Double Cross in Cairo Read Online Free PDF Page B

local expatriate Greek community and the Greek government-in-exile’s radio station in the suburb of Abu Zaabal which broadcast bulletins twice a day on the medium wave in eleven languages under the sponsorship of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE). The studios belonged to Egyptian State Broadcasting but were largely managed by British personnel, among them Shears’s close friend Norman Joly, and was the principal means for the coalition government to maintain one-way contact with Greeks living under the Axis occupation. Among those who appeared regularly on the channel were Crown Prince Paul and the leading politicians, among them Prime Minister Emmanouil Tsouderos, his successor Eleftherios Venizelos, the Minister for War, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and Admiral Petros Voulgaris. A conference in Beirut established George Papandreou as the Prime Minister of a coalition government, and his administration moved briefly to Naples before finally reaching Athens in October 1944. Whenever these individuals were allowed access to the microphone a switch engineer was present who had the authority, under the Chief Censor Professor Eric Sloman, to cut the transmission. Formerly the first director of Corfu’s police academy, Sloman ensured that no indiscretions were transmitted, fully aware that every broadcast was monitored by the enemy for any potential intelligence leads.
    MISANTHROPE ’s Greek background allowed CHEESE access to a complex world of political intrigue and competing groups who tried to influence Allied policy and were anyway determined to exercisepower in Athens after the liberation. It was a maelstrom of personalities and military commanders who were, of themselves, of minimal consequence in terms of strategic importance, but they did represent a plausible milieu which SIME and ‘A’ Force could portray, to the Abwehr at least, as a constituency in Cairo that could shed light on Allied policy towards the Balkans. The dispossessed Greek forces would obviously be essential in any action taken in the eastern Mediterranean, and could be represented as a barometer of Allied plans in the region. At a time when there were no textbooks available on strategic deception, and little experience of the wholesale manipulation of double agents, not to mention the fabrication of notional sources, MISANTHROPE was a truly extraordinary development. Appropriately, Simpson created a narrative, complete with domestic details, to describe how she had gained CHEESE’S confidence. They had met at a party with some Greek friends, and
    he had attempted to obtain from her military information about the Greek forces, supposing her to have many officer friends. He had observed her air of indifference as to the military success of the Allies, and as they became more intimate she had revealed the full extent of her antagonism to the British.
    Some time in May 1942 Paul had remarked to her half-seriously: ‘Supposing that we were agents for the Axis. How easily we could obtain valuable information.’ She had been skeptical; whereupon he had suggested that she should make the experiment of noting what she saw in the course of an hour’s walk in the Cairo streets. She had agreed, and Paul had appeared much interested in the result of the experiment. A little later in the same month he had revealed to her (uncertainly and with much and anxious insistence on secrecy) that he was acting as an agent for the Axis. His manner had been at once vain and nervous. He had not at this stage told her that he was in wireless communication with the enemy. He had then asked her to continue systematically to keep her eyes open for badges and vehicle signs;also for any other kind of military information obtainable visually; and to try and make the acquaintance of members of the Allied forces for the purpose of obtaining military information from them. She had hesitated, pointing out the risks and had asked for time to think the