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A Memorable History of Deception and Spy Capers

Khalid Elhassan June 7, 2020 34 min

Operation Mincemeat - World War II — Items recovered from Major Martin and his briefcase. BBC

4. Making Up Intelligence

Juan Pujol Garcia and his wife. Toronto Star

Instead of heading to Britain, Juan Pujol Garcia went to Lisbon, Portugal. From there, he simply fabricated reports about Britain, using content culled from public sources. He embellished that and seasoned it with his own active imagination, then sent the resultant “intelligence reports” to his German handlers as if he was writing from Britain. The Germans bought it, and begged for more. So Pujol invented fictional sub-agents and used them as sources for additional fictional reports.

Intercepting and decoding secret German messages, the British realized that somebody was hoaxing the Germans. Upon discovering that it was Pujol acting on his own, they belatedly accepted his offer of services. Giving him the codename GARBO, they whisked him to Britain, where they built upon his imaginary network. Under British control, Pujol’s ad hoc fibs were transformed into an elaborate deception operation, that lasted for years. During that time, the Germans were carefully fed a massive amount of often true but useless information, mixed in with half truths and falsities.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.