DOUBLE AGENTS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4326, 10 August 1937, Page 7

DOUBLE AGENTS

SPYING REFINEMENT MISLEADING INFORMATION SUPPLIED TO ENEMY Before I met spies and had the occasion to see the wheels of a spy service revolving, I shared the illusion that intelligence work was a glamorous game in which debonair men of infinite coolness and resource, stiffened with a shade of ruthlessness (patriotic and gentlemanly), pitted their wits against adventuresses of fatal beauty, says a writer in the ‘ Daily Mail.’ The reality, however, it merely drab. The most perilous type of spying, where, in traditional phrase, “ the slightest false step spells death ” in war and lengthy imprisonment in peace, is to be a “ double agent.” Such was my good friend, Marthc Richer, probably the most successfid spy of any nation in the last war. She attracted the attention of Captain Ladoux, of the French Secret Service, because she had a reputation for adventurousness as one of the first women to fly her own aeroplane, and because, as a Lorrainer, she knew German She refused his offer until her husband was killed at the front; then her restless temperament and Lorrainers’ hatred of the Germans led her to seek forgetfulness of her sorrow in action that promised to be feverish. Marthe was sent to Spain, where she used her beauty to such advantage that the lihad of the German Intelligence Service there not only installed her in a flat, but sent her as a German spy to France. Ladoux supplied her with “ valuable ” information specially cooked for German consumption.

Information that she gleaned from her German employer sank a German submarine, prevented a German-insti-gated revolt against the French in Morocco, and led to the death of several dangerous German agents in France.

THE TEST AT DINNER. Typical of her experiences was the dinner party to which she was invited immediately after being taken on by the Germans “ 1 had pretended not to know German,” she told me, “so to try me out mv host let me overhear him say : ‘The soup specially prepared for this woman is over there; don’t give it to the wrong person ’ “ I had to have it, if I was not to give myself away. I gambled on the unlikelihood of their already having discovered I was in the service of France, and drank it to the last drop, chatting easily the while!” A romantic life of breathless and useful adventure —what more could heart desire ? But after a year of it Martha Richer was a nervous wreck, embittered, disillusioned. Apart from the strain of the daily round of resourceful lies, and apart from making a woman’s greatest sacrifice, her own service spied on her and distrusted her. Why? Because Ladoux had to bear in mind that his double agent might be selling him as well as the Germans. So he intercepted compromising letters she wrote to the Germans. Armed with these, Ladoux could have got any court martial to shoot her at once —a terrible weapon with which to bend tier to his will. . In the face of every indignity, difficulty, and distress, with none, not even her chief, to rely upon but herself, it was alone the amazing will to succeed in the service of her country that enabled this veal heroine to survive incredible adventures and escapes. She received not a penny for her work. “ I am poor; you must get money from 3 - our German,” Ladoux said cynically,” Marthe told me. “ There is a good strong word for that,” said added bitterly. The ludicrous climax of this topsyturvy world of mutual suspicion came when Ladoux, head of the war-time French Intelligence Service, was himself charged with betraying his country to the enemy in a sensational trial. His double bluff was so subtle that his subordinates, whom he had trained to trust no one, distrusted their chief. Nothing illustrates the atmosphere in which the suspicion game is played better than the post-war case of 8., a French officer sentenced for selling secrets to Germany. Chief witnesses against B. were George and Kring. George is a cultured ne’er-do-well who became a German spy for love of adventure. Trapped by the French, he got himself out of a nasty corner by agreeing to join their service as a “ double agent.” About this time secret documents disappeared from B.’s desk, and his counsel did not dispute that B. had just previously got into the hands of moneylenders.

George’s first job as a double agent was to try and find out whether B. was innocent or guilty. He returned to Germany, and with the aid of the German Secret Service wrote to B. offering goodly pay for certain information. He received a reply which, the prosecution maintained and the defence denied, was in B.’s writing.

This situation presents the root difficulty with which all the heads of spy systems are faced: Who was selling whom?' George, a self-confessed German spy, had to prove to both French and Germans that he was loyal to each. It was in his interests to incriminate B.

To the Germans ho could say: “ Here’s a trailer for you, use him!” To the French, “ Here’s a traitor for you, arrest him.” Alternatively, George and his German friends may have wanted to plant B. on the French in order to conceal or preserve the real source of their information.

George is the type of “ double agent ” who is himself the only person who knows for whom he is working and whom sooner or later each side without hesitation betrays to the other. Kring, deserter from a Balkan army, is a common type —the weakling who is blackmailed into being a spy. He had helped himself to his regimental funds and been found out “ before he could repay.”

THE OBVIOUS PREY. Now a thief or a deserter is the obvious prey of any secret service. He can be flattered with empty promises

of "ood pay and blackmailed with threats of extradition. His value was that as a professional soldier he appreciated the exact worth of information offered him—always a problem foi t! Krnig said that he had obtained all his information from 8., but the defence pointed out that if the German service had a first-class smirce of information, other than 8., in danger of discovery, that was easier than to get Ivrin" to compromise B and then in turn "betray Kring to the French so that he should confess exactly what they wanted the French to believe, without Kring himself being aware of how he was being used?

The defence made an even more subtle yet perfectly plausible allegation Supposing that the French had an invaluable double agent pumping false but specious “information” into Berlin, supposing his instructions were to say that he was obtaining this priceless information from 8., supposing that the Germans began at length to doubt the authenticity of the information supplied—what more startling proof of authenticity than to have B. tried and disgraced for supplying it? Anv qualms could be quieted by the reflection that B was a necessary sacrifice in a great and patriotic cause. Rearmament spawns spies With the world turning out bigger and better engines of destruction, there are probably more spies, counter-spies, and double agents to the square inch throughout Europe to-day than ever before.

The accuracy of the information which reaches intelligence bureaux in vast masses from these traitors, frightened weaklings, blackmailed double agents, and despicable informers, presents a nice problem in what Bertrand Russell calls “ philosophic scepticism.”