Fifty years ago today, one of the most talented of MI5s WWII intelligence officers died in a car crash in Mallorca. Tomás Harris was a very gifted man - a painter, musician, art dealer and collector. And he played a crucial, if little known, role in the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. He is one of those individuals about whom you can say that history - and the world - would be very different without him. He was half-Jewish, half-Spanish (his grandfather had been a bullfighter). And he was the case officer for MI5 double agent Garbo - Juan Pujol, whos biography I have written. It was Harriss inventive genius combined with Pujols wiliness and brilliant imagination that allowed the British to fool the Nazis so completely about Allied intentions in the summer of 1944, thereby turning what would almost certainly have been a disaster into a stunning success. Even Hitler himself was taken in by Garbos web of stories and fantasies. Harris was very close friends with Cambridge spies Kim Philby (he was godfather to Philbys son), Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. This has led some to speculate that Harris himself was a Soviet agent of some sort, and that his death in a car crash just months after Philbys defection to Moscow, was no accident. If you want to know what I think about the matter, all will be revealed in my forthcoming book on Garbo and Harris - THE SPY WITH 29 NAMES - published 3 April by Chatto & Windus.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:43:49 +0000
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