SPYING ON SPIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 153, 29 June 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

SPYING ON SPIES

No. 4—Trifles That Win Wars ' ' '-'

REALISING that the work of the intelligence ,' depart- ■; ment, for -whom "the secret agent works, is to paint a complete picture for a future armycommander the questions arise: What kind of information? .- How is it obtained? .The average man reading of a spy's capture and the fragments of knowledge that he transmitted is prone to wonder why anyone should take the trouble to collect it, and, still more, to pay for it. : .:•;-- • That judgment might have merit if each fugitive detail were to be judged for its intrinsic worth. Butit- is not. Somewhere or -other .in a quiet - office'; a ■ keen mind' is fitting together the "innumerable pieces.; of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Not only does it call for millions'; of fragments, but those fragments fitted •' into the picture ' are constantly.;, being '; removed to make place for'later-ones.' -'", An' excellent example of an -important _ trifle, ' springs . to . my jmind. .The . incident I have chosen has already been told by a radio speaker, but so mutilated and distorted as to be rendered incomprehensible. A correct version is overdue. Searching for General In the very early days of. 1918 one question was being asked with unusual frequency all over "(Surope: ."Where is General von Hutier 2" Languorous ladies in the lobbies of the Palace and Metropole Hotels in "Brussels asked it of the elegantly ' dressed staff officers of the; army of invasion. ■ Sharp-witted men asked the same question casually in the canteens behind the German lines. Seedy looking individuals, with a furtive glanceover their shoulders, whispered thewords to ' other seedy looking men in a ' score of slums. The question, was answered in every' form of. negative reply. -, . ' It was a conversational trifle upon whi-h the lives of thousands of men hung. Yet no one could answer it. Why wis. it asked? Lynx-eyed readers of aeroplane photo- - graphs had observed signs of activity behind the German lines near the River Ermine.. Those signs pointed indubitably to .a.-': forthcoming attack. But-where-would it fall and when By coincidence, one or two intelligence . officers had been detailed to. make an intimate study of two successful German campaigns from captured documents. These men had. detected in the preparation and execution of 'the Riga. attack on the Russians arid' the rout of the Italians at.Caporetto- the .work of a ' single mind. Strategists and criminals have 'the same defect of trying to do different things always in the same way. Surprise.Attack ;; . As the situation on the ; Somme developed, the similarity between the two previous, successful ; onslaughts on the Allies and 'the situation;/before them became so apparent that the intelligence

. This is the fourth'of a series of '. ''.articles dealing icilh. spies, how they operate and what measures arc taken, to -counteract them. The author, ■•' Major Thomas C'oulson, Jor viany years teas a member oj the British Intelligence Service. He was decorated Willi 'he 'Order of the British -Empire.'-' he is now lecturer and '■'.member of the staff of the famous Franklin Institute of Philadelphia.

By--- , /.'■:,:.. Major Thomas Coulson

staff began to make forecasts,-and these.,;'. were fulfilled. ' Therefore, '.they felt justified in making a bold - prophecy which ■ was contingent upon -the presence in the;-;. ■; sector-- of • one man. Riga - and Caporettd "■ '.had been conceived -by the same man,'. . General von Hutier. ...',. • -.The';main underlying-principle w.as the- ; -.presence of rivers and the adroit use of ; -. ground. If, then, General- Hutier .was .before them; it was highly probable that he would apply his proved principle, in which ■ case the -experts... who had. studied his methods could say definitely where the attacks would be' launched. ■Hence the hue and cry for the elusive : general. ';.:-'.'.;. We need not pursue the discouraging search in detail. From the'.first it' became apparent that the German High Command was deliberately ' concealing his location. ■ You might'think that the -solution was . furnished by some lovely young, spy who wheedled it out i of - a field marshal or by a : scion of a noble : house : working humbly in the Secret ; Service as a.protection against boredom. : Unhappily for'-- romance,. it 'was found ' by-a pipe-smoking; fiend who did little else . but read newspapers in the ■ City ' of Zurich. , '■■'..'-. ;•_..'■-.'•':. Paper Discloses Secret .In present . times, newspaper readers, greedy for sensational news of major •battles, complaining bitterly of the;. . manner in - which information is being withheld, might ponder 'on this story. Fortunately, the editors of : newspapers '.'more discreet than their readers, . and do/not publish details that' might frustrate 'an army commander's plans, i But'.'this discretion does not always extend to'the- smaller provincial papers, which delight in- publishing letters from the front written by local'inhabitants. ■ The spy searching for information ; wastes little time upon the responsible papers; he plunges into the small-town papers, in the editing of. which the wisdom of Solomon is not practised, and too often ' emerges with-a. prize. That is what happened in the Hutier case. A British agent, bored to death in .exile in Switzerland, was reading over a budget of little-known German papers. In one of them he caught the name of "Von Hutier." It appeared that a Ger- '. man airman had been shot down in an i engagement "over the lines." His com-.. : mander had written a letter of sym- ,

pathy to the boy's mother, offering Ins condolences and expressing his. regrets at losing such a valuable officer. The stricken mother had allowed the editor of the paper to print the letter for the information of the dead soldier's friends, This would have been a harmless procedure if the letter had mot/been signed by General von Hutier Still, the British' intelligence service did ■ not know where the "general was, but it took them just about fifteen minutes to locate where that German airman had been shot down. Then they had'the information they needed; they ■could proceed to make their.deductions on the assumption that the general commanded the sector which included the squadron of the dead "airman. Based upon this fragment of knowledge, they drew'their lines on'the map. Two lines, forty miles: apart. And they said that the attack would be delivered between' those two lines. They were wrong by a scant, thousand yards. But their deductions : were rejected ' by a general who had his own ideas. Only he was wrong by more than twenty miles. But that story must wait its turn. So much, then, for what may appear to be inconsequential trifles of information pursued by the Secret Service. Properly used, they become of major importance. Let us turn our' attention to finding out how the spy gets his information. : ..,.■■: '■■• Perhaps, in tliis i regard;-it ought to be said that "the spy can - be il ■ very •indifferent judge 'of information, but he .lniistibe a .Very sound 'judge of human

nature. Because the spy does not have to decide what is of value and what is not. He merely looks for what he is instructed to find. There is no . such thing as taking pot luck with what is available. The man at the centre of the web knows what he wants, asks for it and sees that lie gets-it. Not infrequently the spy' can get what he looks for .from printed documents. At other times he has to dig laboriously, using his own resources and his own experience. There is a perfect example of this in the work of a German engineer in England. Planning English Invasion A glance at the map of England shows that in the city of Reading a number of important railroad linos are tied iii a knot. It, must be the one outstanding objective of any army contemplating a landing on the south coast of the country, because its seizure would paralyse communication. But the city would prove to be .1 very hard nut to crack, as one prospective invader discovered. t In the process of their normal routine the German intelligence service had to draw up a plan of campaign, envisaging the prompt capture of Heading after they had succeeded in effecting a landing on the coast. There was no immediate intention of invading England; the staff merely wanted to have a plan ready should it he needed. They found, to their unmitigated disgust, that British neglect would prove an almost insurmountable stumbling block to any plan they could devise.

There are a number of small rivers to be crossed between the coastline and Heading, and the bridges which spanned these rivers - were .picturesque and ancient enough to satisfy the .'lover of rustic beauty. The trouble was that no armed forces equipped with ' anything heavier than bows and. arrows could cross these old antiques. Modern heavyartillery, motor trucks and tanks would have.to stay on the wrong side of the first river-they came to. ... . ... . The intelligence'service accepted ■■ the challenge. If the British could not bo induced to improve their bridges, the Germans would provide.them. la order to ascertain exactly what their problem was, they sent over a bright young engineer officer with instructions to measure the countryside for anew batch of bridges. The officer arrived in England and brought- with him' a young bride.. The 3-oung couple, were, hospitably/received wherever, they- stopped-on. their honeymoon.' Since they "were, very, much in love, the good-natured ;loeal in'-, habitants left them, in seclusion. But how those two worked! <--.>,.■'■' .'•;■" While the bride eat painting, pretty., water eolour sketches of .the"old mosscovered ■ bridges,:, the- groom -.spentv-his time fishing, or rather-he .'sat dangling a lino in the rivers.' ■.-.'Asi'a'-'result the' happy pair were able, to return : to Ger-'-many with accurate drawings' of bridge sites and technical data- on heights of the banks, volume and flow of water, width of the rivers, and so on. Armed with the data they provided the corps of engineers thereon constructed complete pontoon bridges', which they put in storage against the time whet. "Der Tag" dawned for that invasion of ia'ngland. ' . -.- ,\ .-/'■:':;',.-,■'. ■'..., No Glamour Here A few words must suffice for what is the. most distasteful and melancholy form of spying, that of procuring ill formation which requires the service of someone on the "inside." I said earlier that the spy must .be a good judge of character. He must be able to pick out some official who has bills to meet or expensive tastes to Indulge. Having made the acquaintance of a suitable. victim he proceeds to play the benevolent friend. He.will lend money to relieve the official of his temporary embarrassment, he will lend more than is required, and he will lend it more than once. When the time comes the borrowed money is suddenly recalled, always at a most inconvenient time. Eventually the horrible truth is broken to the unhappy victim. He must turn traitor, produce the required material or be prepared to have his whole unsavoury affair aired in open court. Since such exposure may jeopardise his position or ruin his future prospects, the man is usually weak enough to yield. Character study is an important feature of- a spy's qualifications, then, and leads to the creation of a multitude of traitors. The' drawings of the German warship Von der Tann were secured by a spy who got the whipliand of a German policeman witli a weakness for burglary, aided by his brother-in-law, a naval wireless officer, who did not seem to have been paid anything more than the price of a living room suite for & new home. Countless similar cases could be quoted, but enough has been said to illustrate how treachery is encouraged. Bare indeed is the case where an official voluntarily commits treachery, but when he does the consequences are likely to be disastrous. + + + + Why a spy's success proved a boomerang, the story of the Italian code book and how a' pretty woman burned her lingers with it are disclosed in the next instalment of "Spying on Spies." Watch for it. „ '