Persian Agent KISS Turned Nazi Abwehr Into British Instrument

By Vera Kessler · August 9, 2026

Nazi intelligence believed they had a loyal Persian asset, but the British and Soviets secretly synchronized the misinformation fed to the German High Command.

KISS was a Persian. He was a "Double Cross agent," a designation that, in the lexicon of the Security Service, meant a source who had been turned against their original handlers to feed the enemy misinformation. The file's catalogue entry records that KISS maintained a radio link with the Abwehr—the military intelligence service of Nazi Germany—but the operational control of that link was seized by Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME).

In the precarious geometry of the Middle East during the 1940s, a radio operator was more than a technician; he was a tether between capitals. For KISS, that tether stretched from the Persian plateau to the German High Command, with the British acting as the invisible filter in the middle. The record indicates that his case was managed through a network of hubs, with the three supplementary volumes of his file comprising the SIME operational file alongside records from the Combined Intelligence Centres in Tehran and Baghdad.

SIME and the Baghdad Link

The geography of the KISS operation underscores the fragmented nature of wartime intelligence. By involving both Tehran and Baghdad, the British ensured that the traffic passing through KISS's radio was vetted across multiple regional jurisdictions. This overlap is a hallmark of the era's intelligence gathering, though the catalogue description admits there is "some inevitable duplication" across the volumes.

What remains is the bulk of the radio traffic. In these transcripts, the silence of the archive meets the noise of the airwaves. The Abwehr believed they were receiving intelligence from a loyal Persian asset; in reality, they were reading a script edited in the Combined Intelligence Centres. This was the essence of the Double Cross system: the transformation of a German asset into a British instrument.

Soviet Intelligence

While most Double Cross agents were handled exclusively by the British, the file's catalogue entry notes that the KISS case was "notable because for a time it involved collaboration with Soviet Intelligence."

This detail suggests a level of inter-allied coordination that was often fraught with suspicion. During the Second World War, the Anglo-Soviet alliance was a marriage of necessity, not trust. In the Middle East, particularly in Iran, the British and Soviets frequently clashed over spheres of influence and the security of supply lines. That the British allowed—or were forced into—collaboration with the Soviets on a single Persian agent indicates either a shared priority regarding the Abwehr's regional penetration or a clandestine agreement to synchronize the misinformation being fed to Berlin.

KV 4/70 and the 'W' Board

The operational handling of agents like KISS did not happen in a vacuum. He was a small part of a vast, centralized machine managed by the Security Service. Related records in the KV series point to the structural scaffolding of these operations. Files KV 4/65 through KV 4/69 record the formation and minutes of the Twenty Committee, the secret body tasked with the oversight of all Double Cross agents.

Further documentation in KV 4/70 mentions the "W" Board, another layer of the bureaucratic filter through which agent traffic passed. The scale of this effort is evident when comparing KISS to other assets in the same series. For instance, the file for Juan Pujol Garcia, codenamed GARBO (KV 2/40), details a similar process of reporting agent activities from the German perspective. Where GARBO was used to mislead the Germans about the D-Day landings, KISS served as a regional valve for intelligence in the Middle East, bridging the gap between the Abwehr and the Allied powers.

The Blackguard Case

The catalogue description concludes with a brief, cryptic reference to other files. It notes that within the records of KISS, "there are also some details of the BLACKGUARD double agent case."

It is unclear from the catalogue entry whether BLACKGUARD was a collaborator, a rival, or another link in the same Persian chain. The record does not specify the nature of the connection between the two agents, nor does it explain why the details of one were appended to the file of the other. Whether they shared a handler in Baghdad or were part of a broader effort to deceive the Abwehr in Tehran remains an open question left by the file's summary.