Double-Cross System - Operation Outside The United Kingdom

Operation Outside The United Kingdom

It was not only in the United Kingdom that the system was operated. A number of agents connected with the system were run in Spain and Portugal. Some even had direct contact with the Germans in occupied Europe. One of the most famous of the agents who operated outside of the UK was Tricycle. There was even a case where an agent started running deception operations independently from Portugal using little more than guidebooks, maps and a very vivid imagination to convince his Abwehr handlers that he was spying in the UK. This agent, Garbo, created an entire network of phantom sub-agents and finally succeeded in convincing the British authorities that he could be useful. He and his phantom sub-agents were absorbed into the main Double-Cross System, and he became so respected by the Abwehr that they stopped landing agents in Britain after 1942. They thus became wholly dependent on the spurious information which was fed to them by Garbo's network and the other Double-Cross agents.