POPOV, DUSKO• 427Charles F. Lanman (using the alias Charles Lehman) as Popov’s han-
dler. The FBI was never comfortable about cooperating with a self-
confessed enemy agent, however, and was reluctant to lay the foun-
dations of another double agent case on someone whom they re-
garded as unreliable. Popov’s initial interview was conducted by the
‘‘assistant director for major investigations in the field,’’ Earl J. Con-
nelley, over three hours in New York, during which Popov disclosed
11 of his microdots, and the next day explained to Lanman how to
use his codebook,Night and Day. According to Connelley’s report
of his meeting, Popov anticipated that within a couple of months he
would be contacted by other German agents. In the meantime, he had
a single mail drop in Rio de Janeiro, which was promptly checked
out by the SIS.
Popov made a very unfavorable impression on the FBI, not least
because of his lavish lifestyle shared with his English girlfriend Terry
Brown, his new Buick Pantheon convertible, his very public affair
with the French actress Simone Simone, his penthouse apartment at
530 Park Avenue staffed by a Chinese manservant, and his inability
to identify any other Abwehr agents in the United States. Instead of
nurturing Popov in New York and supplying him with the informa-
tion demanded in his questionnaire and required to maintain the Ab-
wehr’s interest, the FBI virtually disconnected him. Left to his own
devices, Popov constructed some very flimsy messages for his mail
drop in Lisbon, but by October 1941 the Abwehr had failed to re-
spond. Finally, the FBI took up Popov’s proposal that he use his
cover, as an official of the Yugoslav government in exile, to dangle
the opportunity of establishing a shortwave radio on the East Coast.
As a return visit to Portugal so soon would stretch the Abwehr’s cre-
dulity, Popov suggested a trip down to Brazil, where he could receive
the technical instructions required to establish a wireless link across
the Atlantic from the contact he had been supplied with in Lisbon,
who turned out to be Albrecht Engels in Rio de Janeiro.
In mid-November 1941, Popov, known asivanto the Abwehr,
flew down to Rio from New York to rendezvous withalfredoat his
AEG offices and held several further meetings with him during the
following three weeks. Popov was to establish a radio station in
America to communicate with Rio and Lisbon and collect informa-
tion on war production, the composition and destination of transat-