296 • KREUGER. OTTO
ring known as theX Groupin 1940 and runningAndre ́Labarthe
(codenamedjerome).KREUGER. OTTO.Codenamed TR-16 by theSecret Intelligence
Service, Otto Kreuger was a German marine engineer from Godes-
berg who had made the mistake of striking a brother officer who hap-
pened to be related to the kaiser. Kreuger was court-martialed, and
in November 1914, when he offered his services to Richard Tinsley
at the British legation in The Hague, was still embittered. Aged 39,
Kreuger proved to be an exceptional agent, with access to all the Ger-
man naval bases,Zeppelinsheds, and construction yards and with
the professional skill to know precisely what he was looking at. He
possessed a phenomenal memory and made regular trips to Holland
to report to Tinsley without the necessity of carrying any notes over
the frontier. He was also sufficiently adept to escape any suspicion,
even being elected a director of the Federation of German Industries,
until 1939 when he was finally trapped by the Gestapo and beheaded.
KRIVITSKY, WALTER.Born Samuel Ginsberg in Galicia, Walter
Krivitsky was known in The Hague, where he ran an art gallery on
the fashionable Celebestraat, as the wealthy antiquarian bookseller
‘‘Dr. Martin Leissner.’’ In fact he was the head of Soviet military
intelligence for Western Europe and ran a large network of illegals
that stretched right across the Continent. At the end of September
1937 he was ordered back to Moscow but, fearing that he was in-
tended to become a victim of Stalin’s purges like his friend Ignace
Reiss, he fled to Paris, where he sought political asylum. The French
Surete ́extracted enough information from him to fill 80 volumes but
he was unimpressed by their protection. He moved to the United
States, where he gave interviews to theSaturday Evening Postand
testified before the Dies Committee, and then to Canada. It was not
until September 1939 that the British ambassador in Washington,
D.C., Lord Lothian, was told by journalist Isaac Don Levine that
Krivitsky could implicate a spy in the British Foreign Office.
The spy was identified as a cipher clerk, CaptainJohn King, who
was arrested, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to a long term
of imprisonment. Impressed by Krivitsky’s evidence,MI5brought
him across the Atlantic to be interviewed by Jane Sissmore in Lon-