The Greatest Double Agent Ever: How a Spanish Chicken Farmer Became the Most Important Double Agent in WWII

Juan Pujol Gar­cía was one of the rare indi­vid­u­als whose par­tic­i­pa­tion in World War II made him a Mem­ber of the Order of the British Empire and earned him the Iron Cross. He gained that unlike­ly dis­tinc­tion in per­haps the riski­est of all roles in espi­onage, that of a dou­ble agent. Despite ulti­mate­ly work­ing for the Allied cause, he cre­at­ed an elab­o­rate fic­tion­al per­sona — com­plete with an invent­ed spy net­work oper­at­ing across Great Britain — who pro­fessed loy­al­ty to the Nazi cause. Not only did Pujol get this char­ac­ter plugged into the real Ger­man intel­li­gence sys­tem, he also got him on its pay­roll, receiv­ing what came to the equiv­a­lent of more than $6 mil­lion in today’s U.S. dol­lars for sup­ply­ing infor­ma­tion — infor­ma­tion that ulti­mate­ly con­tributed to the Axis’ loss of the war.

The sto­ry of how this chick­en farmer from Barcelona became the most impor­tant dou­ble agent of World War II is told in the ani­mat­ed Pri­mal Space video above. Unlike many of the spies his­to­ry has remem­bered more clear­ly, Pujol did­n’t begin his espi­onage career in the employ of any gov­ern­ment in par­tic­u­lar.

Rad­i­cal­ized, if that be the word, by the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing been draft­ed into the Span­ish Civ­il War, he vowed to ded­i­cate his life to “the good of human­i­ty.” Turned away by the British embassy, to which he’d offered his ser­vices because Britain opposed Nazi Ger­many, he went free­lance, re-invent­ing him­self as a Third Reich-loy­al Span­ish mil­i­tary man seek­ing an assign­ment in the U.K. Tak­en on by Ger­many, he instead decamped to Lis­bon, where he began man­u­fac­tur­ing ersatz intel­li­gence reports using news­reel footage and tourist brochures.

How­ev­er makeshift, Pujol’s craft proved impres­sive to both Ger­many and Britain, which launched an inter­na­tion­al spy hunt for him. He thus accom­plished his goal of becom­ing an offi­cial British dou­ble agent, in which capac­i­ty he arrived at his finest hour: mis­lead­ing the Ger­mans as to the 1944 “D‑Day” inva­sion of Nor­mandy in an effort called Oper­a­tion For­ti­tude. In Span­ish, that would be For­t­aleza, which became the title of an RTVE doc­u­men­tary about Pujol’s long-untold sto­ry a few years ago. But if any sin­gle word reflects Pujol’s con­tri­bu­tion to his­to­ry, that word must be Gar­bo, the code name assigned him by his first British case offi­cer. After all, what oth­er name — at least in 1942 — could quite so evoca­tive­ly befit an agent whose skills of craft­ing and inhab­it­ing invent­ed char­ac­ters made his han­dlers regard him as “the best actor in the world”?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The CIA’s For­mer Chief of Dis­guise Show How Spies Use Cos­tumes in Under­cov­er Oper­a­tions

The Sto­ry of Elize­beth Fried­man, the Pio­neer­ing Cryp­tol­o­gist Who Thwart­ed the Nazis & Got Burned by J. Edgar Hoover

The French Designed a Fake Repli­ca of Paris to Fool Ger­man Bombers Dur­ing World War I

Dis­cov­er the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The CIA’s Rec­tal Tool Kit for Spies — Cre­at­ed for Tru­ly Des­per­ate Sit­u­a­tions Dur­ing The Cold War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.