BRANDES, WILLI• 67camp chief, was appointed the first head ofSpecial Operations Ex-
ecutive’s training section in 1940.BRACKENBURY, HENRY.In January 1886 General Henry Brack-
enbury was appointed head of the Intelligence Division of the War
Office, a post he retained for five years, becoming the British Army’s
firstdirector of military intelligence. A former professor of military
history at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, Brackenbury had
participated in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870 (leading a British Hospital Unit), theAshanti
Campaign, and the Zulu Wars. Brackenbury reorganized the Intelli-
gence Division, then located at 16–18 Queen Anne’s Gate, and nego-
tiated an allowance to encourage army officers to translate foreign
books and take notes while traveling abroad. In 1891 Brackenbury
was replaced by General Chapman and posted to Delhi as director of
the Indian Intelligence Department.
BRANDES, WILLI.Ostensibly a salesman for the Phantom Red Cos-
metic Company and the Charak Furniture Company of New York,
Willi Brandes was a Soviet illegal who had been placed under sur-
veillance byMI5when he was seen contactingPercy Glading, but
he slipped out of the country before the arrests were made in January
- He had been tipped off by the porter in his block of flats in the
Edgware Road, who had been asked by MI5 to identify his tenant.
MI5 learned that Brandes had entered England in January 1937 on
a Canadian passport, but inquiries with the Royal Canadian
Mounted Policerevealed that his papers were false and had been
supported by a man using the name Arman Labis Feldman, who also
was using a fraudulent Canadian birth certificate. The resulting in-
vestigation revealed an extensive trade in bogus passport applications
made in Canada by Soviet surrogates.
According to theKGB archives, Brandes’s real name was Mikhail
Borovoy, and he had been handed control of theWoolwich Arsenal
spy ring byArnold Deutschin January 1937. Brandes and his wife
had been introduced by Glading toOlga Grayas ‘‘Mr. and Mrs. Ste-
phens’’ in August 1937, and they visited Glading’s safe house in Hol-
land Road on several occasions.
Ironically, in 1938 upon his return to Moscow, he was arrested in
the purges and spent two years at a labor camp in Siberia.