Fighting to Lose by John Bryden

Author:John Bryden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2014-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

At the time he was working for the British authorities in England, they composed the messages for him in English, which he transmitted. However, in this connection, these messages were worded in very good English and definitely beyond what Mr. Popov’s capabilities are in handling the English language. This same idea will probably have to be pursued here in order that we can simulate the type of diction pursued previously in the messages prepared by the British …7

These were still early days for the FBI as a counter-espionage organization, so Connelley did not automatically assume — as he should have — that Popov must have been blown the moment the Germans received a message from him that was beyond his known English fluency.

When asked about the money in the briefcase, Popov told the FBI that $38,000 of it had come from the British, and that he was to deposit it for them in an American bank; $6,000 was from the Germans to finance his espionage operations, and the remaining $26,000 was his. Connelley had trouble getting his mind around the first item, probably because the FBI had considerable experience with organized crime and good relations with Treasury agents: usually when people launder large sums of their own money it is because it is counterfeit.

Connelley pressed Ellis to elaborate, but the MI6 man was evasive. He would not explain who Hamish Mitchell was either, or why he had accompanied Popov to his hotel. It was Popov, a few days later, who informed the FBI of Plan Midas and admitted that the $38,000 actually came from the Germans. He claimed that the idea was to deposit it in the United States, where it would be drawn on by a German spy in Britain whose cheques would be traced by British intelligence. Connelley was appalled. It was, he wrote to Hoover, “the most dangerous thing the British could have done, so far as the safety of Popov [was] concerned.”8

The actual scheme involved depositing the entire sum, all of it German money, into the account of a fictitious person who would pay the same amount in England to Wulf Schmidt, who then would serve as paymaster to Germany’s spies in Britain. MI5 planned to jot down their names when they collected their cash. Connelley would have been even more appalled had he known how silly Midas really was.

Ellis again brought with him photo-enlargements of the microdots containing the English-language questionnaire and Popov’s wireless transmission instructions. These Connelley attached to his report, not knowing that Hoover had already received the copies Ellis had given Foxworth. The next day, Lanman went around to Popov’s hotel and collected what microdots Popov still had, and his other espionage paraphernalia.9

There was an additional twist to Connelley’s interview with Popov that the FBI man could never have dreamed of. Popov was reciting his story in the presence of the man who was to be his North American spymaster for both the British and the Germans, Captain Charles Howard Ellis. Ellis

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.