Double agent honoured by both sides

Press, 10 July 1985, Page 6

Double agent honoured by both sides

NZPA-AP London The Allies agreed to leak details of the Normandy invasion to the Germans 3Vz hours before troops hit the beaches, to protect the credibility of a double agent feeding false information to German Intelligence, a new book says. _ The Allies figured that the occupying Germans would not have enough time to reorganise to meet the invasion of France, and the message might dupe the Germans into believing more false information. But on D-Day — June 6, 1944 — the German radio operator who was to receive the invasion leak for the Abwehr, the German Army’s Intelligence branch, did not get in touch with the double agent until after the landings had begun. The agent, known as Garbo to the British and as Arabel to the Germans, had to rewrite his historic message — and blast the

Abwehr for its inefficiency. Garbo was Juan Pujol, a Spaniard born in Barcelona in February 14, 1912. With the British writer, Nigel West, a specialist in secret service history, he tells his story in the new book, “Garbo.” Pujol’s fictitious Londonbased network was so highly regarded that he received the Iron Cross from the Germans as well as the the British Empire Medal. The British concealed news of their award for many years and spread a story, to protect him. from neo-Nazis, that Pujol had died in Angola from malaria. Although Garbo was often mentioned in books about wartime Intelligence, Pujol’s story did not start to emerge until last year when West tracked him down and persuaded him to come from his home in Venezuela to Europe for the fortieth anniversary of D-Day.

Pujol then received the personal thanks of Prince' Philip for his wartime services in a private audience at Buckingham Palace . West calls Pujol “the' most successful double, agent of World War II.” The Spaniard loathed Hitler,whom he calls “a maniac, ; an inhuman brute” and de-: liberately arranged to be sent to Britain by the Germans in 1941, ostensibly to spy on the British. On arrival, he immediately reported that he wanted to serve the Allied cause and set up a network of 26 fictitious agents funnelling bogus information to the Nazis. Pujol says in the book that his most successful coup was Operation Fortitude, when he helped convince the Germans that the invasion was to be in the Pas-de-Calais area of northeast France and that the Normandy landings farther west were merely a feint.