The Double-Cross System

"Yes, it’s written by a man called John Masterman, who was an Oxford academic and historian and latterly became Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. In the Second World War , he was head of something called the Twenty Committee, the double-cross committee – it was an elaborate joke, because two Xs are 20 in Roman numerals. Their primary function was, when German and other Axis spies were intercepted, to work out how to use them as double agents. They were all picked up and offered a pretty stark choice between collaborating or execution. The unlucky 14 chose trial and execution. The rest all agreed to be double agents, and this was a critical part of the war. It’s one of the great unsung victories of the Second World War. The double agents were used to convey a vast quantity of lies to the Germans. This network played a critical part in the run-up to D-Day by throwing huge amounts of disinformation which was swallowed more or less whole by the Germans. Masterman was in charge of this committee which decided what could safely be fed to the Germans. They fed a combination of what they called ‘chicken-feed’, true information which was essentially non-nutritious, and a smattering of completely false information that would lead them in the wrong direction. Masterman’s account of the double-cross system is the definitive account and, although it’s written in quite a dry way, it’s absolutely thrilling. It was very controversial when it was published because it was a complete revelation and the head of MI5 did not want Masterman to publish this still highly classified stuff. Masterman decided that it was in the public interest to publish it and he published it first in the States to make sure that it did come out. Many criticised him very vociferously for doing it. He had, and he bust it. And it was a very brave thing to do. In the end, the authorities decided it was such a success they couldn’t prosecute him. It would have been very odd to prosecute him because he was singing the praises of the security services at a time when their reputation was at rock-bottom. In 1976, we’d just had the revelations about Philby, Burgess and Maclean [who were Soviet double agents]. He wanted to make the point that, in fact, Britain had made this incredible breakthrough which really helped us win the war and nobody knew about it. It’s a wonderful book. It’s just been reissued in a Folio edition with a new introduction by M R D Foot, and it stands the test of time. It’s still as exciting to read as it was when it written and, I suspect, as when it was done. It’s really just an extended version of a long history that Masterman wrote himself at the end of the war for MI5’s consumption. It wasn’t supposed to leave the building but he kept a copy. Masterman was himself a novelist. He wrote some rather successful detective novels, and that sort of writing infuses the way The Double-Cross System is written, which is why I love it."