By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Harrowing Story Of A Double Agent

During the summer of 1943, Britain’s wartime secret service, the Special Operations Executive, SOE, suffered a significant collapse of its networks in northern France. It was a disaster of monumental proportions, a disaster from which the SOE never properly recovered. The story of that collapse lies at the heart of the history of Britain’s secret war alongside the French Resistance.

When the double Lysander flight carried, the earlier mentioned Nora Inayat Khan and three others landed safely north of Angers. Henri Déricourt (alias Claude, alias Gilbert), Section’s new air movements officer, was on the ground to meet them.

The role that MI5 played in the drama concerning Déricourt’s recruitment. MI5, the agency responsible for vetting arrivals on British shores, was not a monolith and was divided conventionally by the organization and, more subtly, by hierarchy. Any statement about what MI5 said or did must be qualified by identifying which officer was responsible. This is because senior members of MI5 sometimes concealed information from lower-level officers. It also appears that Déricourt did not declare his contacts with German intelligence, and the narrative suggests that SIS learned of Déricourt’s contacts with the Gestapo only in April 1943.

A trick aviator who became a pilot with Air France, Déricourt had escaped to England in 1942 to look for work. At that time, Colonel Maurice James Buckmaster, the leader of the French section of Special Operations Executive, urgently needed an airman to organize his night landings, and pick-up operations had snapped him up and had him parachuted back into France with the alias Gilbert. As all at the morning meeting were agreed, air operations in and out of France were, thanks to Déricourt, running more smoothly now than ever.

Allegations of treachery against Henri Déricourt, first made the previous summer, had also spread. So persistent were the accusations against the air movements officer that in February 1944, Colone Buckmaster was obliged by MI5 and SOE’s security directorate to recall him for investigation. Déricourt flew back to England on the night of 8-9 February, bringing his wife, Jeanne. He protested his innocence and was reassured by Buckmaster, who told him he had nothing to fear from the charges and put him up in the Savoy.

Déricourt had won Buckmaster’s trust from the moment they first met. The thirty-five-year-old from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine (whose fables he loved to cite), had a straightforward manner, quiet confidence, and a muscular physique, with fair hair curling into a quiff. His charms had impressed Buckmaster and most in F Section and the pilots of ‘Moon Squadron’. The self-educated son of a postman, he had been drawn to the thrill of flying from a young age, going on to organize aerial events before training as a commercial pilot. In 1942 Dericourt had been promised a job by British Overseas Airways, but when offered a role with SOE, he readily accepted this instead.

MI5, who checked the Frenchman’s history, warned Buckmaster that they couldn't guarantee his reliability’. They gave because, after he was first offered the job with British Overseas Airways, Dericourt had delayed coming to England, spending several more weeks in France. During this time, ‘he would have been a likely subject for German attention’, cautioned MI5, but Buckmaster saw nothing to fear.

“An SIS ‘spotter’ at LRC quickly identified Déricourt as a German agent and turned him.” (Patrick Marnham, in War in the Shadows)

“Throughout 1943, Déricourt had been run as a XX Committee double-agent by SIS as part of STARKEY.” (Patrick Marnham, in War in the Shadows) To clarify the reference to STARKEY, this part of Cockade involved three deception operations: Operation Starkey, Operation Wadham, and Operation Tindall. Operation Starkey was set to occur in early September, Operation Tindall in mid-September, and Operation Wadham in late September 1943.

“Christmann says that Déricourt could have been one of Britain’s most brilliant double agents.” (Jean Overton Fuller, in Double Webs)

“He [Déricourt] said that on 2 June 1943, he was visited by two Germans . . . He accepted the ‘Doctor’s’ offer to work for the Germans. . . .  From then on ‘Gilbert’ became a double agent. But he insisted at his trial that he worked honestly for the British and only ‘feigned to work for the Germans’.” (E.H. Cookridge, in Inside SOE)

“The mistakes and failings of the British agents and their French colleagues are generally characterized as human weaknesses, not treachery, although such a word seems applicable to the double agent Henri Déricourt.” (Mark Seaman, in Foreword to Francis J. Suttill’s Prosper)

“Such a proposition does not stand up to detailed examination in the two related cases cited most often: the attempts in 1943 to persuade the enemy that a second front was imminent, and the duplicity of Henri Déricourt, SOE’s air operations controller, and maybe a double agent run by SIS against the SD.” (Nigel West, in Secret Wars)

This selection of quotations from the literature on Déricourt should immediately provoke the following questions: “Was Déricourt originally recruited by the Germans, and then ‘turned’ by the Allies? Or was he an agent of SOE, whose past connections with German pilots led him to be ‘turned’ by the Sicherheitsdienst and thus used against the Allies?” And the unavoidable conclusion must be that no one knows. Moreover, once a recruit for one service starts talking to the other side, no intelligence or counter-intelligence agency can see where the individual’s loyalties lie, and it must be unsure of its ‘ownership’ of him or her. The claims made in these statements include some troublesome contradictions.

The Royal Victorian Patriotic School (LRC)

 

In War in the Shadows, Patrick Marnham asserts that Déricourt, in September 1942, was identified at the London Reception Centre (LRC) at Wandsworth as a German agent and then ‘turned’ (p 264). He states that the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) had already recruited him, paid him handsomely, and given him his BOE.48 moniker (p 263) before he left Vichy, France. He describes Déricourt as a Gestapo agent unmasked on arrival in England and sent back into France to work within and betray a circuit  . . .’ ( p 276). On the other hand, E. H. Cookridge echoes the claims that Déricourt himself made – that he was a loyal British agent until he was visited on June 2, 1943, by two Germans ‘whom he had known before the war as Lufthansa pilots. After the war, when he was charged with treason by the French DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), Déricourt claimed that he had no choice but to accept the Gestapo demand. One of these assertions must be wrong – maybe both. They are worth analyzing in more detail.

Marnham, by stating that Déricourt was ‘turned’, overtly suggests that the Frenchman’s then-current allegiance must have been to the Nazis. (Marnham’s citation of Keith Jeffery in his Endnote as the source of this assertion is slightly misleading: the authorized historian of MI6 merely confirms that the service had ‘spotters’ at the LRC and does not mention the Déricourt case at all.) Marnham does not explain, however, how the MI5 officer(s) interrogating him knew that he was a German agent already (unless Déricourt himself said so), nor by which threats, or ideological conversion process, Déricourt was convinced to switch his loyalties, or, even more importantly, how SOE knew he was not bluffing when he declared his commitment to his new masters. Marnham then says that, as a consequence of this process, Déricourt was run as a double agent by the XX (Double-Cross) Committee as part of the STARKEY deception operation. (Marnham somewhat confuses his argument when he claims that Déricourt became a ‘double agent’ only when he contacted Boemelburg, i.e., by his first mission, shortly after his arrival in France in January 1943: see p 251 of War in the Shadows.)

That claim concerning Déricourt’s disposition, however, would imply that the XX Committee (or the TWIST Committee, that ran alongside it for a while) had every confidence that Déricourt would reliably carry disinformation with him overseas to his erstwhile German masters without revealing to them what had happened. Moreover, the committee would have to assume that the Gestapo believed that Déricourt had not switched his loyalties but had infiltrated the British intelligence structures under pretenses. Yet the more earnestly British intelligence (in any department) considered that Déricourt might have been a German agent, the more cautious they should have been in turning him loose in France. For SOE/SIS had no control over Déricourt’s movements or what he said while he was in France, and the Germans, correspondingly, must have wondered how Déricourt had succeeded so quickly in gaining the trust of his new employers and whether the information he carried back to them was reliable or not.

Cookridge, on the other hand, quotes the trial transcript of the Permanent Military Tribunal at Reuilly Barracks from June 1948. Here Déricourt stated that the Germans told him that they knew all about his activities, his arrival by parachute, and his journeys to England and that they threatened to shoot him unless he agreed to work for them, also threatening to harm his wife should he abscond to England for good. Déricourt told his French interrogators that he continued to work loyally for the British and only ‘feigned to work for the Germans. “He never gave the Germans information which could have endangered his comrades”, echoed Cookridge, showing some naivety and unawareness of Déricourt’s betrayal of information. Yet the Gestapo was playing a similarly speculative game. They also lacked complete control over Déricourt and, by letting him return to England, must have admitted to themselves that he might reveal the conversations and threats to his British employers and that he might thus bring tainted information with him on his return (or even dispassionately betray his wife). Theirs was a far less dangerous enterprise, however: they were on home turf (if not native soil). They had infiltrated some of the SOE circuits already, and Déricourt was a dispensable associate whom they would manipulate as long as it suited them but then abandon or dispose of if necessary.

In her book, A Life in Secrets (2007), Vera Atkins wrote that allegations of treachery against Henri Déricourt, first made the previous summer, had also spread. So persistent were the accusations against the air movements officer that in February 1944, Buckmaster was obliged by MI5 and SOE’s security directorate to recall him for investigation. Déricourt flew back to England on the night of 8-9 February, bringing his wife, Jeanne. He protested his innocence and was reassured by Buckmaster, who told him he had nothing to fear from the charges and put him up in the Savoy.

Déricourt had won Buckmaster’s trust from the moment they first met. The thirty-five-year-old from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine (whose fables he loved to cite), had a straightforward manner, quiet confidence, and a muscular physique, with fair hair curling into a quiff. His charms had impressed Buckmaster and most in F Section and the pilots of ‘Moon Squadron’. The self-educated son of a postman, he had been drawn to the thrill of flying from a young age, going on to organize aerial events before training as a commercial pilot. In 1942 Dericourt had been promised a job by British Overseas Airways, but when offered a role with SOE, he readily accepted this instead.

MI5, who checked the Frenchman’s history, warned Buckmaster that they couldn't guarantee his reliability’. They gave because, after he was first offered the job with British Overseas Airways, Déricourt had delayed coming to England, spending several more weeks in France. During this time, ‘he would have been a likely subject for German attention’, cautioned MI5, but Buckmaster saw nothing to fear.

As Déricourt’s interrogation began in February 1944, Buckmaster conceded that, should the allegations against the air movements officer prove true, every agent landed in France by air over the previous ten months. Every agent brought back to England would be contaminated. But Buckmaster refused to believe the allegations would ever be proven and declared it an ‘SOE war objective’ to clear Déricourt’s name.

Despite this incriminating evidence, he continued to deny he was Leopold. Next, Rousset was confronted inside Avenue Foch by Gilbert Norman, who told the Germans that Rousset was Leopold. Norman told Rousset that the Gestapo had complete information about SOE and that ‘given this knowledge, he and Prosper had decided to admit everything, to save their lives’. Archambaud advised Rousset to do likewise.

Vera Atkins underlined this paragraph. It was the first credible reference to Francis Suttill since his arrest in June 1943. It appeared to support gossip, which Vera had heard from French sources in Paris, that Suttill and Norman had together decided to make a pact with the Germans ‘to save lives’. ‘Archambaud then went on to say that they had been betrayed by somebody in London and named the traitor Gilbert (Henri Dericourt).’

As Vera knew, MI5’s investigations into Henri Déricourt’s case had only just been wound up, and at the beginning of September 1944, he had been told he was free to go.

Rousset then told his interrogator how he was taken to another room on the third floor of Avenue Foch, where there was a large map of France. ‘On this plan was marked the organization of the French Section with Colonel Buckmaster’s name at the top and all the circuits underneath with names of organizers and radio operators.’

Vera had hoped to hear what the French were finding out, particularly about the Prosper case and Henri Déricourt. She was disappointed. No sooner had she and her colleague arrived than the French police made it clear that they had nothing to say to the British after all. General de Gaulle had heard of their arrival and declared the SOE personnel ‘persona non grata in France’. Vera returned home angered by the snub but determined that the next time she went to Paris, she would go with more authority.

Even more tantalizing were letters from her agent Ange Defendini. But the letters contained no clues about where Defendini was eventually taken. The only clue they did contain was a warning about Déricourt ‘I have confirmation here from my mistress that Gilbert is a swine.’ The word ‘mistress’ was code for Defendini’s Gestapo captors.

‘Louba [Frager] said that a double agent called Gilbert was responsible for his arrest.’ Vera had dearly hoped to talk to Frager about Déricourt (Gilbert). There were many other F Section men, too: all correctly identified and all shot or hanged.

Vera Atkins wrote; There were French women survivors here who had worked with Prosper. One woman reported that a fellow prisoner told her, before being sent to the gas chamber, ‘Gilbert nous a tradies (‘Gilbert has betrayed us’), another reference, it seemed, to Henri Déricourt.

Southgate said he had been so staggered by the depth of Kieffer’s knowledge that he had told him: ‘You seem to know more than I do.’ Kieffer did not understand Southgate’s words immediately. But then, hearing the translation, he jumped to his feet and laughed with great excitement, relishing the flattery. ‘We know much more even than you think!’ he exclaimed. ‘Our people read the documents sent to your country before yours read them.’ Then he paused for a moment, perhaps realizing that he was being somewhat indiscreet: ‘Do you know Claude?’ he asked. Observing the surprise on Southgate’s face, Kieffer continued: ‘He is a very good man of ours. From him, we get reports, documents, and names of people.’

As Southgate well knew, Claude was another alias, in addition to Gilbert, used by Henri Dericourt. Southgate told his British interrogators: ‘I can only state that this German colonel told me that Claude was his agent.’ And for good measure, Southgate added that while he was in Buchenwald, he had heard from another prisoner who experienced Avenue Foch a little later that Kieffer had ‘gone raging mad’ when he heard that Claude had been returned to England for investigation in January 1944.

Vera had heard this story about the captured mail many times before, and it was always Henri Déricourt (Gilbert) who was accused of passing the mail to the Germans, but no SOE or MI5 investigation to date had found evidence strong enough to charge him. One theory, put about by Déricourt's defenders, including Buckmaster, was that the Gestapo had deliberately blackened his name to unsettle fellow agents or to divert attention from a genuine German double agent.

‘Where had Kieffer got the mail?’ Vera then asked Dr. Goetz. Goetz said it came from an agent called Gilbert, who worked for Karl Boemelburg, Kieffer’s commanding officer. Boemelburg handed the mail to Kieffer, but Kieffer himself never encountered Gilbert. He didn’t wish to meet him, said Dr. Goetz. Kieffer didn’t trust Gilbert. ‘He thought he was a double. But he found him useful.

But on occasion, Dr. Goetz himself had encountered Gilbert. Kieffer wanted Dr. Goetz to be present at meetings between Boemelburg and Gilbert in case any information emerged which would help him with his radio deception. He said Gilbert had ‘dark blond wavy hair and a sportive figure’. Vera then showed Dr. Goetz a photograph of Déricourt, and Dr. Goetz recognized him as Gilbert. He also said that all the photostats - prints derived from photographs of the agents’ mail - carried the marking ‘BOE 48’, which he understood to refer to the fact that Gilbert was Boemelburg’s forty-eighth agent.

When Mathilde Carré was finally brought to London for investigation in February 1942, Vera was entrusted by MI6 with the task of watching over the Frenchwoman, which gave her a straightforward and early insight into German penetration methods.

Bleicher was particularly closely questioned by MI5 about events in Paris in the summer of 1943. By that time, Bleicher explained, Hans Kieffer of the Sicherheitsdienst was primarily responsible for rounding up British agents, with the Abwehr now forced to take a secondary role. Kieffer, nevertheless, still found his old adversary Bleicher useful, and they spoke from time to time. On one occasion, Kieffer let Bleicher know that Bodington was in Paris. According to the MI5 interrogation report, it happened like this: ‘He [Bleicher] was informed of Boddington’s arrival by Kieffer, who told Bleicher that he had been informed of it by Gilbert.’ The interrogator wrote: ‘According to Bleicher, Gilbert handed over many of our officers to the SD . . . he had, however, some scruple regarding Bodington, and although he gave away his arrival, said he did not know his address. Kieffer telephoned Bleicher in the hope he might know the address. And it was then that Bleicher warned Frager.’ During the same interrogation, Bleicher said he had also warned Frager in the summer of 1943 that several British wirelesses were being run by Kieffer, telling him that ‘ultimately there were about a dozen’.

Within MI5, Bleicher’s account provoked intense suspicion, both of Dericourt and, by implication, of Bodington. What precisely Bleicher’s motives were in the affair, especially regarding giving information to SOE’s Henri Frager, was, of course, far from clear. Speaking after the war, Dr. Goetz suggested that Bleicher was shopping Gilbert out of jealousy that such a valuable agent should work for the Sicherheitsdienst and not for him. Certainly, Frager’s claim that Bleicher could be trusted - simply because he was an anti-Nazi - was another example of F Section’s tragic wishful thinking: in June 1944, Bleicher personally arrested Frager, who was later shot at Buchenwald.

 

Nicolas Redner Bodington (FN, Senior Staff Officer)

In their interrogation of Bleicher, MI5 tackled the odd circumstances surrounding the arrest of Jack Agazarian, who supposedly attended the fatal rendezvous set up with Gilbert Norman. The interrogator asked Bodington the critical question: why had he sent Agazarian, his wireless operator, to the rendezvous and not gone himself? Bodington’s standard answer - that they tossed a coin - was not satisfactory, but he offered no other. 

Why did either go if there was thought to be a risk? Bodington was asked.

He told his interrogator: ‘They had, after all, to take some chances. Otherwise, they would have got nowhere with their mission.’

One possibility MI5 considered was that Déricourt had warned Bodington that the Germans would be there, but Bodington could not possibly say he had been warned as that would disclose his source. So he sent Agazarian along instead.

Suspicions of Bodington deepened when it emerged that among his many peculiar pre-war acquaintances was Henri Déricourt.

When MI5 asked Bodington why Déricourt always seemed to have so much money, Bodington replied that Déricourt had been a highly paid ‘trick aviator’ before the war. As soon emerged, the two men regularly met at flying shows and dirt-track racing near Paris in the 1930s, when Bodington worked in Paris as a journalist.

One of the German secret policemen Bodington was referring to was almost certainly Karl Boemelburg. Boemelburg, the most senior Sicherheitsdienst officer in Paris for much of the war, was based at the German embassy in Paris in the early 1930s as a quasi-diplomat. Boemelburg, even more strangely, also met Dericourt and Bodington at the dirt-track racing, as Dericourt himself would later reveal.

Rather than reach any conclusion from this plethora of incriminating evidence, MI5 appeared to give up and brought no charges against Dericourt or Bodington. So interwoven were the allegations of treachery involving SOE that the British security service men could not decide whom or what to believe - a state of affairs that may well have suited the former staff officers of SOE.

All these years later, it was still hard to know what to believe, not least because of the ‘weeding’ of the files. What was clear, however, was first that Henri Dericourt was not only a traitor but also a brilliant conman. No sooner had the British acquitted him of treachery for a second time than he was arrested at Croydon airport in 1946, on his way to pilot a plane carrying a large amount of gold and platinum to France. Given his ‘excellent war record’, the magistrate paid him a £500 fine.

Second, it was clear that Bodington went out of his way to protect Déricourt. Déricourt had some hold over Bodington, perhaps dating back to their pre-war liaison, though what that hold was - financial, sexual, or something else - was anyone’s guess.

What was also clear from the files was Vera’s deafening silence on the question of Déricourt. She appeared not to have given her views - or her evidence - on him to the British inquiries at any stage. Yet, she had gathered more incriminating evidence against him than any other investigator. This reticence to speak out officially was in stark contrast to the way Vera made her abhorrence and distrust of Déricourt known unofficially. Anyone who privately broached the subject of Dericourt with Vera after the war was given a rundown on his treachery.

‘She had a feminine intuition. He was a rotten apple. He completely conned me,’ said Hugh Verity, the head of Lysander operations.

Vera mentioned, ‘I knew he was rotten from the very start’, and as she spoke, she suddenly raised her voice a little as if the very mention of the name had stirred long-buried anger. ‘When he came to us, the men were all thrilled to bits with the fellow, but I gave him one look and said I would not trust him across the road. They were furious with me. He seemed to do an excellent job for a while. But he was motivated by money and intrigue.’ 

Vera ‘knew it by Instinct', blowing one of those smoke chimneys above her head. ‘Some people’s instincts serve them well. Mine have always served me well.’

 

Evidence From The Newly Opened Files

Evidence from the newly opened files showed that at the war's end, as many as one-third of F Section circuits were penetrated due to radio deception alone. But the actual penetration of the F Section was far more comprehensive, thanks to Henri Déricourt. Fifty-four British agents who landed in France passed through his hands. All were potentially contaminated, as were any other agents they contacted, as each could have been trailed. The true extent of the penetration of F Section circuits on the eve of D-Day was, therefore, incalculable and concerned MI5’s counter-intelligence experts when they considered the disaster after the war.

Finally, Vera asked Dr. Goetz where she would find Kieffer. Only Kieffer would know about the capture of Francis Suttill. And only Kieffer would be able to confirm, once and for all, whether Henri Dericourt was a traitor. Dr. Goetz said he had last heard that Kieffer ‘was moving towards Munich’.

Vera had not come to interrogate Kieffer formally. She wanted to hear what he had to say on several important matters. On the question of Dericourt, for example, Kieffer was to be Vera’s prime witness, for only he would know the true extent of this man’s treachery. And Kieffer was also the only person who would know the answer to the Prosper conundrum. He would be able to tell Vera once and for all if there had been a pact with Prosper.

At this, Kieffer suddenly looked up, surprised. ‘You are asking me if there was a traitor in your ranks? But why are you asking me? You know yourself, there was one. You recalled him to London - Gilbert.’ Suddenly Kieffer was not at all uncomfortable. He had no qualms talking about Gilbert because he was not one of his informers. ‘He was Boemelburg’s agent,’ he told Vera, referring to his boss, Karl Boemelburg, head of the Sicherheitsdienst in France. ‘For Boemelburg, he was more than an agent. He was a friend going back a very long time. And Boemelburg alone dealt with him. He had the symbol BOE 48. “BOE” for “Boemelburg”. He was Boemelburg’s forty-eighth agent.’ 

And who exactly was BOE 48?’ Vera asked.

‘Well, I think you know,’ he observed her curiously. 

‘Of course, you know. It was Henri Evidence from the newly opened files .’ Here, at last, was the credible confirmation Vera had for so long sought of the treachery of Henri Evidence from the newly opened files Déricourt alias Gilbert. All other evidence against Déricourt. had been viewed by MI5 and by Buckmaster as tainted or open to alternative explanations. Even Dr. Goetz might have been protecting his position in some way. But now Vera had Kieffer’s testimony that Dericourt was working for the Germans. His evidence was more valuable than any other witness, not only because he knew more but because, on the traps of the gallows, he had nothing to lose by telling the truth. Kieffer knew he would almost certainly be hanged for ordering the deaths of the SAS soldiers.

 

 What Exactly Was Boemelburg’s Arrangement With Dericourt?

Vera then asked. Kieffer didn’t know how Boemelburg had come to know Déricourt.. ‘Boemelburg was very secretive about Gilbert,’ he said. He had come to understand, however, that under his deal with Boemelburg, Gilbert offered to show him the agents’ mail and to inform him of any landings that were taking place coming from England. In return, Boemelburg agreed that the docks should take place undisturbed. Gilbert also insisted that the agents should not be followed from the landing fields and that if arrests were to be made, they should be at an agreed distance. Generally, Kieffer told Vera, agents were only shadowed and not arrested not to implicate Gilbert. He had his wireless officer, and generally, he told the Germans where he was transmitting from so that they did not stop him. 

‘Was he paid?’

‘Boemelburg gave him a lot of money. Boemelburg wanted to buy Gilbert a property; his grand dream was that Dericourt would tell him the invasion date. Boemelburg thought Déricourt. was his “super ace”,’ said Kieffer, an expression Vera had also heard from Dr. Goetz. ‘He arrived with masses of papers which had to be photographed so we could use them in interrogations. Everything had to be photostatted very quickly at night. Then I kept the papers in my safe.’

‘When was Gilbert’s mail first used?’

At first, Kieffer said he had not attached much importance to Gilbert’s material. Then he added: ‘It was, however, put to excellent use in the interrogation of Prosper.’

‘I remember that in the summer of 1943, I started the drive against Prosper,’ he told her. 

‘Prosper was arrested in his house after the house had been watched.’ 

‘How did you know the address?’

‘Possibly through Boemelburg. Possibly we did get Prosper’s address through Dericourt. We watched his flat for fourteen days. One day he walked in. We would never have caught him otherwise.’ After Prosper was caught, Boemelburg had passed to Kieffer copies of Prosper’s mail, which Kieffer, in turn, passed to an officer named August Scherer, who first interrogated him.

Nowhere was the statement more ambiguous than on the question of whether Prosper made a pact with Kieffer. Kieffer was a man who liked making pacts. Vera had taken a detailed three-page statement on the ‘pact’ he made with the agent Bob Starr, which was less critical to F Section history. Yet the word ‘pact’ does not appear in connection with Prosper. Vera recorded that, although Prosper ‘did not want to make a statement’, the information Kieffer had received from Dericourt ‘was put to excellent use in the interrogation of Prosper’. What use was this information put to exactly? Vera must have asked Kieffer. But she did not give us his answer.

Vera often chose not to pass on all she found out of loyalty to Buckmaster. But her readiness to manipulate information for less admirable reasons - for example, to cover her own mistakes or the mistakes of SOE - had also been evident.

Vera’s failure to record any detailed testimony from Kieffer on the Henri Déricourt. was even more challenging to fathom than her silence on Prosper, especially because - as she was well aware when she met Kieffer - Déricourt had just been arrested by the French.

At about the same time as Kieffer was captured, the French charged Dericourt with treachery and held him in prison in Fresnes while they prepared a case against him to be heard before a military tribunal.

Any evidence from the senior Sicherheitsdienst officer Déricourt. worked for would, as Vera knew, be vital to the French prosecutor’s case. And Vera had learned enough detail from Kieffer virtually to guarantee Dericourt’s conviction. Kieffer had confirmed in the most credible terms that Dericourt was BOE 48, Boemelburg’s forty-eighth agent. He had also confirmed that Déricourt passed agents’ mail directly into German hands. And he had confirmed that he and his officers knew about every landing from England organized by Dericourt. Yet Dericourt’s name appeared only twice in the formal deposition Vera took from Kieffer and was mentioned almost in passing.

Vera had been building up her file on Déricourt. She showed it to Francis Cammaerts, the former F Section agent, in early 1947.

Cammaerts had told Vera he intended to speak in defense at Déricourt’s trial, and Vera tried to discourage him. ‘As far as I know, Déricourt. was perfect,’ Cammaerts told me. ‘Nobody had ever told me otherwise. Then Vera took me aside. She didn’t say anything. She just took me into a room quietly, showed me a file on him, and then left me to read it. It didn’t take me long to see that he was a double.’ So what happened to the main body of Kieffer’s evidence against Dericourt?

 

Déricourt's Trial

 

When the trial of Henri Déricourt. did eventually take place in Paris in June 1948, it was a travesty of justice. By then, Kieffer lay buried in an unmarked grave. He had been convicted of the SAS murders at a British military trial in Hameln in June 1947 and was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint, the last British hangman. Bob Starr had testified in court to Sturmbannführer Kieffer’s humane treatment of F Section prisoners at Avenue Foch, but his words carried no weight.

Had anyone suggested it, British prosecutors could easily have offered to defer Kieffer’s execution to allow him to give evidence against Déricourt. Recent papers showed that war criminals were often ‘loaned’ to others for trials and then returned for sentence or execution. However, at no point did the British suggest making Kieffer available for the Déricourt. case, and at no point, it seemed, did the French request him.

Much to everyone’s astonishment, Nicholas Bodington made an eleventh-hour appearance, telling the military tribunal that he had been in charge of Déricourt.’s work in the field and vouching for his total loyalty. He said that Dericourt’s contacts with the Germans were known in London and fully authorized for counter-espionage purposes. As a result of Boddington’s evidence, Henri Eugène Déricourt performed his greatest con trick yet and walked away from his military tribunal a free man.

Once again, Déricourt and Bodington appeared to be acting in tandem, and nobody seemed to know why. Diplomats in London were so perplexed by Boddington’s appearance that they asked an MI6 officer based in the embassy in Paris to make inquiries among former F Section people and come up with an explanation. In reply, the officer, Brooks Richards, himself a former SOE man, commented that Dericourt’s evidence ‘bears no relation whatever to the truth as it was known to F Section in London’ and that it was ‘fresh evidence of his unreliability’ and a piece of perjury’.

Yet, in many ways, the mystery of Boddington’s unauthorized appearance at Déricourt's trial is perhaps a red herring. The more important question is why nobody from SOE or the government appeared in an official capacity to present evidence against the man they now knew had hastened scores of British agents to their deaths. Perhaps the Foreign Office refused to countenance any official presence at the trial for fear of ruffling French sensitivities when Britain tried to heal post-war rifts with the French. De Gaulle had always been deeply suspicious of SOE and its real intentions in France. De Gaulle accused French men and women who worked with British-run SOE circuits of being mercenaries, and after the liberation of 1944, he had, on occasion, even ordered SOE agents off French soil. For a representative of SOE now to appear officially in a French court - especially when it meant washing dirty British linen - might have been considered both unwise and embarrassing. And yet there were no British papers to show this was the Foreign Office view. French records on the affair remain closed.

 

French Records On The Affair Remain Closed

And, on the other hand, many people in London wanted to see Déricourt convicted; none more, it appeared, than the woman who had spent so much time investigating his treachery. Dericourt’s conviction would have been a fitting finale to Vera’s ‘private enterprise’. Whatever her impulse to guard F Section secrets, she must have wished to see justice done, if only for the sake of her dead men and women. However, Vera was not even in court to listen to the case. There was no coverage of the trial in the British press. Until the late 1950s, the name Henri Dericourt remained entirely unknown in Britain.

Three years after the end of the war, it was not easy to persuade the powers that Nora’s recommendation for a gallantry award should be rewritten for a fourth time. First, she was proposed for a George Medal, then for an MBE, then a Mention in Dispatches, and, now that the truth about her courage appeared to have emerged, she was to be put forward for the highest award for bravery anyone could receive. The correspondence between Vera and Eileen Lancey of the Honours and Awards Office showed Vera endlessly battling to prove that this time she had got the facts for the citation for Nora right. First, Miss Lancey seemed to doubt the evidence that Nora had been held in chains in Pforzheim. Then there was doubt about how she could have communicated via the prison mugs. ‘How they exchanged mugs I cannot say, but that they did is proved by the fact that Mlle Lagrave had Madeleine’s names and address and many other details concerning her,’ wrote Vera in an exasperated reply to the official. In the end, Kieffer’s evidence of Nora’s escape and her absolute refusal to give any information counted more than anything towards her award. Although Kieffer’s evidence was not available to convict Dericourt, it was crucial in securing Nora her George Cross. Vera quoted Kieffer as the source for the escape with Starr and Faye was ‘Madeleine’s idea’.

By now, Vera had more to worry about than the portrayal of agents in books and films. She was deeply anxious about how the Conservative MP Dame Irene Ward might portray her in the House of Commons. An indomitable character, Ward had once hoped to be an opera singer. Still, it used her powerful voice instead to remonstrate with ministers on behalf of her Tynemouth constituents and in fighting for unpopular causes. In the early 1950s, she was writing a book on the history of the FANY and, like Jean Overton Fuller and Elizabeth Nicholas, had come across the cases of the SOE girls. Irene was particularly intrigued by the case of Henri Dericourt, which Jean Overton Fuller had by now explored in her third book, Double Webs. Here Jean traced Dericourt, who told her he had indeed handed agents’ mail over to the Gestapo but had been acting on instructions from a high authority in London. This claim then fuelled a theory that Dericourt himself was planted inside SOE by MI6. Perhaps MI6 was using Dericourt to keep tabs on the SOE camp and to further its plans to deceive the Germans.

Writing to the Foreign Secretary, John Selwyn Lloyd, in 1958, Irene Ward warned she was ‘going to be an awful nuisance’ unless she got some answers to specific questions. One of these questions was: ‘whether Gilbert was working for one of our secret service organizations and put into SOE to keep an eye on what was going on there, or was he working for the Germans?’

In the 1970s and 1980s, new writers took up the theme, embellishing it with details from newly released papers on ‘Cockade’, the Allied plan to trick the Germans about the date and location of the D-Day invasion. It was now claimed that Henri Déricourt must have been deployed by MI6, or perhaps directly by Claude Dansey, the deputy head of MI6, as part of the plan, ensuring that agents’ mail containing phony hints about D-Day reached the Germans. In his last years, Buckmaster suddenly miraculously recalled that MI6 had sent messages directly to some of the captured SOE radios. By this time, most who had followed Buckmaster’s delusions over the years ignored him. However, some took his thoughts seriously and helped feed new conspiracy theories so enticing that they were put into a novel, Larry Collins’s Fall from Grace, published in 1985.

 

The Cold War

The Cold War was by now being fought, not only across the Iron Curtain but in the corridors of Whitehall and anywhere where the spy-catchers of MI5 might sniff out a traitor. In 1950 a German-born scientist, Klaus Fuchs, who came to Britain in 1933 after fleeing the Nazis and was interned at the start of the war, had been caught passing US nuclear secrets to the Russians. Then, in 1951, the dramatic flight to Moscow of two of the ‘Cambridge spies’, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. The intelligence agencies now clamped down, imposing positive vetting on all secret services and opening files on suspect individuals in any walk of life on the most meager of pretexts. The domestic security service, MI5, opened a file on Vera May Atkins.

In one story, Dericourt wrote about a woman in the Baker Street headquarters of SOE named ‘Lucy’ who was a German agent. Lucy, said Jean in her commentary, was supposed to be Vera. This was extraordinary: the SOE tangle of conspiracy theories had finally come full circle and caught up with Vera. Here was the traitor Déricourt, whom Vera, above all people, had always mistrusted, turning the tables and now accusing her - in the guise of ‘Lucy’ - of being a traitor, all in a work of fiction published after his death.

This little paradox, however, was not Jean Overton Fuller’s point. In her commentary, she explained that Déricourt meant ‘Lucy’ to be Vera because Déricourt had also referred to ‘Lucy’ as a lesbian. ‘He had told that he believed she was a lesbian,’ she wrote. ‘Was she?

I had been told first that Vera worked for the CIA, then that she was a Soviet spy, and now somebody was seriously suggesting she was a German agent. My mind returned to Déricourt’s bizarre depiction of Vera as ‘Lucy’, the German agent in Baker Street.

 

Judith Hiller Made Invaluable Contributions.

A little booklet about the F Section memorial provided a map of all the circuits. Henri Déricourt chose several landing fields near the Cher and the Loire banks.

In their interrogation of Bleicher, MI5 tackled the odd circumstances surrounding the arrest of Jack Agazarian, who supposedly attended the fatal rendezvous set up with Gilbert Norman. The interrogator asked Bodington the critical question: why had he sent Agazarian, his wireless operator, to the rendezvous and not gone himself? Boding ton’s standard answer - that they tossed a coin - was not satisfactory, but he offered no other. 

Why did either go if there was thought to be a risk? Bodington was asked.

When things went wrong, Buckmaster, rather than face up to reality, retreated into fantasy, from which he rarely seems to have emerged. In his later years, when confronted with the facts of his gaffes, he, like others, took refuge in conspiracy theories, saying, for example, that he had known all along that Déricourt was a double agent. Still, he had been following orders from on high. Sometimes when confronted with the facts, Buckmaster cried.

Asked once about the long hours Buckmaster worked at F Section, Vera scoffed, saying he was ‘the worst clock-watcher of all’. And she also allowed a difference of opinion to open up with her former boss over Déricourt. She had told me she never trusted Dericourt, and I soon discovered that in older age, she had made a point of informing many people the same thing, even giving interviews for TV documentaries on the subject. Yet nobody pressed Vera to explain why, if that was the case, she had not ensured his conviction in 1948.

While Vera’s failure to speak out about errors during the war could be explained, her failure to ensure that evidence against Déricourt was put before the French tribunal in 1948 remained one of the greatest puzzles. Dericourt could not be held responsible for anything like F Section’s failings, but his treachery had hastened many agents to their deaths. The Foreign Office may have advised former SOE officers in 1948 that this was a French affair and that a British presence could stir up sensitivities. But such advice would not have deterred Vera from trying to convict Dericourt. Revenge was never a motivating factor in her ‘private enterprise’, but she wanted to see justice done. Yet when Dericourt went on trial, Vera stayed away.

MI5 interrogations concerning Henri Dericourt, Nicholas Bodington, Hugo Bleicher, and related files were mainly in the KV2 series. Associated papers on SOE operations were also in Air2, Air20, and Air 40.

Later stages of Vera’s investigation, including her inquiries into the penetration of F Section and the treachery of Henri Dericourt, were pieced together from her interrogations of Avenue Foch staff, particularly Dr. Josef Goetz and Hans Kieffer, and her notes on these meetings, which were primarily contained in ‘Avenue Foch’ as stated in ‘Paris Files’ https://www.iwm.org.uk/).

Newer evidence surrounding German penetration of F Section and Dericourt’s treachery was contained in several security service files, particularly KV4/20, and in the diaries of Guy Liddell, KV4 (185-96), and in Nicholas Bodington’s report on the Prosper collapse.

 

Hugo Bleicher

 

Moreover, Déricourt was indeed lying. When the Gestapo officer Hugo Bleicher was interrogated in July 1945, he stated that GILBERT had been working for the Sicherheitsdienst for some time before April 1943 and certainly during the period of the negotiations for the release of ROGER [Bardet] from the Sicherheitsdienst (see KV 2/830). Whatever the details were, this was a poor way to run a railroad, let alone a penetrative intelligence organization, as the conflicting expostulations of Buckmaster, given above, affirm. First, the Section F chief threatens the shut-down of the whole set-up should any of his officers be shown to be a double agent (presumably abetting the cause of the enemy) and then reminds his audience of the opportunity of running Déricourt as a ‘double agent’ (probably to help the Allied cause).  There was an officer out of his depth. Yet the mythology of the ‘double agent’ has persisted, and much of the blame can be laid at the feet of John Masterman.

 

The ‘Double Agent’

“In this regard, it is most important to remember that we are apt to think of a ‘double agent’ in a way different to [sic] in which the double agent regards himself. We think of a double agent as a man who, though supposed to be an agent of Power A by that power, is working in the interests and under the direction of Power B. But the agent, especially if he has started work before the war, is often trying to do work for both A and B, and to draw emoluments from both.” (J. C. Masterman)

“It is the modus operandi of all double agents to provide thin material, to begin with, coupled with an undertaking to deliver the earth tomorrow.” (SOE officer Harry Sporborg, quoted by Robert Marshall)

“The concept of the double-agent is well enough known to readers of the literature of espionage; it is understood well enough that the authorized double-agent may be instructed or licensed by his side to contact the enemy and play in semblance the part of a traitor, to gain knowledge of the enemy’s work such as he could scarcely obtain unless she became part of the enemy’s working machine; but it is so often asked what price he has to pay? The authorized double agent who pays in good faith too dearly is not, therefore, a traitor, though, of course, such a double agent may always turn real traitor, and the dividing line might be hard to draw.” (Jean Overton Fuller, in Double Webs)

“But who is to say that these [patriotism and loyalty] will not fade under torture and turn the most steadfast agent into the most dreaded of all espionage weapons, the double agent?” (Alcorn, No Bugles for Spies, 1-2)

“Double agents are spies who secretly transfer their allegiance to a secret enemy service which uses them to confuse its foes.” (M. R. D. Foot in the Oxford Companion to World War II)

“A double agent is a person who engages in a clandestine activity for two intelligence services (or more in joint operations), who provides information about one or the other, and who is wittingly withholding important information from one on the instructions of the other or is unwittingly manipulated by one so that important information is withheld from the other service. Peddlers, fabricators, and others who do not perform a service for an intelligence organization, but only for themselves, are not agents at all, and therefore are not DAs.” (CIA Field Double Agent Guide, 1960)

“Dvoynik – a double agent: An agent who simultaneously cooperates with two or more intelligence services, concealing the fact from each of them.” (KGB Lexicon, edited by Vasiliy Mitrokhin)

 

But What Is A Double Agent, Anyhow?

Even before the end of World War II, the term ‘double agent’ was discontinued in favor of ‘controlled enemy agent’ in speaking of an agent who was entirely under our control, capable of reporting to his original masters only as we allowed so that he was entirely ‘single’ in his performance, and by no means ‘double’.” (Miles Copeland, in The Real Spy World)

The closest analogy to the strategy of the special agents is what Kim Philby set out to do: infiltrate an ideological foe under subterfuge. But the analogy must be pushed somewhat. Philby volunteered to work for an intelligence service of his democratic native country, to facilitate the attempts of a hostile, totalitarian system to overthrow the whole structure. The special agents were trying to subvert a different totalitarian organization that had invaded their country (or constituted a threat, in the case of GARBO) so that liberal democracy should prevail. The two examples have a functional equivalence but not a moral one. Philby was a spy and a traitor: he was not a ‘double agent’, even though he has frequently been called that.

One reason this distinction is so important is that nearly all the so-called ‘double agents’ utilized by the British in the run-up to OVERLORD had not been ‘turned’. Most of them had infiltrated the Abwehr under pretenses and made their true allegiance known when they arrived in Britain. The exception was TATE, who had to be threatened and kept under very close control until he underwent an accurate ideological conversion, his wireless equipment being operated by an MI5 impersonator borrowed from Army Signals. He was not wholly trusted even in the summer of 1943, although MI5 believed that, if he had tried to escape to Germany, his last minders would have killed him instantly, while he would have blown the whole XX Operation.

Problems experienced with other German spies provide evidence of the tradecraft challenges that MI5 faced. SUMMER had to be incarcerated and isolated after he attempted to escape. When Oswald Job, on an Abwehr mission to deliver money to DRAGONFLY, confessed, he was briefly considered for a XX role but then had to be prosecuted – and executed. DRAGONFLY‘s operation had to be terminated because of the connection and exposure. Yet those persons who passed the tests were strictly not ‘controlled enemy agents’ either, since only the Abwehr believed that they were actual Nazi agents working for the German intelligence service (and not all Abwehr officers agreed with that, as it happened.)

In a CIA review of Masterman’s Doublecross System in 1974, A. V. Knobelspiesse tried to clarify matters by explaining that the British maintained four categories of double agents in World War 2: a) the classic double, who might have been in contact with multiple agencies, and thus had to take control of his operation; b) the double agent who was not in personal contact with the enemy service, but communicated solely through writing or wireless; c) the penetration agent, a variety of ‘double’ who worked exclusively against other intelligence services to gain information; and d) the particular agent, a double used solely for planting (dis)information on the enemy, a ‘feeder’.

Yet this is still a muddle. The penetration agent is not a variety of a ‘double agent’, even though he or she may be a gross deceiver. In Category B, impersonation (of activity on a wireless set) was a critical ploy – used by the Abwehr to good effect, too, or sometimes by forcing the operator to transmit under fear of torture or death. (SOE’s Gilbert Norman, aka Archambauld, notoriously agreed to do so, but his security check, the technique for showing he was transmitting under pressure, was ignored by SOE in London, and he capitulated in despair.) Category D appears to differ from Category B by representing personal contact with the enemy. Still, it, unfortunately, uses the terminological preferences of Colonel Bevan, the head of the London Controlling Section, for classifying MI5’s ‘double agents’ (as I have reported before).

If an agent could reliably be deployed to deliver information to the enemy in person (such as Dusan Popov, aka Tricycle), he was not a ‘double’. Those French agents were captured and threatened by the Nazis (with family members perhaps held hostage) and then reported on their comrades (such as Roger Bardet). However, we might sympathize with their plight. They were traitors, not double agents. Moreover, agents who had been identified – but not ‘turned’ – could be fed disinformation (‘chicken-feed’, or ‘barium meals’) if it suited the authorities to maintain them in place, rather than arresting them and thus taking them out of action. That was a completely different aspect of tradecraft. Throughout the archives of MI5’s B1a, officers such as ‘Tar’ Robertson stress, however, that if the unit cannot control a potential ‘double agent’ or implicitly trust his or her patriotism, such a character should not be used for deception purposes.

The confusion has persevered: Nigel West’s Historical Dictionary of WWII Intelligence (2008) defines a double agent in the following terms: “An agent working for one organization may be said to have been turned into a ‘double agent’ when he or she accepts recruitment from an adversary and then knowingly supplies the original employer with false information.” This would appear to resemble Category D, but how the subject ‘knows’ whether the information being passed on is false is not explained. No wonder the publishers’ writers of blurbs for books on intelligence are confused.

Thus the actions and lore of the XX Committee had ramifications that went far beyond D-Day, and the notion that managing ‘double agents’ was simply another ruse out of the counter-intelligence playbook took hold as if it were similar to the process of ‘rounding up the usual suspects’ or ‘bringing on the empty horses’. According to some accounts, James Angleton of the OSS/CIA became excited about the possibilities of passing disinformation to the Soviets after working closely with Kim Philby – but, who knows, perhaps Philby misled him deliberately in getting him to think that such ploys could be used advantageously in that fashion?

Histories of the CIA routinely misrepresent the lessons from the ‘successes’ of the XX Committee. Guy Liddell’s Diaries are littered with examples of Admiral Godfrey of Naval Intelligence dropping by after the war to chat to him about the Double-Cross Operation in the hope that similar techniques might be used against the Russians. (But Liddell knew better.) In one of the more plausible passages in Spycatcher, Peter Wright describes the ridiculous attempts by MI5’s Graham Mitchell, in D Division, to emulate the wartime XX exploits with Russians and eastern European émigrés (pp 120-121). Michael Howard foolishly wrote a letter to the Times claiming that Anthony Blunt had been more usefully exploited (instead of being prosecuted) by letting him pass disinformation to Moscow. And so on.

M. R. D. Foot’s definition above is simply foolish, and the bizarre examples in his short entry show a mixture of traitorousness, duplicity, and misbegotten confidence in an informer. However, the later definitions emanating from the CIA and the KGB offer a more distinct realism. The observation by Miles Copeland (who was charged with keeping a close eye on Philby in Beirut) probably reflects some retrospective imagination. Still, by the 1960s, the realities of dealing at arm’s length with agents recruited to spread disinformation to the Soviets had set in. On the other hand, the CIA field guide definition, more complex as it is, implies that the intelligence agency accurately knows what the ‘double agent’ is doing when he or she withholds information or passes on disinformation. Since such transactions carry on unsupervised, how could the agency ever know whether its agent was drifting into the territory of peddler, fabricator, or, as is commonly defined, ‘trader’? And the CIA’s officers continue to misrepresent policy. The CIA appointed an academic, Dr. David Robarge, as Chief Historian in 2005. Still, his pronouncements in articles and interviews show that he also misunderstands how the Double-Cross Operation worked in WWII. He continues to labor under the misapprehension that ‘turned’ agents become the ‘owned’ emissaries of the agency that turned them. See, for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pin7eqFxQg : this topic merits a deeper investigation at another time.]

 

Dr. David Robarge (CIA)

The KGB definition is much more hard-headed: the double agent is probably duping both his recruiters and is inherently untrustworthy. When Kim Philby landed in Moscow, he was prevented, despite his long track record in spilling reams of information to the Kremlin, from seeing any secret information about KGB assets lest he somehow leaks them back to MI6 in London. No one should be trusted.

The rules for handling agents with shifting loyalties might be summarized as follows:

1) Any agent who too readily switches his or her ideological or patriotic affiliations, or is easily bribable, should be distrusted, as he or she will probably betray any new allegiance;

2) Any agent who is persuaded to ‘turn’ through torture or by other threats will be resentful and vengeful and will need to be observed;

3) Any ‘turned’ agent deployed to carry disinformation to the enemy will need to be controlled closely, and unmonitored contact with the enemy should be avoided;

4) Any agent used for deception purposes should not know what disinformation is, lest he or she betrays secrets under torture;

5) Any agent who claims to have escaped from the custody of an enemy organization should be very stringently interrogated;

6) Any agent detected to be working on behalf of more than one intelligence agency should be wound down at a pace that fits the situation;

7) Agents on home territory who have to be ‘retired’ because of exposure or risks to other assets will have to be isolated or otherwise severely dealt with;

8) Agents on foreign territory suspected of having been betrayed or suborned by the enemy should be isolated immediately, and contacts should be broken off.

It all reinforces the requirement for individual agents to be isolated and not be aware of the broader connections of the ‘ring’. When Goronwy Rees ‘defected’ after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact, Guy Burgess wanted him killed because he knew too much. When Burgess and Maclean absconded, suspicions over Philby grew because he had harbored Burgess in Washington. The Prosper circuit was destroyed partly because it borrowed wireless operators from other networks, and members socialized too freely. Yet espionage is a lonely job, and contacts with occupational ‘colleagues’ often boost morale.

PROSPER’s mission was to establish a network with but one goal: to be a fundamental part of France's invasion and liberation. All operations would be carefully planned to form part of some greater strategic objective. The immediate priority would be slowly building a secret army, disciplined, well-trained, well-armed, and supplied to do the job, which would rise on the eve of D-Day. PROSPER would be the avant-garde of the invasion.

Earlier mentioned by us, Noor would contact the Prosper circuit organizer, Francis Suttill, and take on her new persona as a children's nurse, "Jeanne-Marie Renier", using fake papers in that name. To her SOE colleagues, however, she would be known simply as "Madeleine".

To return to Déricourt. When he arrived in the UK in September 1942, he could have had a variety of statuses, as a potential asset of British Intelligence and a possible agent sent over by the Abwehr or possibly by the Sicherheitsdienst (although the latter organization had no known procedures for infiltrating agents to Britain). Given that the XX Operation was maturing then, comparing his status and profile with those of renowned real and potential ‘double-cross’ agents is educational. So what was he?

Was he like TATE (Wulf Schmidt), a diehard Nazi who agreed to act as a controlled agent under threat of death but eventually became an anti-Nazi because of what he learned about life in Britain?

Was he like SUMMER (Gósta Caroli), another diehard Nazi who similarly agreed to act as a controlled agent but tried to escape when he had the opportunity and thus had to be incarcerated?

Was he like TRICYCLE (Dusan Popov), who claimed that he had recruited himself by the Abwehr through deception, but whose true loyalties were to the Allies, and he was confidently trusted?

Was he like TREASURE (Lily Sergueiev), who similarly claimed that she had got herself recruited by the Abwehr and was trusted until she showed alarming signs of torn allegiance and affront and had to be dropped?

Was he like BRUTUS (Roman Garby-Czerniawski), who narrated a fishy tale of escaping from Nazi captivity and having done a deal with the Abwehr, but whose ultimate loyalty was trusted?

Was he like ZIGZAG (Eddie Chapman), who was utterly amoral and developed such a web of duplicity that his only loyalty was to his survival?

When Déricourt arrived in Britain, he could have:

i) admitted that he had been recruited as a German agent, but it had been a bluff; or

ii) admitted that he had been recruited as a German agent but, under pressure or for other reasons, agreed to switch his allegiance;

iii) concealed the fact that he had associations with the Sicherheitsdienst and stated his eagerness to help the Allied cause;

iv) admitted his contacts with the Luftwaffe but minimized their importance and likewise declared his loyalty to the Allied cause;

v) arrived as an adventurer with a dubious past and a fear that he might be incarcerated, with some vague ambition to help the war effort, and dissembled about part of his experiences.

 If a senior official made a formal statement, he or she should be identified and the statement date. If there is no archival record or trace of a memoir or diary, extreme caution should be used before echoing what a previous historian may have written. It is imprecise to make vague generalizations about departmental policy in British government departments. The whole character of a pluralist democracy implied that multiple opinions competed for attention, and the battles between, say, the Foreign Office and the General Staff, or MI5 and MI6, or SOE and practically everyone else, were a permanent fixture of the political discourse. And such divisions existed within institutions, as well, such as the tensions between the F Section of SOE (i.e., Buckmaster and Atkins primarily) and those officers in charge (notably Gubbins, Sporborg, Boyle, and Senter, but probably not Hambro, who was kept in the dark), with Bodington as a devious intermediary.

We suggest that both Robert Marshall and Patrick Marnham may have oversimplified the role that MI5 played in the drama concerning Déricourt’s recruitment. MI5, the agency responsible for vetting arrivals on British shores, was not a monolith and was divided conventionally by the organization and, more subtly, by hierarchy. Any statement about what MI5 said or did must be qualified by identifying which officer was responsible.  This is because senior members of MI5 sometimes concealed information from lower-level officers. I explained how this happened in my analysis of Agent Sonia, where officers such as Hollis, White, and Liddell were colluding with Dansey in MI6 over Sonia’s entry to Britain but not informing the ‘grunts’ on the ground (e.g., Michael Serpell and Milicent Bagot) about what was going on, to their continued frustration.

Moreover, MI5 was a muddle, even after David Petrie’s reorganization of July 1941. It comprised a very flat structure with many overlapping functions. Dozens of names arise in the Déricourt archive, and it is essential to track what each role was. In early 1943, when it came to vetting arrivals to Britain, Section B1D, under Baxter, held overall responsibility for the LRC (also known as the Royal Victorian Patriotic School, RVPS). Still, the officers who carried out the interrogations (some of whom had been recruited from MI6), such as Beaumont (France) and Ramsbotham (USA), worked in E Division, under Brooke Booth, in E1A. Jo Archer, who was responsible for liaising with the Air Ministry and BOAC, led D3, in Allen’s D Division, with Sargant reporting to him with a focus on the Air Ministry. Security in the ports was managed by Archer’s colleague Adam (D4), with Mars, responsible for Travel Control and Permits, working for Adam. Yet again, another Division (C) was involved with credentials for the Admiralty and Air Force, where Sams and Osborn (C3) took on that role. Robertson managed Special Agents in B1A; Stephens was responsible for Camp020 & 020R in B1E; Hart for Special Sources Case Officers in B1B.

The major relevant sections of this complex organization can be represented as follows:

A Division: Administration and Registry (Butler)

B Division: Espionage (Liddell; deputy White)

            B1 (Espionage)

                        B1A (Special Agents: Robertson)

B1B (Special Sources Case Officers: Hart)

B1C (Sabotage, Inventions & Technical: Rothschild)

B1D (London Reception Centre: Baxter)

B1E (Camp 020 & 020R: Stephens)

B3A (Censorship: Bird)

B4A (Escaped Prisoners of War & Evaders: J. R. White)

C Division: Examination of Credentials (Allen)

            C2 (Military Credentials: Stone & Johnson)

C3 (Credentials for Admiralty, Air Force, etc.: Sams)

D Division: Services, Factory & Port Security, Travel Control (Allen)

            D3 (Air Ministry, etc., Archer)

                        D3A (Liaison with Air Ministry: Sargant)

            D4 (Security Control at Ports: Adam)

                        D4A (Travel Control & Permits: Mars)

E Division: Alien Control (Brooke Booth; assistant Younger)

            E1 (Western Europe, etc.)

                        E1A (French: Beaumont; USA: Ramsbotham)

                        E1B (Seamen: Cheney)

            E2 (Eastern Europe: Alley)

            E3 (Swiss & Swedes: Johnston)

            E4 (AWS Permits: Ryder)

            E5 (Germans & Austrians, Camp Administration & Intelligence: Denniston)

            E6 (Italians: Roskill)

F Division: Subversive Activities (Hollis)

            F1 (Internal Security in H.M. Forces: Alexander)

            F2 (Communism & Left Wing Movements: Clarke & Shillito)

            F3 (Fascist movements, Pacifists, etc.: Shelford)

The point is that most of these units turn up in the MI5 Déricourt files (KV 2/1131 & 2/1132), and they all have different agendas and varying access to information. Thus, given the unwieldy structures, expecting a clear and prompt reaction to events in Déricourt’s case was unreasonable. Those circumstances help to explain the following narrative, where officers like Beaumont struggle, showing complete ignorance of what is going on. At the same time, a high-up like Archer is revealed to be much more familiar with the chain of events over Déricourt’s vetting and recruitment but then has to resort to clumsy evasions. It displays an astounding level of ineffectiveness in management and leadership, where senior officers in MI6, SOE, and MI5 spent far more time deceiving their colleagues than frustrating the enemy.

 

Déricourt’s Recruitment by SOE/ SS Llanstephan Castle

 

Déricourt and Doulet had arrived in Dourock, near Glasgow, on September 8, 1942, on the Llanstephan Castle. They had come from Gibraltar, and their egress from southern France had been approved by MI6, which controlled the MI9 escape lines, in this case, the so-called PAT line. Documentation on their interrogation in Scotland is practically non-existent, but they did not arrive at the LRC until September 15 – a puzzlingly long interval. Doulet (but not Déricourt) was on record claiming on his arrival at Dourock that he was ‘on a special mission, engaged by British Overseas Airways’. I now reconstruct the sequence of events between September 1942 and January 1943.

First, they had to be processed and checked out. Beaumont (who is probably not the same-named MI6 officer who, ‘speaking French with a Slav accent’, facilitated the transfer of the two Frenchmen onto the PAT line in Marseilles) conducted the initial interrogations and confirmed that the stories of Déricourt and Doulet corresponded (29.9.42). (It appears that Déricourt did not declare his contacts with German intelligence to Beaumont: if he did make such an admission, as Marshall cites Lord Lansdowne as claiming, it must have been to the immigration officers when he landed. Yet that information should have been passed to D4.) On learning of their request to join BOAC (30.9.42), Brown of the Air Ministry approached Sargant (D3A) to have the two pilots vetted.  D3A requested Beaumont to check out Doulet and Déricourt again by approaching the Free French (9.10.42). Beaumont did so, but nothing happened for a week when Brown pressed Sargant for a reply.

 

Andre Dewavrin (Colonel Passy)

A keen interest in all arriving Frenchmen was shown by the BCRA (Bureau de renseignement et d’Action), the Free French Intelligence Service, who claimed priority access to such persons. What is noteworthy about Sargent’s request is that Dewavrin, aka Colonel Passy, of BRCA, had welcomed Déricourt and Doulet when they arrived at Euston Station on September 10. This should have been a controversial encounter since the Free French claimed the right to recruit any native French citizen, but, in this case, they let both pilots go. Marcel Ruby’s book on SOE’s F Section states that those Frenchmen who were out of sympathy with the Gaullist movement were sometimes encouraged to join F Section, as it offered superior training and access to equipment and flights. He testifies non-Gaullist Frenchmen who were able to take advantage of such policies. Thus the frequently expressed description of vehement animosity between Section F and the Free French may not be as true as M. R. D. Foot made out.

Claude Dansey, according to some accounts (e.g., Ruby), a close colleague and supporter of the Free French but to others (such as Cecil) a sworn enemy, had alerted the BCRA to the arrival of the pair but had kept the news from those responsible for carrying out the investigation. What motive Dansey had in introducing the two so openly is superficially bewildering since the pilots were later adamant that the Free French not be informed of their exploits, and the Free French, in turn, now aware of their presence and ambitions, tried to warn the British authorities not to use them. That might have been a covering manœuvre, however. After the war, however, Déricourt was arrested at Croydon Airport for attempting to smuggle out gold nuggets and currency, purportedly on behalf of some shady ex-BCRA officers, so he probably maintained his contacts.

The investigation continued haphazardly. On 17.10.42, de Lazlo of the Air Ministry reported to Broad of the BOAC in Bristol that the Free French wanted nothing to do with Déricourt and Doulet – not an astounding revelation, from what we know now, of course. This alarmed Beaumont. He echoed the fact that Forbes might have offered the two jobs but raised the question that, given that promise by British Airways about which the Germans would have learned, the pair might have been compromised and sent over as agents. Consequently (20.10.42), he told Sargant that MI5 could in no way guarantee them from a security point of view, and, at the same time, contacted Ramsbotham (responsible for the USA) to follow up the contacts with the US Consulate, so that they could establish from Donaldson of the US Consulate in Marseilles how he had assessed the pilots’ integrity and reliability.

Sargant informed the Air Ministry of Beaumont’s concerns, which alarmed Brown. Squadron Leader Chaney became involved and looked into Forbes’ offer. On 27.10.42, Chaney was able to confirm that Forbes had indeed offered both men contracts (a claim that would later be undermined), pointed out that the LRC had given give them a favorable report, and showed concern that the men might challenge any interference with their assignments at a ‘high level’. BOAC had already placed the two on subsistence. Yet Sargant was insistent (5.11.42) that the two were a security risk. Beaumont’s judgment was now under scrutiny, as the Foreign Office had become involved. Doublet had approached the Under-Secretary of State, Simpson, querying the delay, so Simpson contacted Beaumont directly (24.11.42). On 30.11.42, Beaumont boldly defended his position but suggested, as a compromise, that the two be employed some distance away, in the Middle or Far East. On 3.12.42, Ramsbotham presented Donaldson’s confirmation of their recruitment and that they had contacted the British ‘underground’, dated 16.11.42. On that date, Déricourt was at RAF Tempsford, receiving training.

What this whole rigmarole needed was for others to get involved. At this stage, on 4.12.42, Jo Archer (D3, to whom Sargent reported and the husband of the eminent Soviet expert Jane Sissmore, now in MI6) made an entry to the stage, with some very odd observations made in writing to Chappell at the Air Ministry. Chaney was still investigating with Forbes the pilots’ assertions about job offers; Archer doubted that they were offered contracts and stated rather enigmatically that ‘neither of them claimed this’. He was suspicious of Doulet’s claims from Syria of wanting to return to Vichy, France, to settle personal matters. He drew attention to the date gap between their ‘repatriation’ and application to the US Consul in Marseilles. He thus doubted the loyalty of these Vichy men wanting to fight Germans and indicated that they were more interested in a ‘fat salary’. Nevertheless, he believed that BOAC would overcome all objections and recruit them.

What was Archer doing here? Trying to lay a false trail of due diligence but pointing inquirers away from SOE? In any case, some long-winded discussions occurred between Beaumont, Sargant and de Laszlo regarding where BOAC could safely employ the pair. Simpson was involved again and wrote on 22.12.42 that Déricourt and Doulet had received a (positive) response from BOAC on 2.10.42. The case appeared to be winding down, and Chaney reported to his boss at the Air Ministry, Wing-Commander Calvert, on 23.12.42 that Forbes had confirmed that Doulet was among those interviewed and that Maxwell (the regional BOAC director) had said that ‘if any Air France pilots turned up in Lisbon, BOAC would be willing to employ them, subject to security’. But he added that, as early as 23.9.42, Forbes had confirmed that he had promised employment to Doulet only if he were to reach Lisbon, following with ‘None of the others who were given offers have appeared in the UK’. He had not been told of Déricourt’s presence in Britain.

So had Archer been sitting on the information from Forbes for three months and keeping the facts from Beaumont? It certainly looks like it. Yet the responsibility was thrust back on him. On 23.12.42, Calvert wrote to Archer that the Ministry proposed not to approve the employment of either pilot unless Archer were satisfied that the suspicions over security had been removed. By the last day of the year, Archer had discussed the case with the Free French, who had also magically changed their minds. He found a lame excuse.  “The assassination of Darlan allows MI5 to look more favorably on them from the security point of view,” he wrote, “although there is still some risk”. Why the assassination of a Vichyite (possibly through the machinations of SOE) who had switched his allegiance lessened any possible exposure in sending the pilots abroad was not explained.

Matters begin to get even more bizarre. The same day, Archer decided to give Beaumont a rebuke, telling him he should not advise on air interests without clearing it with him. (What had Beaumont been doing, working through the proper channels with Sargant?) On 1.1.43, Roddam of the Ministry of Labour informed Osborn of MI5 that BOAC had rejected Déricourt and Doulet for ‘service’ reasons. The next day, Beaumont, having spoken to de Laszlo, noted that the pilots had both gained jobs with BOAC in the Middle East, and Doulet’s application for an exit permit to North Africa was soon approved. Meanwhile, he reported that Déricourt had disappeared, noting he was going to the USA ‘on a mission’, news that rather peeved BOAC, as they had been paying him. Osborn, Roddam, Simpson, and Beaumont seemed to be under the impression that both pilots were being sent to the Middle East.

This inept performance could surely not be a charade to confuse the historians, for even when an officer at SOE showed interest in Déricourt’s status, Beaumont continued the line. He must soon afterward have been approached by SOE. On 21.1.43, the same day Déricourt parachuted into France, Beaumont, after speaking to Flight-Lieutenant Park of SOE , in writing, confirmed to Park Déricourt’s statement that he was leaving on a mission to the USA. It was not until 30.4.43 (when stronger suspicions about Déricourt were being raised) that Beaumont referred to a report from the Free French that had unaccountably been delayed in reaching him. He then relayed the disturbing news to Park that the Gestapo might have been interested in Déricourt. The report, tagged as 24b, has been weeded from the archive, but it may have been contemporaneous with the Free Frenchman Bloch’s complaints about Doulet, from 8.2.43.  So it was not until the doubts emerged from SOE itself that Beaumont understood where Déricourt had gone.

 

Vera Atkins

 

Despite the oft-cited assertion that SOE’s existence was not known to many persons and that SOE officers were supposed to refer to it as the ‘Inter-Services Research Bureau’, Beaumont’s letter of 21.1.43 at 34B in KV 2/1131-3 is addressed to ‘Flight Lieutenant J. H. Park, S.O.E.’ Intriguingly, the signature on Park’s response seems to be ‘H. E. Park’. This person would not appear to be a relative of Daphne Park, the famed MI6 officer who started her career as a FANY with SOE in 1943 or 1944. Vera Atkins was probably writing to Beaumont under an alias. In Sara Helms’s A Life in Secrets, Atkins’s assistant, who shepherds SOE candidates for interview, is described as a man named Park. Atkins later claimed, moreover, that she held instinctive suspicions about Déricourt. As the intelligence officer in F Section, she would have been the obvious candidate to communicate with Beaumont about him. She might have been keen to conceal her identity as she was not only a woman but lacked British citizenship at that time, having been born a Romanian with the Jewish name of Rosenberg. Yet the exchange confirms one very important fact: at the time of Déricourt’s first excursion into France, an influential SOE officer was concerned that he was a risk.

The lower-level Free French officers had got wind of the true disposition of at least one of the two pilots early in 1943. When Bloch learned of Doulet’s imminent departure for North Africa on 8.2.43, he was incensed and told Beaumont that he should be recalled immediately. (Another ‘grunt’, perhaps, being misled by his superiors. Yet Patrick Marnham had pointed out to me how the scandalous behavior of Déricourt in London before he took up his official duties attracted the scorn of the BCRA and that the same brush probably tarred Doulet.) Archer’s flimsy argument of 31.1.42 now looks very deceitful. Beaumont responded that Doulet did not work for the British authorities but for BOAC, a commercial enterprise. He claimed that he did not know whether Doulet had left the country yet. Thus, Bloch may have also written an uncomfortable memorandum about Déricourt, no doubt to an officer at a higher level than Beaumont. The latter considered it too sensitive to be given to Beaumont immediately.

All this would be later shown in perspective when Geoffrey Wethered conducted a detailed investigation into Déricourt in March 1944. When writing to the Regional Security Liaison Officer Gerald Glover on 11.3.44, trying to find employment for Déricourt and his wife, who was installed at a hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon, Wethered wrote that Lemaire (the cover name for Déricourt) ‘after being cleared at the LRC was recruited by SOE’. He does not give a precise date, but it is obvious that the high-ups all knew that SOE had taken on Déricourt. At the same time, Beaumont and other lower-level officers in MI5 (as well as important figures in the Air Ministry and the Foreign Office and the Home Office) were under the impression through December and January that he was working for BOAC. And even the suspicious Park of SOE did not counter to Beaumont the fiction that Déricourt had been sent to the United States. On 23.1.43 he (or she) had thanked Beaumont for his BOAC-oriented report.

Yet the most extraordinary item is the proof of Archer’s connivance at what was happening. In a statement he made in a report to Wethered dated 9.2.44, he relayed what BOAC knew about Déricourt: “Déricourt called at the BOAC office in Victoria on 9.9.42 and said he had been offered a secret mission at the War Office.” In other words, several days before he and Doulet arrived at the LRC, Déricourt had been signed up by MI6. Moreover, according to M. R. D. Foot, Déricourt and Doulet were welcomed by Dewavrin at St. Pancras Station on September 10, suggesting that Déricourt had enjoyed his successful interview with MI6 (and Doulet his corresponding session with BOAC) before meeting the Free French. In any case, it is staggering that, in a time of war, so much time and effort should have been wasted chasing false leads and creating paperwork because of the perpetration of lies within the Security Service and beyond.

Robert Marshall describes some other intriguing events from this period. He tells how the pair arranged, by telephone, a rendezvous in Piccadilly Circus three times, in October and November. That, sometime after this, they enjoyed a re-encounter at a ‘luxurious flat shared by the two Belgians with whom they had sailed on the Tarana’. In this setting, a British intelligence officer named FRANCES asked Doulet whether he wanted to perform secret work in France. Doulet declined but assumed that FRANCES’s organization had already recruited Déricourt. Déricourt later warned Doulet to keep silent over the meeting and his mission. This narrative is based on what Doulet told Marshall, but the forum is not dated and cannot be verified.

Moreover, some aspects of Doulet’s story must be questioned. The archive indicates that they stayed at the same address until November 2, when Doulet moved to Charlwood Street and Dericourt to Jermyn Street. And MI5 was intercepting Déricourt’s mail. He received a very coy letter from Doulet (in which Doulet addresses his friend with the intimate ‘tu’) on January 2, 1943, which reads as if it is setting a false trail.

The critical conclusion appears to be that Déricourt was prepared as to how he should behave before he arrived in Scotland, and MI6/SOE was ready to pounce as soon as he arrived.

 

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