The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Amy Elizabeth Thorpe: WWII's Mata Hari -Dec. 26th, 2004

see educational sources

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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Amy Elizabeth Thorpe:



WWII's Mata Hari

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, code-named 'Cynthia,' was a World War II version of the legendary Mata Hari.
by Wilfred P. Deac

She was born Amy Elizabeth Thorpe on November 22, 1910, in Minneapolis. Family and friends called her Betty. William Stephenson, who ran Great Britain's World War II intelligence activities in the Western Hemisphere, would one day give her a code name--"Cynthia." She reputedly was one of the most successful spies in history.

Amy Thorpe's father was a U.S. Marine Corps officer, which put travel high on the family agenda. By the age of 11, she had used postcards and guidebooks to provide the Neapolitan setting for a romantic novel she wrote, titled Fioretta. A copy found its way to a young-at-heart naval attaché named Alberto Lais at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Her father's resignation from the service to study law brought Amy Thorpe to the U.S. capital, where she met Commander Lais. The Italian officer's platonic relationship with the adolescent he called his "golden girl" undoubtedly contributed to her appearance of maturity. By the time she made her debut in Washington society, 18-year-old Thorpe was beautiful, well-bred and graceful, with green eyes and amber-colored hair. She exuded a magnetism that drew men to her.

An affair with Arthur Pack, second secretary at the British Embassy and 19 years her senior, evolved into a mismatched marriage and gave her a second citizenship. Amy Thorpe Pack gave birth to a son five months after the wedding, but for a variety of reasons she turned the infant over to foster parents. A daughter, born in 1934, did nothing to help the eroding union.

Arthur Pack was transferred to Madrid on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, where Amy Pack immersed herself in secret operations. She helped smuggle rebel Nationalists to safety, transported Red Cross supplies to Franco's forces, coordinated the destroyer evacuation of the British Embassy staff from northern Spain, and meddled in diplomatic affairs. Those activities ceased when she was denounced to her Nationalist friends as a Republican spy, apparently by a jealous woman.

In the fall of 1937, accompanied by her young daughter and a nanny, Amy Pack boarded the Warsaw Express in Paris to, in her words, "become a member of his Britannic Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service." She was quickly "adopted" by a group of young men working for the Polish foreign ministry, a situation facilitated by her husband. Arthur Pack, now an official at the embassy in Poland, had informed her he was in love with another woman. Shortly afterward, he suffered an attack of cerebral thrombosis that landed him in an English nursing home.

Amy Pack was recruited by the British intelligence and allotted an entertainment allowance of 20 pounds sterling to cultivate her high-placed Polish sources. Of her first official male conquest, she would later tell a biographer and future lover, "Our meetings were very fruitful, and I let him make love to me as often as he wanted, since this guaranteed the smooth flow of political information I needed." Pack met her next target at a dinner party hosted by the American ambassador. The handsome Pole seated next to her was a personal aide to foreign minister Jósef Beck. Although married, the aide was sufficiently impressed by his dinner companion to send her pink roses the next morning.

From him Pack learned Polish experts were working on overcoming the threat posed by Germany's Enigma enciphering machine. The extent of her contribution to the "Ultra secret" that gave the Allies a crucial edge over the Nazis remains a matter of conjecture. In fact, however, Britain would owe its ability to decode so much of Germany's World War II radio traffic to the efforts of the Poles, who had cooperated with the French in working out the Enigma system.

In Prague, Pack obtained conclusive proof of Hitler's plans to dismember Czechoslovakia. For reasons that remain unclear, in the fall of 1938 the ambassador ordered her to leave the country. The following April, having called a domestic truce, a recuperated Arthur Pack and his wife traveled to South America, where he took over his embassy's commercial section in Santiago, Chile.

When World War II started, Amy Pack offered her talents to the British intelligence service. She soon was writing political articles for Spanish- and English-language newspapers in Chile. Britain was then gearing up its intelligence and propaganda efforts in the hemisphere, placing them in the spring of 1940 under the British Security Coordination (BSC), headed by Canadian William Stephenson.

Amy Pack left her husband and sailed to New York, where she was given her code name, "Cynthia," and an assignment to set up shop in Washington, D.C. As her cover, she posed as a journalist. Her first major assignment was obtaining the Italian naval cryptosystem. Given her mission, it was only logical that Cynthia look up her old friend Alberto Lais, now an admiral and naval attaché at Italy's Washington embassy. Virtually all published accounts say that Cynthia pried from the 60-year-old admiral the Italian navy's code and cipher books, as well as plans to disable Italian ships in U.S. ports to prevent their seizure. The literary consensus is that Cynthia's amorous success contributed to British victories in the Mediterranean. The lady herself, who described her relationship with Lais as "sentimental and even sensual rather than sexual," said she received the ship sabotage information directly from the admiral and access to the sensitive books from his assistant with Lais' full cooperation.

Heirs of the admiral sued a British author in an Italian court for defamation in 1967, insisting Lais (who had died in 1951) had not betrayed military secrets, and won. In 1988, Lais' two sons protested publication of the seduction account in David Brinkley's best-selling Washington Goes to War and persuaded the Italian defense ministry to publish denial ads in three leading East Coast newspapers.

Cynthia's next assignment was one that assured her place in the intelligence hall of fame. The Vichy French government, established after France's collapse in 1940, was vehemently anti-British. Posing as an American journalist, Cynthia phoned the French Embassy in May 1941 and introduced herself to Charles Brousse, the press attaché. Right away, Brousse--49 years old, several times married and anti-Nazi--was besotted with Cynthia.

The relationship began with elicited material and intelligence tidbits. But by July, Cynthia felt confident enough to make a false flag recruitment, telling Brousse she worked for the Americans. The French official soon was offering his mistress embassy cables, letters, files and accounts of embassy activities and personalities. Before long, to foil FBI surveillance, she moved into the hotel where Brousse and his wife lived.

"London would like to have the Vichy French naval ciphers," Cynthia was told in March 1942. Informed of her latest request, Brousse threw up his hands. Only the chief cipher officer and his assistant had access to the code room. The cipher books were in several volumes, locked in a safe. A dog-escorted watchman guarded the premises at night.

After a series of stymied efforts, Cynthia finally tried the direct approach--burglary. Tapping his friendship with William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of America's Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), the BSC's Stephenson acquired the services of a thug nicknamed "the Georgia Cracker." Brousse was to tell the embassy night watchman that he needed a discreet place to conduct an affair and was prepared to pay him to look the other way. The couple would then visit the embassy for several nights to get the guard used to their presence. On the night of the burglary, they planned to slip the watchman a drugged glass of champagne. After that, they would admit the safecracker, go to the ground-floor code room, open the safe, pass the cipher books to a BSC man waiting on the tree-shaded lawn below and then wait for the volumes to be returned after they were photographed.

All seemed to go as planned. The pentobarbital knocked out the guard as well as his dog (whose food had been drugged). The Georgia Cracker coaxed open the old Mosler safe, but there was not enough time to remove and copy the books, and the intruders had to beat a hasty retreat. A second attempt, made without the Georgia Cracker, was foiled when Cynthia could not get the safe open, even with the combination.

Entering with Brousse's key for a final try, the couple had nervously positioned themselves on their usual sofa in the embassy when Cynthia's intuition told her something was wrong. Impulsively, she arose and removed her clothes. "You haven't gone mad?" asked Brousse, looking at his lover, who was by then clad only in a necklace and high heels. She persuaded him to also start undressing. A door suddenly opened, and a flashlight beam stabbed the darkness. As it focused on her, Cynthia quickly placed her slip in front of her.

"I beg your pardon a thousand times," said the watchman. He turned his flashlight aside and, suspicion allayed, returned to his basement room. Cynthia let in the safecracker. The rest was a milk run.

The Vichy ciphers, whether those obtained by Cynthia or from another source, were used to great effect when the Allies landed in French-held North Africa in November 1942. With the United States now in the war, Cynthia worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services as well as for the British. She considered herself a patriot. "Ashamed? Not in the least," she once said. "My superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives....It involved me in situations from which 'respectable' women draw back--but mine was total commitment. Wars are not won by respectable methods."

The rest of Cynthia's story pales after her earlier adventures. Arthur Pack killed himself in 1945. Brousse and his wife divorced, and the modern Mata Hari married Brousse. In storybook fashion, they settled in a medieval castle on a mountain in France. The end of their story was tragic, however. On December 1, 1963, Amy Thorpe Brousse died of mouth cancer. Her husband was electrocuted about 10 years later by his electric blanket. Part of their fairy tale castle was also consumed in the ensuing fire.

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[snippy_about_it]

Cool. Spider boy looks ready to rumble.

[snippy_about_it]

Sniff any cedar lately?

Been sniffing it all day. LOL. It does smell good.

[snippy_about_it]

...or recovering from trying to figure out how to put all that cedar together.

[Iris7]

Ran across this story at http://womenshistory.about.com/library/prm/blwomenoss.htm

A darker story than Thorpe's, but to my mind more military.

The OSS was running intelligence operations into the German resistance areas in France. This story comes from service with the US Army 36th Division in the Vosges Mountains, 1944.

Agents working for the OSS had to be French, else the Germans would tumble in an instant. Women agents came under less suspicion and proved very useful.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Another woman I worked with was Jeannette, who I called "the spy who used her head." She, too, was courageous. But when she was captured and faced almost certain torture and death, she found that more than courage was necessary.

Jeannette came to our unit as a volunteer for the infiltration of the dangerous Gerardmer region. Gerardmer, a prime intelligence objective, was located at the western end of the Col de la Schlucht, one of the most important passes in the Vosges Mountains and a key supply line for the Germans. It was also a beehive of Gestapo activity. We had already lost two agents there.

Jeannette was a plain-looking woman of 38 who had been in the Resistance for two years, since her husband had been sent to a forced-labor camp in Germany. She looked like a typical French housewife of the region, which she was. She was a spy only by an accident of war. Her mission for the OSS was twofold. First, she was to secure intelligence about enemy activities in Gerardmer and the 40-mile area ahead of our lines, which she would traverse. Second, she was to make contact with the Gerardmer Resistance.

On October 2, her briefing completed, she was escorted to a platoon outpost. From there she managed to slip through the enemy lines. Making her way from safe house to safe house by forest path and mountain road, she reached Gerardmer safely in three days.

Spies must constantly gamble with fate, and fate caught up with Jeannette shortly thereafter. The Gestapo had planted an agent in the local Resistance group some time earlier. Jeannette unfortunately attempted to contact the Resistance just as the Gestapo was poised to strike. She was picked up and taken to the Gestapo headquarters at the Hotel de l'Esperance for questioning.

Her identity papers stated that Moyenmotier (a town occupied by the Germans some distance away) was her residence and birthplace. The Gestapo could not detect that her papers were false, but the fact that she had tried to get in touch with known Resistance members aroused suspicion in spite of her innocent appearance. She was cajoled, threatened, slapped, kicked and beaten, but she only repeated with stubborn simplicity: "I am from Moyenmotier. I came here innocently to seek my brother who I understood was in Gerardmer."

For three days the Germans held her in a room on the third floor of the hotel headquarters. Each morning the guard forcefully kicked open the door and deposited a bowl of watery soup and a piece of leathery bread on a small table. Each day was a nightmare of brutal interrogation, but she courageously stuck to her story. Finally, a Gestapo major exclaimed in exasperation: "Very, well, madame. Tomorrow we take you to Moyenmotier and see if your story is true!"

That night, locked securely in the third floor room, Jeannette lay on her bed, sleeplessly gazing at the stars through the concussion-shattered panes of the one window. If they took her to Moyenmotier, her identity was certain to be proved false. The brutal questioning of the past few days had been the result of mere suspicion. She knew that once that suspicion was confirmed, the Gestapo would torture her and force her to talk--to reveal names of Resistance members, owners of safe houses, American positions and units. Her tortured mind sought some means of escape. There was none.

The night wore on toward morning, and the desperate woman thought of suicide. She rose and went slowly to the window. With a calmness born of desperation, she began to work loose a piece of shattered pane. "Bon Dieu," she prayed, "How can I face You if I have been forced to betray my comrades, if I have aided the Germans by speaking? Is this not better?"

It was the hour of supreme darkness. The stars flickered out, one by one, like the last embers of hope. Then in her mind, drained of all emotion, an idea began to form. It was a slim chance, but it just might work.

She raised the piece of glass, but instead of slashing her wrists, she began to cut her forehead, well up into the dark mass of her hair. Blood began to ooze down in a thin stream. Resolutely, she raised the glass again, painfully, patiently deepening the cut. The blood flowed more freely, matting her hair, trickling slowly down her cheek, into her eye. She carefully hid the glass under the mattress and lay down on the floor directly behind the door. Her hands worked the cut constantly to draw more blood. A small puddle began to form about her head. It seemed like ages before she at last heard the guard's heavy footsteps approaching. A few moments later the door was kicked open and struck her head. Jeannette mercifully lost consciousness.

She came to in a hospital some time later. Her captors had seen no alternative but to send her there. She had no recollection of what had happened, or so she said. "I must have fainted," she explained weakly. When the Gestapo major questioned her again, her replies were anything but coherent. The doctor told him that head injuries were very tricky.

The Gestapo major cursed the guard for being a stupid pig and finally gave up. He had more important things to do than waste his time on this "stupid French peasant," and she was probably too dull to know much anyway. If he had taken better care of the rooms where his prisoners were kept, he might have found the bloodstained piece of glass and made some very interesting deductions.

After a week in the hospital, Jeannette was released. Instead of taking refuge in Gerardmer and awaiting its liberation, she courageously chose to make the perilous journey back to the American lines. We were elated at her return, since we had given her up for lost. Her report on enemy dispositions and movements, based on personal observation, was timely and useful.

The official report of the mission rather laconically termed her ruse "worthy of note." It certainly was. In the tightest of spots, Jeannette had, figuratively and literally, used her head."

[Iris7]

Lieutenant Colonel William F. Buckley was born in Medford, Massachusetts on May 30, 1928. Colonel Buckley graduated from high school in 1947 and joined the United States Army.

Following two years of service as an enlisted MP he attended Officers Candidate School and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in Armor. He later attended the Engineer Officer's Course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the Advanced Armor Officer's Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the Intelligence School at Oberammergau, Germany.

Colonel Buckley served with the 1st Cavalry Division as a company commander during the Korean War. After the war he completed his studies and graduated from Boston University with a degree in Political Science. He was employed as a librarian in the Concord, Winchester and Lexington public libraries. In 1960, Bill joined the 320th Special Forces Detachment which became the 11th Special Forces Group and attended both Basic Airborne and the Special Forces Officers Course. He was assigned as an A- Detachment Commander and later as a B-Detachment Commander.

Colonel Buckley served in Vietnam with MACV as a Senior Advisor to the ARVN. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in May 1969.

Buckley was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1955 to 1957 and again from 1965 until his untimely death. He served in many varied assignments all over the world. He was taken hostage from his last assignment in Beirut; Lebanon where he was the Political Officer/ Station Chief at the U.S. Embassy. Colonel Buckley died after 15 months in captivity of illness and torture. His body was returned to the United States on December 28, 1991 and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

Among Colonel Buckley's Army awards are the Silver Star, Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star with "V", two Purple Hearts, Meritorious Service Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and the Parachutist Badge. He also received the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry w/ Bronze Star from ARVN. Among his CIA awards are the Intelligence Star, Exceptional Service Medallion and Distinguished Intelligence Cross.

Would have liked to meet that man. Some say Buckley spilled his guts. I am willing to bet this is not true.

[Samwise]

[stand watie]

understood.

busy here too.

free dixie,sw

[Professional Engineer]

Flamethrower good. Much uses. ;-)


Spiderboy is studying Taekwondo. Since the photo, he has received his yellow belt.

[Professional Engineer]

Unconfirmed reports suggest a granddaughter of Amy Elizabeth Thorpe-Pack-Brousse, MI6/CIA Saucerspankentruppen.

She has my vote! I'll even vote twice, if need be.

[Professional Engineer]

Being an evil Capitalist pig is sure taking a lot of time. ;-)

You get to wake up every morning and say: Today we celebrate our Independence!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[SAMWolf]

Today we celebrate our Independence!

:-) It's also time spent for us, not some other Evil Capitalist Pig. :-)

[w_over_w]

Amazing story . . . thanks. In moments of desparation, courage and insight can be found.

[colorado tanker]

Thanks for a very interesting story.

I hope you got some time off during the holiday!

[snippy_about_it]

LOL. No time off. I'll just have to catch up later.

[ConservativeMan55]

Toby Keith Puts On Live Concert for the troops on CMT!

[snippy_about_it]

Cool. Thanks.

[ConservativeMan55]

No Problem!

I love it!