The British enjoy deceiving their enemies. When the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz defined war in 1833 as ‘those acts of force to compel our enemy to do our will’, he missed out the dimension that the British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes had spotted nearly two centuries earlier: ‘Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.’ ‘The British like to pretend,’ observes a former US Ambassador, Raymond Seitz....
At 3 o’clock Sunday morning, November 4, 1956, I returned to the hotel in Vienna where I had been staying for three days. I paused to leave a call and exchange a few idle words with the hall porter. Nostalgic early morning music from the radio behind the telephone switchboard echoed through the empty lobby. I went to my room, and within a few minutes after getting into bed, was...
Aleister Crowley is, few would argue, the father of modern occultism, neopaganism, and New Age spirituality. Today’s Thelemites (avowed followers of Crowley and his spiritual doctrine of Thelema) far outnumber the small cadre he recruited in his lifetime. His motto “Do What Thou Wilt” has had a subtle and profound influence on modern culture. While some still fear and loathe him, Aleister Crowley inspires fascination, even admiration, in others. Crowley’s...
Part 1 – Aleister Crowley, agent 666 and Lord Tregedar One of those practitioners of the magical and occult arts was Aleister Crowley. Crowley is perhaps the best known ‘occult spy’ operating in the Second World War. And in fact he was already a spy long before the war. It is not surprising that through history occultism and espionage always have been linked. Undercover operations always need a veil of...
Part 4 – The Occult Adepts of British Intelligence, Cecil Williamson Another occultist who was supposed to have been involved in or connected to the Hess affair was Cecil Hugh Williamson. He is the founder of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic at Castletown on the Isle of Man. Now it’s located in Boscastle in North Cornwall. Major Edward Maltby, a family friend, recruited Williamson into MI6 in 1938. Maltby was...
A backstory on Reinhard Gehlen and the fear of his “Now it can be told”-bookReinhard Gehlen, founder and head of Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, the Federal intelligence service in the days of the cold war, has enjoyed a publicity remarkable for one who, ostensibly (not to say ostentatiously), has fled the limelight. For in the days of his power he always moved in the shadows. He invariably wore dark glasses...
Part 3 – Was Crowley involved in the interrogation of Rudolf Hess? Maxwell Knight from MI5, was bisexual and a friend of Lord Tregedar. Knight had a private menagerie and when Knight’s wife died in 1936, from a suspected overdose of painkillers prescribed for her bad back, bad rumors circulated … Rumors circulated that she committed suicide after participating in a magical ritual with Crowley. Some suggested that her husband...
‘The Friends n. General slang for members of an intelligence service; specifically British slang for members of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.’ ‘If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalise the modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring...
The story of Klaus Fuchs is a tale that seamlessly weaves together elements of mystery, espionage, and scientific genius. Arrested in 1950 for leaking atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, Fuchs was initially branded a traitor by the British press. Fleet Street’s sensational headlines claimed he had sold the secrets of the atom bomb to the Russians, but as the dust of hysteria settled, the true nature of Fuchs’s espionage...
He plays a small role in the story about the disappearance of Otto Maier and Maier files, Martin Bormann. In May 1941 Martin Bormann was made Party Chancellor of the National Socialist Party, a position he utilized to become the Third Reich’s principal bureaucrat. He was also Hitler’s right-hand man, his personal secretary and his bookkeeper, and stood with the Führer until the end. The last incontestable sighting of Bormann...
Joan Miller died in June 1984. Despite efforts by MI5 Miller’s daughter managed to get her mother’s autobiography, One Girl’s War: Personal Exploits in MI5’s Most Secret Station, published in Ireland in 1986. Joan Miller was born in 1918. After leaving boarding school at 16 she found work in a tea-shop in Andover. This was followed by the post of an office girl at Elizabeth Arden. Later she was promoted...
Herbert Osborn Yardley (April 13, 1889 – August 7, 1958) was an American cryptologist. He founded and led the cryptographic organization the Black Chamber. Under Yardley, the cryptanalysts of The American Black Chamber broke Japanese diplomatic codes and were able to furnish American negotiators with significant information during the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922. Recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal. He wrote The American Black Chamber (1931) about his experiences...