4. An Adventurer’s Fake Spy Network Fools the Nazis
Juan Pujol Garcia had neither the means nor the intent to head to Britain and set up a spy network there, as instructed by the Germans. Instead, he went to Lisbon, and from there, made up reports about Britain with content culled from public sources, embellished and seasoned with his own active imagination. He then sent them to his Abwehr handlers as if he was writing from Britain. The Germans swallowed 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 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, transforming it into an elaborate double-cross operation that carefully fed the Germans a massive amount of often true but useless information, mixed in with half-truths and falsities.
