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Old May 17th, 2005 #1
Abzug Hoffman
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Default M16 protected Nazi Horst Kopkow (Jew?)

Britain

May 14, 2005

MI6 protected Nazi who killed 100 British agents
By Sarah Helm

ONE of Hitler’s top intelligence officers, who ordered the murders of more than 100 British secret agents in concentration camps, was spared execution as a war criminal and selected to work for MI6.
Newly opened papers contain startling evidence that in the postwar scramble to secure information about Russian communists, British Intelligence “turned” Horst Kopkow, faked his death and used him to fight the Cold War.



Evidence emerged in the 1980s that Britain had become a refuge for suspected war criminals, but few would have believed that the Government had gone even further and put a man like Kopkow on its books. Details of how MI6 snatched Kopkow, 35, from war crimes investigators, inventing his fake death from “bronchopneumonia”, are revealed in private papers made public only now. The papers belonged to Vera Atkins, a senior officer of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain ’s secret wartime body. After the war she mounted a one-woman investigation into the fate of her agents behind enemy lines.

The Atkins documents have been corroborated by newly declassified secret papers in the British and American National Archives. MI6 declined to comment on the Kopkow case. However, intelligence sources indicated yesterday that the service itself was taken aback by the evidence. To date, Britain has denied that it engaged in the dark arts used by the Americans, whose employment of Nazis to catch Communists has been well-documented. British intelligence sources pointed out that Kopkow was not in the league of “the butcher of Lyons”, a reference to Klaus Barbie, the most notorious war criminal employed by the Americans.

The Kopkow case is uniquely chilling because the MI6 men who spared him were colleagues and “handlers” of his victims. Among those whose torture and death he sanctioned were men and women of the SOE and MI6 agents.

While Kopkow’s information may have been considered valuable, it was in fact useless. The head of MI6’s Russian desk when Kopkow was captured was Kim Philby, exposed as a Soviet spy more than 15 years later.

Precisely how long Kopkow was employed by British Intelligence remains murky. German records state that he adopted the name Cordes and died in Gelsenkirchen in 1996.

SPY AGENCY


Set up in 1940 in London, the SOE grew to number 10,000 men and 3,000 women. Senior staff went to public school and Oxbridge, but agents included a former chef, an electrician and a car dealer’s daughter
Life expectancy of a wireless operator in occupied France was six weeks
Of 39 women agents sent to France, 13 were killed
The Secret Intelligence Service chief called the SOE amateur, dangerous and bogus
 
Old May 17th, 2005 #2
Abzug Hoffman
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...Comfort to the enemy
(Page 2 of 2)

The British probably had more luck with Horst Kopkow, a former Gestapo official who actually specialized in communist activities in Germany. He knew how the Soviet Union operated agents in Germany, and how the Germans destroyed the Soviet Red Orchestra, a European espionage network. According to War Office records, he died of bronchopneumonia in Britain in June 1948. But another Gestapo official claims the British faked his death certificate and employed him in intelligence. Richard Breitman, a historian at American University who contributed to the book, found reports that Kopkow changed his name and died in Germany in 1996.

According to Kopkow, Heinrich Himmler, the head of both the SS and the Gestapo, may have thought that he, too, would be shielded by the Allies. Himmler had attempted some last-minute peacemaking, which included releasing a few thousand Jews from the death camps. Kopkow reported that on May 4, 1945, Himmler addressed 15 SS officials who had fled Berlin for the north. "Total military defeat is a fact," Himmler acknowledged. But, he continued, "the possibility might exist that the Allies would leave a small preserve to a still existing German government." Instead of swords, its men would wield hammers, and their assignment would be Germany's reconstruction.

Himmler had "delusions," says Breitman, who wrote a biography. But the newly declassified British and American documents, rich with CIA justifications for protecting Nazi war criminals, makes one wonder if Himmler's notion of a hidden Nazi zone for diligent workers was more than just a fantasy.
 
Old May 17th, 2005 #3
Antiochus Epiphanes
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part of Gehlen's intelligence apparatus merged into NATO powers after the war?
 
Old August 6th, 2011 #4
Robert Marshall
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Might be useful if I cleared up some inaccuracises here.
Horst Kopkow was not Gestapo; he was SS/SD. He was responcible for counter-intelligence.

When I interviewed him for a BBC documentary and my book, in 1988 he and his wife (both ex-SS) were living under the name Codes in a Government housing estate near Essen. He remained passionate about his role to the end, but never admitted to knowing anything about deaths of SOE operatives arrested by his officers in Paris.
 
Old October 9th, 2012 #5
Richard Card
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Robert In the aftermath of the Horst Kopkow PRO release I was contacted by an author/journalist. He claimed that "Impeccable Intelligence Sources" had told BBC, Times and Mail that they had long harboured suspicions about the UK charities Leonard Cheshire and Sue Ryder as assets of Vatican ratlines.

I became suspicious when the journo appeared to want to attribute the suspicions to me. And I withdrew co-operation.

What I had done in 95 was draw up and swear an affidavit aimed at seeking access to High Court to seek a quash of the suicide verdict handed down on Matron Mary McGill of the Sue Ryder HQ Jan 72.

As first hearsay in the affidavit I swore the account from Welsh Regional Crime Squad of a 1971/72 inquiry into GP Deaths certification irregularity, identity theft and aliens registration irregularity in the care home charity.

The RCS Inquiry in Wales and the sudden death of Matron McGill in Suffolk were at the time Sue Ryder was releasing 1200 men from German postwar internment.

I was told in the 90s by a defence correspondent of a national paper that he had worked for Observer when Sue Ryder gave them an as yet unpublished statement of her role under charity cover in post war Europe. She allegedly detailed how her and other ex SOE girls wrote a song "How many Nazis have we smuggled to England today"

One of the odd things about the case was Matron McGill's sister in law Mrs Marshall collated a lot of evidence in 72. Information in the 90s came from a private investigator hired by the village in Kent where Gwendoline Marshall was murdered. The Pc who gave inquest evidence at the McGill inquest (held three days after the death in secret within the Sue Ryder HQ) was Pc Marshall. And Robert Marshall wrote the Dericourt book. Marshalls every which way.
 
Old October 9th, 2012 #6
Squarehead Chris
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During WWII the Brits sent hundreds of agents into occupied europe knowing full well that they would be quickly captured, tortured and executed by the Germans and their allies.Most of them were SOE amatuers.They were often sent into "networks" that were known to the Brits as being thoroughly compromised by German counter intelligence.And often with codes/ciphers that were also cracked by the Germans. Why was this done?To spread misinformation, even at the cost of their own agents lives, especially in the 8 months or so leading up to D-DAY.After the war, a high yucky-yuk in the SOE was asked if they purposely sent agents into europe to a certian death.He replied in typical British fashion, saying that they were desperate times, calling for equally desperate measure.Or some such thing.
 
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