Mediterranean order of battle deception plan.
Begun in February 1944 as a replacement for CASCADE.
ZEPPELIN. Overall name for the Mediterranean components
of BODYGUARD.
A Note on References and Sources
All archival references provided in the endnotes refer to records from the UK National Archives at Kew (NA Kew) unless otherwise noted. Below are the Kew records series utilized:
CAB - Cabinet Office
FO - Foreign Office
HW - Government Code and Cipher School
KV - The Security Service (MI5)
WO - War Office
Information from the UK’s National Archives is Crown copyright, reproduced in accordance with the Open Government Licence for Public Sector Information - see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/.
Documents found in other archives are denoted in endnotes by the following:
AWCL - US Army War College Library. Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, PA.
IWM - Imperial War Museum, London.
NARA - United States National Archives and Records dministration, Washington nd College Park, MD.
Chapter 1 - The Mechanisms of Counter Espionage
Bringing Counter Espionage and ISOS into the Field
In preparation for Operation TORCH, MI6
“provided a mobile SI(b) Unit to carry out covert counter-espionage operations and to be responsible for communicating ISOS information to the I(b) sections and supervising the exploitation of it”. [1]
There has been much written about the intelligence and deception battles fought in WW2 – Thaddeus Holt’s book “The Deceivers” is one example that provides an excellent description of these areas. So far, however, little has been said about Allied Counter-Espionage (CE) work done “in the field”.
The conception, creation, and exploitation of special military counter-espionage units, manned by MI6 and MI5 staff trained in CE work, and acting as a conduit for specialized ULTRA information to the military staffs at Army Group and Army level, can be credited to one man – Col Felix Cowgill. He was also the man who gave much practical impetus to the creation of the British-American intelligence “special relationship”, by ensuring the OSS Counter-Intelligence Branch was capable enough to demand an equal place with the British in European CI operations during WW2, and had a voice on intelligence and counter-intelligence which was heard at the highest political level in the USA. He developed MI6’s Section V from 1939 to the end of 1944 into a top CE organization, and helped train the elite of OSS/X-2 in the tradecraft of counter-espionage. His insistence on keeping tightly-held the secret of ISOS made him enemies within the British intelligence establishment and probably did prevent optimum usage of the material both in the UK and in the Middle East, but the risks to the whole Allied CE system if that secret were to be blown meant that he, as the ultimate controller of distribution, had to err on the side of caution always. Like Moses leading the people of Israel, he was not allowed to enter his promised land, being forced to stand aside at the last moment, with his promised reward snatched from him by back-stabbing colleagues.
The main aim in these chapters is to cover the Allied CE efforts in North Africa and Europe, but a good part of that work was intertwined with the Allies’ various deception organizations and their operations. We therefore also intend to give some description of these activities, in particular where they involve the participation of enemy agents controlled by the Allies.
The first chapters of this book will provide an outline of the organization and activities of Section V in the UK and in neutral counties, together with the organization and work of other Allied Counter-Espionage and deception agencies, so that the role of a military Counter-Espionage organization can be better explained. Thereafter the organization, development and actual casework of these specialized British formations and their OSS/X-2 counterpart, in North Africa, Italy and Western Europe will be covered in more detail. [2]
Counter Espionage, Signals Intelligence and Deception
During WW2, the British were able to defend their nation from invasion and mislead the enemy into overestimating the strength of Allied forces and misinterpreting Allied intentions when they conducted military operations. They did this through the use of deception, and they were aided in selling this deception by control of the enemy’s eyes on the ground – their agents; by misleading their eyes in the air – aerial reconnaissance – by physical measures such as deploying dummy equipment and structures; by producing false radio traffic; and by being able to check on the success of these measures through the interception and decryption of the enemy’s radio messages (ULTRA). Enemy agents in Britain and the British Empire were the responsibility of MI5, the domestic security agency, and abroad the intelligence agency responsible was SIS (also known as MI6, which is the term generally applied in this text to avoid confusion with US and Italian services with those initials).
In some areas like the Middle East these two agencies operated through separate organizations (i.e. SIME and the ISLD) which helped to provide cover and to supervise deception operations together through a Committee, coordinating with similar groups in other theatres and receiving direction from the London Controlling Section (LCS), which was set up in September 1941 to ensure all deception by the Allies was coordinated.
The work of Counter-Espionage abroad was the responsibility of Section V in MI6, and its role included the penetration and neutralization of hostile intelligence services using penetration agents, double agents and controlled enemy agents. Penetration agents were agents trained and tasked to be recruited by the enemy (as Kim Philby was, by the Soviets against the British MI6). Double agents were agents or officers of the hostile government, intelligence or security service who worked against their employers (such as Oleg Penkovsky, the Russian military officer who volunteered to work for MI6 and the CIA). Controlled Enemy Agents were usually enemy agents deployed behind Allied lines who were caught and turned, agreeing to work against their employers under strict Allied supervision and control (this was the case with a number of spies sent to the UK by the Abwehr, eg TATE, MUTT and JEFF). All three types of agent played a part in the work of Section V and its military counter-espionage units.
The X-2 Branch of the OSS was trained in CE work by both MI6(V) and by MI5. Therefore the definition they gave in their War Report is significant, in that it explains the basis for the wartime operations of MI6(V):
"The principal function of CE was to penetrate the enemy's or potential enemy's closely guarded undercover intelligence services in order to discover his intelligence aims. Knowing the enemy's aims, it was the further function of CE to neutralize his intelligence efforts or control or direct them to its own purposes......One of the principal methods by which this was accomplished was the manipulation of double agents." (War Report of the OSS, p196, prepared by the History Project, Strategic Services Unit, Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, War Department, Washington DC, 1949.)
