Double Cross in Cairo Read Online Free PDF Page A

obituaries mentioned his connection with CHEESE.
    Initially Ellis was unable to make contact and a technical study concluded that the agreed frequencies were unsuitable, so they were changed through a simple plain-language code over the commercial cable to Istanbul, as previously arranged for just such an eventuality, and his messages finally were relayed to Rome on 14, 17 and 21July 1941 when the first radio link was established. For the first three months these signals were transmitted from a flat next to a military base in Heliopolis twice a week on most Mondays and Thursdays, but they contained little information of value as SIME’s deception skills were then unsophisticated. During this same period the amateur transmitter was replaced with an army model, and illness required two changes in operators, none of which apparently attracted the enemy’s attention.
    SIME’s case officer complained that ‘the book-cipher code suggested by the Italians proved clumsy and unsuitable’; a SIME officer devised a new substitution cipher.
    SIME also complained about the quality of Bari’s substandard radio technique, observing that
    the organisation at Bari appeared to be very bad. The encoding was particularly careless (it has improved a little since but has never attained a reasonably good standard), and there was much repetition of questions, etc. The slipshod methods suggested that Levi himself was handling the job at the other end!
    A survey conducted by SIME of the first 163 messages transmitted by Shears demonstrated that ‘as many as twenty-four transmissions were unsuccessful due to four causes:
    1. Bad atmospheric conditions – (particularly October – November).
    2. Heavy interference.
    3. Incompetence or laziness of enemy operator.
    4. Enemy ‘not on the air’.

    The third cause became so bad that on 21 October he registered a complaint in no mean terms. This had the effect of bringing new operators into action. The enemy are now using six operators whom we call:
    â€¢ The ‘original’ for whom CHEESE has a high regard.
    â€¢ The ‘goon’ – a dull-witted and lazy operator.
    â€¢ ‘Curt’ – so called from his style.
    â€¢ ‘Good’ – an expert ‘ham’ operator.
    â€¢ ‘New Good’ – first appeared late in December 1942.
    â€¢ ‘Square Morse’ – a good operator who sends in Continental style.
    Wavelengths have been changed three times. We can now work two alternative frequencies. Callsigns have been changed five times and hours of transmission three times.
    In April 1941 when Levi was scheduled to return home, he recruited Paul Nicossof, a notional agent, to replace him, and gave him £150. Thereafter, Nicossof became a valuable cog in the CHEESE deception machine, and at first was played by a SIME officer named Beddington. He was supposedly a Syrian of mixed Caucasian heritage, eager to work as a mercenary. In September 1941 ‘A’ Force adopted CHEESE , and as a first step it was reported that he had acquired a South African source who, a few weeks later on 29 September, was replaced by PIET , a well-informed South African NCO with money and women trouble, but was employed as a confidential secretary to General John P. Whiteley at GHQ Middle East, and therefore ‘in a position toacquire first-class information’. SIME noted that ‘experience shows that the enemy is curiously unwary and eager to accept stories of the disloyalty of disgruntled Colonials, Irishmen, etc. and even of supposed ex-members of Fascist organisations in England.’
    General Whiteley, a Woolwich graduate who was a willing participant in the scheme, had been commissioned in 1915 and had served in the First World War in the Royal Engineers at Salonika and across the Middle East, having won the Military Cross. He had been posted to Wavell’s staff in Cairo in May 1940. In May 1941 he travelled to