The Double-Cross System: The Classic Account of World War Two Spy-Masters

The Double-Cross System is an authentic document from within the espionage empire of the Second World War, written as a secret report for the Intelligence Commission and released for publication only in 1972. Quite simply, it tells how Britain used the enemy against themselves.
     Here is the record of a remarkable triumph. It is an authentic document from within the espionage empire of the Second World War. Its subject is double agents and deception. There is no more compelling account of how Britain used the enemy against themselves.

J. C. MASTERMAN spent the Great War, despite one escape attempt, interned in Berlin. After leaving Christ Church in March 1940 he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps. Fluent in German, he attended the interrogation course at Swanage before being posted to the War Office as secretary to the committee which investigated the evacuation from Dunkirk. On completing its report Masterman was transferred to the Security Service working in the counter-espionage division. In 1941 he was assigned the task of debriefing Dusko Popov, and it was this remarkable encounter between one of the Abwehr's star agents and his M.I.5 handler that led to the creation of the Twenty Committee, the body created to supervise the conduct of double agent operations. Masterman chaired weekly meetings of the Double Cross Committee, as it became known, before he was invited to write an account of its activities at the conclusion of the war. Twenty-seven years later he revealed to his former employers that he had retained a copy of this manuscript, and intended to publish it in America, an experience described in his autobiography, On the Chariot Wheel, released two years before his death, in June 1977.