Churchill's Spy Files E-Book

Nigel West

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 880

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The Second World War saw the role of espionage, secret agents and spy services increase exponentially as the world was thrown into a conflict unlike any that had gone before it. At this time, no one in government was really aware of what MI5 and its brethren did. But with Churchill at the country's helm, it was decided to let him in on the secret, providing him with a weekly report of the spy activities. These reports were so classified that he was handed each report personally and copies were never allowed to be made, nor was he allowed to keep hold of them. Even now, the documents only exist as physical copies deep in the archives, many pages annotated by hand by 'W.S.C.' himself. In Churchill's Spy Files intelligence expert Nigel West unravels the tales of hitherto unknown spy missions, using this groundbreaking research to paint a fresh picture of the worldwide intelligence scene of the Second World War.

Leseprobe

Courtesy of Nicola Loud

First published 2018

This paperback edition published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Nigel West, 2018, 2023

The right of Nigel West to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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ISBN 978 0 75098 738 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Jonathan Evans, Director-General of MI5, 2007–2013

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

The Monthly Reports

  1     First Report, 2 April 1943

  2     Second Report, 2 May 1943

  3     Third Report, 1 June 1943

  4     Fourth Report, 2 July 1943

  5     Fifth Report, 1 September 1943

  6     Sixth Report

  7     Seventh Report, 1 November 1943

  8     Eighth Report, 1 December 1943

  9     Ninth Report, 1 January 1944

10     Tenth Report, 1 February 1944

11     Ninth Report, 7 March 1944

12     Churchill Intervenes

13     3 April 1944

14     5 May 1944

15     3 June 1944

16     3 July 1944

17     1 August 1944

18     August 1944, undated

19     5 October 1944

20     3 November 1944

21     12 December 1944

22     6 January 1945

23     19 February 1945

24     5 March 1945

25     March and April 1945, undated

26     11 June 1945

27     HARLEQUIN

28     GARBO

Postscript

Appendix 1    Espionage Cases

Appendix 2    MI5 Double-Agents

Notes

FOREWORD

Within Whitehall the Security Service enjoys a unique position, and the Director-General, although answerable to the Home Secretary, has direct access to the Prime Minister. The Service is not an instrument of political power but it operates within a political environment. The delicate balance between the political world and the political neutrality of the Security Service in defending national security depends to a large degree on the relationship between the D-G and the government of the day, including the Prime Minister.

Despite the programme of declassification initiated by my predecessor Sir Stephen Lander, very little is known about how the first D-G, Sir Vernon Kell, coped with successive Prime Ministers until he was dismissed by Winston Churchill in June 1940.

It fell to Sir David Petrie to restore confidence in MI5, which was then almost overwhelmed by the pressures of an unexpected war, and to satisfy the coalition government that the Security Service, long regarded with some suspicion by the incoming Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, was up to the challenge of countering Axis espionage and sabotage, as well as acting professionally and without partisan prejudice in a counter-subversion role.

This was the historical background to the decision to provide regular briefings to the PM, and though the practice was discontinued when Clement Attlee took up residence in No. 10, it was subsequently re-introduced, particularly in the post-Cold War era, when the Service had become the front line in combating terrorist threats. The nature of the threat meant that, especially after 9/11, a much closer relationship developed between Thames House and Downing Street.

During my six years as D-G it fell to me to brief Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron on a range of sensitive operations and, based on that experience, I can appreciate the delicacy of Petrie’s task: how much to impart without compromising the operational independence of the Service, enshrined in law, and how much detail the Prime Minister needed to know in order to understand the threat facing the country, without burdening him or her with unnecessary detail.

Now, for the first time, we have the chance to see the papers put before Churchill and, with the benefit of hindsight, we can come to acknowledge the fine judgement exercised by Petrie and his supremely able subordinate, Guy Liddell.

The reports to Churchill (and to him alone) demonstrate MI5’s global reach, its links with Allied agencies, its skilful and imaginative exploitation of precarious sources of information, and the sheer quality of personnel engaged in a struggle with a very determined adversary operating worldwide. In many ways, it might seem that not much has changed.

Lord Evans of WeardaleFormer Director-General of MI52018

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is indebted to those wartime MI5 agents who assisted his research, among them Dusan Popov (TRICYCLE), Ivo Popov (DREADNOUGHT), Elvira de Chaudoir (BRONX), Harry Williamson (TATE), Eugn Sostaric (METEOR), the Marquis deBona (FREAK), Ib Riis (COBWEB), Juan Pujol (GARBO), Eddie Chapman (ZIGZAG), Roman Garby-Czerniawski (BRUTUS), John Moe (MUTT), Tor Glad (JEFF) and the MI5 officers Tommy Robertson, Ian Wilson, Jack Bingham, Norman Himsworth, Cyril Mills, Dick White, Herbert Hart, the Hon. Hugh Astor, Anthony Blunt, Victor Rothschild, Len Burt, John Maude, Peter Hope, Peter Ramsbotham, Gerald Glover, Sir Rupert Speir, Richard Darwall and Russell Lee.

I am also grateful for the help given by Sigismund Best, Francois Grosjean, E.P.C. Greene; Rui Arajo, Mark Scoble, Douglas Wheeler, Etienne Verhoeyen, Ben de Jong, Gunter Peis, Joan Bright Astley, Margaret Blyth, Ed Lawler from OSS, and five SIS officers, Philip Johns, Cecil Gledhill, John Codrington, Ken Benton and Desmond Bristow, who were based in Iberia during the war; and Peter Falk, who was in Sweden.

ABBREVIATIONS

@

Alias

ACIC

Allied Counter-Intelligence Centre, Iceland

ADB1

Assistant Director, MI5’s B1 section

AEM

Alto Estado Mayor

AFHQ

Allied Forces Headquarters

ARP

Air Raid Precautions

ASDIC

Anti-Submarine Detection

ATS

Auxiliary Territorial Service

BSC

British Security Coordination

BUF

British Union of Fascists

C

Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service

CICI

Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq

COHQ

Combined Operations Headquarters

CPGB

Communist Party of Great Britain

CSDIC

Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre

Devlag

German-Flemish Working Group

DF

Direction-Finding

DOR

Defence of the Realm Act

DSO

Defence Security Officer

FFI

French Forces of the Interior

FSP

Field Security Police

FUSAG

First United States Army Group

GC&CS

Government Code and Cipher School, Bletchley Park

GOC

General Officer Commanding

IH

Eins Heer

IL

Eins Luft

IM

Eins Marine

ISK

Intelligence Service Knox

ISOS

Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey

JIC

Joint Intelligence Committee

KO

Kriegsorganisation

LRC

London Reception Centre

NKVD

Soviet Intelligence Service

OB

Ossewa Brandweg

OD

Orde Dienst

OGPU

Soviet intelligence service

OKW

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

OSS

Office of Strategic Services

PLUTO

Pipe Line Under The Ocean

PoW

Prisoner of War

P-Plane

V-1 flying bomb

PRU

Photographic Reconnaissance Unit

PWE

Political Warfare Executive

RASC

Royal Army Service Corps

RCMP

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

RDF

Radio Direction-Finding

RHSA

Reich Security Agency

RIS

Radio Intelligence Section

RSLO

Regional Security Liaison Officer

RSS

Radio Security Service

R/T

Radio-Telephony

SCI

Special Counter-Intelligence Unit

SCO

Security Control Officer

SD

Sicherheitsdienst

SHAEF

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

SIE

Servicio Informazione Extere

SIGINT

Signals Intelligence

SIM

Servicio Informazione Militare

SIME

Security Intelligence Middle East

Sipo

Sicherheitspolizei

SIS

Secret Intelligence Service

W/T

Wireless Telegraphy

X-2

OSS Counter-intelligence branch

XX

Double-Cross

Code Names

BIGOT

Indoctrinated into invasion plans

CROSSBOW

German V-1 flying-bomb campaign

OVERLORD

D-Day invasion of Normandy

PHOENIX

D-Day harbour caissons

TORCH

Allied invasion of North Africa

INTRODUCTION

When in June 1942 Alfred Duff Cooper was given ministerial responsibility in the Cabinet for the British Security Service, MI5, he was not surprised by the secrecy surrounding the organisation and its operations, which hitherto had been largely undertaken under the aegis of the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, but he was intrigued to learn about its activities and offered to share some of this information with the Prime Minister.

Churchill had a long history of interest in, bordering on fascination with, secret intelligence, dating back to his period as Home Secretary in 1910 when he had introduced the first communications warrants to allow the interception of a suspect’s mail. He was enchanted by Cooper’s suggestion, as the newly appointed Chairman of the Home Defence Security Executive, replacing Lord Swinton, to have MI5’s Director-General, Sir David Petrie, prepare summary reports on what the country’s principal counter-espionage and counter-intelligence authority had been working on. As Petrie explained, this was an innovation as hitherto MI5 had not been keen to advertise its existence, let alone its clandestine role, but he recognised that support from 10 Downing Street was essential. Cooper wrote:

My Dear Petrie,

I had a talk with the Prime Minister on Sunday afternoon, in the course of which I told him about some of our recent activities and described some of the more interesting cases which have come under our control, such as the case of Chapman and Woerman. I also told him about the present we had recently received from the north of Scotland and the evidence that we had about the head of the Ossewa Brandweg. He was very much interested and I subsequently suggested to him that it would be a useful thing for him to receive a Monthly report on the activities of the Security Service. He entirely agreed. I think the furnishing of such a report would not only be useful from his point of view, in order that he night keep in touch with what is going on, but might also encourage those who are engaged in the work to feel that its importance is properly estimated, and the fact of it reached the highest authorities:

If you agree, perhaps you would inform those concerned in order that such a report might be prepared to cover the present month. It is most important that it should not be a voluminous document as the Prime Minister is naturally overwhelmed with reading material and has very little time to devote to it. It should not consist, in my opinion, of more than two or three pages and should be confined to incidents of exceptional interest.

Perhaps you will let me know what you think.

The four cases referred to that Cooper thought would interest Churchill were those of Eddie Chapman, code-named ZIGZAG, who was one of the most remarkable double-agents of the war; the ultra-nationalist, pro-Nazi Ossewa Brandweg movement in South Africa; the defector ‘Woerman’, who was actually Major Richard Wurmann, formerly head of the Algiers Abstelle, code-named HARLEQUIN and alias Count Heinrich Stenboch; and the vague allusion to recent events in northern Scotland was a Luftwaffe parachute drop near Aberdeen of sabotage equipment for a pair of Norwegian double-agents, MUTT and JEFF.

The day after Cooper wrote this, the matter was mentioned by Guy Liddell, the Director of MI5’s B Division, in charge of counter-espionage, in his diary:

The Director-General has had a letter from Duff Cooper who, after consultation with the Prime Minister, has suggested that we should furnish the Prime Minister with a monthly report. It should not be too long and should only include items of major importance. It is suggested there should be contributions from Herbert Hart, Buster Milmo, T.A. Robertson, the London Reception Centre, Roger Hollis and occasionally items of interest received from Defence Security Officer points abroad. Dick White is going to get out a rough draft which we will then discuss. There are obvious advantages in selling ourselves to the Prime Minister who at the moment knows nothing about the activities of the department. On the other hand he may, on seeing some particular item, go off the deep end and want to take action, which will be disastrous to the work in hand.

Clearly Liddell was worried by Churchill’s reputation for spontaneity and meddling, but a few days later, on 16 March, he discussed the matter with his senior subordinates, two from B Division and Hollis, in charge of the counter-subversion branch, F Division:

I had a talk with Dick White, T.A. Robertson, and Roger Hollis about the monthly report for the Prime Minister. They were all a little apprehensive about Hollis’ contribution. The Prime Minister might speak to the Home Secretary about it and if the latter was not also informed we should find ourselves in trouble. We eventually decided to draft something and see what it looked like. Dick will be editor of the B Division material.

What makes this material so remarkable is that it was prepared for the sole consumption of the Prime Minister, and not any of his staff, including his private secretaries, military advisers nor even Desmond Morton, his intelligence aide, seconded from the Secret Intelligence Service. Not even the Cabinet Secretary was a party to these reports, and no copies were retained within the Cabinet Office as every document was delivered to Churchill by hand by Petrie, who waited to offer a verbal briefing if required and then took the file back to his headquarters in St James’s Street. No one else, in an era when the word declassification had not been invented, was ever intended to have sight of the contents, thus allowing the authors to be both selective and candid.

The task of assembling the report was given by Liddell to his assistant, Dick White, and on 26 March he produced a covering memorandum explaining that the editorial work had been undertaken by Anthony Blunt:

The attached paper has been prepared as the first report for Mr Duff Cooper to hand to the PM. The 2½ pages represent condensation from the original script turned into one by various sections amounting to something like 16 pages. These 16 pages were reduced in the first place, by Blunt merely as a precis exercise and then he and I discussed the preparation of this final draft.

As a matter of policy we have not produced any sketch of the work of this office in retrospect as we considered that this would look too much as though we were out to advertise the office. It is surely up to Mr Duff Cooper to let the PM know what sort of things we do in general. The items we have included in this report have been chosen both because they may be expected to interest him in themselves and because they illustrate the type of work we do, at any rate in B Division. We have not had any contributions from E Division and indeed have not asked for them while I understand it is not considered advisable for Hollis to make any contribution at all.

May I suggest that the procedure should be for Mr Duff Cooper to hand a report of this type to the PM. in a special file marked ‘personal for the PM only’ or some such wording and that it should be returned to Mr Duff Cooper after the PM has read it.

On 29 March Liddell considered the matter further, and minuted his revised views about the wisdom of mentioning the activities of F Division, for fear that Churchill might raise a matter with Herbert Morrison regarding the Communist Party, about which the Home Secretary had not been briefed. The topics of security and intelligence were regarded with great suspicion by the Labour Party, many members of whom either had been close to the Communist Party of Great Britain, or held views shaped by the events surrounding the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald’s administration in October 1924 following publication of the notorious Zinoviev letter. In these circumstances Liddell exercised characteristic caution so as to avoid political controversy:

I enclose a draft report for the Prime Minister in accordance with Mr Duff Cooper’s letter. I do not know what you feel about contributions from other Divisions. Personally I think there are difficulties in putting forward anything from F Division since, if the Prime Minister were to discuss the subject with the Home Secretary, the latter would be extremely annoyed that he had not received prior notification on a matter for which he was primarily responsible, and this would place us in bad odour with the Home Office.

It is perhaps for consideration whether we should send a copy of our report to C. I am not anxious to do so if it can be avoided. On the other hand CSS is constantly seeing the Prime Minister, who might well discuss the contents of our report with him where it indirectly impinges upon SIS work.

Lastly, I think it would be better if instead of leaving this report with the Prime Minister, Mr. Duff Cooper showed it to him personally and then took it away. It would not take more than 5 minutes to read, and if there were any supplementary questions or queries they could either be dealt with on the spot or conveyed to Mr. Duff Cooper who could refer them back to ourselves.

You may wish to have a talk about these various problems with the officers concerned before submitting the draft to Mr. Duff Cooper.

By 2 April the first MI5 report, one of twenty-five drawn up before the end of the conflict, had been drafted, as Liddell recorded:

I saw Duff Cooper and took him the report for the Prime Minister. He seemed quite satisfied with its form and contents. I impressed upon him the degree of secrecy which should be attached to it and the necessity therefore of ensuring that it was seen by the Prime Minister only. At first he had thought of sending it to Desmond Morton. I said I thought it would be far preferable if he handed it to the Prime Minister himself. He would then be able to answer any supplementary questions and ascertain the Prime Minister’s reactions. From what he said I do not think that he intends to leave the report with the Prime Minister. In any case he will ask for its return. I told him that if it went to Desmond Morton it was highly probable that he would take a copy and send it to C. While there was no real objection to this it might possibly cause a certain amount of trouble.

Although Liddell appears to have welcomed the principle of winning the Prime Minister’s ear, if only briefly, he was obviously very anxious to exclude Morton from access, as he undoubtedly would have informed Stewart Menzies, who in turn would have been bound to confide in Section V, the SIS branch that dealt with MI5 daily on the most sensitive of issues, such as the ISOS intercepts and the management of double-agents. Section V’s notoriously prickly chief, Felix Cowgill, was already highly proprietorial about sharing his section’s gold dust, and would have been horrified at the prospect of Churchill being entrusted with such delicate secrets as the true identities of agents.

The ticklish task of selecting cases for submission to Churchill was assigned by Liddell to his trusted assistant, Anthony Blunt, who must have relished the prospect of being given a pretext to range far and wide across the Security Service, and elsewhere, to assemble the appropriate material for the Prime Minister. Few spies in history could ever have been presented with such a spectacular opportunity to call for files, question colleagues and demand briefings on topics that would otherwise be completely outside the ambit of his duties. Quite simply, Blunt, who had been a Soviet agent since 1936, was granted a licence to delve into just about any operational issue that caught his interest. As Liddell’s personal assistant he enjoyed a lofty viewpoint anyway, and his role in directing the TRIPLEX project1 provided him with access to some of the organisation’s most delicate sources, but his added responsibility, of drafting the monthly reports, must have seemed heaven-sent. His MI5 colleagues already accepted that he routinely acted in Liddell’s name, and this additional responsibility must have greatly added to his already exalted status.

The purpose in reproducing all the Prime Minister’s monthly MI5 reports here is to give a comprehensive picture of what the Security Service shared with Churchill, and when. As we shall see, Petrie and his subordinate Liddell exercised considerable discretion in what went to Downing Street, and to give the bigger view each report is accompanied by a commentary to reveal the background to some of the events, operations and individuals which are referenced. Very often, particular agents and defectors were not identified by their true name, so this annotated version is intended to leave the reader rather better informed than Churchill.

A few of the cases selected for the Prime Minister’s attention will be familiar to aficionados of wartime espionage, but the majority will be entirely new to historians. They shed fascinating light on the global aspect of MI5’s wartime activities, demonstrating the value of some hitherto relatively unknown officers, such as Colonel Henderson, the Defence Security Officer in Trinidad who, operating from Bretton Hall in Port of Spain’s Victoria Avenue, interdicted numerous Axis spies en route to and from South America. These spies underwent a preliminary interrogation before being passed to HMS Benbow, the Royal Navy’s shore establishment, for a voyage to England and incarceration at Camp 020.

By convention, the identities of MI5 personnel were not disclosed in reports likely to be circulated outside headquarters, so Churchill had little way of knowing that, for example, the officer sent to the United States in April 1943 to advise on American port security arrangements was George Denham, or that the head of MI5’s counter-sabotage branch mentioned in several reports was Lord Rothschild. By filling in the gaps, and drawing pen-portraits of such remarkable men as HARLEQUIN and COLOMBINE, not to mention the rather lesser-known double-agents as FIDO, HAMLET and METEOR, it is hoped that more light will be shed on the somewhat misunderstood, murky relationship between the First Secretary of the Treasury and the Security Service.

THE MONTHLY REPORTS

1

FIRST REPORT, 2 APRIL 1943

Entitled Report on Activities of the Security Service, the document, with a paragraph redacted, covered several topics and established a standard format of arrested spies and imminent espionage cases, and introduced the concept of controlled enemy agents:

Spies arrested since September 1939

It is believed that while the many Germans who returned to their country when on the outbreak of war took with them a most exact knowledge of the state of our re-armament and the potential output of our factories they left no live spy organisation behind them. Being without up-to-date information, after their defeat in the Battle of Britain, the Germans again resorted to their former system of individual spying. Since September, 1940, attempts at penetration have been persistent. In all 126 spies have fallen into our hands. Of these eighteen gave themselves up voluntarily, twenty-four have been found amenable and are now being used as double-cross agents. Twenty-eight have been detained at overseas stations, and eight were arrested on the high seas. In addition twelve real, and seven imaginary persons have been foisted upon the enemy as double-cross spies. Thirteen spies have been executed, and a fourteenth is under trial.

NEW ARRESTS.

(1) MENEZES

This spy was a clerk in the Portuguese Embassy, London. He was working for the German and Italian Secret Services, to whom he sent reports written in secret ink in private letters sent through the Portuguese diplomatic bag. For a period during which we were able to assure ourselves that the reports which he was sending were harmless, we watched his operations and finally on an occasion when he had obtained an interesting item of news which duly showed up in a letter, his career as a spy had to be ended. Through the wholehearted collaboration of the Portuguese Ambassador Menezes was arrested and made a full confession. The Portuguese Government having waived his diplomatic privilege, he has now been committed for trial.

(2) DE GRAAF

This Canadian traitor, of Dutch parentage, was detected by our interrogation staff on entering this country. He confessed to having worked for the German Secret Service for more than two years, during which he had insinuated himself into an Allied escape organisation for our prisoners of war which he is believed to have betrayed to the enemy. He was in addition a well trained saboteur.

(3) BATICON, LASKI, PACHECO Y CUESTA

The existence of these three spies on ships bound for South America was revealed by material supplied from special sources. They were successfully identified at our Trinidad control, and are being sent to this country for interrogation.

C. Agents Expected

Similar material reveals German plans for despatching two new spies to this country and two saboteurs to be landed by submarine on the coast of Palestine. Suitable arrangements have been made for their reception.

D. Controlled German Spies (‘Double-Cross Spies’)

(1) Through a double-cross spy in this country a deal was concluded with the German Secret Service in Madrid, by which £2,500 were paid to the spy here and 250,000 pesetas were put at our disposal in Madrid. This deal was arranged through the unconscious help of the Spanish Assistant Military Attaché in London, who took with him in the diplomatic bag a letter of introduction to the principals in Madrid, on the back of which was a message to the German Secret Service in secret ink.

(2) ‘ZIGZAG’, an Englishman was dropped as a spy by parachute in October 1942 near Thetford. Extensive information was already in our possession before his arrival, so that his confession on giving himself up could be immediately checked. It was found possible to collaborate with this spy in deceiving his former masters, who were persuaded to believe that he did in fact perform the mission for which he was sent here, namely to sabotage the de Havilland Mosquito factory at Hatfield. The agent has now been sent back to the Germans via Lisbon, and it is expected that he will be given another similar mission in British or Allied territory.

(3) On the night of 20 March 1943 a wireless set of new design, £200 in notes, and sabotage equipment were dropped by parachute in Aberdeenshire for MUTT and JEFF, who are double-cross spies of Norwegian nationality. The German aircraft flew low over the exact spot indicated by us to the German Secret Service.

(4) On 10 March 1943 one of our agents who has been recruited by the German Sabotage Service in Spain had a faked explosion arranged for him in Gibraltar. The German Sabotage Service gave him some SOE equipment with which to carry out this act of sabotage. As in a previous case where an act of sabotage was staged for another of our Gibraltar agents, this apparently successful enterprise has caused extreme satisfaction in German and Italian circles.

[XXX]*

Important new information about the organisation and methods of the German Secret Service has been obtained from two of its former members. Both these individuals have been induced to collaborate, and as one of them, an officer of the German General Staff, had been chief of an enemy Secret Service base, his revelations were particularly sensational. As a ‘book of reference’, it is believed his services will continue to prove of great value.

C. General Security Measures

(1) The Security Service has prepared a memorandum, running to sixty-eight printed pages, including diagrams, on the technical counter-measures to be taken against possible enemy sabotage. This memorandum has been circulated to our Defence Security Officers in the most important posts in the Empire. A special section dealing with the defence of shipping against sabotage has been further circulated to all ports in which we have representatives, both in England and overseas.

(2) On the strength of information about TORCH supplied by the Security Service, the Director of Military Intelligence has issued a strong warning against careless talk about future operations. This warning was based on Security Service investigations which showed that a disturbing amount of loose talk had taken place before the invasion of North Africa.

(3) On the return of a special adviser who had been sent to the Middle East to survey the security position there, the Security Service are implementing his recommendations by sending three officers to the area, two of whom will plan and direct the examination of aliens, who arrive in that area from occupied Europe at the rate of about 900 a month, and the collection of intelligence from them. A third officer will supervise the investigation of Axis espionage. The existing organisation in Middle East requires strengthening on both these sides of the work.

(4) By arrangement with the Director of Military Intelligence the Security Service is supplying certain of its officers who have recently been put through special training courses in preparation for their future work, which will be to act as advisers on general security measures and on the technical aspect of counter-espionage and counter-sabotage work, both to the GHQ Ib staff of future expeditionary forces and to the staff of the Chief Civil Affairs Officer in the area behind the lines. The Director General considers that, with diminishing risks at home, these officers should be released for the purposes stated.

On the following day, Liddell was pleased with Churchill’s reaction, which had been scrawled on the bottom of the third and final page:

Duff Cooper has returned our report for the Prime Minister with a letter saying that the Prime Minister would like to have further details about Wurmann. The Prime Minister has minuted the report in his distinctive red ink: ‘Seen. Deeply interesting. W.S.C.’ Duff seems to think it has been a great success.

The Prime Minister’s interest in Richard Wurmann was entirely justified, as he was one of the most unusual cases dealt with by MI5 during the conflict, and a special summary was prepared (see Chapter 27).

This first report was MI5’s opportunity to educate Churchill about the breadth of the organisation’s activities, demonstrate its competence, and compete with SIS’s daily briefings and deliveries of decrypts, usually juicy diplomatic telegrams, carefully selected by Menzies for his consumption. In terms of double-agents, four cases were mentioned by name, being the Norwegians MUTT and JEFF, and the safe-cracker Eddie Chapman, code-named ZIGZAG, then on his first mission to England, having arrived by parachute in December (not October, as stated) 1942. Unnamed is the doubleagent who extracted £2,500 from his Abwehr controller in Madrid. This was surely a reference to GARBO, although his case would not be introduced for another three months, and to a scheme known as Plan DREAM that involved the Spanish assistant military attaché conspiring to circumvent the Bank of England’s currency regulations with a syndicate of London fruit merchants. Simply, Leonardo Muñoz wanted to send money to Spain, but was willing to pay a nominee in London if he was paid the same sum, plus a generous commission, in Spain. The concept had been inspired by Cyril Mills, in November 1942, as Guy Liddell had noted in his diary:

Cyril Mills talked to me about a plan he had on foot for getting money for GARBO. Apparently some fruit merchant here who is known to Muñoz, the Spanish assistant military attaché, wishes to transfer money from this country to Spain. It is suggested therefore that this money should be handed over to GARBO and that the German secret service should credit the fruit merchant with pesetas. Quite a large sum of money is likely to be involved. This is known as Plan DREAM.

By the end of January 1943, after complicated negotiations, DREAM had started to look like a practical proposition, as Liddell recorded on 1 February:

Muñoz, the Spanish military attaché, is returning to Spain on Monday, and for the purpose of Plan DREAM we have arranged for him to take with him a letter of introduction. GARBO is to send a letter giving a new address at which Muñoz can be contacted and the money is to be deposited with Charles Russell & Company. Muñoz will then send a telegram to his contact in London to say that one has received the pesetas and that the sterling may now be released to the notional Mr Wills, in other words Cyril Mills. On the back of Muñoz’s letter there will be a message in secret ink about which he will know nothing. The Germans will be notified about the existence of this message.

This transaction, supposedly brokered by the City solicitors Charles Russell & Co., where Richard Butler had worked before joining MI5, was completed without a hitch, and ten days later MI5 received the £2,500, an impressive coup that obviously merited inclusion in the report to Churchill. Indeed, the operation was so successful that it would be repeated again several times to fund GARBO’s burgeoning network and expenses.

As if to emphasise MI5’s remit across the Empire, Petrie described the three spies seized in Trinidad, Baticon, Laski and Pacheco, who would reappear in the third report, and the anticipated arrival of a pair of agents to be landed by a U-boat in Palestine. In the event, neither turned up, and the subject was not mentioned again.1

Such discretion, drawing a veil over an operation that had gone awry, and concentrating on proven success stories, would become a feature of the reports. The de Graaf case is an early example, as Guy Liddell had recorded on 23 January 1943, and there were some aspects to it, such as his temporary employment at the British embassy in Madrid, which had been omitted from the version submitted to Churchill:

Buster Milmo reported at the Wednesday meeting that there had been a large influx at Camp 020. The main increase is in spies going to South America. He mentioned the case of Johannes de Graaf, a Belgian who had come down an escape route and had been temporarily employed at the British embassy in Madrid. De Graaf admitted that he had been in contact with the Abwehr but said that he had done so in order to escape. He was carrying pyramidon and tooth-picks. He was caught through a clever link-up on the information index at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School which showed that he had been put on the escape route by someone known already to be working for the Abwehr. He is now beginning to come clean. He was highly trained both in espionage and sabotage and appears to have corresponded with German occupied territory after his arrival in Madrid.

The de Graaf case was unusual in many respects. He was born in Saskatchewan in November 1918 to Dutch parents – farmers who returned to Amsterdam in 1928 – and he acquired a British passport in 1933. When the Germans occupied the Netherlands he was employed as a bookkeeper, and in June he was interned at Schoorl because of his dual citizenship. After ten days in detention de Graaf applied for his release, on the grounds that he was more Dutch than British, and he was interviewed by the Sicherheitsdienst in The Hague. Threatened with incarceration at a concentration camp, and anxious to support his elderly parents, de Graaf agreed to his recruitment and underwent a lengthy training course in sabotage and clandestine communications. In 1941 he made contact with an underground escape line that assisted his travel via Toulouse, where he spent six weeks, to the Spanish frontier in February 1942. He stayed in Barcelona for two months, supported by the British consul. Upon his arrival in Madrid he presented himself at the British embassy, where he was employed by Sir Peter Norton Griffiths for eight months as an accountant in the office of the military attaché, Brigadier W.W.T. Torr.

In December 1942 he sailed from Gibraltar for Gurock on the Llanstephan Castle and was arrested upon arrival when a search revealed the ingredients for secret writing. He was transferred to Brixton and then moved to Camp 020 where, during his sixth interview, he confessed to his role as a German spy, and admitted having sent three letters to his German controllers, one from Chalon and two from Toulouse.

A detailed interrogation was conducted by Helenus Milmo, who reported on 12 February 1943 that:

… since de Graaf’s arrival at Camp 020 very substantial progress has been made and we are now in a position to say that this man is an infinitely more important enemy agent than we had originally thought. We are still a long way from obtaining the full truth from him and the extraction is proving a laborious process but from the admissions so far obtained de Graaf has shown himself to be one of the best trained enemy agents who have so far fallen into our hands. Thus he has admitted to having received instruction in political propaganda work, secret ink writing, wireless telegraphy, codes, sabotage, and the use of firearms. Moreover he has confessed to having been in contact with an interesting and important variety of German Secret Service personnel and to have written no less than three letters to the Germans at a time when he was employed on highly confidential work in the British Embassy at Madrid whilst awaiting repatriation to this country.

De Graaf’s admission to an espionage role, and having attended some forty classes on radio technique, opened the possibility of a prosecution under the 1940 Treachery Act, and a death sentence, but there was a complication, as the 020 commandant, Robin Stephens, warned on 27 February:

The position has been reached where a case could be put forward for prosecution under the Treachery Act. The prosecution, however, is much complicated by the astonishing action taken by the British Embassy in employing this German spy for eight months in the Embassy with access to information on the escape routes. De Graaf relies upon a satisfactory recommendation from the Embassy to bear out his defence that he never intended to work against the Allies. At the same time it must be borne in mind that de Graaf has admitted possession of Pyramidon which was handed to him by the German Secret Service for purposes of secret writing.

Thus, having conceded that he had been sent on a sabotage mission, de Graaf’s embarrassing defence was that he had never intended to spy, even though there was evidence from MI9 that he had compromised a major British escape network, having gained access to the information while employed by Brigadier Torr:

Whilst employed at the British embassy in Madrid, this man was responsible for passing to the enemy information about an escape route from occupied territory and was directly responsible for the arrest by the Germans of probably the most important British agent operating this route who was responsible for the very marked success which it had achieved over the course of the last year.

De Graaf’s assertion was that his sabotage mission had been to South Africa, and once it became clear to him that he could not obtain further instructions from his contact in Lisbon, as he had been directed, he had abandoned all thought of espionage. This may or may not have been true, but MI9 certainly did not want to acknowledge that a German spy had been working for them in Lisbon undetected for eight months. The issue was put before the Director of Public Prosecutions in March 1943 by Edward Hinchley-Cooke, and the decision was taken not to proceed with a prosecution. Accordingly, de Graaf’s future was referred to the Home Office, with a recommendation from Petrie that he should be isolated at Dartmoor:

The case against de Graaf has become a more serious and formidable one than was originally suspected, and admissions have been obtained from him which prove beyond question that he is one of the best and most extensively trained enemy agents who have fallen into our hands since the beginning of the war. Thus he has received a very thorough training as a saboteur and is conversant with the most up-to-date German sabotage methods and equipment. He has been fully instructed in the use of secret ink and developers, codes and cyphers, firearms, political propaganda and has achieved a considerable proficiency as a wireless operator. In short he is an extremely dangerous man.

We had hoped that it would have been possible to prosecute De Graaf under the Treachery Act, but although we do not entertain the slightest doubt that de Graaf’s association with the German Secret Service is incapable of any innocent construction, the Director of Public Prosecutions has advised against criminal proceedings because he feels that the evidence available for use in a Criminal Court – and this of course excludes the confessions extracted at Camp 020 – might not be strong enough to satisfy a jury that de Graaf’s excuse for undertaking to work for the enemy is necessarily a bogus one. I may say that the excuse in question is the time-honoured one which the Germans instruct their agents to put forward if caught, namely; that he never intended to work for the enemy and only undertook his espionage assignments in order to escape to this country. In these circumstances the DPP has ruled against a prosecution. De Graaf, being technically a British subject and being detained under DOR 18(b), cannot remain indefinitely at Camp 020, but, as in the case of Boyd,2 we would be strongly averse to his spending the rest of the war with the disaffected British subjects whom he would meet in any ordinary place of detention for 18(b) cases. It is, in our view, wholly undesirable that proved enemy agents, whether they be British subjects or aliens, should be allowed to mix freely or at all with ordinary internees and detainees. The chances of leakage are considerable and no proper safe-guards against such leakages can be maintained. Further, as I think I have stressed on previous occasions, it would not, in our view, be in the public interest that it should become generally known how very difficult it is to establish a strong enough case for prosecution against a spy, or that there are in this country in detention a very large number of spies who are not and cannot be dealt with under the Treachery Act.

We are therefore of the opinion that de Graaf should be moved to Dartmoor and should remain there for the duration.

At the end of April 1943 de Graaf was driven to Paddington Green police station for a final interview, and then escorted onto the Cornish Riviera Express at Paddington station for the rail journey to Exeter, and Dartmoor prison, where he remained for the rest of the war.

Although a highly abbreviated version of the de Graaf case was given to Churchill, he was never informed that, probably unwittingly, de Graaf had succeeded in penetrating MI9 in Madrid, and had betrayed an important British agent. When challenged about his employment, the Foreign Office’s security branch, headed by William Codrington, insisted that Norton-Griffiths had disregarded procedures by taking him on without the approval of the embassy’s security officer, Alan Hillgarth, and that the Passport Control Officer had known of the situation. Wherever the blame properly lay, de Graaf survived the experience and, having been refused a return to Canada, was repatriated to the Netherlands at the end of the war.

Whereas it had been almost impossible to prosecute de Graaf under the Treachery Act, MI5 encountered no such difficulties with Regeiro de Menezes, even though he was a fully accredited foreign diplomat whose espionage had been detected by that most secret of sources, TRIPLEX. Having arrived in London in July 1942 to work at the Portuguese legation with a junior rank, de Menezes had begun writing letters to his sister in Lisbon, enclosing another note using secret ink addressed to a man named Mendez. His mail had been included in the Portuguese diplomatic bag, which was surreptitiously opened and examined by MI5 as part of a joint SIS operation code-named TRIPLEX and supervised by Anthony Blunt. Although the precise nature of TRIPLEX was not explained in explicit terms, it is probable that Churchill either knew or guessed the sensitivities involved. That Blunt should have selected the de Menezes investigation to put before the Prime Minister is interesting as it illustrated at least six distinct MI5 techniques, including ISOS, the introduction of a woman agent provocateur, the penetration of the embassy by an agent code-named DUCK, physical and technical surveillance, and the exploitation of TRIPLEX.

As Blunt would have known, the de Menezes case had involved a high-level discussion about the wisdom of revealing evidence to the Portuguese ambassador that might put TRIPLEX at risk. The proposal, discussed in January 1943, had been vetoed instantly by SIS’s David Boyle. Despite this reticence, TRIPLEX continued to supply the spy’s correspondence that, under ultra-violet light, revealed secret writing describing London’s air defences.

De Menezes’s mission as a Sicherheitsdienst spy had been betrayed by an ISOS intercept even before he had landed, and he was watched inside the legation by an MI5 agent, and outside by MI5 surveillance teams. According to Jack Bingham, an MI5 officer who befriended him, he seemed particularly interested in anti-aircraft defences. In February 1943 the evidence was presented to Ambassador Monteiro, who was reminded that three other Portuguese, Gastao de Freitas,3 Manoel dos Santos4 and Ernesto Simoes,5 had been caught spying and, after he had consulted Lisbon, he agreed to withdraw de Menezes’ immunity. When arrested, Menezes claimed that he had spied under duress because he had relatives in Germany who were under threat. In his confession he identified Mendez as a man named Marcello who worked for Umerte, an Italian intelligence officer. He claimed to have been introduced to them by a Portuguese air force officer, Colonel Miranda, and also mentioned Ramos, a cipher clerk in the Portuguese foreign ministry. Nevertheless, he was convicted under the Treachery Act in April 1943, sentenced to death, and reprieved after a plea for clemency from his ambassador. He was imprisoned at Dartmoor and, on the instructions of the Lord Chief Justice, no public statement was made concerning the trial or the reprieve.

As a result of the case the Policía de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado in Lisbon arrested twenty-three members of the Abwehr’s local organisation, including Kuno Weltzien, a figure who had long posed a threat to British intelligence operations in the Peninsula. De Menezes was freed and deported back to Portugal in December 1949.

* * *

Petrie’s choice of ZIGZAG, MUTT and JEFF as the three most suitable examples with which to introduce the Prime Minister to the concept of double-agents is quite curious. The two Norwegians, John Moe and Tor Glad, had paddled ashore in Banffshire in April 1941. Their participation in an operation code-named OATMEAL, involving the Luftwaffe dropping them a wireless transmitter and £400 in cash, was ample proof that both men had been completely accepted by their Abwehr masters in Oslo, who demonstrably believed them to be at liberty and active on their behalf. Churchill would later hear more of them, and about BUNBURY, a daring act of sabotage. As would later emerge, OATMEAL had an unexpected aspect, as Liddell confided to his diary on 24 March:

A piece of the parachute by means of which MUTT and JEFF’s wireless set was dropped some weeks ago has been picked up by a farmer near Loch Strathbeg. It only reached us quite fortuitously through an officer in AI-1(g) having given it to Room 055. The general instructions are that objects of this kind should be handed over to the air force by the police. I am going into this matter with RC. The officer’s suspicions had been aroused because of a report he had read of an interrogation of a German airman who claimed to have landed an agent here in November 1939 in a Dornier 18 off the Yorkshire coast, not far from Scarborough. This agent was equipped with a short-wave wireless set. At the end of April 1940 he picked up the same man from a bay just to the North of Flamborough Head. This spy was said to have given the Germans immensely valuable information at the beginning of the Norwegian campaign and also about a raid carried out in April 1940, on which advance information was given. There was a raid on 18 April from which five Hampdens and two Wellingtons failed to return from a flight to southern Norway. The signal for picking up a spy was to be the dropping of a bomb and as a bomb had been dropped in connection with the MUTT and JEFF enterprise the air force officer who brought in the bit of parachute thought it might have some significance from an MI5 point of view. The prisoner of war also spoke of another agent that he had landed at the beginning of the French campaign. This man wore civilian clothes and was provided with a squadron-leader uniform and a small transmitter. Landings from aircraft and also descents by parachutes had later gone out of fashion as they were thought to be too dangerous.

Nothing more was ever heard of these alleged airborne infiltrations, so it is likely that the Luftwaffe PoW had fabricated the stories, perhaps in the hope of enhancing his own status with his captors.

* * *

As for ZIGZAG, he had departed on an Ellerman Line cargo vessel, the City of Lancaster, for Lisbon on 15 March, and the only way of monitoring his progress, first in Portugal and then in Norway, was through the interception of ISOS traffic, which occasionally mentioned his continued survival as a spy code-named FRITZCHEN. He would not be seen again until his triumphant return in June 1944, which would earn him further mention.

____________

* Indicates redacted material here and throughout.

2

SECOND REPORT, 2 MAY 1943

The second report, dated 2 May 1943, is very domestic, covering two espionage cases, Frank Steiner and the Portuguese diplomat Rogeiro de Menezes; three double-agents, ZIGZAG, HAMLET and METEOR; and the problem of sabotage in Gibraltar. The final draft was approved by Richard Butler, head of the Director-General’s secretariat, on 2 May.

Also described is BUNBURY, an act of sabotage to be carried out by MUTT and JEFF using material captured by the Germans from SOE networks in France. BUNBURY involved an explosion in August 1943 at the electricity power plant at Prospect Row in Bury St Edmunds, which was reported in detail by the East Anglian Daily Times, and resulted in claims broadcast on Nazi radio describing the incident and the deaths of 150 workmen. A week later the supposedly independent, Berlin-based Trans-Ocean News Service, which was controlled by Dr Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, repeated the story on its North America wireless system.

Supposedly, a bomb placed beside a condenser had detonated causing widespread damage, and another device had been discovered and defused before it could explode. In reality, of course, the entire episode was an elaborate charade intended to build up the status of the two Norwegians.

On 5 August Guy Liddell indoctrinated Sir Frank Newsam, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office:

I saw Frank Newsam and explained to him Plan BUNBURY. He thought it possible that Watts, head of the explosives department, might be brought in. I said that if and when he was, we might consider whether it would be better to inform him of the true position in case he discovered that the whole business was a hoax and gave the show away. Newsam was I think pleased at having been brought into this matter.

The scheme, supervised by Victor Rothschild and Len Burt, had been code-named BUNBURY in deference to the fictional character in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and took place on 6 August, as Liddell recorded in his diary the following day:

Len Burt is going down to investigate Plan BUNBURY which took place last night. I have not yet heard any details. Burt thinks that he may be able to help a bit on the press side since both the Ministry of Information and Frank Newsam think that they could not give the story to the press without arousing considerable suspicion. The Chief Constable is giving it to the local press and I have suggested that he should explain when doing so that he has approval from Censorship, as it is thought that the public need to be made aware that something is going on in their midst. It is hoped that this will stimulate security.

However, the following week, on 12 August, Liddell noted that the local police were becoming a little too enthusiastic about the investigation:

Victor Rothschild and Len Burt came to see me about Plan BUNBURY. Burt thinks it desirable to ease up the police a little, who are suspecting the Irish and the Poles. There is great activity in the eastern counties and I understand that guards at utility undertaking have been doubled. The local press have got the story but do not think it worthwhile sending to London, as they feel it would not be passed by censorship. We are doing our best to grease the wheels but cannot do this too obviously.

Two days later BUNBURY came again, unexpectedly, when Rothschild referred to the operation during a conference at Oxford attended by MI5’s Regional Security Liaison Officers (RSLO), as Liddell confided to his diary:

Victor Rothschild has been talking to the RSLOs before lunch and had outlined to them Plan BUNBURY. He had written a circular letter which he had sent off to all his utility undertakings in which he had drawn attention to the incident at the electricity power station at Bury St Edmunds. He said quite definitely that we regarded this as an act of enemy sabotage, and had made some reference to spies being at large. RSLOs felt that the electricity undertakings would undoubtedly take this letter to the Chief Constable and ask him for his views. The Chief Constable would then go to the RSLO and ask why it had been thought desirable to communicate the information to utility undertakings which had not been given to the Chief Constables. They would want to know whether it was true. Was the RSLO to lie or take the Chief Constable into his confidence? The general opinion at that stage seemed to be that it might be a wise move to take the Chief Constable into our confidence if he approached the RSLO but not otherwise. The matter however was left in abeyance.

However, the issue did not fade away, as probably everyone hoped, and was brought to the attention of Petrie, who was unamused by Rothschild’s initiative. By telling the RSLOs about the true nature of the operation, he had placed them in an invidious position as they acted as MI5’s official link to the police. If that relationship was to be based on a lie, implying that the Chief Constables were not fully trusted, then they were in danger of being undermined, thereby potentially compromising future cooperation:

I had a meeting with the Director-General, Jasper Harker, Victor Rothschild, Alan McIver and T.A. Robertson about Plan BUNBURY. The Chief Constables are to be told if they approach the RSLOs that the incident is a special exercise. They are to be asked to keep up the deception with the utility undertakings. I am to visit Colin Robertson, the Chief Constable of Suffolk, and explain the position. There is to be no publication in the Police Bulletin. The D-G was rather annoyed about the letter to the utility undertakings being sent out without prior reference to himself. The fact is, however, that the normal way is for a utility undertaking to report to the Central Electricity Board who immediately send teleprinter messages to all their power stations in the country. Moreover, if we are out for publicity which we have so far not been able to get, there is bound to be a reproach by Chief Constables to RSLOs. The only unfortunate thing about the letter to my mind is that there is something about spies being at large, and it is perhaps a little too positive.

Nevertheless, despite the internal friction caused by BUNBURY, MI5 remained keen to exploit the situation and generate some media interest, as Liddell noted on 18 August when Len Burt was authorised to adopt unorthodox tactics to attract the newspapers:

I had a talk with Len Burt about BUNBURY. There is to be publicity in today’s press. Burt pretended to get tight in a pub and had leaked to one of his more disreputable contacts and he has now protested to this contact that he has been let down. In the light of this publicity the Director-General has agreed to reverse instructions to RSLOs, provided they have not already been approached. Jasper Harker subsequently ascertained that the field was clear. RSLOs were told that if the Chief Constable approached them they were to say that equipment known to have been used by the enemy was employed and that the matter was still under investigation. If they referred to the letter to utility undertakings they are to be told that this was ‘toned up’ a bit to make the undertakings more security-minded.

This led Liddell and Rothschild to visit the Chief Constable, and make a clean breast of the situation:

I went down to see Chief Constable Colin Robertson with Victor Rothschild and I explained to him all the various phases of BUNBURY and our difficulties. He told me that in spite of this morning’s publicity in every paper, not one question had been put to him about BUNBURY at a Chief Constable’s meeting he had attended. He expected everybody to come up and say ‘Now give us the lowdown about the sabotage at Bury’ but not a word. He was I think pleased we had paid him a visit. He was in thorough agreement with the policy of saying nothing to Chief Constables, and entirely agreed with Len Burt’s view that quite a number of them on receiving the information would hold a mother’s meeting. He was quite prepared to face his own superintendent if he ever found out. He explained to me how difficult it would be to get the searchers to find the unexploded bomb. He pretty well had to push their noses right into it before it was discovered. It looked just like a part of the old unused generator.

Although the two MI5 officers succeeded in mollifying the Chief Constable, the issue was raised the next day at Scotland Yard, where Special Branch detectives expressed their well-founded suspicions:

When visiting Special Branch, Langdon was confronted by Albert Foster, Charles Gill, and four inspectors with the announcement of Plan BUNBURY. They said ‘Whatever your views are about this case, we have come to the conclusion that it is either SOE or Lord Rothschild.’ I am afraid Langdon did not put up a very good show. Although he did not commit himself positively, I think he left them with very little doubt about the origin of the outrage. Amongst other things he is reported to have told them to keep it to themselves, which is of course a complete admission of guilt.

This scenario, in which MI5 sought to deceive Special Branch, was exacerbated on 20 August by Len Burt, himself a former Scotland Yard detective, though never a member of Special Branch. Apparently he had no compunction in assuring Foster that the sabotage had been genuine:

Len Burt has seen Albert Foster and considerably shaken him on the question of the genuineness of BUNBURY. Burt gave it as his opinion it was a true bill.

Having committed itself to perpetuating the lie, it began to spread, and the following day another RSLO, Peter Hope, sought Liddell’s guidance:

Peter Hope has got a reaction from the Assistant Superintendent in Newcastle about Plan BUNBURY. He has been told to stick to the line given to him for communication to the Chief Constable.

On 24 August Liddell was obliged to address the dilemma yet again: