Cargo of Lies: The True Story of a Nazi Double Agent in Canada 9781442659766

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
ONE Broken Boats, Broken Bodies
TWO. The Stranger in Room 11
THREE. A Fluent and Fertile Liar
FOUR. Bobbi Calls Home
FIVE. C'est la guerre
SIX. Collapse
SEVEN. Operation Crete
EIGHT. Autopsy
Sources
Index
Illustration Credits

Citation preview

Cargo of Lies

On a chill autumn night in 1942, a German spy was rowed ashore from a U-boat off the Gaspe coast to begin a deadly espionage mission against the Allies. Thanks to an alert hotel-keeper's son, Abwehr agent 'Bobbi' was captured and forced by the RCMP to become Canada's first double agent. For nearly fifty years the full story of the spy case, code-named Watchdog, was suppressed. Now, author Dean Beeby has uncovered nearly five thousand pages of formerly classified government documents, obtained through the Access to Information Act from the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Department of Justice, the National Archives of Canada, and Naval Intelligence. He has supplemented this treasure trove with esearch among still heavily censored FBI files, and interviews with surviving participants in the atchdog story. Although British records of the case remain closed, Beeby also interviewed the MIS case officer for Watchdog, the late Cyril Mills. The operation was Canada's first major foray into international espionage, predating the Gouzenko defection by three years. Watchdog, as Beeby reveals, was not the Allied success the RCMP has long claimed. Agent 'Bobbi' gradually ensnared his captors with a finely spun web of lies, transforming himself into a triple agent who fed useful information back to Hamburg. Beeby argues that Canadian authorities were woefully unprepared for the subtleties of wartime counter-espionage, and that their mishandling of the case had long-term consequences that affected relations with their intelligence partner throughout the old War. DEAN BEEBY is a journalist in Halifax with the Canadian Press. He is author of In a Crystal Land: Canadian Explorers in Antarctica, and co-editor, with William Kaplan, of Moscow Despatches: Inside Cold War Russia.

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Cargo of Lies The True Story of a Nazi Double Agent in Canada DEAN BEEBY

U N I V E R S I T Y OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1996 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-0731-7 (cloth)

© Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Beeby, Dean, 1954Cargo of lies Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-0731-7 1. Janowski, Werner Alfred Waldemar von. 2. Espionage, German - Canada. 3. World War, 19391945 - Secret service - Germany. 4. World War, 19391945 - Secret service - Canada. 5. Intelligence service - Canada - History - 20th century. 6. Spies Germany. 7. Spies - Canada. I. Title. D810.S8J35 1996 940.54'8743'092 C95-931976-X

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

For Lisa and Richard Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard, upon the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! Psalm 133:1-2

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix Prologue 3 ONE Broken Boats, Broken Bodies 6 TWO The Stranger in Room 11 19

THREE A Fluent and Fertile Liar 44 FOUR Bobbi Calls Home 76 FIVE C'est la guerre 102

Contents SIX Collapse 126

SEVEN Operation Crete 140 EIGHT Autopsy 167 Sources 199 Index 205 Illustration Credits 214

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Acknowledgments

Bill Kaplan, a good friend from graduate-school days, first drew my attention to the mysterious case of Watchdog, the Nazi spy landed by U-boat in 1942 near New Carlisle, Quebec. We had contemplated a collaboration, but for various reasons Bill became entangled in other worthy projects and graciously left to me the telling of this story. Our early discussions have left an indelible mark on this book. The backbone of the narrative that follows is the RCMP's 3000-page Watchdog file, obtained after a request to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service under the Access to Information Act. The file offers a fascinating inside look at the recruitment and running of a German double agent during the darkest years of the Second World War, when the Allies seemed powerless against U-boat predations in the Atlantic. Even the acknowledged masters of wartime double agentry, the British counter-intelligence agency MIS, have never permitted such close scrutiny and free use of individual case files. Professor F.H. Kinsley's officially approved access to British intelligence files, which resulted in the multi-volume series British Intelligence in the Second World War, was still subject to significant restrictions. Some sections of the RCMP's Watchdog file were partially withheld to protect personal information and to safeguard material obtained from the British and American governments, both of whom were kept intimate with the case. But the resulting gaps in the dossier could be readily patched over by other means. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation material on the case was extracted from their archives piecemeal over several years, through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The FBI eventually released 217 heavily censored pages from its IX

Acknowledgments 1911-page Watchdog file, but the documents none the less add an important North American perspective. Canadian Naval Intelligence files held by the National Archives in Ottawa also filled many holes, as did dozens of other documents obtained under the Access to Information Act from the Justice Department and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Cyril Bertram Mills, the former British MI5 agent who helped oversee Watchdog in Canada, kindly offered his insights about the case in the year before his death. Two brave merchant mariners, Gordon Hardy and Pierre Simard, dredged up memories of narrowly surviving a torpedo attack by U-518, the submarine that days later delivered the spy. Marguerite Beebe, Geraldine Langham, and Simone Loubert told me simply and eloquently what it was like to meet and catch a Nazi spy. All these people cheerfully put up with my near-interrogations, for which they have my admiration and profound thanks. Many others helped in the research, especially John Annett, Halifax; Bill Beahen, RCMP Archives, Ottawa; Robert Dietz, Halifax; W.A.B. Douglas, Director of History, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa; Sharon Farrell, Gaspe Spec, New Carlisle, Que.; Michael Hadley, Victoria, BC; Suzanne Le Rossignol, Montreal Gazette', C. Herbert Little, Ottawa; Doug Luchak, Ottawa; Paul Marsden, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; Steve Neary, St John's, Nfld.; Andre Ruest, Gaspe, Que.; Dorothy Sheehan, Saint John, NB; Michael Sheehan, Ste-Foy, Que.; Gilles Soucy, Riviere-au-Renard, Que.; David Stafford, Canadian Institute for International Affairs, Toronto; Sylvia Strojek, Edmonton; Wesley K. Wark, Toronto; Nigel West (Rupert Allason), London, England; Glenn Wright, RCMP Archives, Ottawa; Eric Yarrill, Sherbrooke, Que. They have all helped to strengthen this book, but blame me - not them - for any lingering weaknesses. Special thanks must go to Wesley Wark, whose detailed and constructive critique of the manuscript forced me to rethink several issues and led to many improvements. Doug Luchak, who has kindly assisted on this and many other projects over the years, was especially helpful in obtaining photographs and other visual materials. Gerry Hallowell and Robert Ferguson of the University of Toronto Press were supportive and enthusiastic throughout. John St James was an astute, sharp-eyed copy editor. No government grant or direct aid from taxpayers was used to prepare the manuscript, though much research was carried out in Canada's publicly supported libraries. X

Acknowledgments In the pages that follow, espionage aficionados will immediately recognize my reliance on J.C. Masterman's The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945, a model of brevity and the first full account of Britain's success in strategic wartime deception. Nigel West's pioneering espionage histories, including MI5: British Security Service Operations, 1909-1945 and Garbo, the volume he co-authored with Juan Pujol, were also invaluable. The Hinsley volumes cited above also provided a reliable foundation of fact, as did David Kahn's two masterful tomes, Hitler's Spies and The Code-Breakers. C.W. Harvison's The Horsemen was helpful, despite the frequent inaccuracies and generally misleading account of the Watchdog case in chapter 11. Michael L. Hadley's meticulously researched U-Boats against Canada was also a mine of essential information. I have forsaken endnotes in favour of a sources section; all research materials, including transcripts of all interviews, will be deposited in due course at a Canadian archive. Specific queries about sources can be made through the publisher. My wife Irina and our children, Nikolai and Josef, taught me much of what I know about good storytelling. I hope they enjoy this little wartime yarn. Dean Beeby Halifax June 1995

XI

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Gordon Hardy, 18 at the time, was asleep in his bunk aboard the ore-carrier Rose Castle when it was hit by a torpedo fired from U-518 off Bell Island, Newfoundland, on 2 November 1942. Hardy saved himself by diving into the frigid waters of Conception Bay just as a second torpedo finished off the vessel.

An RCAF photograph of the Rose Castle in convoy off Sydney, Nova Scotia on 1 September 1942. The ship, which transported iron ore from Bell Island, Newfoundland, to the Sydney steel mill, narrowly survived two U-boat attacks on 5 September and 20 October before falling victim to Friedrhich-Wilhelm Wissmann's U-518 Twenty-eight men died.

Pierre Simard, 18, dove off the ore-carrier PLM-27 after the ship was rocked by a torpedo from U-518 on 2 November 1942. Simard, torpedoed once before off the New England coast, managed to swim to Lance Cove on Bell Island, but had to be helped ashore because his legs were too damaged for him to walk out of the water.

Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann (centre), commander of U-518, and his four officers, 1942. U-518, on its maiden voyage when it attacked the Bell Island anchorage, was Wissmann's first command since joining the U-Waffe in 1935.

A 'most secret' Naval Intelligence map of the route of U-518 between 30 October and 8 November 1942, based on Lieutenant Wilfred Samuel's interrogation of Janowski.

Rocky cliffs four miles west of New Carlisle, Quebec, where Werner Alfred Waldemar von Janowski landed in the dark from U-518 on 9 November 1942. The Annett family, who were instrumental in Janowski's capture, later purchased the property.

The Carlisle Hotel in New Carlisle, Quebec, where Janowski stopped for a bath and breakfast early on 9 November 1942. Arrow shows the front sitting-room where young Earle Annett retrieved Janowski's discarded Belgian matchbox to gather evidence against the suspected spy.

Cover of the Belgian matchbox that, together with some outdated Canadian $1 bills, helped to arouse the Annetts' suspicions about Janowski. Earle Annett Jr noticed that the yellow matchbox lacked the required excise stamp.

Earle Annett Jr (left) and Constable Alphonse Duchesneau of the Quebec provincial police in front of the Poiriers' gas station in New Carlisle, Quebec, on 12 November 1942. Annett deeply mistrusted Duchesneau as a policeman and was upset about lax security after Janowski's capture.

Barry German, commander of Fort Ramsay in Gaspe, Quebec, in June 1943. German, a former Naval Intelligence officer, desperately wanted to interrogate Janowski but was thwarted by the Quebec provincial police and the RCMP. He lost his left arm in the 1917 Halifax explosion.

The New Carlisle courthouse and jail, where Constable Duchesneau finally placed Janowsk, for fear a raiding U-boat party might try to spring him from his room at La Ma.son Blanche hotel. The RCMP's Cliff Harvison conducted his first interrogations of Janowski in the jailer's office.

RCMP mug shots of Janowski, 38 years old at the time of his capture. A seasoned veteran of Abwehr sabotage and counter-espionage missions, Janowski presented himself to his RCMP captors as a mere soldier reluctantly pressed into low-grade espionage work.

Some of Janowski's effects, including the two paperback books that formed the basis for his radio code system and a slide rule that added a measure of security to the coding. All the items were contained in the briefcase that Janowski carried in addition to the suitcase-sized Afu, or 40-watt short-wave receiver-transmitter.

Janowski's naval uniform, which he wore on landing so that in case of immediate capture he could credibly claim he was a military officer, rather than a spy, and thereby avoid execution. The clothing was carefully buried at his landing.

RCMP Commissioner Stuart Taylor Wood, staunch anti-Communist and anglophile, who persuaded Justice Minister Louis St Laurent to approve Canada's first double-agent operation on 24 November 1942. Wood also invited Britain's counter-intelligence agency MI5 to send an officer to help run the case.

Cliff Harvison, the man who ran the Watchdog case, and who became the 11th commissioner of the RCMP in 1960. Harvison had a well-deserved reputation as a tough, effective cop, but was out of his depth when it came to counter-intelligence matters.

Photostat of the letter and envelope Janowski sent to an Abwehr mail drop in Sweden on 25 November 1942 to inaugurate the RCMP double-cross. Typed copy lower left is a translation of the invisible-ink message that lies beneath the visible message.

Cyril Mills (left) with his brother Bernard in England in the 1930s. Mills joined MI5 during the war, eventually to become a top double-cross officer, and was posted in Canada from December 1942 to September 1945 as MI5's North American liaison officer.

RCMP mug shot of Alfred Langbein, aka Alfred Haskins, taken on 27 November 1944. Langbein landed from U-213 near St Martins, New Brunswick, on 14 May 1942 and lived quietly in Montreal and Ottawa. He turned himself in to Naval Intelligence on 1 November 1944, and convinced the RCMP and MI5 that he had not carried out any espionage.

Cargo of Lies

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Prologue

Just how many enemy spies washed up on Canadian shores during the Second World War is anybody's guess. Like subatomic particles, their existence can often be inferred only from the faint flash-traces they leave across the historical record. Alfred Langbein, rowed ashore from a U-boat near St Martins, New Brunswick, in the spring of 1942, is one of only two documented arrivals. Apparently never intending to carry out his mission, Langbein travelled with little trouble to Montreal and Ottawa, where he lived for more than two years on money supplied to him by the Abwehr, the German military-intelligence service. Running short of cash and resigned to Germany's eventual demise, he turned himself in one fall afternoon in 1944 to a naval lieutenant at No. 8 Temporary Building in Ottawa. Under RCMP interrogation, Langbein freely confessed his mission, saying he had been trained in Bremen alongside another German spy who was to be landed by submarine somewhere in Canada shortly after him. That mysterious agent has disappeared from history. RCMP wartime files also refer obliquely to an Italian agent landed by submarine in the Gulf of St Lawrence. That spy, too, is a phantom whose footsteps have left no imprint on the official record. A captured German U-boat engineer claimed in 1944 that the captain of one submarine, Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann of [7-575, had landed five agents in Canada and the United States - not just the lone agent known to the RCMP. Any such spies were apparently swallowed up by the intrigues of war, never again to surface. The 1943 War Diary of the German Naval Staff cites several agent reports from Canada that cannot be traced. Who were these Nazi moles who had quietly burrowed into 3

Prologue Canadian cities and towns? How many Langbeins chose not to reveal themselves? How many agents dutifully carried out their missions without detection? Did any of them remain safely and anonymously in Canada after the destruction and dismemberment of Germany? Among the spoils of war is control of the historical record, especially in the murky world of espionage. Captured enemy documents, not always complete in the case of the German intelligence services, finally provided the Allied victors with an eagle's-eye view of the war. Wartime theories and assumptions about the enemy could be checked in peacetime by patiently sifting through filing cabinets and interrogation reports. Perhaps it is not surprising that the main Allied counter-espionage agencies, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Britain's MI5, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, concluded in hindsight that they had effectively rebuffed the German espionage and sabotage threat. A prostrate Germany was in no position to challenge that interpretation, and so an Allied consensus seemed to jell: the German intelligence services were incompetent, disorganized, easily duped, and crippled by petty politics. Such a view has persisted to this day, supported in great part by the reluctance of Western agencies to release the full wartime record of their counter-espionage efforts, despite the passage of more than half a century. Contemporary newspapers and other media, caught in the swirl of jingoism, added their own slanted accounts that frequently ridiculed the German agent. The Watchdog file, the story of the RCMP's capture of a Nazi agent in 1942, pokes a hole in the traditional picture of sharp-witted Allied spymasters outfoxing the stumbling Teuton. Werner Alfred Waldemar von Janowski, code-name Bobbi to his German operators, created havoc within Canada's nascent intelligence service with consequences that have reverberated down the decades. The release of the RCMP file on the case, with missing pieces supplied through interviews and other formerly classified documents, provides a unique opportunity to balance the historical scales. The Watchdog operation has been called a 'key event in the Canadian experience of counter-espionage' and the Mounties' 'entry test into the spying big leagues,' predating by almost three years the better-known Igor Gouzenko defection from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa in September 1945. It was an inauspicious debut on the world stage of espionage, revealing as it did that the RCMP was

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Prologue largely incapable of the subtleties of counter-espionage and strategic deception. The episode was like an early-warning signal, particularly for MI5 officials, that Canada's intelligence service was clumsy and amateurish. The Watchdog case helped cement the RCMP's junior and dependent role in the world of espionage, a reputation it was unable to shed throughout the Cold War. Janowski's bold deceits were thickly layered, one woven into another, creating a tangle of deception that eventually ensnared his captors. Precious police resources were drained by the Watchdog case, pinning down RCMP manpower and perhaps allowing other agents a clearer run at Canadian shores. The sleek U-boat that disgorged its shivering passenger at the base of a boulder-strewn Gaspe cliff in November 1942 had dropped off more than a mere spy. It was also delivering a cargo of lies.

5

ONE

Broken Boats, Broken Bodies

Gordon Hardy, steward aboard the iron ore-carrier Rose Castle, prepared to dive from his ship into the frigid, choppy waters off Bell Island, Newfoundland. Sweeping searchlights from the shore regularly rolled into the pitch black that November night in 1942 as Hardy raced onto the deck, dressed only in boxer shorts and a thin life-jacket. 'Where are you going, Hardy?' barked one of the engineers standing on deck. Tm going over the side,' he announced, climbing with determination onto the railing. 'Don't jump in that cold water. It's too cold. It'll kill you,' came the shouted reply. But Hardy knew better. Born and raised in the Cape Breton Island fishing port of Ingonish, he had been diving from ships into the North Atlantic for most of his eighteen years. Ingonish, near the north-east tip of Nova Scotia, was then a bustling centre for fishing companies, all of whom had their own fish stages and wharves stretching far out from shore. Dozens of boats from Newfoundland bobbed in the harbour each spring as a groaning catch of cod was unloaded or supplies brought aboard for the next trip out to the Grand Banks. The port was a wonderland for Ingonish's young boys, with its forest of masts, its fleets of wooden dories and schooners, its sailors and fishermen prowling among the barrels, crates, and nets along the wharves. Hardy's gang would hang out here spring and summer, befriending captains and crew members who would let the boys dive from the decks or rigging. Hardy was the local daredevil, diving from the highest spots, plunging into the coldest water, and holding his breath for as long as possible. Often, a fisherman would accidently drop a fish-splitting knife or some other equally valuable

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Broken Boats, Broken Bodies object over the side. Hardy would grandly offer to help, diving and swimming all the way down to the sandy bottom of the harbour to fetch it. At age seventeen, in 1941, Hardy went to sea. His father had been working as a fireman aboard the Lord Strathcona, which regularly transported red hematite, an iron ore, from the world-famous mines at Bell Island on the east side of Conception Bay to the blast furnaces of the steel plant at Sydney, Nova Scotia. The voyage across the Cabot Strait and into the North Atlantic was perilous and nerve-wracking, exposed as it was to German U-boat attacks. Crew members willing to brave the dual risks of fierce Atlantic storms and enemy torpedoes were difficult to find. Hardy had no work in Ingonish and was too young to sign up for the war. But the merchant marine, starved for men, readily accepted his application in Sydney to become a trimmer aboard the Lord Strathcona. By September 1942, Hardy had been a year aboard ship and long overdue for a visit home. After a short trip back to see his mother in Ingonish, he returned to Sydney only to find that the Lord Strathcona had sailed for Bell Island ahead of schedule, leaving him stranded. Just as well. On 5 September, a German submarine, £7-57.3, plugged two torpedoes into the hull of the Lord Strathcona, sending it 140 feet to the bottom of Lance Cove off Bell Island. All of those on board made it safely into lifeboats, including Hardy's father. The crew of the Saganaga, another ship destroyed in the same attack, were not so lucky, with more than twenty losing their lives. Another torpedo narrowly missed the 7800-ton Rose Castle, docked at the ore-loading pier, but it did blow up a large chunk of the wharf. Badly spooked, many of the Rose Castle crew - including the captain - called it quits. On 17 September, Hardy, his father, and several others who had served on the now-broken Lord Strathcona transferred to the Rose Castle, its sister vessel built at the same British shipyard and also owned by the Dominion Iron and Steel Company of Sydney. Some weeks later, on 20 October, the Rose Castle was part of a convoy headed back to Bell Island for another load when a terrific storm blew up. Her holds empty, the ship was high and light in the water, and extremely difficult to control. The blasting gale forced the vessel a hundred miles or more away from the convoy to a point sixteen miles southeast of Ferryland Head. The heavy seas tossed the ship like a cork, its spinning propellors rising into the night air, the blades loudly slapping

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Cargo of Lies the surface of the water. Suddenly hearts sank as someone on deck spotted a white streak several hundred yards off, pointed directly at the bouncing hull, the unmistakable wake of a churning torpedo. Miraculously, there was no explosion. Either the torpedo was a dud, not uncommon with German U-boats, or the boiling sea had tossed the hull up and out of harm's way just as the explosive was about to ram the ship. Everyone was immediately ordered onto the boat deck to be ready to abandon ship when the next torpedoes arrived. As fate would have it, the torpedo was the very last carried by Ulrich Graf's £/-