Spies like us...

This interesting thread has disappeared from the Forums so I thought of bringing it back here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/philby_harold.shtml

My weirdest find so far has to be Kim Philby, senior officer in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) for ten years, but was actually an agent of the Soviet KGB.



Harold Adrian Russell (Kim) Philby (1912 - 1988)

Best Known As: British "Master Spy" and Soviet double-agent

Philby was the son of the famous Arabist St John Philby, and was born in India, where his father was serving as a magistrate.

He was recruited to the KGB while still a student at Cambridge, and along with other KGB recruits - Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt - from the same university, eventually became infamous as a member of 'the Cambridge spy ring'.

In the 1940s they began working for British intelligence, and Philby rose in the ranks to be a respected member of the intelligence community.

Philby betrays the most intimate Anglo-American secrets of state to Moscow, including the top secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Thanks in no small measure to Philby, a network of Soviet spies gradually infiiltrates the Manhattan project supplying the Soviet Union with the most intimate details of the atom bomb.

The most urgent appeals and secret memoranda sent to the British government from German conspirators such as Carl Goerdeler never reach their intended destination because Philby has intercepted and destroyed their conspiracy papers. Philby's mission on behalf of the Soviet Union is to block or sabotage from his position as intelligence overlord any possible contact between the German conspirators and the British government.


In 1951, under suspicion of being double agents, Burgess and Maclean disappeared, surfacing in Russia in 1956 as defectors. Philby was questioned and accused of being "the Third Man," the one who warned Burgess and Maclean to flee as investigations closed in, but he was never officially charged. In 1963 Philby defected to the Soviet Union, and in his 1968 book My Silent War he claimed to have been a "double-agent" for the KGB, the Soviet spy agency, for nearly two decades. He lived the rest of his life in Russia, where he died in 1988, a recipient of the Order of Lenin and an official Soviet hero.


http://www.who2.com/kimphilby.html

http://www.joric.com/Conspiracy/Philby.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSphilby.htm

 

Cicero

Turkish spy Elyesa Bazna code named "Cicero".

He served as valet to the British ambassador in Turkey, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. This valet photographed secret documents, selling them to the Germans during 1943-44 and earning an estimated $1.2 million, paid in British pounds and some diamonds.

His role remained unknown until long after the war when his former German contact, Ludwig Moyzisch, at the German embassy in Ankara, published his memoir in 1950 in Germany. It also appeared in English under the title Operation Cicero (New York: Coward-McCann, 1950) and followed by Cicero's own memoir, I Was Cicero (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

Cicero, who did not know his codename until the 1950 book appeared went under the name of "Pierre" while he was spying, got hold of the British ambassador's safe key, while Sir Hughe, the ambassador, was absent from his bedroom. Sir Hughe was careless to bring secret documents to his residence rather than study them at his office at the embassy. Cicero made a wax imprint and a key of his own, thus gaining access to the safe. The photographed documents were delivered to Herr Moyzisch at clandestine meetings at which he also was paid.

Operation Cicero was full of ironies: before hiring Bazna as a valet the British did not run a background check; had they done so they would have had plenty of reasons to suspect him as a shady character and thus not hire him.

The Germans did not utilize the precious information they gained because of the deep rivalry between the personnel of the military and diplomatic corps. Some Nazi officials suspected that Cicero was a British plant.

The greatest irony was the denouement after the war: the fortune that Cicero gained for his efforts at the risk of his life, those British pounds, were counterfeit money. Cicero's dreams of a rich life turned into a nightmare as he was sued for replacements of his bogus payment to creditors. He actually went to court to be reimbursed by the West German government for his spy services, but not surprisingly, he was unsuccessful. He died at the age of 66 as a poor night watchman in Munich.


http://bofhcam.org/co-larters/snooping-email/author.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2082/is_3_63/ai_75162090

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IMR/is_2002_Spring-Summer/ai_92615721

 

More Philby:

The Vermehren Affair

In February 1944, a senior German Abwehr officer, Eric Vermehren, serving in the German consulate in Istanbul, defects with his wife Elizabeth to British intelligence. The Vermehrens are devout Catholics and highly connected in Germany. Elizabeth Vermehren is a cousin of former Weimar Chancellor Franz von Papen. Deciding they can no longer endure the brutality of the Nazi regime, they turn themselves in to British intelligence and agree to be spirited away to Britain.

Having arrived in England, they supply their debriefing officer with a complete list of Germany's most prominent Catholic political activists working against the Nazi regime. According to the Vermehrens, the people on this list would be crucial to helping the western Allies set up a post-nazi anti-communist government in Germany. Tragically for the anti-communist German opposition to Hitler, the debriefing officer assigned to the Vermehrens is none other than Kim Philby.

Shortly after the war, when American and British secret service agents attempt to contact the Germans on the Vermehren list, they learn to their horror that nearly all of them have been killed. A generation later, it is discovered that Philby had passed on the list to his Soviet controllers and that the KGB had assassinated nearly everyone on that list. Philby never confesses to being the culprit, but fellow SIS agents identified him as the leaker explaining their consequent deep animosity towards him.

http://www.joric.com/Conspiracy/Nemesis.html

 

SPIES:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/index.html

 

Wow!

 

A Man Called "Intrepid" William Stephenson

Sir William Stephenson (1896-1989 )

Born on January 11 1896 in Winnipeg, Manitoba

During WWI he was a Sergeant in the Canadian Engineers

In 1917 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps

Shot down 12 planes before he was shot down and captured by the Germans on 28 July 1918

During WWII he was made head of British Security Coordination, headquartered in New York

During World War II, William Stephenson set up Great Britain's spy operations in the Western Hemisphere and coordinated the exchange of intelligence between Great Britain and the United States. In this capacity, he also served as a trusted and confidential intermediary between Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Among the operations undertaken by Stephenson and his New York City based operation was the neutralization of Axis spies, including assassination of Nazi agents with hit and run automobile "accidents" and shooting another through the window of an office building.

http://www.around.ntl.sympatico.ca/~toby/intrep.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWstephensonW.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stephenson

 

One of the greatest enlightenments about WWII for me was the extent of espionage that had been conducted. The detection, turning and use of the German agents in England was one of the most amazing. Figures like the men who were the actual double agents facinate me now as much as the campaigns, battles and individual actions. One part of me sees the effort and dedication. It has to be a supreme effort to lead such a double life. The level of anxiety and paranoia that they maintain would cripple, and does cripple most people who try to do this. The other part is the revulsion I feel for their traitorous actions. No matter which side they betray or which master they serve there is something fundamentally abhorant about anyone who can do this. It is sort of like someone who is a nanny being a pedofile. No matter if they are doing it to your kids or someone elses, it is just wrong.

 

To my huge surprise I have read about the big number of communist spies at high levels in the western allied organisations... Scares me what Stalin might have accomplished...

 

When you realize how much information that the Russians got about the Manhattan Project it really is scary.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Trinity-Vatican-Swiss-Banks/dp/031218199X

Anyone read anything who these German scientists might be that actually were spies for Stalin?

 

Then of course there's these guys.

Shoot, the link didn't work.

Image: Aakroyd and Chase dressed in fur.

Later

 

The soviets got info on the Manhattan Project from the Rosenberg's. However it's being said that the Soviets already had a bomb of their own but just couldnt figure out some glitches and that's what the Rosenbergs helped with.

 

The spy ring that has always fascinated me, is the Lucy ring that supplied Stalin with top secret plans that sometimes hit his desk before German commanders received it.

Intelligence professionals and historians alike have long regarded the Red Orchestra as one of the most successful spy rings that operated during the Second World War.

The Red Orchestra spy ring consisted of three main branches: the network in France, Belgium, and Holland; the Berlin network; and a remarkable group of agents, known as the "Lucy Ring," that operated from the relative safety of neutral Switzerland. The Berlin-based Red Orchestra agents included Harro Schulze-Boysen, an intelligence officer assigned to the German Air Ministry, and Arvid von Harnack, an employee of the German Ministry of Economics. These men, as well as several others, reported extraordinarily sensitive information from key areas of the German bureaucracy in the German capital itself.

The Lucy Ring, perhaps the most important branch of the Red Orchestra, possessed some impeccable sources of information. These sources included Lieutenant General Fritz Theile, a senior officer in the Wehrmacht's communications branch, and Colonel Freiherr Rudolf von Gersdorff, who eventually became intelligence officer of Army Group Center on the eastern front. The Lucy Ring provided Soviet leader Josef Stalin with extraordinarily accurate information on Nazi intentions on operations on the German eastern front. The Germans apparently knew of the existence of a Soviet spy ring operating in fairly high levels of the Reich Government administration as early as 1941. However, like many counterespionage cases, it was only after two years of painstaking investigation that the case was finally broken.

Any clues to any other top Germans capable of passing that sort of info?

 

Have a look at the Ustinov family....Well known about Peters dad, but little known about what Peter brought back from his travels. Whoops, Did I just out him?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1973962.stm

The name's Tricycle, Agent Tricycle...

 

Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Agnes Meyer Driscoll (1889-1971) was a United States cryptanalyst. Driscoll broke a multitude of Japanese naval systems, and developed early cipher machine systems.

http://www.answers.com/topic/agnes-meyer-driscoll

In her thirty-year career, Mrs. Driscoll broke Japanese Navy manual codes -- the Red Book Code in the 1920s, and the Blue Book Code in 1930, and in 1940 she made critical inroads into JN-25, the Japanese fleet's operational code, which the U.S. Navy exploited after the attack on Pearl Harbor for the rest of the Pacific War. In early 1935, Meyer Driscoll led the attack on the Japanese M-1 cipher machine (also known to the U.S. as the ORANGE machine), used to encrypt the messages of Japanese naval attaches around the world. At the same time Agnes sponsored the introduction of early machine support for cryptanalysis against Japanese naval code systems.

 

Might be a little of topic by since it is about spies I will ask it. What would you consider as one of the best spy movies?

 

No surprise there as I like the Bond movies, especially Roger Moore is my favourite, if you ask me. then again I do love the parodies even better, Austin Powers is especially good.

 

J. Edgar Hoover

After the war broke out in Europe, Hoover lobbied vigorously to expand the FBI jurisdiction globally to become the one U.S. intelligence agency. He was furious when he found that his goal had been thwarted by his old nemesis, William Donovan.

FDR, in particular, was anxious to have a close relationship between the FBI and its British intelligence counterparts. Things went along well until it was clear to Hoover that the head of the British intelligence team was supporting Donovan in his bid to start a new agency which was to eventually to be called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA.

After Roosevelt appointed Donovan to head up this important new intelligence agency, Hoover went completely sour on any cooperation with the British intelligence operatives.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/hoover/8.html

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Interesting to find possible details and reasons why things did not always go as smoothly as you´d expect them to...

 

British Sergeant Harold Cole, "the worst traitor of the war," deserted from the BEF in 1940 and set up an escape and evasion network in northern France. The group saved hundreds of downed airmen until Cole was turned by the Gestapo. After that, Cole betrayed dozens of resistance workers and soldiers to death at German hands. He was successful with women, discarding a number of loyal mistresses, and completely untrustworthy about money. By 1945 both Gestapo and Allied forces wanted his head. In 1946 he was killed by police in Paris.

Amazon.com: Turncoat: The Strange Case of British Sergeant Harold Cole, the Worst Traitor of the War: Brendan Murphy: Books