Philby’s guilt again raised the spectre of an extensive, deep-rooted network of ideologically motivated Soviet agents in the very heart of the British establishment. A massive molehunt followed, but inevitably, and in the absence of Kim Philby, MI5 was forced to return to its first suspects after the defection of Burgess and Maclean: John Cairncross and Anthony Blunt. Cairncross underwent a further interrogation at his new home in the United States late in March 1964, and was a lot more forthcoming about his own activities, although he denied knowledge of any other Soviet agents. That left only Anthony Blunt. Coincidentally, Michael Straight, Blunt’s former pupil at Cambridge and a one-time recruit, volunteered a highly incriminating statement to the FBI in Washington, which finally led to the interrogation and confession of Sir Anthony Blunt on 22 April 1964. Then the keeper of the Queen’s pictures, he had not had access to any official secrets since his retirement from MI5 in 1945, but he did confirm that a large spy ring had been created by Soviet recruiters in the mid-1930s, and that many of its members had achieved positions of authority within Whitehall and the intelligence community. Although he knew the names of many Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates who might have been approached, he merely confirmed the guilt of those like Cairncross who were already well known to the Security Service. In the months that followed dozens of leads were pursued, and two more friends of Tommy Harris came under suspicion: Lord Rothschild and Peter Wilson.
Lord Rothschild had been a member of the famous Apostles, the secret society at Cambridge that had nurtured so many Soviet agents. Among them had been Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Leo Long and Alistair Watson. The latter two had been identified as Soviet spies by Blunt. Long had been a wartime military intelligence officer and, after a fruitless attempt to join MI5, had worked for a film company in London. Alistair Watson, on the other hand, had been an admiralty scientist specialising in antisubmarine warfare. He later gave a partial confession: he admitted being a covert communist and having conducted covert meetings with Soviet intelligence officers, but denied ever having passed on classified information from the admiralty. He was promptly moved into a less sensitive position.
In 1940 Rothschild had joined the Security Service, and had subsequently recommended Blunt for a transfer into MI5, but had returned to scientific research at the end of hostilities. When questioned by MI5 in 1964 he had ‘felt it essential to help them in every possible way’ and successfully cleared himself of any suspicion.
Before the war, Peter Wilson had been appointed a director of the art auctioneers Sotheby’s, and had later served in MI6. He had been a regular visitor to Tommy Harris’s gallery home in Chesterfield Gardens and had known Philby, Blunt and Burgess both professionally, while a serving MI6 officer, and socially. Like Blunt and Burgess, he was an active homosexual. But had he also been a Soviet spy?
The one person who seemed to be at the centre of these events, Tommy Harris, was killed in a car accident in January 1964, a year after Philby’s escape from Beirut and three months before Blunt was induced to confess his treachery. Harris had been driving Hilda from Palma, where they had been seen to argue at a restaurant, and both had consumed a great deal of alcohol. Instead of heading toward his home at Camp de Mar, Harris had turned inland in the direction of a pottery which he had commissioned to glaze some of his latest ceramics, and he lost control of his new, powerful Citröen on a humpback bridge on the notorious Lluchmayor Road. The car had spun off the road and had hit an almond tree, killing Harris instantly. Miraculously, Hilda had been thrown clear and had suffered only minor injuries. A discreet but necessarily superficial investigation had followed, and such evidence as could be found had pointed toward the crash having been entirely accidental. However, not everyone had been convinced, and more than one intelligence officer has commented on the fact that Harris had driven along the Lluchmayor Road many hundreds of times before the crash occurred. Although the road has some tortuous bends, the bridge where the car ran off the road is actually quite straight. Was it likely that such an experienced driver would lose control of his car on a perfectly straight road? Or had alcohol, combined with a domestic argument, stolen his judgment?
Of the very few Allied intelligence officers who were allowed to learn GARBO’s full story, it is extraordinary that at least two, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, should have turned out to be very senior Russian spies. The fact that Tommy Harris, the genius who masterminded the operation, should have been killed in such circumstances and at such a time is remarkable. Although Hilda survived the car crash, she never fully recovered her health and, unable to live alone, died not long afterward. Forty years after GARBO’s departure for Venezuela, most of the principal participants have either departed to Moscow or died, and the conundrum remains as insoluble as ever.
APPENDIX I
By Colonel R. F. Hesketh OBE TD
The aim of Operation FORTITUDE, the cover plan for the invasion of occupied Europe in June 1944, was to convince the enemy that the landings on the Normandy beaches were a feint and that the main attack would be made in the Pas-de-Calais region. Largely thanks to the code breakers at Bletchley and the efforts of the British Security Service, MI5, there were no genuine German spies in England to betray our intentions. In fact, the only Abwehr sources at large were those who were the double-cross agents operating under the control of MI5’s B1(a) section, headed by Colonel T. A. Robertson. He and his team provided us with a ready-made channel for passing our fictitious story to the German high command.
The deception staff at SHAEF, under Colonel Noel Wild and known as Ops B, was divided into two sections. One, under Colonel Jervis Read, dealing with physical deception, such as camouflage, and the other, generally known as the special means section, for which I was responsible, dealing with all forms of controlled leakages. Events proved that the only consistently effective conduit for passing false information to the enemy was that provided by the double agents, and it was to feed this channel that, within the overall framework, a succession of special means plans were prepared and put into operation, each being designed to meet changes in the situation. There was at all times a close liaison with Colonel David Strangeways, who was in charge of deception at 21 Army Group, largely to ensure that there should be no conflict between the cover plan and the operation itself.
When the implementation of FORTITUDE first began, an MI5 officer from B1(a) was seconded to us to help in the task of passing the story to the enemy through double agents. It must be explained here that every double-cross agent had a case officer who looked after his affairs generally and, as there was a strict rule that there should be no direct contact between the SHAEF deception staff and the agents themselves, it was invariably the case officer who visited our office at Norfolk House to receive the information that was to be conveyed through his agent, and then made sure that the message was passed correctly.
From the start, it was thought likely that GARBO would provide one of our best channels. Unlike many of the other double-cross agents, GARBO’s sympathies had lain all along with the Allied cause. GARBO’s status was amply confirmed by an examination of the German intelligence reports for the year 1944, made after the war had ended. Because of his high standing with his Abwehr masters, much of the burden of communicating the FORTITUDE plan fell to GARBO and his case officer, Tommy Harris. German faith in him hardly faltered, even after the beachhead in Normandy had been well established. The post-war analysis demonstrated that, during the period of the FORTITUDE campaign, no less than sixty-two of his messages were quoted in the German high command’s intelligence summaries.
As the date for the invasion drew near, General Eisenhower was asked when the all-important message might be transmitted which would specifically affirm that the Allied attack in Normandy was merely a feint and that the main assault was destined for the Pas-de-Calais. This part of the cover plan had been supported by an apparent concentration of troops in south-east England. Eisenhower replied, at any time after the first landings had taken place.<
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Because of his reliability and his standing with the enemy, GARBO was chosen for this task, but his case officer insisted on a three-day delay before sending the message. He pointed out that if the Germans could be persuaded to recall troops who were already on the move, there would be little chance of them changing their minds again. Accordingly, GARBO’s crucial text was not sent until D+3, when Berlin had already authorised the immediate transfer of forces to the west.
Within hours of the D-Day forces coming ashore, certain German armoured and infantry divisions received orders to move from the Pas-de-Calais to spearhead a German counter-attack in Normandy. But at 0730 hours on the morning of 10 June, the day after GARBO’s wireless transmission, Field Marshal von Rundstedt issued a countermanding order recalling these troops to the Pas-de-Calais, and there they remained. Indeed, there were more German forces in that region at the end of June than there had been on D-Day.
When the war ended I decided to find out whether GARBO’s message had contributed to the issue of the countermanding order. It was important that no time should be lost since, with the war crimes trial approaching, delay might result in some of our best witnesses being no longer with us.
I sought and obtained permission to interview von Rundstedt and his chief of staff, General Blumentritt, who were then being held in a prisoner-of-war camp near Bridgend in Wales. I took with me my brother Cuthbert (who has since died), who had worked with us in SHAEF and had a better command of the German language than me.
When asked why the order had been issued recalling the reinforcements then on their way from the Pas-de-Calais, they both, without hesitation, answered that it had been issued on instructions from the OKW, the supreme command of the German armed forces. It was therefore arranged that my brother should interview field marshals Keitel and Jodl, who were by then awaiting trial at Nuremberg. In the meantime, I was able to find, among captured enemy documents that had been brought to London, GARBO’s message of 9 June. This my brother took with him. On 18 April 1946 I received the following letter from him, which I quote in full:
TOP SECRET
BRITISH WAR CRIMES EXECUTIVES (E.S.)
April 18th, 1946
My dear Roger,
I saw Keitel last night. He agreed that the halting of 1 SS Pz Div would have been an OKW decision as they were very hesitant and nervous about moving anything from the P-de-C at that time. He could not, however, recollect the incident, nor could he say for certain what the ‘bestimmte Unterlagen’ were. He suggested that it might have been air recce of shipping movements on the south coast, so some other report from the Marine or Luftwaffe. When he saw the RSHA message he as good as said, ‘well there you have your answer’. He read through the comment at the end and explained to me that it would have been written by Krummacher and that it exactly represented the frame of mind of the OKW at that moment, which was such that the RSHA report in question would have had just the effect of persuading them to countermand the move of those forces. He added, ‘This message proves to you that what I have been telling you about our dilemma at that time is correct.’ Later he said, ‘You can accept it was 99 per cent certain that this message was the immediate cause of the counter order.’
This morning I managed to get hold of the OKW war diary and I enclose an extract from it which I think will interest you. The rest of the sheet is a list of things which have recently been sent to London, the first one being in fact the war diary, which I will try to get hold of when I get back as it covers the whole of 1944.
I am going to Regensburg tomorrow and return here on Monday to pick up a note which Keitel has promised to write in amplification of what he said yesterday. Then I hope to get the airplane on Tuesday to London.
With love from Cuthbert
Not surprisingly, GARBO’s code name can now be found in virtually every manual on the subject of strategic deception, and his achievements have been well documented in books such as J. C. Masterman’s The Double Cross System in the War of 1939–1945. But although I had worked with GARBO, via MI5’s intermediaries, throughout the latter part of the war, I never discovered his real identity and did not actually meet him in person until May 1984, when he suddenly emerged from his self-imposed obscurity abroad. A few days before the fortieth anniversary of the D-Day landings I was invited to attend a private reception at the Special Forces Club in London where GARBO, who was introduced to me by his real name, Juan Pujol, was reunited with his surviving wartime MI5 colleagues. None had seen him in the intervening years. It was an emotional gathering, and one I shall never forget.
APPENDIX II
GARBO’s Agents
GARBO’s Close Contact No 1 – known as: J(1) or THE COURIER
NAME: Not mentioned.
NATIONALITY: Presumably British.
OCCUPATION: Employed as an official of one of the airline companies running a service between UK and Portugal. (Note:- From the regularity of the service it would appear more likely on analysis that the actual carriers of the letters were members of the KLM rather than BOAC.)
ADDRESS: Not mentioned.
RECRUITED: Prior to 15.7.41.
From the early information about this character, it would have appeared that he was a rather accommodating individual who, taking advantage of his position in a trans-continental airline company, was prepared to facilitate the sending of correspondence to Portugal without passing through Censorship, pretending he thought he could justify his conscience by the knowledge that the writers were political refugees, while increasing his income by so doing.
Though he was never definitely identified with SMITH JONES, the person who received the incoming correspondence for GARBO (and presumably the other characters in England whom the courier was facilitating) the Germans nevertheless frequently referred to him as ‘THE COURIER SMITH’.
It was not advisable that the Germans should believe that the courier carried the correspondence to and from Portugal personally, lest they requested that he should be put in contact with them. Therefore, we took pains to impress upon them that though he did at one time make the journey as a member of the plane’s crew, he later made use of various friends of his who were members of the crew to cooperate in this and the other business of smuggling.
It is a fact that the crews of planes became notorious through the press for engaging in smuggling, and though these activities were mostly confined to the smuggling of watches purchased in Portugal for sale in England, it was reasonable that the Germans should imagine that they engaged in other traffic.
As time went on, the courier developed into a very sinister character who, it became apparent, was trafficking in the sale in Portugal of Bank of England notes, the proceeds of robberies in the UK, which were exchanged in Lisbon for other Bank of England notes which, when brought into circulation in the UK, were no longer traceable to the robberies.
It subsequently became apparent that in order to engage in this very dangerous business the courier made use of a number of rather well placed British subjects in Portugal, one of whom at least was in direct contact with a person either employed by, or used as, an outside agent by SIS.
By means which were never disclosed, the courier came to discover that one of the cover addresses to which GARBO had been writing in Lisbon was a German cover address that had become the subject of investigations by the British in Lisbon.
With this valuable information in his possession, and realising that GARBO was therefore a German agent and not a refugee, he decided to blackmail him. We informed the Germans of this situation. They reacted to it as if it had been news of good fortune rather than bad and promptly authorised GARBO to pay the courier the sum of £2,000, which he was demanding far his silence, pointing out to GARBO that once he had accepted this blackmail money he would be entirely in GARBO’s power.
Though the courier could never be induced to supply the Germans with military information against his country he did, in the interests of his self-protection, produce valuable counter-esp
ionage information for GARBO, which enabled him to escape the vigilance of the British Security Service when, towards the last stages of the case, the Germans were made to realise that the British had become aware of his activities and identity.
GARBO’s Close Contact No 2 – known as: J(2) or GARBO’S AVIATOR FRIEND
NAME: Not mentioned.
NATIONALITY: British.
OCCUPATION: Officer in the RAF.
ADDRESS: British Overseas Club, London, and Bentley Priory, Headquarters of Fighter Command.
RECRUITED: Operated as an unconscious informant from 12.4.42.
The first piece of genuine information supplied by GARBO after his arrival in the UK, which was a report on the rocket batteries in Hyde Park, was attributed to this contact. He was quoted as a source at infrequent intervals throughout the case and was primarily instrumental in serving as a build-up for GARBO.
GARBO’s Close Contact No 3 – known as: J(3) or GARBO’s FRIEND AT THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION
NAME: Not mentioned. (By a careful examination of the traffic and check on the movements of W. B. MCCANN, head of the Spanish section of the Ministry of Information, while in Spain, the Germans would have been bound to draw the conclusion that J(3) and MCCANN were identical.)
NATIONALITY: British.
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