run by 41 and 42 Committees included:
ARTHUR – a rich Spanish Jew in Oran who had links with the Spanish Consul in French Morocco. He passed information picked up in high circles by weekly letter between March and October 1943.
CHER BÉBÉ - a Spanish mechanic hired by the Germans as an agent, run through the Spanish consul in Oran. A reluctant CEA, he worked on deception for some months from May 1943. He had initially been intended as a penetration agent, but the apparent confidence placed in him by the Germans made him a suitable deception channel.
CUPID - a young, attractive German Jewess, running a bar in Casablanca and corresponding by SW to the Abwehr in Barcelona. She was run for deception between March and June 1943.
DAVIL – one of the more important deception channels, he was a French penetration agent who was employed by the Germans in Madrid and sent to Casablanca with a W/T set. He sent information on aviation, military order of battle and shipping from January to June 1944, while employed at the Casablanca Air Base.
EL GITANO – Based in Oran, this Spanish hairdresser, smuggler and pimp was a German (1942) and later an Italian agent (1943), used for low-level deception until February 1944. [44]
Double agents and CEAs run by the Forty Committees were used only for deception purposes through 1943, and a study of ISOS in June 1942 concluded that, while there was a lot of uncontrolled leakage in AFHQ’s zone, only about 10% was true and the number of bad reports only served to build up the controlled sources, who were passing accurate but inconsequential chickenfeed. Opportunities to expand the double agent stable in North Africa were rejected by the Forty Committees because they lacked the chickenfeed to build up and sustain new agents. An example of this was the decision of the 41 Committee not to pursue orders from the Germans in March 1943 to two double agents, EL GITANO and LE PETIT, to recruit more sub-agents (LE PETIT was a Spanish secret service agent, employed as an interpreter for the Americans at the Oran docks and used from April 1943 to August 1944 to pass high-level deception material via the Spanish vice-consul at Oujda). [45]
This restriction of the size of the DA stable was an indication of the influence of A Force policy, which was concerned with controlling deception agents rather than using DAs and CEAs for penetration purposes. The French authorities remained the controlling body for CE work in their North African territories, and they may have continued to operate other cases for this purpose unilaterally. It does serve as a reminder, however, that different agencies pushed their own agendas, and in the Mediterranean, A Force was in the driver’s seat.
The final word on the Middle East specifically, should be a quote from an official post-war report by MI6 on the use of ISOS:
“For a considerable part of the war five British controlled German agents or groups of agents regularly transmitted by W/T to their German controlling station reports prepared by the Middle East strategic deceptionists. After the British entry into Greece two British-controlled Abwehr agents transmitted similar reports from Athens. Their reports often elicited from the enemy useful directives and questionnaires – and occasionally large sums of money as payment.Apart from these, there were in various parts of the Middle East and Turkey numerous British controlled agents through whom deception material was passed to the enemy. ISOS was the only sure check of their good faith. Sometimes it revealed interesting sidelights, e.g. that the Turks for reasons of their own were planting false information on the Germans on a very wide scale. ISOS also made clear when apparently straight British intelligence agents were in fact controlled by the enemy. These were then used for deception purposes by being given suitably misleading questionnaires.On a small scale British controlled German agents and German controlled British agents were also used to penetrate the German intelligence organizations. Information obtained in this way proved a valuable supplement to ISOS as ISOS proved a valuable check on its veracity.” [46]
Footnotes
a) In both “Deceiving Hitler” by Terry Crowdy (p 138), and also in “Master of Deception” by David Mure (p 68) the NCO is identified as Ellis; in “A Force” by Whitney T Bendeck (p 116) he is called Shears. In Thaddeus Holt’s ”The Deceivers”, p 40n, Holt confusingly attributes the W/T operation of LAMBERT aka Nicossof to both Ellis and Shears, but also claims that Shears was the radio operator for the agent STEPHAN. The MI5 file (KV 2/1133) states that there were a couple of operators at the start of the operation, but Shears was the longest- serving.
b) See Chapters 7-11 for more on Harmer, G Ops SHAEF (which ran deception means in NW Europe) and 104 SCIU.
c) Sensburg was the controller of a number of Allied Double-Cross agents based in the Middle East while working at AST Athens.
Chapter 2 Endnotes
A Force , SIME and ISLD
1 “Master of Deception”, by David Mure, pp 48, 63-64, William Kimber & Co, 1980.
2 “British Intelligence in the Second World War, Vol 5, Strategic Deception”, by Michael Howard, p 32. A footnote states that ISOS traffic from the Middle East was broken from June 1941 onwards, but the MI6 controlling section in Cairo was not set up until nearly a year later).
3 “Use of ISOS by Section V during the War”, dated 2 May 1946, p 28, HW19/321, NA Kew.
4 “Security and Counter-Intelligence in the Middle East in the Second World War (to September 1943)” dated 14 Sep 1943 (WO/204/12907, NA Kew).
5 “Security and Counter-Intelligence in the Middle East in the Second World War (to September 1943)”, 14 Sep 1943, WO/204/12907, NA Kew.
6 “James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence”, by Michael Holzman, p 46, University of Massachussetts Press, Amherst, 2008.
7 “A Force”, by Whitney T Bendeck, p 117, Naval Institute Press 2013.
8 CHEESE Case Report as attachment to Minute ADB1 to B1A Major Robertson dated 3/3/43, KV 2/1133, NA Kew.
9 “Confidence Men – the Mediterranean Double-Cross System, 1941-45”, Dissertation by Brett Edward Lintott, pp 21-22 (Footnote 36), Graduate Department of History, University of Toronto 2015.
10 “I Spied Spies”, by Major A W Sansom, pp 142-143, George G Harrap and Co, Ltd, London, 1965.
11 Letter dated 3 June 1944 ref PF 55552/ADB/TAR from Lt Col TA Robertson, MI5 to Maj JC Robertson, SIME, KV 2/1133, NA Kew.
12 Levi Letter to the British Embassy in Istanbul dated 10 February 1944, KV 2/1133, NA Kew.
13 Oral Interview, Kisray, Rene 'Mac', Production date 27 Sep 1991, by Imperial War Museum, Catalogue number 12325. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80012060.
14 Telegram Maunsell, SIME to DG, MI5, dated 6/1/43, KV 2/1133, NA Kew.
15 “Confidence Men – the Mediterranean Double-Cross System, 1941-45”, Dissertation by Brett Edward Lintott, pp 70-71,100, 102, Graduate Department of History, University of Toronto 2015.
16 “CHEESE/MISANTHROPE”, Specil Section SIME letter dated 14 March 1945 to MI5, KV2/1133, NA Kew.
17 “Security and Counter-Intelligence in the Middle East in the Second World War (to September 1943)”,
