Persian Agent KISS Betrayed Abwehr and Soviets for British Intelligence

By Constance Bell · August 18, 2026

This Persian double agent’s radio traffic remained locked in UK archives, masking a three-way game between London, Berlin, and Moscow that spanned Tehran and Baghdad.

A man in Persia lived every hour under the shadow of a firing squad, playing a game of radio signals where one wrong word meant death. He sold secrets to the Germans and the Soviets, knowing that the slightest slip in his "Double Cross" script would leave him discarded by all three empires.

For the British, this man—codenamed KISS—was a high-value asset in a theater of war where geography and ideology collided. According to the file's catalogue entry from the UK National Archives (KV 2/1285), KISS was a "Double Cross agent" whose primary radio link with the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, was managed by Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME).

In the high-stakes environment of the 1940s, a double agent was only as useful as the lie he could sustain. To the Germans, KISS was a source of intelligence on the Persian front; to the British, he was a valve through which they could feed Berlin curated misinformation. It was a discipline of deception that required absolute control, the kind of operational rigor that defined the Security Service's approach to the war.

Berlin's Radio Link

The technical reality of KISS's work was centered on the radio. The catalogue entry records that his link with the Abwehr was "taken over" by SIME, effectively turning the agent into a British mouthpiece. By controlling the transmitter, London could ensure that every report sent to Germany served a strategic purpose, preventing the Abwehr from discovering the true state of British interests in the region.

This was not an isolated effort but part of a broader, systematic campaign of deception. Related files in the UK National Archives, such as those regarding the Twenty Committee (KV 4/65, 4/66, 4/69) and the "W" Board (KV 4/70), show that the British had industrialized the use of double agents. The goal was not merely to gather information, but to manage the enemy's perception of the world. We see the gold standard of this method in the case of Juan Pujol Garcia, codenamed GARBO (KV 2/40), who constructed an entire imaginary network of spies to mislead the German high command. KISS was a regional variation of this same ruthless efficiency.

Moscow's Shadow

While the struggle against the Abwehr was a matter of survival, the introduction of the Soviet Union into the equation added a layer of volatility. The catalogue entry for KV 2/1285 notes that the case of KISS was "notable because for a time it involved collaboration with Soviet Intelligence."

In the context of the wartime alliance, such collaboration was often a tactical necessity, but it was never an act of trust. For the Security Service, allowing a double agent to operate across both German and Soviet lines was a dangerous gambit. The Soviets were not mere partners in the liberation of Europe; they were opportunistic actors with their own long-term designs for the Middle East. Any collaboration with Moscow in the management of an agent like KISS would have been conducted with a profound awareness that the Soviets were as likely to burn an asset as they were to use one.

The record does not specify the terms of this collaboration, only that it happened and that it made the case "notable." In the world of intelligence, "notable" is often a polite archival term for "precarious."

Tehran and Baghdad

The operational footprint of the KISS case extended across the vital corridors of the Middle East. The file's catalogue entry indicates that the records are split across three supplementary volumes, encompassing the SIME operational file as well as those of the Combined Intelligence Centres in Tehran and Baghdad.

These cities were the nerve centers of British power in the region, where the struggle to secure oil fields and supply lines to the USSR took precedence over almost all other considerations. The presence of KISS's records in both Tehran and Baghdad suggests an agent whose utility spanned the wider Persian Gulf and Mesopotamian theaters. It also indicates a high degree of coordination between various intelligence hubs to maintain the agent's cover.

Beyond the primary narrative of KISS, the record suggests the existence of other overlapping operations, mentioning "some details of the BLACKGUARD double agent case." Like KISS, BLACKGUARD represents the invisible layer of the war—the men who lived in the gaps between loyalties, managed by a silent board of directors in London.

The catalogue entry notes that while some duplication exists across the three supplementary volumes, much if not all of the radio traffic is included.