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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Basic Required Reading for Intelligence Professionals, December 3, 2001
This review is from: The Double-Cross System: The Incredible True Story of How Nazi Spies Were Turned into Double Agents (Paperback)
J.C. Masterman's "The Double-Cross System: The Incredible True Story of How Nazi Spies Were Turned into Double Agents" should be required reading for all counterintelligence and other human intelligence (HUMINT) personnel. Even after a 20+ year career as a human intelligence professional myself, this is one of the few "spy" books that I have. I consider this book a counterintelligence "how to" text book. To get the full impact of this book, I suggest first reading Ladaslas Farago's "Game of the Foxes", based on the files of Nazi Germany's intelligence service. After reading the German side of the story, the full impact of J.C. Masterman's book and this amazing intelligence operation will hit you right between they eyes.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Source Document on Running Double Agents, November 29, 2009
This review is from: The Double-Cross System: The Incredible True Story of How Nazi Spies Were Turned into Double Agents (Paperback)
The Double-Cross System by J. C. Masterman was written right at the end of the European campaign of WWII while the author was still on active duty with the British Government. The text was initially an official memorandum of the Double-Cross (XX) System which was declassified and published around 1970. XX was apparently successful in identifying all German agents operating in Britain and either turning them into double agents serving British interests or eliminating them.
Masterman cites seven specific reasons for running the XX System:
1. To control the enemy system or as much as we could get our hands on
2. To catch fresh spies when they appear
3. To gain knowledge of the personalities and methodologies of the German Secret Service
4. To obtain information on the code and cypher work of the German services
5. To get information of enemy plans and intentions from the questions asked by them [questions assigned to German agents in Britain]
6. To influence enemy plans by the answers went to the enemy [in response to their questions]
7. To deceive the enemy about our own plans and intentions.
Achieving any of these goals would have more than justified the efforts of the XX System. Incredibly, all of them were achieved to a great extent.
One of the more famous operations, Operation MINCEMEAT, was the basis for the movie The Man Who Never Was. In this operation, a body dressed as a major in the Royal Marines was released by a British submarine so as to wash up on the coast of Spain in the knowledge that the neutral but fascist government would provide any information to the Germans. Chained to the body was a dispatch case containing apparently official letters indicating that the next allied move after North Africa would be an invasion of either Greece or Sardinia. This was deliberate disinformation intended to lead the Germans away from the actual plan of invading Sicily. The deception was entirely successful.
Masterman also provides details of several other successful deceptions associated with the Normandy Invasion and with leading the Germans to inaccurately target their V-1 and V-2 weapons.
The book is a good, concise summary of the XX System. For the reader interested in a broader and more detailed treatment of the subject, I'd also recommend Anthony Cave Brown's Bodyguard of Lies.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive but Dry Account of British Double Agents During World War II., May 22, 2009
This review is from: The Double-Cross System: The Incredible True Story of How Nazi Spies Were Turned into Double Agents (Paperback)
"The Double-Cross System" was written by John Cecil Masterman in 1945 at the request of the Director General of the Security Services as a history of MI5's section B1A, which dealt with double agents during World War II. It was published for confidential consumption in September 1945, in the same form you see here, but Masterman did not receive permission to make it public until 1971, when it was published under the title "The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945". J.C. Masterman was a novelist and a university don who was recruited by MI5 during the war. He worked with double agents for 4 1/2 years. This was his report on the theory and practice of running double agents and how they contributed to Britain's war effort.
From the fall of France in mid-1940 until its liberation in 1944, Britain "actively ran and controlled the German espionage system" in its country. Everyone the Germans thought were working for them were actually working for the Brits. This was, in part, because France's occupation cut Britain off from the Continent and forced Germany to work with limited agents in Britain. This unique situation proved a great advantage for Britain and ultimately allowed B1A to supply Germany with misinformation about D-Day, leading Germany to believe that a larger offensive would come in Pas de Calais, thereby diverting 7 German offensive divisions away from Normandy. That was the coup de grace for the double-cross system, but most of its work was done in the previous 4 years.
Masterman begins by laying out the principles of running double agents and explaining the organization. As the needs of double agents presented formidable administration challenges, they required a specialized department, B1A. But MI5 did not do it alone. The Twenty Committee, of which Masterman was chairman, was formed with representatives from various agencies to decide what information could safely be allowed to pass to German hands and to maintain consistency. B1A was aided by some flaws in the German intelligence organization, Abwehr, which kept the double-agents afloat longer than they might have been. It seems that the Germans did suspect some of the agents but preferred to have disloyal agents than none at all.
The bulk of the book follows the agents and operations of B1A year by year, from 1939 through 1945. It begins with their first big agent, "Snow" (all agents are referred to by their code names), a German electrical engineer living in England who began work for Britain before the war. There are details of the work of many agents, including the remarkable "Garbo", a Spaniard of great initiative who was awarded the M.B.E. from Britain and the Iron Cross from Germany. The roles of the double-cross system were security, counterespionage, and strategic deception, which it fulfilled admirably. Masterman's prose is informative but very dry. It was written as a report, and it is fluid and interesting by that standard, but spare by the standards of a book.
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