Juan Pujol Garcia

Garbo, the double agent whose deceptions protected D-Day

Overview

A Spaniard who volunteered to spy for Britain, Juan Pujol Garcia first talked the Germans into recruiting him and then fed them invented reports from Lisbon before MI5 brought him to London in 1942. Run by case officer Tomas Harris under the codename Garbo, he built a fictitious network of some two dozen subagents. In June 1944 his reports helped convince German commanders that the Normandy landings were a diversion and that the main invasion would come at the Pas de Calais, keeping divisions away from the beachhead. He was awarded both the German Iron Cross and the British MBE.