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http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/09.htm

November 9th, 1941

UNITED KINGDOM: London: Stories in the British press this morning about sabotage at a food warehouse at Wealdstone will give the Abwehr, the German military intelligence, a great deal of satisfaction, for it believes that the fire bomb attack was carried out by two of its secret agents who landed in Scotland from Norway seven months ago.

In fact, the agents, both Norwegian, have been working for British Intelligence from the day they landed, and their sabotage exploit was carefully contrived to establish their credentials with the Germans.

Code-named “Jack” and “OK” by the Germans, but known to the British by the cartoon character names of “Mutt and Jeff”, they are being run by the “Twenty Committee”, so-called because of the Roman numerals of double-cross. The committee, chaired by an Oxford don, John Masterman, was set up last January. Its purpose is to feed information, a mixture of fact and fiction, to the Germans through their own agents.

Captured agents are given the choice: work for us or be executed as a spy. Two of the first Abwehr agents parachuted into England a year ago were given this choice. They both chose to live and now, code-named “Summer” and “Tate”, are employed in sending disinformation to their former bosses.

Other agents, like “Snow”, a Welshman, offer their services to the Germans with the intention of becoming double-agents.

Great care is taken to build up a disinformer’s “legend”. The committee has to decide what genuine information can be sent to the Germans and what actions can be allowed to go ahead in order to maintain the double-agent’s credibility.

British Intelligence is also gaining valuable knowledge of the inner workings of the German secret service.

GERMANY: U-362 laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)

U.S.S.R.: Tikhvin is captured by the Germans. This cuts the railroad into Leningrad. In the South Yalta falls to the Germans.

ITALY: Count Ciano writes in his diary of the effect of Malta based aircraft: “Since September 19 we had given up trying to get convoys through to Libya; every attempt had been paid for at a high price ... Tonight we tried it again. A convoy of 7 ships left, accompanied by two ten-thousand-ton cruisers and ten destroyers....All - I mean all - our ships were sunk.”
YUGOSLAVIA: Mihailovich’s Chetnik partisans continue their attack on Tito’s communist group, weakening organized resistance to the Nazis.

MEDITERRANEAN SEA: The British cruisers HMS AURORA and HMS PENELOPE, with the destroyers HMS LANCE and HMS LIVELY, attack two Italian convoys; two destroyers, the FULMINE and LIBECCIO, and ten merchant ships are sunk.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: MacArthur met with Hart and advises him to “get a real Fleet”. Hart bitterly resented this jab. (Marc Small)