On 9 September GARBO received the following letter from the Abwehr, which was dated 31 August 1944, from Lisbon. As one might expect, GARBO and Tommy Harris were fascinated by its contents:
It has, for a long while past, been my desire to deal in brief with your various collaborators or, that is to say, to let you know how we here judge the quality and importance of their reports.
I can say with satisfaction that all of these who are regular informants show that they have understood their mission owing to the logic of the good instructions which they have received from you. Outstanding in order of importance are the reports of your friend 4(3), who, owing to the position he occupies, is the best placed for facilitating details with regard to the organisation of the army in general, about its large units and its composition, the arrival of new American divisions, plans of the high command etc. Though I imagine that in this connection you are dealing with an unconscious collaborator, it is necessary to cultivate this friendship by all possible means, as you yourself have pointed out. The last report of this friend of yours about the reorganisation of FUSAG was excellent. Nevertheless, it is necessary to proceed with the greatest care so as not to arouse his suspicion through the questions you ask him.
The informants DONNY, DICK and DORICK we consider to be perfect military observers and we have no further observation to make. If they continue to work as they have done up till now, then we are more than satisfied!
As to 7(1), it is a long time since we had news of him, possibly you can get some information through this channel about the present location of the 9th British Division, a matter which interests us as we have already stated by message.
The work of DRAKE did not last long and we could not judge his good qualities. We are happy that the difficulties that he experienced did not bring more serious consequences. I realise that this agent must have been influenced by this incident. Nevertheless, I consider the Swansea area to be of great importance. Even though there are not, at present, large contingents of troops there, it is [important] from other aspects of war and therefore I do not think that you should break contact altogether with this agent. I think you should use him for work which is not dangerous, as I do not think that he will be able to work free from fear, but he might be of some minor use. I leave the final decision to you.
I am completely in agreement with your decision in regard to agent 7(6), who has shown no signs of intelligence. We have had practically no news about 7(3) since she has been in your employment. We hope for good results from her new place of residence.
DAGOBERT is the one who has the greater merits, since he has organised his large network and has at the same time acted himself as an observer and military informant of great precision and accuracy. He has also supplied us with several reports of extraordinary merit. We should be very upset should we ever have to lose this friend who has overcome so many difficult situations. It was undoubtedly he who gave so much help in cases which had to be resolved with urgency, such as the case of CHAMILLUS after he had left the camp. I hope, therefore, that we will be able to continue to count on the collaboration of DAGOBERT, and should he not wish to remain here we would like to have him in the new organisation in Canada, which I will deal with more fully later in this letter.
With regard to BENEDICT, who is undoubtedly your best collaborator, there is no need for me to say anything more since we have expressed, above, our opinion of him.
As to 3(1) and 3(2), it is a long time since we have had news of them. (Possibly your friend who was in contact with them is no longer able to maintain this contact.) If this is the case, please let us know so that we can remove them from our list.
The same applies to 3(3) as has been said about DRAKE, DICK and DORICK, though I think that this is a case where the informant might intensify his work a little, since it is undoubtedly the case that a lot of important military activities are taking place in the north, in spite of the fact that the possibility of an embarkation from there appears, for the moment, to have disappeared.
I shall deal more fully with CHAMILLUS, together with the Canadian project. The effort which he made when the invasion was about to take place merits the highest recognition and praise. I perfectly well understand that what he is doing now and his present situation must be intolerable, and I consider that we should please him as quickly as possible.
ALMURA continues to carry out his mission with all perfection and reliability. He has acquired a great deal of practice since he has been transmitting. The transmissions have sometimes been very difficult, owing to atmospheric conditions and other disturbances. Should he be able to modify his set, increasing the frequency bands from 5,000 to 9,000 Kcs, for example, we should be able to adapt more favourable frequencies to the general conditions and times of transmission. If he cannot do it, it does not matter, because we have managed to get along like this and will continue to do so.
4(2) is another of the agents about whom we have had no news for some time. I therefore hope that you will also let me know in this connection whether we may remove him from our list or whether this agent is collaborating with you in some other connection.
With regard to your friends J(3) and J(5), I do not think they call for any special mention. This information from the MOI, which you have obtained through J(3), has on many occasions made it possible for us to be able to draw important conclusions and this friend has, furthermore, served your cover magnificently.
With reference to J(1), I can tell you that the sending of correspondence has worked recently to perfection. Some letters have been in my possession within a week.
This historic document was the best confirmation of the success that GARBO and his network had achieved. There were no complaints, no recriminations for all the misinformation that had been conveyed over the previous two and a half years. Every plausible word of the deception campaign had been swallowed whole by the enemy. DAGOBERT’s ring was held in such esteem that MI5 were determined to wring every last advantage from it. DONNY was singled out in more than one ISOS decrypt as a ‘hitherto particularly reliable source’, so he was exploited further:
Southampton and surrounding areas. Most military camps in the area are occupied by US troops. All roads extremely busy with large convoy movements. Saw following troops and vehicles: Fourteenth US Army, XXXIII US Corps, US Division with the sign of the letter ‘VV’ in white interlaced with the number ‘9’ on a blue oval, 11th US Infantry Division, SOS SHAEF, 48th US Division, 59th US rattlesnake Division, 9th US Armoured Division, 25th US Armoured Division, 2nd British Airborne Division. General impression: great activity and movement of troops, vehicles, armour and supplies. Fourteenth US Army was recently reported by DORICK as having left his area.
All these assessments turned up, sooner or later, in the ISOS material intercepted by GCHQ. The Abwehr and the Wehrmacht high command seemed oblivious to the huge scale of the deception, and perhaps the ultimate irony lay in the fact that GARBO was receiving constant praise and funds from the victims of his imaginative duplicity. But just as GARBO and Tommy Harris were congratulating themselves on their triumph, disaster suddenly loomed large. The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service station in Madrid reported that a locally based Abwehr agent had offered to betray his organisation’s chief agent in Spain. The news caused consternation in St James’s Street.
SIS’s man in the Spanish capital was Captain Hamilton-Stokes, who ran the British passport control office from the first floor of the British embassy annex in the Monte Scinta. On the floor above him the Section V representative, Jack Ivens, ran a small counter-intelligence department to monitor the enemy’s activities in and around Madrid. Suddenly, in mid-August 1944, Ivens received a telephone call from the embassy’s press attaché calling him to a meeting with a German who had walked into his office without warning. The German was a low-level Abwehr case officer named Fritz Guttmann, who made an intriguing proposition: he would give details of a major German spy ring run by a Spaniard in Britain
in return for protection and help in getting to London. He was also prepared to trade his own star agent, an officer of the Directión General de Intelligencia (DGI), Franco’s intelligence service. The latter item was of no great interest to SIS, but Section V judged that the first would certainly intrigue MI5. Ivens agreed to communicate Guttman’s suggestion to headquarters, and suggested that he return once he had received his instructions. Apparently satisfied, the German left the embassy by the front door.
Since the Security Service were confident that all the enemy’s agents in Britain were operating under their supervision, it was clear that Guttman was actually offering to identify the man known to him as ARABEL, and to MI5 as GARBO. Somehow the Abwehr man had to be prevented from carrying out his plan, as it would be impossible to maintain GARBO if the Germans suspected that he had been betrayed by a defector. Fortunately, Ivens had stalled for time and Guttman had declined to go into any detail for fear of showing his hand before a deal had been struck. This enabled Tommy Harris to dream up a characteristically ingenious solution to the problem. Early in September, GARBO reported that his courier had recently met someone in Lisbon who had mentioned that Guttman was planning to defect to the Allies. But instead of eliminating Guttman, which might suggest to the British that there had been a leak, the traitor should be allowed to continue his work. However, Guttman should be informed that GARBO had recently fallen under police suspicion (which was partly true) and that he had been obliged to flee England. This manoeuvre would reduce GARBO’s value to the British should Guttman defect and, in all probability, would prevent Guttman from making a further approach. The Abwehr was delighted with the scheme and GARBO promptly wrote a number of letters as though he had made good his escape to Spain. At the Abstelle in Madrid word was circulated to Guttman that ARABEL had fled the country and the police in London were now resigned to the fact that he had escaped and had given up calling at his lodging.
The plan worked, and Guttman failed to make a second appearance at the British embassy. Evidently he did not have much confidence in the value of his DGI source to the British. It was later reported that Guttman committed suicide rather than face interrogation.
This narrow escape, similar to the ARTIST crisis earlier in the year, highlighted the danger that GARBO was facing in London. As he was notionally under police suspicion, at the end of September 1944 it was agreed with Madrid that he should go into hiding at the remote Welsh farmhouse that had been used by the deserter CHAMILLUS before his departure for Canada. But life in the rugged countryside did not suit GARBO. On 3 October he wrote a long letter, his thirtieth, describing his rain-sodden surroundings and his uncongenial companions:
There were three of us, the Welsh couple and a Belgian. The former are both fairly old, each of about sixty years of age. They work all day long in the fields looking after the farm, which consists of four herds of cattle and about a hundred fowls. The house is miserable and poor and it only has electricity through a miracle, since the electricity supply happens to pass through some mountains and goes to a village which is only ten miles away. The old man is a Welsh Nationalist who, in his youth, worked a great deal for the party. His English is worse than mine and I mostly do not understand what he says. They speak Welsh when they are talking together. He is now no longer mixed up in politics. He is a friend of DONNY and it is in this farm that the group which was formed by those who are now working for us used to print their propaganda leaflets. They used to hide their documents; they had, and still have, a secret cellar which leads out of the basement of the house. It is a sort of shelter where the Belgian and I would hide should there be an unexpected visit from one of the neighbours. This, however, is very unlikely, since in this corner of the world no one will ever turn up, and secondly, because the nearest neighbour lives two and a half miles away from the farm. The Belgian is a man who is a little simple. I do not know whether his brains are atrophied. On studying him, he seems to be abnormal. We spend the day on our own, listening to the radio and reading books.
The Abwehr were suitably distressed by GARBO’s plight and, on 1 January 1945, he received the following from Lisbon, dated 12 December 1944:
My dear friend and colleague, the days are approaching which, in normal times, would be days of good cheer for us all. We are living through the decisive hours for the future of humanity and the civilisation of Europe and surely for the whole world, and the thoughts of the tremendous unhappiness which this evolution has, to some extent, brought with it for millions of human beings does not allow conscientious people to enter into the good atmosphere of these festive moments. Thus, during these days we will devote ourselves with more intensity, if this should be possible, to thinking about our companions who, in the performance of their duty and in defence of their ideals, are now in a dangerous situation, terrible and very disagreeable. I should like to be a writer in order that I should have facility to find the words which might fully give you to understand the high esteem which we all have for you and the desire we and our headquarters have to collaborate with you.
We have, in your personality, your character, your valour, all these virtues which become a gentleman. I hope, nevertheless, that from what I have written to you, you will have been able to feel that which perhaps through lack of ability to express myself in the written word I have been unable to impress adequately. We here, in the very small circle of colleagues who know your story and that of your organisation, talk so often about you that it often seems as if we were living the incidents which you relate to us, and we most certainly share, to the full, your worries. On account of them, I know that with the approach of Christmas you will be suffering many bitter moments at having to spend these days separated from the people who mean most in your life. I trust, nevertheless, that the satisfaction of being able to contribute, through the mediation of the organisation which you have created, to a sacred cause, which is that of the struggle for the maintenance of order and salvation in our continent, will give you comfort and moral strength to be able to go ahead with us until we have overcome our obstacles.
At the termination of this year of truly extraordinary struggles, I wish to express to you our firm and absolute conviction that next year will bring us further along our none too easy road, at the end of which we will find that which has been awaiting us as a worthy recompense for all the sacrifices which this temporary task has imposed upon us.
For you, personally, my dear friend, you already know that my greatest wish is to see you soon free from your present critical situation and united once more with your family. We pray to the Almighty that He may give them and you His protection as He has done up till now, and that He may inspire those who direct the destination of countries to avoid the final catastrophe in the world. What is now taking place in many countries in Europe is perhaps the first way of light which He has shown us to illuminate and demonstrate what would occur if wise judgment is not shown in time, in order that it should be appreciated where the true danger lies.
These thoughts are also, to some extent, directed to all the companions of your organisation. I trust that it will be possible for you to pass them our thoughts, our good wishes and our gratitude for their magnificent work, and, in particular, to those who have helped you to resolve the present situation as true friends, to BENEDICT, DAGOBERT, the courier, DONNY etc. We hope very sincerely that one of these days it will be possible for us to express to them all our feelings in a more concrete form.
I know, my dear friend, that it is not possible to recompense materially all that you and your organisation are doing; nevertheless, I wish very sincerely that all your colleagues should have the possibility of being able to do something during the days of Christmas which will remind them that our thoughts are with you. Were it possible, I would send from here something to each of them as a small token. In view of the circumstances, I have no alternative but to confine myself to money, which, I trust, they will be able to accept as an expression of personal attention. I should be gra
teful to you, therefore, if you would take the necessary measures to effect this, and I leave it to your judgment to decide the amount which should be given to each of them in accordance with your knowledge of the various friends. I think that maybe the equivalent of a month’s payment might be suitable, but as I have already said, you have absolute freedom to take the decision in this connection.
Operation Garbo Page 20