Rupert Allason

Rupert Allason

Member of Parliament for Torbay
In office 11 June 1987 – 1 May 1997
Preceded by	Frederic Bennett
Succeeded by	Adrian Sanders

Personal details
Born	Rupert William Simon Allason (1951-11-08) 8 November 1951 (age 72) London, England, U.K.
Political party	Conservative
Education	Downside School
Occupation	Author and MP

Rupert William Simon Allason (born 8 November 1951) is a British former Conservative Party politician and author. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Torbay in Devon, from 1987 to 1997. He writes books and articles on the subject of espionage under the pen name Nigel West.

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Juan Pujol Garcia was a Spanish double agent during WWII, acting as a spy for both the Axis and the Allies. Born in 1912 in Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, Pujol had a variety of careers during his younger years, studying animal husbandry for a time and managing various businesses. In 1931, at the age of 19, Pujol completed six months of mandatory military service in a Spanish artillery unit. He did not enjoy his time in the military stating that he lacked the “essential qualities of loyalty, generosity, and honor.” Five years later, when the Spanish Civil War broke out between Republican and Nationalist forces in 1936, Pujol was managing a poultry farm north of Barcelona. During the course of the war, Pujol served with both Republican and Nationalist forces in limited capacities, but took pride in the fact that he never fired a single shot on either side. Pujol’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War left him with an extreme dislike of both fascism and communism. This dislike extended to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. He was married around this time and had one child. In 1940, during the early stages of WWII, Pujol decided that he wanted to make a contribution “for the good of humanity.” Pujol offered his services to the British three different times, but was turned down repeatedly. He decided to become a German agent instead before reapproaching the British to offer his services as a double agent. Pujol created a fake identity as a Spanish government official with Nazi sympathies with the ability to travel to London on government business. He created a fake diplomatic passport by fooling a printer he worked for the embassy in Lisbon, Portugal. German Intelligence accepted his offer to work for them as an agent and they trained him in secret writing, providing him a bottle of invisible ink, a codebook, and 600 pounds for expenses. He was to move to London and establish a network of British agents there. Pujol moved to Lisbon instead of London and using a tourist’s guide to England, books from the Lisbon public library, and newsreels he saw at cinemas, he wrote reports back to the Nazis that seemed to be coming from London. He even submitted traveling expenses based on fares listed in a British railway guide. Pujol created a whole network of fictitious agents that he claimed to have recruited across Britain. His reports were so credible that when the British intercepted some of them they launched a counter-intelligence spy hunt for him through MI5. In 1942, after the United States entered the war, Pujol contacted an American naval officer in Lisbon who recognized Pujol’s potential. The Americans contacted their British counterparts in support of Pujol. Pujol was relocated to Britain in April 1942 and was later provided the code name of Garbo. Pujol and a Spanish speaking MI5 agent, Tomas Harris, maintained Pujol’s fictitious spy network that he had created, writing over 300 letters to the Germans. Nazi intelligence made little effort to recruit additional spies in the United Kingdom during the war because of this. The information they delivered included real information of little military value, valuable information intentionally delayed, and bits of complete fiction. Pujol later began communicating with the Germans via radio. His codename within the German intelligence service became Arabel and the sophisticated encryptions they provided him were in turn supplied to British codebreakers. In early 1944, the Germans informed Pujol that they believed a large scale invasion of Europe was approaching and wanted him to discover information about its planning. He became an integral part of Operation Fortitude, a code name for the Allies’ military deception strategy in the build up to the Normandy landings. Pujol sent over 500 radio messages between January 1944 and D-Day in June to mislead the Germans about where the landing would be occurring. Pujol’s transmissions were carefully delayed on D-Day, so that the real information he sent arrived too late. Three days after D-Day, Pujol sent a message to the Nazi high command that reached Adolf Hitler. He provided the Allied order of battle, showing exaggerated numbers of soldiers still in England ready for an additional invasion. The deception was supported by inflatable tanks and bogus radio chatter. The deception paid off and the German high command trusted Pujol’s reports. After the war, it was discovered that no less than 62 of Pujol’s reports were included in German military high command intelligence summaries. The Germans had paid their agent, Arabel, $340,000 U.S. dollars to support his spy network. Adjusted for inflation, this comes out to over $4.5 million in 2015. At the height of his reports, Pujol’s fictitious spy network totaled 27 individuals. In July 1944, the Germans awarded Pujol, as Arabel, the Iron Cross for his services to the Nazi war effort. This award was one of great honor and required Hitler’s personal authorization. He was presented the award via radio and later received the physical medal after the war had ended. As Garbo, Pujol received a Member of the Order of the British Empire from King George VI in November 1944 for his service as a double agent. The Nazis never realized during the war what Pujol was really doing. Pujol, or Garbo, was one of the very few people to have received decorations from both the Axis and Allied powers during WWII. After the war, Pujol traveled to Angola and faked his death from malaria in order to avoid revenge attacks by surviving Nazis. He later divorced his first wife and married a second, having two sons and a daughter with her. He lived in Venezuela, running a bookstore and gift shop there. In 1971, a British military historian, Rupert Allason, became interested in Garbo and for over a decade attempted to discover the individual’s real identity. Finally, a former MI5 agent revealed Pujol’s name in 1984 and Allason and Pujol met in New Orleans later that year. With his identity finally revealed, Pujol was honored with an audience at Buckingham Palace and met with former colleagues. On June 6, 1984, the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Pujol traveled to Normandy to tour the beach and pay his respects. Juan Pujol Garcia died in Caracas, Venezeula in 1988 and is buried in a small town near the Caribbean Sea. In 2009, a Spanish documentary called Garbo: The Spy was created about Pujol’s role in WWII. Be sure to check the film out for a much more detailed account of Pujol’s incredible story. You can watch a trailer for the film at garbothemovie.com If you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to my channel for future videos. You can also like my Facebook page for updates there. Leave a comment below with any feedback, additional information you may like to share, or suggestions for future videos you would like to see. You can check out another video on when Japan bombed Oregon during WWII right here. Thanks for watching.

Background

Born in London, Allason and his brother, Julian, were brought up as Roman Catholics,^{[citation needed]} the faith of their Irish mother, Nuala (who acted under the names Nuala McElveen and Nuala Barrie), daughter of John A. McArevey, of Foxrock, Dublin.^[1] The boys attended Downside School. Their father, James Allason, was also a Conservative Party MP, descended from the architect Thomas Allason.^[1]

Political career

Allason contested Kettering in 1979 and Battersea in 1983 before being elected as Conservative MP for Torbay in 1987.

He was opposed to integration with the European Union; in 1993 he was the only Conservative to refuse to vote for the Maastricht Treaty when it was made into a motion of confidence. The vote was narrowly won, but Allason's abstention caused him to have the party whip withdrawn for a year.^[2]

He left parliament after the landslide 1997 general election in which he lost his seat to Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders.^[3] His margin of defeat was just twelve votes, one of the narrowest election margins since 1945. It was reported that Allason had failed to tip a pub waitress a week before polling day, and that as a consequence, fourteen waiters who were going to vote for him switched to the Liberal Democrats.^[4]

In 2000, Allason was reported to have considered joining the UK Independence Party (UKIP).^[5] Author Jon Ronson, in the first chapter of his book Them: Adventures with Extremists, briefly analysed Allason's career and character, with particular emphasis on his 1997 electoral loss.

Literary career

As an author, Allason has concentrated on security and intelligence issues. He was voted 'The Experts' Expert' by a panel of other spy writers in The Observer in November 1989. In 1984 The Sunday Times commented: "His information is so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. West's sources are undoubtedly excellent. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories."

Allason has been a frequent speaker at intelligence seminars and has lectured at both the KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow and at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he once addressed an audience that included the Soviet spy Aldrich Ames. He continues to lecture to members of the intelligence community at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in Washington, D.C.

His special contribution to the study of modern historical espionage has been in tracking down former agents and persuading them to tell their stories. He traced the wartime double agent GARBO, who was reported to have died in Africa in 1949. However, Allason found him in Venezuela, and they collaborated on the book Operation Garbo, published in 1985.

He was also the first person to identify and interview the mistress of Admiral Canaris, the German intelligence chief who headed the Abwehr, and he was responsible for the exposure of Leo Long and Edward Scott as Soviet spies.^{[citation needed]}

His titles include The Crown Jewels, based on files made available to him by the KGB archives in Moscow; VENONA, which disclosed the existence of a GRU spy-ring operating in London throughout the war, allegedly headed by J. B. S. Haldane and Ivor Montagu; and The Third Secret, an account of the CIA's intervention in Afghanistan. Mortal Crimes, published in September 2004, investigates the scale of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project, the Anglo-American development of an atomic bomb.

In 2005 he edited The Guy Liddell Diaries, a daily journal of the wartime work of MI5's Director of Counter-Espionage. He also published a study of the Comintern's secret wireless traffic, MASK: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the first of a series of counter-intelligence textbooks, The Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, The Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence and The Historical Dictionary of Cold War Counter-Intelligence.

In his 2018 book, Cold War Spymaster: A Legacy of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director of MI5, the author did not suggest that Liddell had passed secrets to the Soviets, as had been claimed by some other authors, including John Costello in his Mask of Treachery. In fact, Allason under the 'West' pseudonym stated that Liddell "was betrayed by Burgess, Blunt and Philby", according to a 2019 summary of the book.^[6]

Legal actions

Allason has been involved in a number of legal cases, in each of which he represented himself without lawyers. While in the House of Commons, he campaigned against the use of public-interest immunity certificates, and exposed the arms-dealing activities of the publisher and fraudster Robert Maxwell. He was sued for libel by Maxwell but won the case, winning record damages for a litigant in person by counterclaim.^{[citation needed]}

In 1996 Allason sued Alastair Campbell for malicious falsehood with regard to an article printed in the Daily Mirror in November 1992. The case was heard by Mr Justice Drake, without a jury. The judge ruled that Allason had failed to demonstrate that the Daily Mirror article, although inaccurate, had caused him any financial loss.^[7]^[8] In a retrial in 1998, he was awarded £1,050 in damages and 75% of his legal costs.^[8]

In 1998, Allason lost a libel action – his 18th – against the authors and publishers of the Have I Got News for You 1997 diary for referring to him as "a conniving little shit".^[9]

In 2001, Allason sued Random House, the publishers of The Enigma Spy, the autobiography of the former Soviet agent John Cairncross. Allason claimed he had ghostwritten The Enigma Spy in return for the copyright and 50 per cent of the proceeds. However, Allason lost the case and was ordered to pay costs of around £200,000. The trial judge, Mr Justice Laddie, described him as "one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen".^[10]

Honours and awards

Allason is the recipient of the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO)'s Lifetime Literature Achievement Award, and in 2011 he was elected to the Honorary Board of that association. He is the European Editor of the World Intelligence Review, published in Washington, D.C.^[11]

Personal life

In 1979 Allason married Nikki van Moppes. They divorced in 1996. The couple have two children.^[12]^[13] In 2012, he married violinist Nicola Loud.^[14]^[15]

Publications

Spy! (by Richard Deacon with Nigel West), London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1980
MI5: British Security Service Operations, 1909–1945, New York: Stein and Day, 1982, 1981
A Matter of Trust: MI5, 1945–72, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982; published in the U.S. as The Circus: MI5, Operations 1945–1972, New York : Stein and Day, 1983
MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations: 1909–45, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983
Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984
The Branch: A History of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch (By Rupert Allason)
Operation Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II, co-written by Juan Pujol and Nigel West, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985
GCHQ: The Secret Wireless War, 1900–86, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986, ISBN 0-297-78717-9
Molehunt: The Full Story of the Soviet Spy in MI5, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987
The Friends: Britain's Post-War Secret Intelligence operations, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988
Games of Intelligence: The Classified Conflict of International Espionage, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989
The Blue List (novel), London: Secker & Warburg, 1989, ISBN 0-436-56602-8
Cuban Bluff (novel), London: Secker & Warburg, 1990
Seven Spies Who Changed the World, London: Secker & Warburg, 1991
Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartime Sabotage Organisation, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992
Murder in the Commons (novel), London: 1992
The Faber Book of Espionage: Faber & Faber, December 1994
Murder in the Lords (novel), London: 1994
The Secret War for the Falklands: SAS, MI6 and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost: Little Brown, January 1997, ISBN 0-7515-2071-3
Introduction to British Security Co-ordination: British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45: Little Brown, 1998
The Faber Book of Treachery: Faber & Faber, March 1998
The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets Exposed by the KGB Archives, London: HarperCollins, 1999, 1998
Counterfeit Spies: Time Warner Paperbacks, March 1999
VENONA: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War: HarperCollins, May 2000 ISBN 0-00-653071-0
The Third Secret: The CIA, Solidarity and the KGB's Plot to Kill the Pope: HarperCollins, October 2000
Mortal Crimes: The Greatest Theft in History: Soviet Penetration of the Manhattan Project, New York: Enigma Books, 2004
The Guy Liddell Diaries: 1939–1942 Volume 1: Frank Cass Publishers, February 2005
The Guy Liddell Diaries: 1942–1945 Volume 2: Routledge, London, June 2005
Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence: Scarecrow Press, London, June 2005
Mask: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain: Frank Cass Publishers, July 2005
On Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, MI6: Greenhill Books, London October 2006
Double Cross in Cairo: The true story of the spy who turned the tide of war in the Middle East. London: Biteback Publishing. 2015. ISBN 978-1-84954-796-3.
Classified! The Adventures of a Molehunter: Biteback Publishing, London, February 2024 ISBN 9781785908538

References

^ ^a ^b Burke's Landed Gentry, eighteenth edition, vol. I, ed. Peter Townend, 1965, Burke's Peerage Ltd, p. 9
^ "Rupert Allason: No stranger to the courtroom". BBC News. 17 October 2001. Retrieved 20 August 2006. As John Major's prime ministership lurched from crisis to crisis, every MP's vote counting as the tiny Conservative parliamentary majority dwindled away after 1992, Mr Allason rebelled over Maastricht and then became the only Tory to refuse to back his government in a no confidence motion.
^ "General election results in Torbay, 1997 and 2001". Political Science Resources. Richard Kimber. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
^ "A guide to life in a marginal constituency". BBC News. 9 January 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
^ "Tory Euro-sceptic considers defection". BBC News. 9 January 2000. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
^ "Behind a bittersweet industry". Coldspur. 31 March 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
^ "Campbell denies control freak claim". BBC News. 23 July 1998. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
^ ^a ^b "Rupert Allason wins case against Alastair Campbell, PM's aide". BBC News. 30 July 1998. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
^ "Ex-Tory MP loses libel action". BBC News. 21 January 1998. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
^ "Rupert Allason: A reputation in tatters". The Independent. 20 October 2001.
^ "Contact Us". World Intelligence Review. Archived from the original on 20 January 2007. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
^ "Rebel without a case "profoundly dishonest"". The Independent. ^{[dead link]}
^ "Ex-Tory MP loses libel action". BBC News. 21 January 1998. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
^ Walker, Tim (26 July 2012). "Spy author Rupert Allason seduces Loud musician". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 27 November 2016.
^ Oliver, Aidan (6 October 2012). "Tweet". Twitter. Retrieved 18 April 2022.

External links

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Preceded by Frederic Bennett	Member of Parliament for Torbay 1987–1997	Succeeded by Adrian Sanders

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This page was last edited on 14 May 2024, at 08:54

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