426 • POPOV, DUSKO
POPOV, DUSKO.When Dusan M. Popov, known to his family and
friends as Dusko, arrived in London as a German spy in December
1940, he was not accommodated atMI5’s interrogation center at
Camp 020, the usual destination for men suspected of being enemy
agents. Instead he was driven straight to the Savoy Hotel, where he
was entertained by senior members of both MI5 and theSecret Intel-
ligence Service(SIS). The reason was that although theAbwehrbe-
lieved both Popov and his brother Ivo to be dedicated to the Nazi
cause, they had each been recruited by SIS in Belgrade shortly before
the war. Thus when the young playboy from Dubrovnik turned up at
the British embassy in Lisbon en route to England, he declared his
true purpose and requested an appropriate message be sent to his SIS
contact who knew him asscout.
Popov had been educated in Germany and it was one of his fellow
students who had approached him with a view to working for the
Abwehr. The Popov brothers saw this as an opportunity to escape
from the occupation, and both exploited the situation to their advan-
tage. Codenameddreadnoughtby SIS, Ivo pretended to recruit
many of his friends for the Abwehr, but each willingly became a
double agent. Similarly, after Dusko was installed in a Mayfair
apartment by MI5 and supplied with a case officer, he recruited sev-
eral subagents so as to enhance his status with the Germans.
In September 1941 Popov returned to Lisbon for a meeting with
his Abwehr controller to receive details of his new assignment, a mis-
sion to the United States. During the course of the year, the Abwehr’s
networks in America had suffered a series of setbacks as theFederal
Bureau of Investigation(FBI) arrested several key German agents.
Popov’s task was to complete a questionnaire relating to U.S. mili-
tary installations and set up a wireless station in Brazil. Having
cleared the mission with MI5, which obtained the FBI’s consent,
Popov made his way to the United States in June 1941 via Lisbon,
where he received $70,000, his instructions, a microdot question-
naire, and cipher instructions. These he handed over toBritish Se-
curity Coordination(BSC) in Bermuda, and for the final leg of his
journey in August 1941 he was accompanied by an SIS officer, Ham-
ish Mitchell.
Once in New York, ostensibly under the control ofMI6’sDick
Ellisand John Pepper at BSC, Sam Foxworth assigned Special Agent