’, the sergeant worked as a clerk in some unspecified United States army headquarters in London and, therefore, had access to important military documents that someone of this rank would not normally see. Both GARBO and CHAMILLUS were sure that this imprudent serviceman would prove a useful, if unconscious, source of valuable intelligence. Harris designated him 4(3) and assigned to him the role of building up the American contribution to SHAEF’s deception campaign.
The last two notional agents to be recruited in 1943 were both seamen, in an attempt to improve GARBO’s marine observations. The first was a Greek deserter, who materialised on 19 December. The rich Venezuelan, BENEDICT, described how he had met the Greek, who had turned out to be a communist. Ever resourceful, GARBO’s deputy had told him that he was a Soviet spy on the lookout for new, trustworthy members of his ring. The Greek had promptly offered his services and had promised to submit regular reports from Scottish ports. The Germans were delighted by this, so Harris entered him in GARBO’s growing logbook as 3(3).
The second former seaman came via DAGOBERT, the Welsh mercenary from Swansea, who had joined up with the leader of a small group of political dissidents. GARBO reported to Madrid:
A friend of DAGOBERT has been a member of the ‘Welsh Nationalist Party’, but he had advanced ideas and he was not pleased with the liberal sentiment of the party, maintaining that the emancipation of his country would depend entirely on the establishment of what he calls the ‘Aryan World Order Movement’ to collaborate with all the Aryans all over the world. On account of this, he left the party more than two years ago and joined an Indian, a friend of his, who has lived for many years in this country, forming a group which he calls ‘Brothers in the Aryan World Order’. As its position, owing to being clandestine, is very dangerous, they have had very little success, as only about twelve revolutionary members are affiliated, and their activities are very limited and rather ridiculous.
DAGOBERT claimed that the brothers in the Aryan World Order occupied themselves by compiling lists of political and racial undesirables (mainly Jews and communists) who were to be assassinated when they seized power. After receiving Madrid’s approval, the ex-seaman was code-named DONNY and taken onto DAGOBERT’s strength. Tommy Harris marked him down as 7(2) and arranged for him to take up residence in Dover. After further consultation early in the new year of 1944, the Indian fanatic was code-named DICK. MI5 designated him 7(4) and sent him to Brighton.
The Abwehr seemed so pleased with DAGOBERT’s progress that GARBO and Harris decided to take full advantage of the situation and suggested the recruitment of the rest of the brothers. Because DAGOBERT himself was being paid a salary, this expansion would inevitably require further expenditure and, therefore, a greater commitment from Madrid. As well as the financial motive for the proposal, which might have seemed a little overambitious so soon after COCKADE, there was also a further, equally important, motive. By the end of 1943 the Twenty Committee was fully aware of the implications of OVERLORD and had been given advance warning of a ban which was to be imposed on people visiting certain coastal areas. The whole point of DAGOBERT’s self-contained spy ring was its access to shipping. But if the entire network remained bottled up in South Wales there would be little chance of presenting a comprehensive deception plan. A good geographical spread was essential to any campaign, so DAGOBERT’s sources had to be accepted into the network and dispersed to their chosen observation points before the ban was officially announced. If their recruitment was handled quickly, each could execute the move without delay and obtain the necessary residential qualification before applying for the much-valued permit to live in a coastal area. Naturally, none of this was spelt out to the Abwehr, and luckily it did not take long before the German consent arrived. As a result, four more brothers were promptly enrolled. One alleged dissident, designated 7(3), was DICK’s secretary and mistress, who had recently been called up for the Women’s Royal Naval Service. She had been ordered to report for war duty at a Wren depot at Mill Hill and, after her preliminary training, was to be posted to a camp near Newbury to sit a language examination. DAGOBERT was later to explain that she spoke fluent Hindustani, and this had led to her eventual transfer to South-East Asia Command’s headquarters in Ceylon. In reality, her role was taken on by Peter Fleming, the deception expert on Lord Louis Mountbatten’s staff, who proceeded to fabricate a series of letters which GARBO forwarded to Lisbon. ISOS decrypts later showed that these letters eventually ended up with the Japanese military attaché in Berlin, who had them transmitted to Tokyo. This ‘barium meal’ gave the code breakers at Bletchley Park valuable clues to the Japanese diplomatic cipher.
The other brothers brought into DAGOBERT’s ring in December 1943 were three Welsh fascists: DRAKE, who was portrayed as one of DONNY’s relations and instructed to go and live in Southampton; 7(6), who was due to move to Exeter; and DORICK, who was notionally placed in Harwich. These arrangements were later changed early in 1944 when the Twenty Committee decreed that it was too dangerous to allow DRAKE to go to Southampton as there were too many sensitive military and naval installations for him to observe. So GARBO remarked on 18 February 1944, in his sixteenth letter to Lisbon (which, incidentally, was deposited at the Espírito Santo bank concealed in a tin of curry powder), that DRAKE had gone to Exeter and that 7(6), who had originally intended to go there, had stayed in South Wales instead.
Before describing how MI5 mobilised all these characters into the most successful deception campaign ever, it would be well to retrace our steps briefly and catch up with BENEDICT’s brother, MOONBEAM, who had been obliged to beat a hasty retreat to Canada in the summer of 1943 and had started GARBO’s North American network.
The ‘Canadian connection’ really dated back to 10 December 1942, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had arrested their first important, genuine German spy of the war. The agent, who carried clumsily forged papers identifying himself as ‘Mr Braunter’, a radio salesman from Toronto, had been spotted in the small town of New Carlisle passing out-of-date Canadian currency. Virtually everyone in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula had been warned about possible landings by Nazi spies, and this particular stranger could hardly have been more conspicuous, arriving in a tourist area out of season. The RCMP had been alerted swiftly and a local constable had challenged him on a train bound for Montreal. He had quickly admitted his true identity – that of a German naval officer named Janowsky attached to the Abwehr – and had claimed to have been landed the previous evening by a submarine in Chaleur Bay; he was then allowed to show the RCMP the spot on the beach where he had buried his captain’s uniform. After a brief interrogatio
n he volunteered to be a double-agent and work his transmitter back to Hamburg under the RCMP’s control.
Although, at that time, intelligence work was relatively unknown to the RCMP, which boasted just one full-time intelligence officer whose main function was liaison with London, they did have the use of an experienced former British Secret Intelligence Service agent named Gottfried Treviranus, who was then living in Montreal. Treviranus had been a veteran spy who had been obliged to flee Germany before the war when the Gestapo had discovered some of his covert activities. SIS had given him a new identity and had smuggled him to Mount Royal, Montreal, where he had lived quietly under the RCMP’s protection. Treviranus had served in U-boats during the First World War and gradually built up a rapport with the spy, so much so that he persuaded the RCMP officer in charge of the case, Cliff Harvison, to contact MI5. Was the Security Service interested in running a double agent? After some discussion by the Twenty Committee, it was agreed that Cyril Mills, accompanied by a B1(a) secretary, Pixie Verrall, should travel to Ottawa to investigate further, and while he was there he would represent GARBO’s MOONBEAM, who was becoming a liability in England.
Mills was met in Canada by the RCMP commissioner, Stuart Wood, and invited to run the spy. Once Mills was satisfied that the agent had truly turned (which was established when he disclosed his wireless security check: his secret signal that he had been caught and was operating under the enemy’s control), he was dubbed WATCHDOG and was placed under guard in a three-roomed basement apartment under Treviranus’s home. The RCMP built a fifty-foot aerial in the back garden and, with the aid of a powerful Canadian army transmitter (which proved more reliable than the ineffective radio provided by the Abwehr), successfully opened communications with Hamburg.
Operation Garbo Page 13