London Controlling Section - Charter

Charter

The sweeping LCS charter, in part, authorized them to prepare cover and deception plans on a world-wide basis, co-ordinate deception plans prepared by Commands world-wide, and watch over the execution of deception plans. Additionally, and more sweeping, they were not limited to strategic deception, but had authority to include any matter for a military advantage.

Cover and deception are intended to either create or reinforce a belief in one’s opponent which influences the opponents behavior along certain lines. Cover induces belief that something true is false. Deception induces belief that something false is true. “Cover conceals truth; deception conveys falsehood. Cover induces nonaction; deception induces action.” Since behavior is that which is to be influenced, the enemy does not have to actually believe what is being projected. It is only necessary that the enemy is so concerned that he must provide for it.

To influence behavior, the target of deception is the enemy commander, and the consumer of the deception is the commander’s intelligence organization. For example, for strategic deception in Europe, the target of deception was Adolf Hitler himself through the Supreme Command of the Defense Forces, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). The consumer was a branch of the intelligence staff of the High Command of the Army, Oberkommando Des Heeres (OKH), the Foreign Armies West, Fremde Heere West (FHW).

Three essential elements of deception are a firm plan, adequate security, and time. For an operation to be successful, there must be a clear statement of the true situation along with the objective and a road map of how to bring a certain belief into the mind of the enemy. Clearly, there can be no deception if security fails and the enemy knows the true situation. Finally, the higher the target, the more time is required to build up the mosaic presented to the target.

John Bevan, the first Controlling Officer of the LCS, added two additional elements to strategic deception: codebreaking and double agents. Codebreaking in the European Theater was done at Bletchley Park, and the intelligence from this activity was codenamed Ultra. Generally, the information was used to ferret out enemy intentions. However, in the arena of deception operations, the information was used to assess the effectiveness of the cover and deception operation. Double agents were in the purview of the Double Cross System, also known as the Twenty Committee, run by John Cecil Masterman. Double agents were used to collect intelligence of enemy interests through the questionaires they recevied from their German Controllers. But more importantly they were used to inject deceptive information at a high level. In this respect, British intelligence was in a very strong position since it had broken the German agent codes at a very early stage and was soon after able to intercept and read exchanges between Abwehr headquarters and their outstations. This provided a third dimension that permitted the allies to know if and when their attempts at deception had been believed. By comparison, German intelligence had no similar avenue of feedback and were never able to know if their attempts at deception had been effective. This situation was reported in detail in Hugh Trevor-Roper's Radio Intelligence Report 28, 5th June 1944 (TNA HW 19/347).