Nicossof ’s a Russian name
And not what you might think,
A form of Oriental vice,
Or buggery, or drink.
A scion of this noble house,
An unattractive sod,
Was Stanislas P. Nicossof
Of Nizhni Novgorod.
COLONEL DUDLEY CLARKE
They call me Venal Vera
I’m a lovely from Gezira
The Fuhrer pays me well for what I do
The order of battle
I obtain from last night’s rattle
On the golf course with the brigadier from GHQ.
ODE TO A GEZIRA LOVELY
Any trustworthy item of intelligence
is worth a dozen panzers.
ADMIRAL WILHELM CANARIS, FEBRUARY 1941
Chief among these masters of espionage was the
innocuously named agent CHEESE. This case
became one of the most successful of all the
double cross agents in the war.
TERRY CROWDY IN DECEIVING HITLER
CONTENTS
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Dramatis Personae
Introduction
Chapter 1 Renato’s Tale
Chapter 2 SIME
Chapter 3 Rommel’s Intelligence
Chapter 4 The CHEESE Network
Chapter 5 Operation HATRY
Chapter 6 1943
Chapter 7 1944
Chapter 8 Plan JACOBITE
Chapter 9 MAX and MORITZ
Chapter 10 Finale
Appendix 1 Cipher devised for CHEESE
Appendix 2 Allied Order-of-Battle Inventions
Chronology
Bibliography
Index
Also By Nigel West
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author owes a debt of gratitude to the intelligence professionals who have assisted his research, among them Tommy Robertson, Rodney O. Dennys, David Mure and Bill Kenyon-Jones. He is also grateful for the assistance of the deception historian Thaddeus Holt, and Martin Levi and his family. In addition, the archivists at Winchester College and University College, Oxford, were generous with their time.
Renato Levi in 1949
GLOSSARY
18700 SIS Numerical code for Nicholas Elliott in Istanbul
89700 SIS Numerical code for Rodney Dennys in Cairo
ABEAM Deception scheme
Abstelle Abwehrstellen
Abwehr German military intelligence service
AFU Agentfunkgerät (Abwehr wireless)
ALADDIN Abwehr officer in Istanbul
AMGOT Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories
BGM Blonde Gun Moll
BIJOU Deception scheme involving HMS Indefatigable
CAMILLA ‘A’ Force deception scheme
CASCADE ‘A’ Force deception scheme in 1942
CBME Combined Bureau Middle East
COMPASS Allied attack at Sidi Barrani in 1940
CS Commission Speziale
DAK Deutsche Afrika Korps
DAKHLA Abwehr agent in Egypt
D/F Direction-Finding
DOWAGER ‘A’ Force deception scheme
DSO Defence Security Officer
EAM Greek National Liberation Front
ELAS Greek Peoples Liberation Army
FABRIC ‘A’ Force deception scheme in 1942
FLESHPOTS ‘A’ Force deception scheme at El Alamein
GALVESTON ‘A’ Force deception scheme
GRANDIOSE ‘A’ Force deception scheme concerning the Prime Minister’s
travel itinerary in 1942
HARPOON Unsuccessful Allied convoy to Malta
HATRY Financial scheme to finance CHEESE
HERKULES Axis plan for the invasion of Malta
HUSKY Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943
IH Einz Heer
IL Einz Luft
IM Einz Marine
ISLD Inter-Services Liaison Department
ISOS Signals intercepts
JACOBITE Plan to establish CHEESE in Athens
KO Kriegsorganisation
KONO Kriegsorganisation Nahe Orient
LAMBERT SIME codename for Paul Nicossof
LIGHTFOOT Allied offensive in 1942
LLAMA SIM agent in Tripoli run by the French as a double agent
LRDG Long Range Desert Group
MIDAS MI5 scheme to finance TATE
MI5 British Security Service
MI6 British Secret Intelligence Service
MI9 British Escape and Evasion Service
MI14 Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre
NCO Non-Commissioned Officer
ODYSSEY Plan to recover a wireless set in Athens
OETA Occupied Enemy Territory Administration
OKW Wehrmacht High Command
OSS Office of Strategic Services
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence
PAIC Palestine and Iraq Command
PCO Passport Control Officer
PEDESTAL Allied relief convoy to Malta
RAYON Deception scheme in 1942
RB Rifle Brigade
RHSA Reich Security Agency
RSS Radio Security Service
SCU Special Communications Unit
SENTINEL Deception scheme in 1942
SIM Servizio di Informazione Militare
SIME Security Intelligence Middle East
STONEAGE Allied relief convoy to Malta
TORCH Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942
TREATMENT Strategic deception scheme in 1942
TRIANGLE Decrypts of Abwehr Signals traffic
TS Tribunale Speziale
TURPITUDE Deception scheme in 1944
VENDETTA Deception scheme in 1944
VIGOROUS Allied relief convoy for Malta
V-mann Verbindungsmann
WANTAGE Deception scheme in 1944
X-2 OSS counter-intelligence branch
ZEPPELIN Deception scheme in 1944
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Captain Alessi Italian Air Force officer
Annabella Abwehr assistant to Rossetti
APOLLO Abwehr agent in Athens
ARMANDO Abwehr agent in Athens
ARMAVIR Unidentified Abwehr courier
ARTHUR Abwehr codename for DOLEFUL
Bonzos German agent codenamed RIO
Hamado Amin Bey Member of the PYRAMIDS network
BLACKGUARD SIS agent
Blonde Gun Moll Evangeline Palidou
Cuthbert Bowlby Head of ISLD
Max Brandl Swiss watch salesman codenamed ODIOUS
Joseph Buchegger Member of a criminal gang in Istanbul
Helene Cabri Notional nominee for the receipt of money in Cairo
CARPELLASO Abwehr agent in Sofia
Peter Chandos SIS officer
CHARLES Abwehr officer in Sofia
CHEESE SIME codename for Renato Levi
Pat Clayton Captured LRDG officer
Andrea Cohen Notional recipient of funds in Switzerland
Henri Cohen Corrupt merchant in Cairo
Costa Swiss-Italian double agent codenamed PESSIMIST X
Geoffrey W. Courtney SIS officer in Paris
Michael Crichton SIME officer
CRUDE ISLD double agent in Syria
G. R. C. Davis SIME officer
DOLEFUL SIME double agent, a wagon-lit attendant on the Taurus Express, known to the Abwehr as ARTHUR
Dudley Clarke ‘A’ Force director
Dr Delius Abwehr officer in Sofia
Rodney Dennys SIS officer
Desmond Doran SIME officer
EFFIGY SIS double agent in Athens
Otto Eisentrager Abwehr officer in Sofia
Nicholas Elliott SIS officer in Istanbul
Staff Sergeant Ellis CHEESE’s first wireless operator
EMILE Abwehr codename for Clemens Rossetti
Johannes Eppler Abwehr spy arrested in Cairo in July 1942
GALA Double agent
GEORGE Georges Khouri
GILBERT Deuxième Bureau double agent in Tunis
GODSEND Istanbul banker and SIS agent
GROWNUP SIS agent
GULL SIS agent
Rex Hamer SIME officer
HAMLET Abwehr codename for Jawad Hamadi
Kurt Hammer Abwehr agent in Rome
HASSAN Abwehr agent in Athens
Heilgendorf Abwehr radio operator in Bari
Otto Helfferich Abwehr chief in Rome
HELMUT Notional sub-source of ARTHUR
Jack Hester SCU 4
Major S. S. Hill-Dillon SIS officer
Geoffrey Hinton SIME officer
INFAMOUS SIS double agent in Turkey
Michael Ionides SIS officer
Giles Isham SIME interrogator
JEAN Abwehr agent in Paris
George Jenkins DSO Egypt
Alec Kellar MI5 officer
Bill Kenyon-Jones ‘A’ Force
Georges Khouri Suspected spy in Cairo
KISS SIS double agent
Klein Abwehr agent in Palestine
Captain Knowles SIS officer in Paris
Karl Kurt Abwehr agent, alias Charles Masson
LAMBERT SIME codename for the CHEESE network
Captain Lafontaine SIS officer
Major Lethbridge PCO in Belgrade
Renato Levi Double agent, known as CHEESE to SIME and ROBERTO to the Abwehr
LUPO Abwehr agent in Athens
Kenneth MacFarlan Radio Security Service officer
Giovanni Magaracci Real name of Fulvio Melcher
Alfred Major British Consul in Genoa
MARIE Abwehr codename for MISANTHROPE
Rolf von der Marwitz German naval attaché in Turkey, codenamed DENNIS
Raymund Maunsell Head of SIME
Captain McElwee SIME officer
Fulvio Melcher Alias of Giovanni Magaracci, Abwehr radio operator
MIMI Abwehr agent known to SIME as PESSIMIST Y
MISANTHROPE Notional Greek girlfriend of Renato Levi
MURAT Abwehr codename for Erich Vermehren
NAHICHEVAN Unidentified Abwehr courier
Paul Nicossof Notional sub-agent of CHEESE
ODIOUS Max Brandl
OTTO Abwehr agent in Athens
PAPAS Abwehr agent
Parker OSS officer
PASCHA Abwehr agent based in Istanbul
PEDANT SIS double agent in Athens
PESSIMIST X Swiss-Italian double agent run in Syria by SIME named Costa
PESSIMIST Y Wireless operator and double agent codenamed Mimi by the Abwehr
PESSIMIST Z Double agent and drug smuggler in Syria
Hans Piekenbrock Deputy chief of the Abwehr
Eric Pope SIME officer
PRECIOUS Erich Vermehren
QUICKSILVER George Liossis
RAM French double agent
REALTER Abwehr spy sent to Egypt
RIO Codename of a Gestapo agent named Bonzos
ROBERTO Abwehr codename for Renato Levi
Douglas Roberts DSO in Beirut
James C. Robertson SIME officer
Terence Robertson SIME officer
Clemens Rossetti Abwehr officer, codenamed EMILE
Gilbert Ryle RSS analyst
John de Salis SIS officer
SAVAGES Double agent network in Cyprus
Count Scirombo Italian intelligence officer in Rome
Walter Sensburg Senior Abwehr officer in Athens
Rowley Shears Royal Signals wireless operator
Harry Shergold CSDIC interrogator
Evan Simpson SIME officer
SMOOTH ISLD double agent in Syria
Azeglia Socci Cabaret artiste and Renato Levi’s girlfriend
Blanshard Stamp MI5 analyst
TATE MI5 double agent in London
Hans Travaglio Abwehr officer, alias Major Solms
Tschunscheff Abwehr agent in Athens
Erich Vermehren Abwehr defector codenamed PRECIOUS
WHISKERS French double agent in Morocco
John Wills SIS officer
Victor Whittal SIS officer in Istanbul
WERNER Abwehr agent
Kurt J. Zähringer Abwehr officer, alias Zedow, at the German consulate-general in Istanbul.
INTRODUCTION
Very little has ever been written about CHEESE because almost nothing has been known about him for certain. Even the declassification of MI5’s wartime files in 2011 ensured that practically all references to his true identity had been redacted, but it is now possible to tell his astonishing story in full for the very first time since his death in 1954, with the support of his surviving family.
As a double agent, CHEESE has few, if any, equals. He was an Italian Jew who was brought up in India, was educated in Switzerland, and employed as a British agent while working for the French, Italian and German intelligence services. During his extraordinary espionage career which spanned the entire length of the Second World War, he worked for four intelligence agencies (sometimes simultaneously), and survived the experience. He was imprisoned in Turkey and Italy, and his information, brilliantly fabricated in Cairo, had a profound impact on the course of the war in North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, and became the foundation upon which the concept of strategic deception was constructed. He was fluent in English, French, Italian and German, and his wireless traffic was transmitted in French. He was also entirely cosmopolitan, a womaniser, and the legitimate holder of a British passport. Exceptionally brave, he made a perilous journey to place himself back in the hands of the Abwehr in 1942 when his loyalties had come under German investigation. The huge quantities of misleading material that he conveyed to the Axis undermined the Afrika Korps’s attempt to capture Cairo and the Suez Canal, and made a substantial contribution to the first defeat suffered by General Erwin Rommel. In particular, CHEESE is widely acknowledged as having played a pivotal role in the success of Operation CRUSADER, General Claude Auchinleck’s offensive in November 1941 which took the enemy by surprise and successfully recaptured Tobruk.
In 1942 the British deception planners, known as ‘A’ Force, exploited the enemy’s confidence in CHEESE’S network by vastly exaggerating the Allied order-of-battle across the Middle East, and conveying bogus reports of deployments and intentions. According to Sir Michael Howard, the official historian of British strategic deception in the Second World War, CHEESE was ‘the most successful channel at their disposal’. Best of all, TRIANGLE demonstrated that CHEESE’S information was routinely circulated ‘to the Admiral Aegean, Panzer Armee Afrika IC, and the Festungskommandant Crete’.
What makes CHEESE so remarkable, apart from the absence of any reference to him by the authorised historians of both MI5 and MI6 (Christopher Andrew in The Defence of the Realm and Keith Jeffery in MI6), is the entirely notional network of agents and casual contacts that he developed, among them the colourful, pipe-smoking Syrian Paul Nicossof, who eventually took over control of the organisation, and CHEESE’S Greek girlfriend, codenamed MISANTHROPE. Although she was an invention, a very real woman, a fierce Cretan known as the Blonde Gun Moll, or BGM, acted her role when required.
As we shall see, CHEESE’S spy-ring extended to informants of all types and ranged from an American general to cabaret artiste. Perhaps most importantly of all, CHEESE became the principal channel of ingeniously fabricated false intelligence which had been invented by a large team of case officers and analysts who effectively created the concept of military misdirection. As an agent of the British Secret Intell
igence Service (MI6), he is unrivalled, and accomplished more, over a longer period, than any other. Quite simply, CHEESE became one of the most influential figures of the conflict, yet his role remains undisclosed until now.
Over the past forty years, since the first revelations about the XX Committee, which managed MI5’s stable of double agents, and ULTRA, the signals intelligence product distributed from Bletchley Park, much has been published about the manipulation of the enemy’s spy-rings, and the influence of Enigma and Geheimschreiber decrypts. Once highly classified, the concept of strategic deception is now acknowledged as yet another hidden dimension to the clandestine war, but few have stopped to ask how all this effort started. The extraordinary exploits of GARBO, SNOW, ZIGZAG and TRICYCLE have now been declassified, and much has been written about the D-Day deception campaign codenamed FORTITUDE and the highly imaginative schemes, such as MINCEMEAT and COPPERHEAD, designed to mislead the enemy. Such adventures have captured the public’s imagination, and one can only marvel at the ingenuity of the British intelligence personnel who dreamed up a plan to drop the body of a dead courier on a Spanish beach in April 1943, or to send Monty’s double to visit Gibraltar shortly before the invasion of Normandy. Schoolboy pranks or ruses designed with scientific precision to deceive the Abwehr and save thousands of Allied lives?
With the advantages of virtual control over the Axis intelligence collection system, access to the German High Command’s internal communications, and the willingness to mount highly sophisticated deception campaigns, the Allies took significant gambles with the objective of misdirecting the enemy. The results certainly justified the risks. We know now that secret intelligence had a significant impact on the destruction of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat fleet during the Battle of the Atlantic, on the amphibious landings on the coast of France, and the defeat of the Afrika Korps in Libya. We have also learned much about the cryptographers who solved the most complex ciphers, the technicians who devised the machinery, such as Bombes and the Colossus computer, to assist their task, and the British agents and their case officers who worked in conditions of great secrecy to ensure victory. Some of these individuals have been recognised at exhibitions, with belated medals, biographies and even Hollywood movies. Much information has also been released about similar operations in the Far East theatre, where Peter Fleming ran double agents from India against the Japanese, and American cryptanalysts broke the PURPLE and other codes and circulated the results as MAGIC. However, all these triumphs owe their origins to a pioneering operation masterminded by a complete amateur, Evan Simpson, and his star, a playboy with the unprepossessing codename CHEESE.