390 • NOMINAL AGENTS
headed by a local illegalrezident.MI5relied upon surveillance and
information fromdefectorsto reconstruct the order of battle of the
Londonrezidentura, although it was not able to do so with any accu-
racy untilOleg Gordievskywas debriefed at length in 1985.
During World War IISpecial Operations Executive(SOE) and
theSecret Intelligence Serviceestablished formal liaison arrange-
ments with the NKVD, withGeorge Hilldispatched to represent
British Intelligence in Moscow, followed in April 1945 by Major
J. E. Benham. Reciprocating in London was Colonel Ivan Chichaev,
whoworkedcloselywithD/P, established in 1942 and headed by
Major A. D. Seddon. SOE’s Russian operations consisted ofpick-
axes, which was the dropping of agents into Western Europe for the
NKVD, andmamba, the recruitment of Russian PoWs who had been
captured while serving in the Wehrmacht.
At the end of World War II the NKVD continued to engage in espi-
onage. After the liquidation of Lavrenti Beria in 1954, following the
death of Stalin, the organization was renamed the Committee for
State Security (KGB).NOMINAL AGENTS.Fictitious sources invented by agents or their
case officers are known as nominal or notional agents. Although their
use can be a high-risk strategy, they have played an important role in
deceptionanddouble agentoperations, particularly during World
War II. The master of the notional agent wasgarbo, who ran an
entirely imaginary network of 26 spies operating across the globe,
from a Wren in Ceylon tomoonbeam, supposedly a Venezuelan in
Canada.
NORDPOL.TheAbwehrcode name for a classic deception operation
undertaken in Holland in 1942 and known asEnglandspielin which
Special Operations Executive’sNetherlands Sectionwas per-
suaded that their networks in Holland were at liberty, whereas all had
fallen under the enemy’s control and perished at Mauthausen con-
centration camp. The disaster resulted in a postwar parliamentary in-
quiry in the Netherlands in which the British declined to participate.
NORWAY.Following the relationships forged during World War II
with theNorwegian SectionofSpecial Operations Executive