THOMPSON, SIR ROBERT• 541bysnow. An investigation conducted byMI5’sHerbert Harttraced
his movements in the area after his arrival the previous November. A
parachute found at Haversham in Buckinghamshire six months ear-
lier was presumed to be his. Hart reported that Ter Braak, thought to
be a Dutchman named Englebertus Fukken, had been denounced by
his English landlady (although the complaint had not been pursued)
and concluded that when Ter Braak had run out of funds and ration
coupons for food, he had shot himself in desperation. Examination
of his wireless transmitter, recovered from the left-luggage office at
the railway station where it had been deposited the previous March,
suggested that he had failed to establish contact with Germany. A
report on the apparent suicide was circulated toSpecial Operations
Executive, which used it to teach agents how to avoid finding them-
selves in the same desperate circumstances.TEUFELSBERG.Located in the British sector of West Berlin, on
what had been the Third Reich’s military academy, the hill known as
Teufelsberg was created from the rubble of 800,000 bombed build-
ings cleared from the city’s center in 1946. British and American sig-
nals intelligence organizations established an intercept facility on the
summit, and during the Cold War it was manned by 13 Signal Regi-
ment and theRoyal Air Force’s 26 Signal Unit. The height of the
antenna arrays allowed the operators to monitor Soviet radio traffic
in East Germany and Warsaw Pact communications in Poland and
Czechoslovakia throughout the Cold War. The station was closed
down in 1998 and has been transformed into a museum.
THIRTY-ONE COMMITTEE.The coordinating interagency group
that superviseddouble agentoperations in the Middle East during
World War II.
THOMPSON, SIR ROBERT.Educated at Marlborough and Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge, Robert Thompson joined the Malayan
civil service in 1938 at age 22 and then joined theRoyal Air Force
in 1941. At the end of the war, Thompson returned to Perak in Ma-
laya and was appointed civil assistant to the director of operations
in 1950 and coordinating officer for security in 1955. When Malaya
became independent in 1957, Thompson was deputy secretary for de-