Juan Pujol

Juan Pujol, Agent Garbo, was probably the most interesting and inventive of the British double agents. He was also the most important in Operation Fortitude, the deception operation that allowed the Allied landing in Normany with less of a German resistance than would otherwise have been. In other words, his work was directy instrumental in the operation that turned the tide of the war.

Pujol's story is fascinating, and he tells it simply and effectively. If it was his story alone, I would have given the book a higher rating.

The book was spoiled by the chapters written by Nigel West. West is the person who tracked Joan Pujol down after more than thirty years, and thus we have him to thank for finding Pujol which led to his writing about his part in serving the British during the war.

Pujol tells his own story. But he cannot tell the whole story because he was not privy to all the information that his handler and co-conspirator, Tomas Harris of MI6 had. So West deals with the story of the greater picture. But he does it by filling the book with minutiae that doesn't explain the story. He will mention a department within the government or military, or secret service and tell us who was in charge, second in charge, who the secretary was, etc. You try to focus in on all the names only to discover that none of them ever appears again. West fills (stuffs) the book with countless excerpts, sometimes the whole message that Pujol and his fictitous agents sent as the misinformation in the leadup and then through the early days of the Normandy landings. But not once does West explain what it was about any one of those messages that was misleading and how did it serve to misguide the Germans. Generally speaking they led the Germans to believe that the British were gathering to the north when they were actually gathering to the south. Or vice versa. All those messages about the troop movements or non-movements without being told their specific intent, made for tedious reading.

At the end, West stuffs the book further with a short discussion of the famous Cambridge spies. You have to wonder why. None of them were directly involved with Garbo, although Kim Philby probably knew about the operation. Why those pages devoted to Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, etc.? Because the man who directed Garbo on what to write and how to write it -- the brains behind the misinformation, Garbo's partner, was Tomas Harris, and since Harris knew Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt, and moved in their social circle (although he didn't attend Cambridge and West never suggests he was ever a communist), and he died in a car crash, on a straight road, well then, maybe Harris was a traitor too. Harris was not only Garbo's partner; he was a good friend who continued the friendship after the war, and helped him to resettle a few years later. Then he died. Unsubstantiated accusations had no place in this book.

Joan Pujol and Tomas Harris built on the few fictitious agents Pujol had created before even coming to Britain and together created a fictitious network of over two dozen spies, all reporting to Garbo who passed on all their infromation to the Germans -- information dictated to Garbo by Harris. What imagination, what coordination, what chutzpah! It's an incredible story, somewhat spoiled by West, but still worth reading.… (altro)