Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

DE MOWBRAY, STEPHEN• 147

mained in Lisbon until early the following year, when he was sum-

moned back to London to be transferred from SIS to another highly

secret organization, the Political Warfare Executive, which was pre-

paring to broadcast to Germany from a clandestine radio station lo-

cated atWoburn Abbey. Headed by banker Leonard Ingrams, whom

Delmer ‘‘knew to have something to do with the cloak-and-dagger

side of the war,’’ this early venture into psychological warfare con-

sisted of a series of programs edited by Richard Crossman, who was

to become a Labour cabinet minister. What subsequently was to be

called ‘‘black radio’’ was then in its infancy, but the objective was to

transmit anti-Nazi propaganda to Europe in German, in such a way as

to deceive the listeners into believing that it was an authentic wireless

station operating from within the Reich. The shortwave transmitters

began broadcasting from a site at Milton Bryant in Bedfordshire in

late May 1941, spreading subversion intended to subtly undermine

German morale and create dissention on the home front. From this

early start, with programs recorded by anti-Nazi Germans in spe-

cially constructed studios located at Wavendon Tower, there devel-

oped a highly sophisticated propaganda offensive that was to do

much to foment resistance to the Axis. Being almost more German

than English, and certainly possessing a deep understanding of the

German psyche, Delmer was to prove indispensable to Woburn.

DE MOWBRAY, STEPHEN.A graduate of New College, Oxford,
Stephen de Mowbray joined theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) in
1950, aged 25, and two years later was posted to Cairo. In 1953 he
undertook a two-year tour in Baghdad, and then returned toBroad-
way. In 1957 he was appointed head of station in Montevideo, return-
ing to London in 1961.
During his period in SIS’scounterintelligencebranch, de Mow-
bray was indoctrinated into themolehunts that had beset the Security
Service. He acted as one of SIS’s two representatives on theflu-
encyCommittee (on whichArthur Martinserved forMI5), which
investigated Soviet spy suspects. One of the cases he pursued was
that of Donald Prater, whom he interviewed in New Zealand after the
latter’s retirement from SIS, ostensibly on health grounds. De Mow-
bray transferred to Washington, D.C., in 1964 and succeeded the
head of station there in 1966. He remained in the United States for a
further two years and then came back to Broadway.