14. A Crazy Feat of World War II Spycraft
In Lisbon, Juan Pujol Garcia used content that he culled from public sources, embellished and seasoned it with his own active imagination, then sent that to his German handlers as if he was writing from Britain. The Germans, who gave him the codename ALARIC, swallowed Pujol’s reports and begged for more. So he invented fictional sub-agents and used them as sources for additional fictional reports. The British, who were intercepting and decoding secret German messages, realized that somebody was hoaxing the Germans.
When they discovered that it was Pujol, the British belatedly accepted his offer of services. They gave him the codename GARBO, and whisked him to Britain, where they built upon his imaginary network. His ad hoc fake reports became the centerpiece of 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 lies. The flood of reports from Pujol and his steadily growing network of fictional sub-agents transformed him, in German eyes, into their best spy in Britain.
