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its best, and by mid-1942 they had deployed half- a- dozen agents to the
Middle East. However, two years later when Maunsell had the opportunity
of examining a captured Abwehr list of Middle East operatives (principal
agents and W/T operators), he noted with satisfaction that all of them
were firmly under British control.^13 Such was the handicap imposed on
Eisenberg and Wagner as they attempted in Berlin and Zossen to plan
subversive operations in Iraq, which depended almost entirely on the
recruitment and use of local individuals whom they were unable to screen,
evaluate, or control in person. Consequently, as can be seen from the fol-
lowing operational narratives, Abw II was forced to delegate much plan-
ning and coordination of Iraq operations to Paul Leverkuehn, the head
of Kriegsorganisation Nahost (KONO), the Abwehr outstation in Istanbul.
For neutral countries (e.g. Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Spain,
Portugal, Bulgaria, and Turkey) the unique concept of the covert
Kriegsorganisation (war organization [KO]) was devised, which substan-
tially mimicked the conventional Abwehrstelle (Abwehr station [AST]) in
structure and function. Being free from diplomatic protocol, a KO could
be located in either a neutral capital like Stockholm or Lisbon or in a major
neutral urban centre like Istanbul, where intelligence activity was far more
intense than in the Turkish capital, Ankara. If a city was a known hotbed
of international espionage, then it only made sense for the Abwehr to sta-
tion its operational officers there rather than in the national capital. The
concept of the autonomous KO served this end brilliantly. As a creature of
the Abwehr’s invention, it was infinitely adaptable, devoid of the rigid
protocols that hampered or severely chastened the behaviour of Abwehr
officers under embassy cover. In Turkey the solution was to locate
Leverkuehn’s subsidiary operational base (KONO) in Istanbul, under
consular cover, while the nominal head of station, Meyer-Zermatt,
remained under diplomatic cover at the Ankara embassy more or less in a
liaison capacity, dealing with the ambassador, Franz von Papen, former
chancellor of Austria.^14
As Appendix C shows, a total of 14 covert initiatives targeting Iraq were
planned by Abw II OR, KONO, and the ex-Mufti’s Arabisches Büro (Arab
Bureau [AB]) between 1941 and 1945. Of these, only eight were actually
launched; the rest were either intercepted, cancelled, or aborted before full
execution. In three cases, personnel disappeared without trace. It must be
stressed that these are the only German covert operations to be found in the
archival records. It is, of course, possible that more were conceived. However,
given the fact that the Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia (CICI)
A PLACE IN THE SHADE