This is a great documantary by Ben Macintyre about the safecracker, playboy and WWII double agent Eddie Chapman. Most Bond fans will love this one, I think :007)
A very unusual court case started today. A company in the concrete business sues the Norwegian secret services (both inteligence and Counter-intelligence( for nearly 136 000 000 Crowns (nearly 15 million USD. The reason is that the company used to work a lot in Northern Russia when Our Secret services tried to recruit them. This was so unbelivably clumsilly (once they tried to contact the Company CEO at his home. Since the door was locked the "Secret" policeman knocked on the neighbour's door and asked him to tell the CEO the PST (police counter-intelligence) wanted him to contact them. The CEO rejected the offer, but belive it or not the Russian FSB got wind of Norwegian secret services contact with the concrete company. )
The leaders of the company were thrown out of Russia and they never got another contract in the country. Christ ….
It turns out employees of the company were handled very though by the Russian FSB. During intorrogation they were threathened with handguns to their heads and syringes with unknown content. One person was taken to the edge of the roof a highrise building and given "hints" about how far it was to the ground. I fear this court case offer some hard truths about both countries' secret services.
Honey traps has been a part of espionage since the begining, and it rarely end well for whoever falls into one. Gunvor Galtung Haavik is certainly an example of this. She was born in 1912 in a industrial town in the fjords of southern Norway. Gunvor had romantic dreams of the outside world, and she loved it when a Cossack orchestra visited the town. She decided to learn Russian because of this visit. She moved to the capital to study to be a nurse, but she also sought out Valerij Karrik. He was an artist and a figure in the very small Russian immigrant community in Oslo. Karrik became Gunvor's best friend and a subsitute father who who she learnt Russian from. Her life long love of Russian culture and language began.
Karrik died in 1943, Three years after the German invasion of neutral Norway, and Gunvor transfered to a nursing job in the Arctic town of Bodø to get away from her loss of Karrik. Ironically there were many Russians in Northern Norway at this point in history, prisoners of war serving under harsh conditions. One of them was Vladimir Kozlov, who was doing slave labour at a fish fillet factory in town. He got his face injured and got bandaged at the hospital. Gunvor and Vladimir spoke Russian together and got on very well. When his bandages was removed Gunvor blurted out: "Good God, how beautiful you are!" Vladimir also found the blonde nurse very pretty. Because food production was an industry of litterlly vital importance during the war, the Russians at the factory served under better conditions than most Russian POWs in the region who's lives were brutal and short. Vladimir was able secretly visit her at home after he was discharged from the hospital. As he was leaving he tripped on the door frame and fell into her arms. They kissed. The nurse and the prisoner of war were in love. This had to be a secret, if they were discovered the consequences would be serious and probably deadly for him.
Vladimir dreamt of freedom, and when he was transfered to a POW camp closer to neutral Sweden he got his chance. The prisoners lived on local farms and the farmer was a patriot who was willing to help Vladimir escape. Gunvor was also in on the plan and she visted the last night before he ran off. She put "The dying swan" from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake on the gramaphone and danced for him. When he was about to leave they kissed and Gunvor whispered "Snipp, snapp, snute, så var eventyret ute" ( ….then the fairytale was over"), the traditional ending to Norwegian fairytales. he gave her a note with his parents' Leningrad address. Then he walked into the night to cross the mountains to freedom in Sweden.
When the war ended all Soviet citizens who had been in contact with foreigners were seen as suspect by Stalin's paranoid and brutal regime, even POWs. Most went almost directly from Hitler's POW camps to Stalin's GULag camps, many even died there. Vladimir was released in 1947.
Gunvor Galtung Haavik speaking to freed Russian prisoner shortly after the war.
Gunvor was also involved in sending Russian prisoners back to the USSR asa nurse and interpreter.
Because of her efforts with the POW Gunvor was offered a job as a secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo in 1946. Her first assignment was as an interpreter for a group of officials settling the border between Norway and the USSR. This gave her the chance to search for Vladimir, and she found him in Leningrad in 1947. Vladimir understood how dangerous any such contact was, so she warned her against an affair. "What can we do about it, volodtisjik?" This was her pet name for Vladimir. "I've fallen in love with you, there is nothing to be done about it." When her work with the border commision was over she had to return to Norway. It was unlikely to ever meet again. Vladimir went to the police and asked for permition for them to exchange letters. The police said yes.
The same year Gunvor returned to the Soviet Union as secretary in the embassy in Moscow, in effect their interpreter. An officer of the KGB contacted Vladimir. Since most of the personel in Soviet embassies worked for the KGB or GRU they assumed Gunvor Galtung Haavik really worked for some western secret service. In their paranoid minds Vladimir had to be a spy too, and the only way he could prove his innocence was to work for them. Vladimir was married and had children at this point, but he started meeting Gunvor again. The KGB supplied an apartment. Gunvor didn't tell her superiors about the affair. Pavljuk, the Russian driver who worked at the embassy, helpfully handled the letters Gunvor and Vladmir wrote to each other. After two years he broke cover to Gunvor and told her he worked for the KGB and blackmailed her to become their agent. "You know your friend is on thin ice? You may never see him again." Gunvor broke and signed a document saying she was now working for the KGB. She told later Vladimir. She was solely motivated by love, not ideology. "The iron curtain is very much a reality." she wrote on one of her letters, "All the pretty talk about how you wish to live in friendship with peaceful neighbours are just empty words."
Vladimir Kozlov as an old man
In the following 27 years she handed the KGB countless secret documents. The reward was getting to meet Vladimir from time to time in the KGB-financed appartment. In 1962 a Soviet defector named Anatolij Golitsyn told his interrogators about one of their spies.He didn't know the name, but the secretary of the Norwegian ambassador in Moscow was working for the KGB. His information wasn't up to date. didn't know was that Haavik had been trasfered back to Norway in 1955. Her replacement, a Ingeborg Lygren, got arrested for espionage instead. Lygren was actually working for Norwegian military inteligence and the CIA, looking after dead drop «mail boxes» all over Moscow. She got arrested for treason and espionage for the USSR, but she was realeased after a long investigation because of insufficient proof. The public and the counter-inteligence service remained convinced she was a traitor for many years, but her employers in military inteligence belived her.
Ingeborg Lygren - a spy, but no traitor.
When Gunvor Galtung Haavik was transfered back to Oslo back in 1955 she never saw Vladimir again. Perhaps she belived she at least was free of the KGB, but after two years later they contacted her again. We can assume Vladimir's welfare and possibly her hope of getting in contact with him again was used to put pressure on her. She never got in contact with the love of her life, but because of him she did meet the KGB 190 times to bring them secret documents. Gunvor was on her way to such a meeting when she was arrested in 1977. By then she had been a spy for 27 years, as far as we know no Norwegian has ever spied on us for that long. Gunvor confessed and cooperated with the police, but she died in her prison cell a short time before her trial started. The coroner ruled it a heart attack, but there has always been doubts. Did the KGB kill her?
I don't think I'm alone in thinking of a certain person when reading this story.
I always remember the time Gerry Adams put on show a " Bug " he claimed was in
his car, planted by MI5. As it was bloody enormous I mean it was the size of at least
two blue-ray players with acres of wiring I did think at the time, Surely MI5 must
have a smaller Bug than that thing ?
Then again it may have been made so big so that it would be found, as MI5 had so many
agents throughout the Republican network, they had to keep throwing the odd red herring
at the top level of Republicans to explain all the success MI5 etc were having ?
That plays for the same results as the KGB habit of breaking into your home and taking a dump in the middle of your living room carpet.... ) ) )
"I mean, she almost kills bond...with her ass."
-Mr Arlington Beech
I just started reading The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintrye, it's the story of Oleg Gordievsky and his eventual exfil from the clutches of the KGB. Highly recommended!
"I mean, she almost kills bond...with her ass."
-Mr Arlington Beech
One of our Boy Scout leaders had been a C-47 pilot in World War II. For about a year he flew diplomatic missions from the UK to Stockholm. He said they would radio the Germans and get everything cleared then start out...He said the strangest part of was being in a bar or restaurant in Sweden with people from the Axis powers and everyone was polite..
"I don't know if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who mean it."-Mark Twain
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)
With a headline like this most people don't expect a story about a hero, but Anne Marie Breien was a true hero. She was born on a large farm in the Ringerike region in the south-east of Norway in 1915. Her father employed twenty people on the farm and also buildt up a successful factory. Anne Marie was strong-willed and into sports, so she got her self an education in athletics. In 1938 she continued her education in Germany. There she witnesed Hitler's regime first hand and she disliked it from the start. She even helped Jews escape to Switzerland. Anne Marie returned to Norway a short time before the German invasion. There she married the lawyer Kjell Langballe. and started her own gym.
After the Germans invaded the country some started building a resistance. Her father was among the first, soon becomeing the distgrict commanderof MILORG, he military wing of the resisitance. Most people called MILORG «the boys in the forest». Her father had two batallions under his command. In 1940 her sister had married a Polish aristocrat and memeber of the Polish exile army there. After the fall of France they escape to Casablanca in Morocco. The couple are interned in a refugee camp in the desert under harsh conditions, but finally they got help from the American consul and traveled to the US. Both of Anne Marie's brothers were active in the resisitance back home.
When the early resistance was formed most people believed an British invasion wasn't far into the future. Of course know that's not what happened. With no British invasion the result was almost inevitable. You can't hide away guerilla units for montsh and years with limited allied support. Many organisations were disrupted and many got arrested. Her father was arrested in 1942 and was in solitary confinement for nine months. A death sentence was in the cards. Anne Marie started working to save him and she wasn't the type to take no for an answer.
"The boys in the forest"
Finally she got a meeting with Siegfried Wolfgang Fehmer who was leader of a special Gestapo unit working solely with espionage and counter-espionage cases. Late in the war he became the commander of the Gestapo in Oslo. The resistance saw him as one of their most dangerous enemies. He was very good at his job, he used torture extensively and sometimes shoed a sadistic side when he personally took part in some torture sessions. During his meeting with Anne Marie he showed the other sides of his personality, the charmer and womanizer. Fehmer was caprivated by her beauty, but also her strong will and tendecy to speak her mind. They had several long following the first. They discussed their views on the situation, politics and of course her father. She was working him and she found her useful for gauging the mood in the population since she was so outspoken. Her realtionship with the Gestapo officer paid off when her father was released from prison. Anne Marie spoke to her contact in the resistance and they agreed she should develop the relationship further. Her MILORG contact wrote in in a report after the war: «When she made her desicion it was in the knowledge that the contact [with Fehmer] in my opinion was of such great importance to the resistance personal considerations had to be set aside». After some time Anne Marie could come and go as she pleased and talk to anyone she wanted to in Gestapo headquarters.
Gestapo headquarters
After assassinations were carried out by the resistance there were usually followed by exections of civilian hostages. Anne Marie spent a lot of time convincint Fehmer to stop these executions and later they discussed how this could be done. She also worked through Fehmer to stop police raids, get patriotic Norwegians out of prison, consentration camps and death sentences. She also brought letters and food to prisoners. For a long time Fehmer was a «family friend». At least once Fehmer and Anne Marie's went fishing for crayfish together, the Gestapo commander and teh resistance commander together in a small rowing boat». But by 1944 Fehmer told her their relationship couldn't continue if it didn't turn into a sexual realtionship. I took into consideration that the relationship couldn't possibly hurt anybody but myself as long as I not for a moment forgot whos side I was fighting» she wrote after the war. Her marriage had understandably been rocky for quite some time, and that year they got a divorce. He even lived in her house from time to time. Anne did get some sympathy for the Gestapo man, partly because he was really helpful in saving the people she tried to save. He probably knew she had some sort of connection to the resistance, but did nothing to stop it. At one point one of the «boys in the forest» became ill and she told him «You can move in with me, because Fehmer lives there and you'll be safe!» One assumes no-one said the house guest was part of the guerilla he was trying to catch, but he may very well have suspected the truth. That summer her father and one of her brothers were infomed on by a Norwegian nazi. Fehmer released them, claiming this kind of snitching often wasn't well founded and was often had personal motivations.
From the film "Max Manus". Fehmer dancing with a character based on Anne Marie Breien.
When the war ended the resisitance were the heroes and darlings of the country and the Germans and Norwegian nazis were hated by most. Fehmer was very much he was a wanted man and he was on the run. It was his relationship to Anna Marie that proved to be his undoing. The police put a wiretap on Anne Marie's phone and struck gold. Earlier Fehmer had given her his German shepherd and he phoned her to ask about the dog. The phone call revealed his location and he was arrested. And what about Anne Marie? The resistance and British police raided her parents' house to find her, then they raided three more houses in the sunny coast of the far south where she had gone on holliday ten days after Germany's surrednder. She was completely unaware she was wanted by the police until a friend in MILORG phoned and told her. Soon she was arrested and charged with treason. She was put in a cell in the medieval Akershus castle where her father had served in prison and she had helped so many more Norwegian patriots. Her MILORG contact made a call and she was released the same afternoon, but the charges weren't dropped until later that summer. But for some reason both the resistance and the authorities didn't say a word to the public about her her work for them and the fact that they had asked her to to be Fehmer's mistress to do that job. One wonders what they would have done if a man had seduced German women to save his countrymen and get infomation? As a «thank you» for her heroics she gets slapped, gets threathening phone calls and is called «German's slut» on the street. She can't show her face in the community she grew up in.
Akershus castle
Now it's Fehmer who's sitting in a cell in Akershus castle. During his tial Anne Marie is one of the few witnesses who support him. She tells the court how the two of them saved sixty Norwegians. The real number is possibly even higher. Ninety patriots may have been saved by her. But his many crimes, especially the torture, made him one of the most hated men in the country and he was sentenced to death by firing squad.
Anne Marie gets a job at the American embassy in Oslo, but she still experiences death threats on the phone.and false rumours being spread. In 1946 she moves to her sister in the US. Only a year later both of them move back to the family farm and she got a job in NATO's headquarters there. Again she recieved threats. A journalist even threathened to write about her in the newspaper. In spite of thank you-lettters from people she saved and letters documenting her work from individual MILORG members she gets kicked out of her job. Again she moves to America.
Life is better in America, but she has feelings of bitterness and depression because of the war. On her darkest days she thinks of the people she couldn't save, sometimes becaue of messages that arrived too late. She drinks too much, but after some years she gets help from AA . Anne Marie never re-marries. In 1993 she gives an interview to a Norwegian newspaper, the only time she talked about her experiences to the general public.
In 1981 she was approved for a veteran's pensions, but she never got medal or an official thank you. When she died in 2000 and she was burried in Norway next to the graves of her family's graves.
Herman Simm is a former chief of the Estonian Defense Ministry's security department and convicted Russian spy. As head of the Defense Ministry Security Department, Simm was tasked with coordinating the protection of state secrets. The department is also responsible for issuing access to classified information and for handling data from international organizations, including NATO, the European Union and Estonia’s other defense partners. He also took part in the devising of EU and NATO information protection systems.
The Simm case became the first since the restoration of Estonia's independence in 1991 in which an actual agent was identified, tried, and convicted of treason.
I remember back in the 90s', there was a genuine worry about the defense co-operation with newly independent Estonia. Finlands National Defense University did a lot of initial education of the officers for fledgling Estonian army, and there was a concern about sleeper agents from a not west bound neighbor.
There is a quite good documentary about Simm in U-Tub, see below.
Operation Musketoon - Commandoes by the polar circle
In September 1942 a daring sabotage mission was carried out by ten men from No. 2 Commando and two Norwegian Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents in the far north north of Norway.
The target was a hyrdoelectric power plant in Glomfjord, a narrow fjord surrounded by steep mountains not far north of the polar circle. At the end of the fjord was a hydroelectric power station supplied by two water pipes coming down the mountain from inland lakes. The power plant supplied electricity to a factory that produced much needed aluminium for the German Luftwaffe. The factory was working around the clock and work was being done to make the plant and factory even bigger. The plan was to blow up the turbines in the power plants and the pipes running up the steep mountainside. The saboteurs were commanded by a Canadian, captain Greame Black. Under his command were nine commandoes and two SOE agents from the Linge company to act as guides. They trained for a forthnight on a large country estate in Scotland before being shipped to the Orkney islands. Early in the planning the group was supposed to be flown to and from Norway by sea plane, but it was decided it was better to go to Norway submarine and escape on foot to neutral Sweden. The team was transported on the «Junon» of the Free French Navy. French submarines were better suited for special operations than the British for two reasons. French subs had a profile that looked like German subs and French subs had a larger flat surface in front of the tower suitable for deploying agents and commandoes.
The team was supposed to be taken by «Junon» halfway into Glomfjord and paddle to land on a inflateble rubber boat, but on the advice of the Norwegian SOE guides they were taken to the smaller Bjæring fjord. The reason was that information that the entrance of Glomfjord was closely guarded by German forces and they were at risk of being detected when the «Junon» had to surface to deploy the saboteurs. «Junon» positioned itself deep in Bjæringfjord waiting for nightfall. The sub surfaced and the team inflated the boat, loaded the equipment onboard and placed themselves in it ready to paddle to land. Tehy were so close to land they could hear dogs and a bisycle bell. The sub dived down from under them and the saboteurs headed for land, A sleepless widow saw what happened from her house. The next day she hurried to the local grocery store, eager to share the exciting news. Luckily the store owner had better sense and adviced her sternly against telling anyone before any damage was done.
The saboteurs hid the boat and headed up into the mountains. They carried heavy rucksacks and some special gear, including a silk map of Norway and Sweden and Norwegian Kroner notes. They also carried two compasses (one sewn into each collar tab) a hacksaw blade and a two meters long rope each. They were lightly armed. Each had a Colt 45 pistol and a Fairbairn-sykes fighting knife. Captain Black also carried a supressed Stengun submachine gun. Two commandoes carried Lee Enfield rifles, usefull in long range encounters with the enemy in the mountains. One of the SOE agents managed to drop his pistol, losing it in the steep mountainside. Black handed him his own pistol.
They had to cross the Black Ice glacier to get to their target in Glomfjord. The twelve men used their ropes to each other to avoid falling into the dangerous crevasses.
Finally they could see the powerplant deep below them. For several days they observed their target and the rutines of the German guards before they began their descent. When they reached the pipeline two commandoes and one SOE agent were left behind to set 40 kilos of plastic explosives to blow the large pipes leading to the water to the plant.. The other nine continue down to the powerplant. There they found an open door and captain Black, a second commando and the remaining agent walked into the fully lit machine hall. They spotted a guard behind the glass in the control room and ran accoross the hall. The Norwegian agent knew the building from the year before when he recced the place while pretending to be looking for a job. They questioned the Norwegian guard if there are any Germans around. The guard said there were none.
There was no road from the plant to the village where the workers lived. Instead a mile long tunnel through the solid rock was used. When the three saboteurs and the Norwegian guard opened the room leading to the tunnel they came upon a German soldier. The SOE agent shot him with his pistol. Then he questioned the Norwegian guard again, and this time he admits there is a second German soldier guarding the plant plus a Norwegian family living in the plant tower. They searched for the second German who threw away his rifle and ran down the tunnel, no doubt to raise the alarm when he reached the Geman unit in the village. The SOE agent and the two commandoes evacuated the family in the tower and the civilian workers through the tunnel while the commandoes set the explosives in the machine hall. After the civilans disappeared down the tunnel the commandoes threw a smoke grenade into the tunnel to slow down any German soldiers coming the other way. Then they start the timers for the explosives and start walking up the stairs that runs along the pipelines. When the three men who set the charges on the pipes saw the explosion they started a ten minute timer to blow the pipes. Actually the explosions in the plant didn't do very much damage because the charges were placed on top of the generators leading most of the force of the explosion upwards. The charges should have been placed under the generators. After all the saboteurs had passed the charges on the pipes they blew up. The water burst out of the broken pipes and hurtled down the steep mountainside towards the plant,destroying much of it. First the whole plant was flooded, then the cascading water made a hole right threough the building. The German plans to use alluminium from the Glomfjord factory were stopped for good.
The tunnel
Now the German soldiers in the village ran into the tunnel to find out what was happening, but they turned back because of the smoke from the smoke grenade. Instead they commandeered a civilian boat to get to the plant. The German soldiers were unable to use the stairs along the pipes because of the torrent of water from the broken pipes, but they chased the commandoes and agents by another route. The saboteurs also wanted to use a different route up the mountains, by a second stair under a cable for a cable car, but they can't find the suspension bridge leading to the stairs. One of the SOE agents enter a bunkhouse for the men working on the cable car. He got one of the workers to draw a simple map. In the darkness the twelve saboteurs still couldn't find the suspension bride, so they returned to the bunkhouse to get the worker to guide them. In the meantime German soldiers had entered the bunkhouse in their search for the saboteurs. They asked the worker if he's seen the Englishmen, but the worker denied any knowledge. Two Germans stayed in the room with the worker, but one of them removed the clip from his Mauser rifle. Next one of the SOE agents came through the door. The German reacted first, aimed the rifle at the agent and pulled the trigger. When he remembered the rifle was unloaded he desperately threw it at the agent. The bayonet impaled the agent, who pulled the bayonet out and staggered out the door. The commando who was second in command burst through the door and fired two times at the Norwegian worker, but luckily he missed. «Get the German, he's standing there!» yelled the worker and pointed at the second soldier in the cormer. The commando turned and shot the German.
Later the Germans found the notepad and discoverd the man had applied so much pressure on the pencil when drawing the map the imprint is visible on the notepad. The Germans jailed the worker for the remainder of the war for helping the saboteurs.
In the following chaos three commandoes and the agent who was unhurt got seperated form the others. The four of them managed to get up the mountain, but the remaining seven commandoes came to a dead-end and were cornered by their persuers. A firefight ensued, but the commandoes had to surrender when they ran out of ammunition. The injured SOE agent was also captured too. He was put on a boat alongside a wounded German soldier. The two exchanged words and the agent spat at the soldier.
The four who were still on the run had trouble finding their way up the steep mountainside, but somehow they made it. Further up in the mountain the Norwegian agent swam acoross the river, but he barely made it because of the strong current. From the other side of the river he shouted for the British commnadoes to follow him, but he didn't speak English and the commandoes thought he wanted them to find anther route. They got seperated and the Norwegain was the only one who knew the terrain and he also had the good maps. Both the lone agent and the remaining commandoes were without food, sleeping bags and other equipment and they had days of walking in difficult terrain between them and safety in neutral Sweden. They only had the silk maps and were not able to fully grasp how challenging the journey ahead was.
The SOE agent who was stabbed in the gut by a German bayonet was taken to hospital. He tried to hide the fact that he was Norwegian. It was important to portray the sabotage as a British military mission to avoid reprisals against civilians. But after a few days he realised he's about to die, and he whispered to a Norwegian doctor: «I'm just twenty-two years old, but for the nation to survive some must be willing to die». The other SOE agent walked alone for two days towards Sweden, then he decided to turn back to search for the three commandoes he left by the river. Back by the river he found footprints and he tried to follow them. The three commandoes he was searching for were in trouble in the mountains. The lack of food, incredibly challenging terrain, the harch weather and the lack of food was punishing and they ate methaphine pills to cope with the exhaustion. One of the commandoes got seperated from the others. After three days without food in the mountains the commandoes took a chance and visited a farm to get some food. The family there were helpful even though German soldiers were on patrol nearby. Later the Germans turn up on the same farm and forced the famer at gunpoint to be their guide. Later in the escape all of them (the agent, the single commando and the two who stayed together) visited more farms to get food and rest. Noen of the locals betrayed them. All of them were put in contact with the local resistance and heard news of each other. The commando who walked alone was so hungry and exhausted he got lost and turned back west again twice, but locals helped him on the right track again. All four make it to Sweden after walking 210 kilometers, more than 130 miles, in mountainous terrain.
The seven captured commandoes were transported to Germany and imprisoned in the infamous Colditz castle. The commandoes weren't searched well, so they tried to escape from the castle. They started to cut the bars in the cell window using the hacksaw blades hidden in their uniforms, hoping to to use the ropes to lower themselves down the castle walls.Unfortunately they were moved after just a few days,before they were able to carry out their plan. They are moved to the Sachsenhausen consentration camp were all seven were they are executed according to Hitler's «Commando Order». This «Kommandobefehl“ ordered German forces to execute saboteurs i uniform in direct contradiction of inernational law. The seven commnadoes from the Glomfjord mission were the first victims of this order. The surviving Norwegian SOE agent returned to occupied Norway only months later. Again he was on a submarine, again to blow up a hydropower plant just north of Glomfjord. Tragically the sub hit a suberged mine and sank. Two of the British commandoes survived the war.
I just discovered a major Moneypenny working in the Inter Allied Services Department, a WWII inteligence unit in Australia. He was one of the men who tested the folbot collapsible canoes that were used in he famous Operation Jaywick where Australian commandos sank Japanese ships in Singapore harbour. :007)
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An arm prosthesis with a gun is on display at the spy museum in Oberhausen, Germany,
Lipstick gun:
Shoe from the 1960's with a voice transmitter in the heel.
Flashlight gun (Perhaps a good idea for a Bond Movie, especially if they hide the barrel behind the bulb)
Video: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Double+Agent%3a+The+Eddie+Chapman+Story+&&view=detail&mid=9C8F0FF081761B3DEE769C8F0FF081761B3DEE76&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DDouble%2BAgent%253a%2BThe%2BEddie%2BChapman%2BStory%2B%26FORM%3DHDRSC3
The British could have put an man in Space in the 1950's
Youtube documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWFFzL65dEQ
The leaders of the company were thrown out of Russia and they never got another contract in the country. Christ ….
Honey traps has been a part of espionage since the begining, and it rarely end well for whoever falls into one. Gunvor Galtung Haavik is certainly an example of this. She was born in 1912 in a industrial town in the fjords of southern Norway. Gunvor had romantic dreams of the outside world, and she loved it when a Cossack orchestra visited the town. She decided to learn Russian because of this visit. She moved to the capital to study to be a nurse, but she also sought out Valerij Karrik. He was an artist and a figure in the very small Russian immigrant community in Oslo. Karrik became Gunvor's best friend and a subsitute father who who she learnt Russian from. Her life long love of Russian culture and language began.
Karrik died in 1943, Three years after the German invasion of neutral Norway, and Gunvor transfered to a nursing job in the Arctic town of Bodø to get away from her loss of Karrik. Ironically there were many Russians in Northern Norway at this point in history, prisoners of war serving under harsh conditions. One of them was Vladimir Kozlov, who was doing slave labour at a fish fillet factory in town. He got his face injured and got bandaged at the hospital. Gunvor and Vladimir spoke Russian together and got on very well. When his bandages was removed Gunvor blurted out: "Good God, how beautiful you are!" Vladimir also found the blonde nurse very pretty. Because food production was an industry of litterlly vital importance during the war, the Russians at the factory served under better conditions than most Russian POWs in the region who's lives were brutal and short. Vladimir was able secretly visit her at home after he was discharged from the hospital. As he was leaving he tripped on the door frame and fell into her arms. They kissed. The nurse and the prisoner of war were in love. This had to be a secret, if they were discovered the consequences would be serious and probably deadly for him.
Vladimir dreamt of freedom, and when he was transfered to a POW camp closer to neutral Sweden he got his chance. The prisoners lived on local farms and the farmer was a patriot who was willing to help Vladimir escape. Gunvor was also in on the plan and she visted the last night before he ran off. She put "The dying swan" from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake on the gramaphone and danced for him. When he was about to leave they kissed and Gunvor whispered "Snipp, snapp, snute, så var eventyret ute" ( ….then the fairytale was over"), the traditional ending to Norwegian fairytales. he gave her a note with his parents' Leningrad address. Then he walked into the night to cross the mountains to freedom in Sweden.
When the war ended all Soviet citizens who had been in contact with foreigners were seen as suspect by Stalin's paranoid and brutal regime, even POWs. Most went almost directly from Hitler's POW camps to Stalin's GULag camps, many even died there. Vladimir was released in 1947.
Gunvor Galtung Haavik speaking to freed Russian prisoner shortly after the war.
Gunvor was also involved in sending Russian prisoners back to the USSR asa nurse and interpreter.
Because of her efforts with the POW Gunvor was offered a job as a secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo in 1946. Her first assignment was as an interpreter for a group of officials settling the border between Norway and the USSR. This gave her the chance to search for Vladimir, and she found him in Leningrad in 1947. Vladimir understood how dangerous any such contact was, so she warned her against an affair. "What can we do about it, volodtisjik?" This was her pet name for Vladimir. "I've fallen in love with you, there is nothing to be done about it." When her work with the border commision was over she had to return to Norway. It was unlikely to ever meet again. Vladimir went to the police and asked for permition for them to exchange letters. The police said yes.
A screenshot from a film about Gunvor Galtung Haavik's life.
[img]https://www.filmweb.no/bilder/migration_catalog/article606637.ece/representations/w970/Ellen Dorrit Petersen som Vera Våge og Morten Traavik som Brynjulfsen i Iskyss[/img]
The same year Gunvor returned to the Soviet Union as secretary in the embassy in Moscow, in effect their interpreter. An officer of the KGB contacted Vladimir. Since most of the personel in Soviet embassies worked for the KGB or GRU they assumed Gunvor Galtung Haavik really worked for some western secret service. In their paranoid minds Vladimir had to be a spy too, and the only way he could prove his innocence was to work for them. Vladimir was married and had children at this point, but he started meeting Gunvor again. The KGB supplied an apartment. Gunvor didn't tell her superiors about the affair. Pavljuk, the Russian driver who worked at the embassy, helpfully handled the letters Gunvor and Vladmir wrote to each other. After two years he broke cover to Gunvor and told her he worked for the KGB and blackmailed her to become their agent. "You know your friend is on thin ice? You may never see him again." Gunvor broke and signed a document saying she was now working for the KGB. She told later Vladimir. She was solely motivated by love, not ideology. "The iron curtain is very much a reality." she wrote on one of her letters, "All the pretty talk about how you wish to live in friendship with peaceful neighbours are just empty words."
Vladimir Kozlov as an old man
In the following 27 years she handed the KGB countless secret documents. The reward was getting to meet Vladimir from time to time in the KGB-financed appartment. In 1962 a Soviet defector named Anatolij Golitsyn told his interrogators about one of their spies.He didn't know the name, but the secretary of the Norwegian ambassador in Moscow was working for the KGB. His information wasn't up to date. didn't know was that Haavik had been trasfered back to Norway in 1955. Her replacement, a Ingeborg Lygren, got arrested for espionage instead. Lygren was actually working for Norwegian military inteligence and the CIA, looking after dead drop «mail boxes» all over Moscow. She got arrested for treason and espionage for the USSR, but she was realeased after a long investigation because of insufficient proof. The public and the counter-inteligence service remained convinced she was a traitor for many years, but her employers in military inteligence belived her.
Ingeborg Lygren - a spy, but no traitor.
When Gunvor Galtung Haavik was transfered back to Oslo back in 1955 she never saw Vladimir again. Perhaps she belived she at least was free of the KGB, but after two years later they contacted her again. We can assume Vladimir's welfare and possibly her hope of getting in contact with him again was used to put pressure on her. She never got in contact with the love of her life, but because of him she did meet the KGB 190 times to bring them secret documents. Gunvor was on her way to such a meeting when she was arrested in 1977. By then she had been a spy for 27 years, as far as we know no Norwegian has ever spied on us for that long. Gunvor confessed and cooperated with the police, but she died in her prison cell a short time before her trial started. The coroner ruled it a heart attack, but there has always been doubts. Did the KGB kill her?
I don't think I'm alone in thinking of a certain person when reading this story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csy98m
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That plays for the same results as the KGB habit of breaking into your home and taking a dump in the middle of your living room carpet....
-Mr Arlington Beech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peElrjxyOs0
-Mr Arlington Beech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7jWBTiDI0o&list=PLR0XuDegDqP2Acy6g9Ta7hzC0Rr3RDS6q&index=397
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1YqVDrqG58
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)
With a headline like this most people don't expect a story about a hero, but Anne Marie Breien was a true hero. She was born on a large farm in the Ringerike region in the south-east of Norway in 1915. Her father employed twenty people on the farm and also buildt up a successful factory. Anne Marie was strong-willed and into sports, so she got her self an education in athletics. In 1938 she continued her education in Germany. There she witnesed Hitler's regime first hand and she disliked it from the start. She even helped Jews escape to Switzerland. Anne Marie returned to Norway a short time before the German invasion. There she married the lawyer Kjell Langballe. and started her own gym.
After the Germans invaded the country some started building a resistance. Her father was among the first, soon becomeing the distgrict commanderof MILORG, he military wing of the resisitance. Most people called MILORG «the boys in the forest». Her father had two batallions under his command. In 1940 her sister had married a Polish aristocrat and memeber of the Polish exile army there. After the fall of France they escape to Casablanca in Morocco. The couple are interned in a refugee camp in the desert under harsh conditions, but finally they got help from the American consul and traveled to the US. Both of Anne Marie's brothers were active in the resisitance back home.
When the early resistance was formed most people believed an British invasion wasn't far into the future. Of course know that's not what happened. With no British invasion the result was almost inevitable. You can't hide away guerilla units for montsh and years with limited allied support. Many organisations were disrupted and many got arrested. Her father was arrested in 1942 and was in solitary confinement for nine months. A death sentence was in the cards. Anne Marie started working to save him and she wasn't the type to take no for an answer.
"The boys in the forest"
Finally she got a meeting with Siegfried Wolfgang Fehmer who was leader of a special Gestapo unit working solely with espionage and counter-espionage cases. Late in the war he became the commander of the Gestapo in Oslo. The resistance saw him as one of their most dangerous enemies. He was very good at his job, he used torture extensively and sometimes shoed a sadistic side when he personally took part in some torture sessions. During his meeting with Anne Marie he showed the other sides of his personality, the charmer and womanizer. Fehmer was caprivated by her beauty, but also her strong will and tendecy to speak her mind. They had several long following the first. They discussed their views on the situation, politics and of course her father. She was working him and she found her useful for gauging the mood in the population since she was so outspoken. Her realtionship with the Gestapo officer paid off when her father was released from prison. Anne Marie spoke to her contact in the resistance and they agreed she should develop the relationship further. Her MILORG contact wrote in in a report after the war: «When she made her desicion it was in the knowledge that the contact [with Fehmer] in my opinion was of such great importance to the resistance personal considerations had to be set aside». After some time Anne Marie could come and go as she pleased and talk to anyone she wanted to in Gestapo headquarters.
Gestapo headquarters
After assassinations were carried out by the resistance there were usually followed by exections of civilian hostages. Anne Marie spent a lot of time convincint Fehmer to stop these executions and later they discussed how this could be done. She also worked through Fehmer to stop police raids, get patriotic Norwegians out of prison, consentration camps and death sentences. She also brought letters and food to prisoners. For a long time Fehmer was a «family friend». At least once Fehmer and Anne Marie's went fishing for crayfish together, the Gestapo commander and teh resistance commander together in a small rowing boat». But by 1944 Fehmer told her their relationship couldn't continue if it didn't turn into a sexual realtionship. I took into consideration that the relationship couldn't possibly hurt anybody but myself as long as I not for a moment forgot whos side I was fighting» she wrote after the war. Her marriage had understandably been rocky for quite some time, and that year they got a divorce. He even lived in her house from time to time. Anne did get some sympathy for the Gestapo man, partly because he was really helpful in saving the people she tried to save. He probably knew she had some sort of connection to the resistance, but did nothing to stop it. At one point one of the «boys in the forest» became ill and she told him «You can move in with me, because Fehmer lives there and you'll be safe!» One assumes no-one said the house guest was part of the guerilla he was trying to catch, but he may very well have suspected the truth. That summer her father and one of her brothers were infomed on by a Norwegian nazi. Fehmer released them, claiming this kind of snitching often wasn't well founded and was often had personal motivations.
From the film "Max Manus". Fehmer dancing with a character based on Anne Marie Breien.
When the war ended the resisitance were the heroes and darlings of the country and the Germans and Norwegian nazis were hated by most. Fehmer was very much he was a wanted man and he was on the run. It was his relationship to Anna Marie that proved to be his undoing. The police put a wiretap on Anne Marie's phone and struck gold. Earlier Fehmer had given her his German shepherd and he phoned her to ask about the dog. The phone call revealed his location and he was arrested. And what about Anne Marie? The resistance and British police raided her parents' house to find her, then they raided three more houses in the sunny coast of the far south where she had gone on holliday ten days after Germany's surrednder. She was completely unaware she was wanted by the police until a friend in MILORG phoned and told her. Soon she was arrested and charged with treason. She was put in a cell in the medieval Akershus castle where her father had served in prison and she had helped so many more Norwegian patriots. Her MILORG contact made a call and she was released the same afternoon, but the charges weren't dropped until later that summer. But for some reason both the resistance and the authorities didn't say a word to the public about her her work for them and the fact that they had asked her to to be Fehmer's mistress to do that job. One wonders what they would have done if a man had seduced German women to save his countrymen and get infomation? As a «thank you» for her heroics she gets slapped, gets threathening phone calls and is called «German's slut» on the street. She can't show her face in the community she grew up in.
Akershus castle
Now it's Fehmer who's sitting in a cell in Akershus castle. During his tial Anne Marie is one of the few witnesses who support him. She tells the court how the two of them saved sixty Norwegians. The real number is possibly even higher. Ninety patriots may have been saved by her. But his many crimes, especially the torture, made him one of the most hated men in the country and he was sentenced to death by firing squad.
Anne Marie gets a job at the American embassy in Oslo, but she still experiences death threats on the phone.and false rumours being spread. In 1946 she moves to her sister in the US. Only a year later both of them move back to the family farm and she got a job in NATO's headquarters there. Again she recieved threats. A journalist even threathened to write about her in the newspaper. In spite of thank you-lettters from people she saved and letters documenting her work from individual MILORG members she gets kicked out of her job. Again she moves to America.
Life is better in America, but she has feelings of bitterness and depression because of the war. On her darkest days she thinks of the people she couldn't save, sometimes becaue of messages that arrived too late. She drinks too much, but after some years she gets help from AA . Anne Marie never re-marries. In 1993 she gives an interview to a Norwegian newspaper, the only time she talked about her experiences to the general public.
In 1981 she was approved for a veteran's pensions, but she never got medal or an official thank you. When she died in 2000 and she was burried in Norway next to the graves of her family's graves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNXKovYM15A
The Simm case became the first since the restoration of Estonia's independence in 1991 in which an actual agent was identified, tried, and convicted of treason.
I remember back in the 90s', there was a genuine worry about the defense co-operation with newly independent Estonia. Finlands National Defense University did a lot of initial education of the officers for fledgling Estonian army, and there was a concern about sleeper agents from a not west bound neighbor.
There is a quite good documentary about Simm in U-Tub, see below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwso2knThRI&t=94s
-Mr Arlington Beech
In September 1942 a daring sabotage mission was carried out by ten men from No. 2 Commando and two Norwegian Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents in the far north north of Norway.
The target was a hyrdoelectric power plant in Glomfjord, a narrow fjord surrounded by steep mountains not far north of the polar circle. At the end of the fjord was a hydroelectric power station supplied by two water pipes coming down the mountain from inland lakes. The power plant supplied electricity to a factory that produced much needed aluminium for the German Luftwaffe. The factory was working around the clock and work was being done to make the plant and factory even bigger. The plan was to blow up the turbines in the power plants and the pipes running up the steep mountainside. The saboteurs were commanded by a Canadian, captain Greame Black. Under his command were nine commandoes and two SOE agents from the Linge company to act as guides. They trained for a forthnight on a large country estate in Scotland before being shipped to the Orkney islands. Early in the planning the group was supposed to be flown to and from Norway by sea plane, but it was decided it was better to go to Norway submarine and escape on foot to neutral Sweden. The team was transported on the «Junon» of the Free French Navy. French submarines were better suited for special operations than the British for two reasons. French subs had a profile that looked like German subs and French subs had a larger flat surface in front of the tower suitable for deploying agents and commandoes.
The team was supposed to be taken by «Junon» halfway into Glomfjord and paddle to land on a inflateble rubber boat, but on the advice of the Norwegian SOE guides they were taken to the smaller Bjæring fjord. The reason was that information that the entrance of Glomfjord was closely guarded by German forces and they were at risk of being detected when the «Junon» had to surface to deploy the saboteurs. «Junon» positioned itself deep in Bjæringfjord waiting for nightfall. The sub surfaced and the team inflated the boat, loaded the equipment onboard and placed themselves in it ready to paddle to land. Tehy were so close to land they could hear dogs and a bisycle bell. The sub dived down from under them and the saboteurs headed for land, A sleepless widow saw what happened from her house. The next day she hurried to the local grocery store, eager to share the exciting news. Luckily the store owner had better sense and adviced her sternly against telling anyone before any damage was done.
The saboteurs hid the boat and headed up into the mountains. They carried heavy rucksacks and some special gear, including a silk map of Norway and Sweden and Norwegian Kroner notes. They also carried two compasses (one sewn into each collar tab) a hacksaw blade and a two meters long rope each. They were lightly armed. Each had a Colt 45 pistol and a Fairbairn-sykes fighting knife. Captain Black also carried a supressed Stengun submachine gun. Two commandoes carried Lee Enfield rifles, usefull in long range encounters with the enemy in the mountains. One of the SOE agents managed to drop his pistol, losing it in the steep mountainside. Black handed him his own pistol.
They had to cross the Black Ice glacier to get to their target in Glomfjord. The twelve men used their ropes to each other to avoid falling into the dangerous crevasses.
Finally they could see the powerplant deep below them. For several days they observed their target and the rutines of the German guards before they began their descent. When they reached the pipeline two commandoes and one SOE agent were left behind to set 40 kilos of plastic explosives to blow the large pipes leading to the water to the plant.. The other nine continue down to the powerplant. There they found an open door and captain Black, a second commando and the remaining agent walked into the fully lit machine hall. They spotted a guard behind the glass in the control room and ran accoross the hall. The Norwegian agent knew the building from the year before when he recced the place while pretending to be looking for a job. They questioned the Norwegian guard if there are any Germans around. The guard said there were none.
There was no road from the plant to the village where the workers lived. Instead a mile long tunnel through the solid rock was used. When the three saboteurs and the Norwegian guard opened the room leading to the tunnel they came upon a German soldier. The SOE agent shot him with his pistol. Then he questioned the Norwegian guard again, and this time he admits there is a second German soldier guarding the plant plus a Norwegian family living in the plant tower. They searched for the second German who threw away his rifle and ran down the tunnel, no doubt to raise the alarm when he reached the Geman unit in the village. The SOE agent and the two commandoes evacuated the family in the tower and the civilian workers through the tunnel while the commandoes set the explosives in the machine hall. After the civilans disappeared down the tunnel the commandoes threw a smoke grenade into the tunnel to slow down any German soldiers coming the other way. Then they start the timers for the explosives and start walking up the stairs that runs along the pipelines. When the three men who set the charges on the pipes saw the explosion they started a ten minute timer to blow the pipes. Actually the explosions in the plant didn't do very much damage because the charges were placed on top of the generators leading most of the force of the explosion upwards. The charges should have been placed under the generators. After all the saboteurs had passed the charges on the pipes they blew up. The water burst out of the broken pipes and hurtled down the steep mountainside towards the plant,destroying much of it. First the whole plant was flooded, then the cascading water made a hole right threough the building. The German plans to use alluminium from the Glomfjord factory were stopped for good.
The tunnel
Now the German soldiers in the village ran into the tunnel to find out what was happening, but they turned back because of the smoke from the smoke grenade. Instead they commandeered a civilian boat to get to the plant. The German soldiers were unable to use the stairs along the pipes because of the torrent of water from the broken pipes, but they chased the commandoes and agents by another route. The saboteurs also wanted to use a different route up the mountains, by a second stair under a cable for a cable car, but they can't find the suspension bridge leading to the stairs. One of the SOE agents enter a bunkhouse for the men working on the cable car. He got one of the workers to draw a simple map. In the darkness the twelve saboteurs still couldn't find the suspension bride, so they returned to the bunkhouse to get the worker to guide them. In the meantime German soldiers had entered the bunkhouse in their search for the saboteurs. They asked the worker if he's seen the Englishmen, but the worker denied any knowledge. Two Germans stayed in the room with the worker, but one of them removed the clip from his Mauser rifle. Next one of the SOE agents came through the door. The German reacted first, aimed the rifle at the agent and pulled the trigger. When he remembered the rifle was unloaded he desperately threw it at the agent. The bayonet impaled the agent, who pulled the bayonet out and staggered out the door. The commando who was second in command burst through the door and fired two times at the Norwegian worker, but luckily he missed. «Get the German, he's standing there!» yelled the worker and pointed at the second soldier in the cormer. The commando turned and shot the German.
Later the Germans found the notepad and discoverd the man had applied so much pressure on the pencil when drawing the map the imprint is visible on the notepad. The Germans jailed the worker for the remainder of the war for helping the saboteurs.
In the following chaos three commandoes and the agent who was unhurt got seperated form the others. The four of them managed to get up the mountain, but the remaining seven commandoes came to a dead-end and were cornered by their persuers. A firefight ensued, but the commandoes had to surrender when they ran out of ammunition. The injured SOE agent was also captured too. He was put on a boat alongside a wounded German soldier. The two exchanged words and the agent spat at the soldier.
The four who were still on the run had trouble finding their way up the steep mountainside, but somehow they made it. Further up in the mountain the Norwegian agent swam acoross the river, but he barely made it because of the strong current. From the other side of the river he shouted for the British commnadoes to follow him, but he didn't speak English and the commandoes thought he wanted them to find anther route. They got seperated and the Norwegain was the only one who knew the terrain and he also had the good maps. Both the lone agent and the remaining commandoes were without food, sleeping bags and other equipment and they had days of walking in difficult terrain between them and safety in neutral Sweden. They only had the silk maps and were not able to fully grasp how challenging the journey ahead was.
The SOE agent who was stabbed in the gut by a German bayonet was taken to hospital. He tried to hide the fact that he was Norwegian. It was important to portray the sabotage as a British military mission to avoid reprisals against civilians. But after a few days he realised he's about to die, and he whispered to a Norwegian doctor: «I'm just twenty-two years old, but for the nation to survive some must be willing to die». The other SOE agent walked alone for two days towards Sweden, then he decided to turn back to search for the three commandoes he left by the river. Back by the river he found footprints and he tried to follow them. The three commandoes he was searching for were in trouble in the mountains. The lack of food, incredibly challenging terrain, the harch weather and the lack of food was punishing and they ate methaphine pills to cope with the exhaustion. One of the commandoes got seperated from the others. After three days without food in the mountains the commandoes took a chance and visited a farm to get some food. The family there were helpful even though German soldiers were on patrol nearby. Later the Germans turn up on the same farm and forced the famer at gunpoint to be their guide. Later in the escape all of them (the agent, the single commando and the two who stayed together) visited more farms to get food and rest. Noen of the locals betrayed them. All of them were put in contact with the local resistance and heard news of each other. The commando who walked alone was so hungry and exhausted he got lost and turned back west again twice, but locals helped him on the right track again. All four make it to Sweden after walking 210 kilometers, more than 130 miles, in mountainous terrain.
The seven captured commandoes were transported to Germany and imprisoned in the infamous Colditz castle. The commandoes weren't searched well, so they tried to escape from the castle. They started to cut the bars in the cell window using the hacksaw blades hidden in their uniforms, hoping to to use the ropes to lower themselves down the castle walls.Unfortunately they were moved after just a few days,before they were able to carry out their plan. They are moved to the Sachsenhausen consentration camp were all seven were they are executed according to Hitler's «Commando Order». This «Kommandobefehl“ ordered German forces to execute saboteurs i uniform in direct contradiction of inernational law. The seven commnadoes from the Glomfjord mission were the first victims of this order. The surviving Norwegian SOE agent returned to occupied Norway only months later. Again he was on a submarine, again to blow up a hydropower plant just north of Glomfjord. Tragically the sub hit a suberged mine and sank. Two of the British commandoes survived the war.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11379595/special-boat-service-picture-facebook/
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43702764
http://www.nortonofmorton.com/2016/05/mad-dogs-and-servicemen-sergeant-king.html
Podcast: https://spystories.podbean.com/e/roald-dahl-ep05/