Double Cross in Cairo by Nigel West Page A

Englandshould never be insoluble to an organisation with branches in the Peninsula and even in Eire. However, we have known long periods during which agents, whom it was clear that the Abwehr trusted, remained in urgent need of money, although during the same period there were other agents in England with surplus funds and yet others who might have acted as couriers on their way here. We should certainly have been wrong had we deduced, from the fact that these agents were not paid, that the Abwehr lacked the means to pay them. It was rather that it lacked the imagination and good sense to make use of the opportunities that were available. For this reason most, if not all, of the really successful schemes for paying agents in England have been our invention, not the Abwehr’s, and have been carried through with our active, not to say pressing, collaboration. I suggest that SIME should find a similar approach to yield the same results.
    Robertson’s analysis was sent to Maunsell on 15 April 1943 and SIME prepared a rather resentful, four-page rebuttal of thirteen specific points dated 20 May 1943.
    1. Special Station have read with very great interest the comments on their history of the CHEESE case which accompanied Lieutenant-Colonel White’s letter of 15 April addressed to Colonel Maunsell. They are very far from considering the points made as merely academic or the criticism unhelpful. The truth is the contrary, and all those who have read the London comments wish that it could be possible to have a full-length personal exchange of ideas with their opposite numbers in London. Since the opportunity for this does not at the moment exist, the following paragraphs represent an unsatisfactory substitute for those personal conversations which, it is hoped may one day become feasible.
    2. Paragraph 1 of the commentary contains, of course, the key to the understanding of what may appear to London to be the somewhat unbalancedhandling of the CHEESE case. Operating from behind the lines – at one time one might almost say within the sound of enemy guns – it has been natural that the principal and almost the only object of CHEESE’S existence should be the practice of operational deception.
    3. Since his ‘rehabilitation’ CHEESE has been almost exclusively used for the transmission of high grade operational material, with occasional interludes which have been devoted to ‘building him up’ for his next coup, while keeping him continuously at the disposal of the operational chiefs as a potential, rapid and reliable means of communication with the enemy.
    4. This devoting of CHEESE to operational uses – almost entirely excluding any possibility of using him for counter-espionage purposes – to some extent explains what may appear to London to have been the over-cautious policy adopted in coordinating plans with the enemy for his payment. Special Section are only too aware of the weakness of the CHEESE story in its financial aspect, as pointed out in Paragraph 17 of London’s comments. At the time of writing in fact, CHEESE has reached an almost unprecedented pitch of exasperation, and the slender thread on which depends the credibility of his story must be regarded as very near breaking point. Arrangements – approaching, it is believed, as near as was conceivable to the fool-proof – had once more been made for the receipt of money in Cairo, when CHEESE was informed (in response to querulous enquiries) on 9 May that the money had been delivered at the agreed address before 5 April. It was in point of fact certain that there had been no such delivery. Further irritable enquiries were made of the Abwehr; these produced information that the money had been handed over at the address which had been raided by the Egyptian Police in late 1942. While plans had remained in force for the receipt of money at this address, its unsuitability had been made clear to the enemy, and an