63 Wilson, ‘War in the Dark’, pp. 118–19.
64 ‘Muller, Carl Friedrich Heinrich @ Leidec [and] Hahn, John’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 1: 1909–1915, TNA KV 4/112.
65 RW 5/v. 48 – Geheimer Nachrichtendienst und Spionageabwehr des Heeres – von Generalmajor z.V. Gempp (1939), 8. Abschnitt: Die Ergebnisse das Nachrichtendienstes der mobilen Abt Illb in westen vom Fruhjahr 1915 bis Ende 1916, IV: Die Kriegsnachrichtenstelle Antwerpen Anlage 5: Meldungen der Kriegsnachrichtenstelle Antwerpen vom 25.3.15–14.6.15, Bundesarchiv Militararchiv, Freiburg.
66 W. E. Hinchley Cooke to DG (Petrie), ‘Motor-car purchased by MI5 out of German Secret Service Funds during the 1914–18 War’, 29 June 1943, TNA KV 4/200.
67 ‘The Secret Services: Inquiry by the Minister without Portfolio [Lord Hankey]. Second Report dealing with the Security Service (MI5)’, Jan.–May 1940, TNA CAB 127/383.
68 W. E. Hinchley Cooke to DG (Petrie), ‘Motor-car purchased by MI5 out of German Secret Service Funds during the 1914–18 War’, 29 June 1943, TNA KV 4/200.
69 See below, pp. 248–50, 253.
70 ‘Rosenthal, Robert @ Berger, Harry B.’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 1: 1909–1915, TNA KV 4/112. Draft History of G Branch, vol. 4, pp. 111ff., TNA KV 1/42.
71 Felstead, German Spies at Bay, pp. 44–56. Felstead appears to have had access to MI5 as well as Special Branch reports when writing his book. Drake later told Hall, ‘B[asil] T[homson] gave him my reports to read, I understand.’ Drake to Admiral Hall, 1 Nov. 1932, CCAC HALL 1/3.
72 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, p. 115.
73 Felstead, German Spies at Bay, p. 56.
74 Security Service Archives.
75 ‘(i) Janssen, Haicke Marinus Petrus (ii) Roos, Willem Johannes’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 1: 1909–1915, TNA KV 4/112. ‘Principal German Espionage Agents captured in the United Kingdom by M.I.5, 1909 to 1919’, May 1919, TNA KV 4/114.
76 Commandant Hue, head of the French mission at the Bureau Central Interallié, complained in 1917 that ‘Up to now, attempts at establishing [intelligence] liaison with allied armies seem to have produced few results.’ Aubin, ‘French Counterintelligence and British Secret Intelligence in the Netherlands’, p. 19.
77 Major General Sir Walter Kirke diary, 15 June 1915, IWM.
78 Felstead, German Spies at Bay, ch. 4. Lady Kell, ‘Secret Well Kept’, p. 154, IWM.
79 Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 133, 221.
80 ‘Marks, Josef @ Multer, Josef Marks’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916[sic]–1937, TNA KV 4/113. ‘Principal German Espionage Agents captured in the United Kingdom by M.I.5, 1909 to 1919’, May 1919, TNA KV 4/114.
81 Albert Meyer, Frank Greite, Mrs Albertine Stanaway, Leopold Vieyra. ‘Principal German Espionage Agents captured in the United Kingdom by M.I.5, 1909 to 1919’, May 1919, TNA KV 4/114. ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
82 George Vaux Bacon; see below, pp. 73–5.
83 Felstead, German Spies at Bay, p. 109.
84 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, p. 106.
85 Felstead, German Spies at Bay, pp. 110, 139, 150, 209–15, 284. ‘Hurwitz y Zender, Ludovico’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
86 Security Service Archives.
87 ‘Bacon, George Vaux’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
88 ‘Principal German Espionage Agents captured in the United Kingdom by M.I.5, 1909 to 1919’, May 1919, TNA KV 4/114.
89 ‘Bacon, George Vaux’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
90 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 136–7.
91 Draft G Branch History, ch. 12, pp. 155ff., TNA KV 1/43. ‘Bacon, George Vaux’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
92 MI5’s first foreign double agent had been the German spy Armgaard Karl Graves, recruited by Kell in 1912. Graves, however, deceived both Kell and German intelligence. See above, pp. 40–41. The first wartime double agents were two Indians recruited in October 1915 to report on German attempts to subvert the British Raj. See below, p. 92.
93 ‘Wife Sues Editor Whytock’, New York Times, 9 Sept. 1911.
94 Whytock’s identity and role are revealed in ‘Bacon, George Vaux’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113. Further details (though not Whytock’s identity) are contained in Draft G Branch History, ch. 12, pp. 160ff., TNA KV 1/43.
95 Captain Roslyn Whytock’s position in US military intelligence was mentioned by the New York Times on 30 Oct. 1918 in a report on an injury suffered by his brother, Lieutenant Norman R. Whytock, while fighting in France.
96 ‘Bacon, George Vaux’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
97 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, p. 138.
98 Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 169–77.
99 Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 31–46.
100 ‘Game Book’, vol. 1: 1909–1915, TNA KV 4/112; vol. 2, 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113. A post-war MI5 count of ‘persons convicted of espionage, treason &c’ also arrived at a figure of sixty-five; ‘Certain Offences against the Defence of the Realm Regulations 1914–1919.Estimate of Cases leading to conviction or executive action, as dealt with by the Security Service (Approximate figures)’, TNA KV 4/114.
101 The names and/or codenames of agents recorded in German archives are listed in Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, appendix 3.
102 The first three names on Dr Boghardt’s list fit this category. In many other cases details of agents’ roles have not survived. Ibid.
103 See above, p. 51.
104 Security Service Archives. On COMO’s first attempt to track down German spies in Britain who were out of contact, see above, p. 72.
105 After the First World War, numerous authors published accounts of alleged German secret missions to Britain, most of which have since proved to be vastly exaggerated or wholly invented. In a book entitled The Invisible Weapons, published in 1932, Jules Crawford Silber claimed he had conveyed a wealth of critical information to Berlin which he had obtained while working as a British censor in Edinburgh. Dr Boghardt, among others, has doubted the truth of Silber’s claim, arguing that there is no trace of a ‘Silber’ in German archives, and pointing out that Silber revealed in his book only information that was already in the public domain. In the wartime censors’ office the names of known German agents and their addresses were written on large blackboards, for all the censors to see. Had this information really been passed to German intelligence, it would presumably have lost fewer of its main British agents. As Boghardt notes, however, German records on the 120 wartime agents sent to Britain are far from complete. Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 97, 109.
106 E Branch History, ch. 11, pp. 134–5, TNA KV 1/34.
107 Ibid.
108 Simpson, ‘Duties of Local Authorities in War Time’, pp. 5–30. Mellor, ‘Status under the Hague Conference of Civilians who Take up Arms during the Time of War’, pp. 559–78. Ovens, ‘Fighting in Enclosed Country’, pp. 524–46.
109 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser. Several accidental explosions aboard transatlantic shipping were also wrongly blamed on Sektion P.
110 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 122–3. Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, p. 37.
111 Basil Thomson was surely right to argue, ‘The Germans made great use of sabotage in America. Unquestionably, they would have done the same in England if they could . . .’ Thomson, Queer People, p. 194.
112 F Branch Report, TNA KV 1/36. By August 1915, F Branch, headed by Holt-Wilson, contained six officers and seven clerks.
113 Branch nomenclature during MO5(g)’s rapid expansion in 1915 was fluid and somewhat confusing. On its foundation in August 1915, E Branch was commonly referred to as MO5(e). As part of a larger War Office reorganization of MO5, the three existing branches were renamed. MO5(g)A (counter-espionage) became MO5(a); MO5(g)B (aliens, DORA and preventive security) became MO5(f); and MO5(g)C (records, personnel, administration) became MO5(h). These four branch
es became collectively known as MI5 on 3 January 1916. ‘Historical Sketch of the Directorate of Military Intelligence during the Great War of 1914–1919’, TNA WO 32/10776.
114 Security Service Archives.
115 Security Service Archives.
116 A surviving letter from Major Money to Hinchley Cooke in 1916 begins, ‘My dear old Koch’. Security Service Archives.
117 ‘Boehm, Captain Hans W @ Thrasher, Jelks Leroy’, ‘Game Book’, vol. 2: 1916–1937, TNA KV 4/113.
118 German naval documents captured after the Second World War revealed that plans to set up a shipping agency as cover for intelligence operations which included the contamination and poisoning of cargoes bound for enemy ports had begun before the First World War. Security Service Archives.
119 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 133–4.
120 Major J. F. C. Carter (MI5), ‘Alfred Hagn. Alleged German agent’, 30 May 1917, CUL Templewood Papers. Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, p. 130.
121 ‘F-Branch Report: Preventative Security’, p. 9, TNA KV 1/35.
122 General Staff Paper, ‘The Organization of the Services of Military Secrecy, Security and Publicity’, Oct. 1917, p. 44, TNA INF 4/9.
123 Though offering an implausible analysis of her involvement in wartime espionage, Howe, Mata Hari, successfully dismantles the pre-war myths constructed by Zelle about her upbringing and early career.
124 Zelle’s two-volume MI5 file is in TNA KV 2/1–2.
125 Thomson, Queer People, pp. 182–3.
126 TNA KV 2/2.
127 Howe, Mata Hari, pp. 11–12.
128 H. A. Pakenham (Paris) to R. D. Waterhouse, 28 Nov. 1917, TNA KV 2/2.
129 Bird, ‘Control of Enemy Alien Civilians’.
130 According to later MI5 statistics, it recommended 354 aliens for deportation, 226 ‘persons of hostile origin or association’ for internment, 650 ‘suspected persons’ for exclusion from certain areas, and 25 ‘hostile persons’ to be made subject to other personal restrictions. ‘Certain Offences against the Defence of the Realm Regulations 1914–1919. Estimate of Cases leading to conviction or executive action, as dealt with by the Security Service (Approximate figures)’, TNA KV 4/114.
131 After the war Holt-Wilson wrote an enthusiastic reference for Hinchley Cooke. Security Service Archives.
132 Holt-Wilson, ‘Memorandum on the Military Inexpediency of permitting persons of German blood to remain at large during the present organization of this country for war’, 15 June 1915, TNA KV 1/65, pp. 271–5.
133 See above, p. 38.
134 See above, pp. 71, 72.
135 Thomson, Scene Changes, passim.
136 Holt-Wilson, ‘Security Intelligence in War’, 1934, IWM Kell MSS.
137 Drake to Admiral Hall, 1 Nov. 1932, CCAC HALL 1/3. An MI5 summary of espionage cases over the previous decade confirms that ‘There is no instance on record of any spy, enemy agent, sub-agent or associate having been discovered, detected or captured as a result of original information obtained or supplied by Scotland Yard or any of the Civil Police of the United Kingdom.’ ‘Principal German Espionage Agents captured in the United Kingdom by M.I.5, 1909–1919’, TNA KV 4/114, s. 8a.
138 Bell to Leland Harrison, 2 May 1919, enclosing memo on British intelligence, Library of Congress, Leland Harrison MSS.
139 Newman, Speaking from Memory, p. 93.
Chapter 3: The First World War:
Part 2 – The Rise of Counter-Suberversion
1 Security Service, p. 72.
2 339 of the departures occurred in 1918. Security Intelligence Service Seniority List and Register of Past and Present Members, December 1919.
3 Security Intelligence Service Seniority List and Register of Past and Present Members, December 1919.
4 Kell was also at work on Christmas Day, 1916; see below, p. 97.
5 H Branch Report, Security Service Archives. Much of the increase in the card index during the later stages of the war was due to the MI5 Ports Police. A memoir of the Registry records that by 1917 the card index filled 748 large boxes; Security Service Archives. A later head of Registry believes that each box was capable of holding up to a thousand cards.
6 Only vol. 24 of the Black List, dated October 1918, survives in MI5 records, containing names numbered from 10914 to 11275; TNA KV 1/61. By this time the suspects were global in range, from as far afield as North and South America, Japan and Polynesia. Some names had been supplied by the French, Belgian and US liaison.
7 Security Service Archives.
8 Security Service Archives.
9 W. E. Hinchley Cooke to DG (Petrie), ‘Motor-car purchased by MI5 out of German Secret Service Funds during the 1914–18 War’, 29 June 1943, TNA KV 4/200. By a curious coincidence, which some might interpret as conspiracy, Cumming’s official car was also stolen.
10 ‘Historical Sketch of the Directorate of Military Intelligence during the Great War of 1914–1919’, TNA WO 32/10776.
11 Security Service, p. 98. There are minor discrepancies between Curry’s and other figures.
12 Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 117–18.
13 Two telegrams marked ‘Private and Secret’ from Findlay (Christiania) to FO, 30 Oct. 1914, with minutes by Grey, TNA MEPO 2/10660. Details of several Irish agents who also provided intelligence on Casement to British intelligence agencies still remain classified in order to maintain government policy of neither confirming nor denying the names of former agents.
14 Copies of Casement to MacNeill, 28 Nov. 1914, with covering letter from Casement to Mrs A. S. Green, TNA KV 2/8. The letter to Mrs Green is quoted in Sawyer, Casement, p. 119.
15 Sawyer, Casement, p. 115.
16 Andrew, Secret Service, p. 356. Frank Hall, then a captain, had joined MO5(g) in December 1914; Security Intelligence Service Seniority List and Register of Past and Present Members, December 1919.
17 Dudgeon, Roger Casement – The Black Diaries, pp. 481–5.
18 Security Service Archives.
19 Churchill too admired Hall’s expertise. Churchill to Lord French, 17 April 1919, CCAC CHAR 16/6.
20 Andrew, Secret Service, p. 356.
21 Inspector Edward Parker (Special Branch), ‘Interview with Sir E. Blackwell, Home Office’, 18 July 1916, TNA MEPO 2/10664.
22 O’Halpin, ‘British Intelligence in Ireland’, pp. 59–61.
23 TNA KV 2/8.
24 Findlay (Christiania) to FO, 30 Oct. 1914, with minute by Grey, TNA MEPO 2/10660.
25 Findlay (Christiania) to Nicolson (FO), 3 Jan. 1915, ‘Most Private and Secret’, TNA KV 2/6; Statement by Christensen to Chief Inspector Ward in Philadelphia, 23 May 1916, TNA KV 2/9.
26 Dudgeon, Roger Casement – The Black Diaries.
27 Report by Dr Audrey Giles in Daly (ed.), Roger Casement in Irish and World History.
28 On the use of forged documents in KGB ‘active measures’, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive. Though British intelligence did not forge the ‘Black Diaries’, Captain Hall and others made unscrupulous use of them after Casement’s conviction to undermine the campaign to secure clemency. Andrew, ‘Casement and British Intelligence’.
29 Andrew, Secret Service, ch. 8. O’Halpin, ‘British Intelligence in Ireland’.
30 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory.
31 D Branch Report, p. 63, TNA KV 1/36.
32 Following the assassination in London of Sir William Curzon Wyllie in 1909, a four-man Indian section was added to the MPSB. Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, p. 132.
33 Ibid., p. 139.
34 Ibid., p. 176.
35 Fraser, ‘Germany and Indian Revolution’, p. 258.
36 Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, pp. 178–9.
37 Ibid., pp. 220–21.
38 Ibid., pp. 219–20.
39 Security Intelligence Service Seniority List and Register of Past and Present Members, December 1919.
40 Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, p. 218. The co
mmittee had representatives from the Indian, Colonial, Foreign and War Offices, and the Admiralty.
41 Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, p. 220.
42 Ibid.
43 Datta, Madan Lal Dinghra, p. 77.
44 Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, pp. 225–6.
45 Ibid., pp. 226–9.
46 Nathan left MI5 on 29 February 1916. Security Intelligence Service Seniority List and Register of Past and Present Members, December 1919. In August 1919 Nathan joined SIS as head of the Political Section.
47 Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, pp. 245–51.
48 Thomson, Queer People, p. 103.
49 Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, p. 251.
50 Ibid., p. 219.
51 Ibid., p. 189.
52 D Branch Report, p. 14, TNA KV 1/35. D Branch Report, p. 135, TNA KV 1/36. On 15 January 1917 a new section, MI5(b), was set up to deal with ‘questions affecting natives of India and other Oriental races’; this was absorbed by D Branch on 1 September 1917.
53 D Branch Report, p. 13, TNA KV 1/19.
54 See below, p. 138.
55 Thomson, Queer People, p. 266.
56 Security Service Archives.
57 Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage and Security in Great Britain during the First World War’, p. 651.
58 Major V. Ferguson (MI5) to Sir Ernley Blackwell (Legal Adviser, Home Office), 30 June 1916, TNA HO 45/1081/307402, file 75.
59 Major V. Ferguson, Note for Kell, 14 June 1916, TNA HO 45/10801/307402, file 75. I am very grateful to Dr Nicholas Hiley for providing a photograph of this document. The original is now missing from the file.
60 Holt-Wilson, General Staff paper, ‘The organisation of the Services of military secrecy, security and publicity’, 1917, TNA INF 4/9.
61 Thomson, Queer People, p. 269.
62 Clarke, Hope and Glory, p. 79.
63 ‘Revolutionary Agencies at Work’, pp. 62ff., TNA KV 1/43.
64 Debo, ‘Georgii Chicherin in England’, p. 655.
65 ‘Memorandum regarding the Russian section of the Communist Club’, enclosed with recommendation by Kell for Chicherin’s internment, dated 26 Jan. 1917, TNA HO 144/2158.
The Defence of the Realm Page 119