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members as sub-agents and access sympathetic moles in the armed services. Since the Special Branch maintained a number of well-placed informers
inside the BUF, Owens’ conspicuous efforts were soon noticed, and fed back to MI5. ‘Our friend Snow is on the warpath again,’ noted Hinchley-Cooke with dismay. ‘Some
definite action is required to clip his wings.’
    Even by the base standards of the BUF, Owens’ pitch to the Blackshirts was remarkably crude. ‘Snow spoke very freely about Thames House, St Ermin’s Hotel, the St James’s
Park people and Colonel Peal,’ noted Albert Canning, the man in charge at the Branch. ‘He said that his work had revealed serious corruption in the British intelligence service, how it
was run by Jews etc, and expressed his willingness to expose this “terrible racket”.’
    On the hackneyed pretext of working for peace, Owens warned that Jews were preparing an attack on Germany, hoping to trigger a ‘criminal’ war between England and the Reich. On the
promise of funding from Hitler, he proposed setting up a chain of clandestine BUF radio stations to broadcast hate direct to a blinkered, complacent public who ‘must be told what is going
on’. Still more ambitious, Owens also hinted at a coup d’état. ‘If the BUF had a reliable following who would “stick at nothing” to show the government how much
they were in favour of Germany and detested the Jews, he could arrange for a cargo of arms for use in an attempt to seize power.’
    Such blunt overtures betrayed surprising ignorance of far right nationalist politics. While virtually all Blackshirts were staunch admirers of the new European dictators (Hitler, Mussolini and
more recently Franco), and most professed to loathe communists and Jews, far fewer were prepared to countenance acts of treason against King and Country. The moment Owens began to boast openly of
being ‘a direct personal agent of Hitler’ and solicit military and industrial intelligence, doors began to close. It hardly helped that Oswald Mosley hoped toset
up his own commercial radio station, funded with Nazi money.
    ‘Owens is regarded with considerable suspicion by the few leading officials of the BUF cognisant with his approach,’ Canning concluded. ‘Some describe him as an
agent-provocateur, and others as a knave or fool.’
    The vexatious petty traitor was both, leading MI5 to again consider charges under the Official Secrets Act. Ultimately the Little Man was dismissed as an impostor: several clandestine
assignations at the Regent Palace Hotel were found to entail the debriefing of gullible young women rather than ruthless Nazi spies, while a colourful sidekick named Hellfire Williams quickly
vanished from the scene. Undoubtedly Owens boasted one or two genuine contacts on the fringes of the military, and perhaps even inside the Air Ministry itself, yet most were invented, like the
fictive Welsh ring. Unfortunately even imaginary agents seemed inclined to let Johnny down. Poking around in a chandlery one day, Owens purchased an instrument described as a pressure gauge from a
British submarine and in due course took it to Hamburg, fibbing that his source worked in an Admiralty dockyard. In fact, as Ritter soon discovered, this latest ‘sample’ was merely an
obsolete inclinometer from a scrapped Great War biplane.
    Owens laughed it off, excusing that he could hardly be held responsible for the honesty – or otherwise – of every contact. Ritter reminded Johnny that Stelle X still had no plans to
open a museum.
    Whether or not Irene Owens knew of her husband’s undercover antics at the Regent Palace Hotel, or on the Hamburg Reeperbahn, their marriage of twenty years was rapidly turning sour. In
July 1938 Owens took his family to Ostend, ostensibly to enjoy the long sandy beaches and cut-price casinos of the Belgian Riviera, then whisked Irene away to Germany, leaving Bob and Patricia in
the care of the hotelmanager. Owens’