MI6 by Nigel West

Author:Nigel West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Modern / General
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2020-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

It would appear from this letter that some people working in British intelligence still had a severely limited knowledge of the Abwehr. The letter makes clear that, even if the spelling mistake of Canaris’s name is American in origin, there was still doubt about his exact role.

Having obtained an (albeit reluctant) acceptance of the possible advantages of aggressive counter-intelligence, Cowgill went on to develop the concept of geographical sections. This left an individual case officer to become an expert on the enemy’s activities in a certain theatre. Because Section V was so short-staffed, it was impossible to create country sections in parallel with the rest of the Secret Intelligence Service and Special Operations Executive. Instead, officers were assigned geographical regions. In the weeks after Dunkirk this was a relatively straightforward exercise, and each officer became known by a special Section V code-name. Thus Mills, Vivian’s assistant, became V(a), with responsibility for a Belgian section which consisted initially of a repatriated agent named Duvivier (who became V(b)). The transport section was in the hands of Captain Blake-Budden, known as V(c). From 1942, an administration section operated under the leadership of a barrister from the Inner Temple, Roland Adams, and the officer who later became SIS’s Chief Administrator, Harald Peake. Keith Liversidge, who joined Gerald Templer’s staff after the evacuation of the rest of Colonel Calthrop’s Station, dealt with Scandinavia; Mackenzie was assigned France, Jarvis dealt with Iberia, O’Brien with the Middle East and Dennys with the Netherlands. Staff passed to Section V from redundant European Stations, whom even Section V found it difficult to keep busy, were posted to the geographical section responsible for ‘The Americas’. In this last category were Evelyn Sinclair (recently repatriated from Berlin) and Robert Carew-Hunt, of whom more will be heard later. Because of the acute logistical problems, the MI5 officer responsible for security in the western hemisphere, Colonel W.T. (Freckles) Wren, doubled as Section V’s man and the Defence Security Officer.

Ironically, Section V only began to realize its full potential after MI5 had developed an agent rejected by SIS. At the end of 1936 Colonel Edward Peal, the SIS case officer, had been informed by MI5’s Edward Hinchley-Cooke that one of his main agents in Germany, a Welshman named Arthur Owens, was playing a double game. Owens had been recruited by Naval Intelligence and had been passed to Peal, who had given him the code-name SNOW. As soon as Hinchley-Cooke disclosed that SNOW had been writing to an address in Hamburg which appeared on MI5’s stop list, Peal abandoned the case and handed him over to MI5’s B Division. Tar Robertson took over SNOW and ran him as a thoroughly successful double agent. The question of ‘turning’ agents in peacetime had never been considered by the CSS, who had viewed SIS’s role in terms of intelligence acquisition, not intelligence per se.

When SNOW had been given the chance to operate his Abwehr wireless set under MI5 control in September 1939, he seized it and, in due course, SNOW was promoted by the Germans to the leadership of a substantial network.

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