562 • VOLUNTARY INTERCEPTORS
Manchester Guardianand had enjoyed a long association with
Claude Dansey’sZ Organisation. He was placed in charge of anti-
Nazi propaganda but always disapproved of PWE’s ‘‘black’’ (clan-
destine) strategy.VOLUNTARY INTERCEPTORS (VI).The highly skilled work of
wireless intercept was undertaken during World War II by amateur
license holders, sometimes known as ‘‘radio hams,’’ who monitored
the airwaves for illicit signals traffic. Headed by Lord Sandhurst, the
organization responsible for the recruitment, vetting, and training
these volunteers was the Radio Security Service with a headquarters
located atArkley Viewin Barnet. The VIs operated from home, and
when it became clear in 1940 that there were no undetected enemy
wireless transmissions in Britain, they began concentrating on other
German signals and enabled the cryptographers atBletchley Parkto
solve many of the hand ciphers used across Europe. At the end of
World War II, the Radio Security Service was absorbed into theDip-
lomatic Wireless Service, based atHanslope Park.
VON DER GOLTZ, HORST.Early in November 1914 Horst Von der
Goltz, newly arrived at Tilbury from Rotterdam, called at the Foreign
Office in London, using the alias ‘‘Bridgeman Taylor,’’ and asked to
see ‘‘the head of the British Secret Service.’’ He was interviewed by
aSecret Intelligence Serviceofficer, Major Cecil Cameron, and vol-
unteered the information that he was an officer of the Mexican army
and was in a position to supply information about futureZeppelin
raids. Baffled, Cameron passed the visitor to Basil Thompson, who
interrogated him at Scotland Yard and extracted the admission that
his American passport was a forgery. Von der Goltz declared his true
identity and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and deporta-
tion.
In January the following year, while Von der Goltz was serving
his sentence in Reading Gaol, the German military attache ́in Wash-
ington, D.C., Franz von Papen, was expelled from the United States
on suspicion of having organized widespread sabotage on the East
Coast. When von Papen’s ship docked at Falmouth, his luggage was
searched and, despite his protests of diplomatic immunity, his finan-
cial records seized. Among them was a canceled check that had been