In the Ballroom

Even before his teens Nigel West had a good working knowledge of the role and activities of the Security Service (MI5) because his father had been Jack Profumo’s PPS and close family friend.

At his boarding school West was greatly influenced by a Benedictine monk who, before he had taken Holy Orders, had served as a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) officer. In 1942 he had escaped from a German PoW camp and walked across occupied Europe to reach Gibraltar.

While an undergraduate, he worked for two authors with an intelligence background: Donald McCormick, a former Naval Intelligence officer who wrote extensively about subversion and foreign intelligence agencies; and Ronnie Seth, a former Special Operations Executive agent who had parachuted into Sicily and captured by the Gestapo.

In 1972 West became fascinated by the role of wartime double agents and began to search for MUTT, JEFF, TRICYCLE, BRONX, DREADNOUGHT, BALLOON, GELTINE, TATE, BRUTUS, TREASURE, ZIGZAG, FREAK and METEOR. Each had an astonishing story to relate.

The most important German spy in England, under British control, was GARBO, who volunteered to become a double agent and played a key role in the deception campaign codenamed FORTITUDE which duped the Axis by persuading enemy analysts that the D-Day landings in Normandy were a diversionary feint, and that the real attack would take place in the pas-de-Calais, thereby avoiding a planned armoured counter-attack when the allied troops were still wading ashore on the beaches.

In 1984, on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings West accompanied GARBO to Buckingham Palace to attend an investiture where he received the medal he had been awarded in great secrecy in 1944.

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