Rantzau’s, and the text was to tell him that Owens wanted him to get in touch. However, this version contradicted what Owens had said at an earlier interview, so the incident only served to heighten suspicions.
When Owens next tried to establish radio contact, a prison warder pushed the cell door open and asked those gathered inside if they minded anyone using the passage outside. At the thought of people being able to see him Owens paled, and was clearly terrified. He turned to the MI5 officer and begged ‘don’t let them see me – whatever happens don’t let them see me.’ He then explained that earlier the same morning a fellow prisoner had cornered him and said that he knew Owens had been ‘quizzed by the intelligence cops’. Allegedly, the man had tried to find out what Owens had told them, and although Owens would not reveal his name to MI5, he claimed that the prisoner had just returned from Germany. When this story was relayedto Hinchley-Cooke, he recognised the individual immediately as someone about whom he already possessed considerable information.
Soon after this episode, on 11 September, Owens was moved from Wandsworth to Kingston police station where he was to be treated as a special prisoner, and was even allowed some liberty under MI5’s supervision. On the following day Owens was taken flat-hunting by a police inspector, and found a suitable flat in the Kingston area. Top-floor accommodation was required to enable a concealed radio aerial to be strung on the roof and, having set up the transmitter, Owens made a further attempt, under MI5’s supervision, to contact Germany and send a brief message: MUST MEET YOU IN HOLLAND AT ONCE. BRING WEATHER CODE RADIO TOWN AND HOTEL. WALES READY.
When challenged about this text, Owens explained that he was supposed to meet Dr Rantzau in Holland to pick up the code for transmitting weather details for areas in England that the Germans planned to bomb. The mention of Wales was a reference to Rantzau’s desire to get hold of a Welshman who was a member of the Welsh Nationalist Party because he intended to establish a network of disenchanted Nationalists who would operate in Wales as saboteurs with arms which were to be brought up the Bristol Channel aboard a submarine. Owens suggested that MI5 should supply someone to go over to Germany with him who could fulfil this role. The reply was not immediate but then the letters ‘O E A’ were heard on his receiver. This was the call sign used when the Germans wanted to get in touch with the agent they knew as J OHNNY .
In September 1939, within days of S NOW establishing contact with the enemy by radio, his traffic had come under the scrutiny of a semi- independent intelligence organisation that worked in parallel with MI5 and offered technical support in the wireless field, an area of expertise rather new to MI5’s staff. Based in a pair of neighbouring detached houses in Barnett, on London’s border with Hertfordshire, the Radio Security Service employed a group of amateur license-holders, all volunteer members of the Radio Society of Great Britain, to scan the airwaves in the hope of detecting clandestine broadcasts. Upon the outbreak of hostilities there had been an expectation that several enemy spies might resort to the ether to exchange messages with Germany, but as it turned out, there were almost none. Nevertheless, the RSS experts who found themselves listening in to S NOW made an astonishing discovery. It seemed that his transmissions had been acknowledged by a German radio, but not one broadcasting from Hamburg, as had beenexpected. Bearings taken by British direction-finding stations calculated that his messages had been received by an enemy spy ship off the coast of Norway. Better still, his messages had been re-enciphered within a few minutes and then relayed to Germany. However, during this second part of their journey across the ether to the Abwehr’s headquarters, his texts had been encrypted
When Owens next tried to establish radio contact, a prison warder pushed the cell door open and asked those gathered inside if they minded anyone using the passage outside. At the thought of people being able to see him Owens paled, and was clearly terrified. He turned to the MI5 officer and begged ‘don’t let them see me – whatever happens don’t let them see me.’ He then explained that earlier the same morning a fellow prisoner had cornered him and said that he knew Owens had been ‘quizzed by the intelligence cops’. Allegedly, the man had tried to find out what Owens had told them, and although Owens would not reveal his name to MI5, he claimed that the prisoner had just returned from Germany. When this story was relayedto Hinchley-Cooke, he recognised the individual immediately as someone about whom he already possessed considerable information.
Soon after this episode, on 11 September, Owens was moved from Wandsworth to Kingston police station where he was to be treated as a special prisoner, and was even allowed some liberty under MI5’s supervision. On the following day Owens was taken flat-hunting by a police inspector, and found a suitable flat in the Kingston area. Top-floor accommodation was required to enable a concealed radio aerial to be strung on the roof and, having set up the transmitter, Owens made a further attempt, under MI5’s supervision, to contact Germany and send a brief message: MUST MEET YOU IN HOLLAND AT ONCE. BRING WEATHER CODE RADIO TOWN AND HOTEL. WALES READY.
When challenged about this text, Owens explained that he was supposed to meet Dr Rantzau in Holland to pick up the code for transmitting weather details for areas in England that the Germans planned to bomb. The mention of Wales was a reference to Rantzau’s desire to get hold of a Welshman who was a member of the Welsh Nationalist Party because he intended to establish a network of disenchanted Nationalists who would operate in Wales as saboteurs with arms which were to be brought up the Bristol Channel aboard a submarine. Owens suggested that MI5 should supply someone to go over to Germany with him who could fulfil this role. The reply was not immediate but then the letters ‘O E A’ were heard on his receiver. This was the call sign used when the Germans wanted to get in touch with the agent they knew as J OHNNY .
In September 1939, within days of S NOW establishing contact with the enemy by radio, his traffic had come under the scrutiny of a semi- independent intelligence organisation that worked in parallel with MI5 and offered technical support in the wireless field, an area of expertise rather new to MI5’s staff. Based in a pair of neighbouring detached houses in Barnett, on London’s border with Hertfordshire, the Radio Security Service employed a group of amateur license-holders, all volunteer members of the Radio Society of Great Britain, to scan the airwaves in the hope of detecting clandestine broadcasts. Upon the outbreak of hostilities there had been an expectation that several enemy spies might resort to the ether to exchange messages with Germany, but as it turned out, there were almost none. Nevertheless, the RSS experts who found themselves listening in to S NOW made an astonishing discovery. It seemed that his transmissions had been acknowledged by a German radio, but not one broadcasting from Hamburg, as had beenexpected. Bearings taken by British direction-finding stations calculated that his messages had been received by an enemy spy ship off the coast of Norway. Better still, his messages had been re-enciphered within a few minutes and then relayed to Germany. However, during this second part of their journey across the ether to the Abwehr’s headquarters, his texts had been encrypted
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