The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [43]
When Sir Samuel Hoare was taken on at the end of 1915 he was given ‘an intensive course in the various war Intelligence departments’ over several weeks. ‘One day, it would be espionage or contre-espionage, another coding and cyphering, another war trade and contraband, a fourth, postal and telegraphic censorship.’15 The increasing professional and technical competence of the Service is also illustrated by a 135-page document, ‘Notes on Instruction and Recruiting of Agents’, compiled at the end of 1918. This included such matters as the use of codes, secret inks, letter boxes (locations where secret messages could be left), sabotage, cover and agents provocateurs. Among the ‘few points which cannot be drilled into an agent too soon nor too forcibly’ (and evincing much common sense) were ‘Don’t get cold feet, but if you do get caught keep your mouth shut and don’t give anybody away’; ‘In writing or wiring to sub-agents don’t use your own handwriting or name. Always type’; ‘Destroy carbons after typing incriminating matter. An officer [who was working for the Germans] recently blew his brains out to avoid arrest, having been traced by a carbon found in the rooms of a German chief agent who had been arrested’; ‘Think as much of the safety of your colleagues as of your own.’ It was remarked in the notes that ‘no hard and fast rule’ could be laid down as to the best cover for an agent, but that ‘in the long run’ there was ‘nothing to beat sound commercial cover’. While among ‘the best schemes for good cover’ was that of ‘commercial traveller’, this was ‘a hopeless business unless the agent really knows & understands the article he is supposed to sell and also really transacts business in such article’. Agents were advised to have at hand ‘an efficient highly technical expert burglar’. With commendable understatement it was conceded that ‘the difficulty is to recruit the necessary man for the job. He must be reliable, willing to undergo imprisonment if caught, without giving the show away and if obtainable should be handsomely rewarded.’ But the potential results ‘might well repay all the trouble’, and the notes cited a successful operation involving ‘the emptying of the safes in the Austrian Consulate and S.S. in Zurich’.
Forged German bread tickets prepared for MI1(c) to be used by agents working out of Switzerland.
In a section on counter-espionage, the notes considered the use of agents provocateurs targeting enemy secret services, ‘one of the most fascinating branches of S.S. work’, but also to be indulged in only sparingly, ‘as whilst the results are tangible the risk involved to other units of the organisation is considerable’. Successful operations ‘by clever agents’, however, could ‘lead to the complete disorganisation of the service against which they are working’ (though ‘equally the danger to our own service is a very real one’). An example was given of a successful operation against a German organisation in a neutral country where an attractive ‘Belgian woman of good family, who for various reasons had good cause to hate the Boche’, was employed to seduce a German agent. She agreed that ‘nothing, either of a personal or moral nature, was to be shirked in order to obtain a successful issue’. After ‘two months preliminary work’, the agent was ‘recruited’ by her victim and ‘engaged by the German S.S. to make a trip to France for them’. Given contact addresses in Paris, she was also supplied with ‘several articles of underclothing impregnated with secret ink’, partly for ‘delivery to a certain address