Larry Loftis - The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones

ALSO BY LARRY LOFTIS

Code Name: Lise

Into the Lions Mouth

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Copyright 2021 by Larry Loftis

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First Atria Books hardcover edition February 2021

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Interior design by Jill Putorti

Jacket design by James Iacobelli

Jacket photograph Courtesy of USSOCOM

Author photograph by Spencer Freeman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-4386-2

ISBN 978-1-9821-4388-6 (ebook)

For Tom, Ann, and David Blastic
Minha amada familia ersatz

She, who appeared so beautiful a woman,

spoke without hesitating, so readily,

and with so much ease,

and sweetness both of tongue and voice,

that her good sense surprised them

no less than her beauty.

She began the history of her life,

with a clear and sedate voice,

in this manner:

There is a place in this country

of Andalusia, from which a duke

takes a title, which makes him one

of those they call Grandees of Spain.

This duke has two sons; the elder,

heir to his estate, and in appearance,

to his virtues.

Scarcely had he seen me,

when (as he afterwards declared)

he fell desperately in love with me,

as the proofs he then gave

of it sufficiently evinced.

Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605)

• General William Donovan : OSS chief (Washington)
• Robert Dunev (WILLIAMS): chief code clerk, agent (Madrid)
• Aline Griffith (BUTCH): code clerk, agent (Madrid)
• Edmundo Lassalle (PELOTA): Walt Disney Company representative, agent (Barcelona, Madrid)
• James MacMillan (QUERES): deputy station chief, financial officer (Madrid)
• W. Larimer Larry Mellon (LEGION): agent, French-Spanish chain (Madrid, Barcelona)
• Pierre (PIERRE): OSS-trained operative (identity unknown)
• Frank T. Ryan (ROYAL): chief of Iberian Peninsula (Washington)
• Whitney Shepardson : head of OSS Secret Intelligence (Washington)
• H. Gregory Thomas (ARGUS): station chief (Madrid) and operations head, Iberian Peninsula

• Casilda Arteaga : daughter of the Count of Avila
• Cristbal Balenciaga : couturier, fashion designer (Madrid, Paris, Barcelona)
• Juanito Belmonte : bullfighter, son of Juan Belmonte
• lvaro de Figueroa y Torres-Sotomayor : Count of Romanones, grandfather (El Abuelo)
• Luis de Figueroa y Alonso-Martinez : Count of Velayos (later, of Romanones), father of Luis de Figueroa y Perez de Guzman
• Luis de Figueroa y Perez de Guzman : Count of Quintanilla (later, of Velayos, Romanones)
• Manolete : bullfighter
• Ana de Pombo : fashion designer

• Constantin Canaris : Abwehr agent in Madrid, nephew of Admiral Canaris
• Admiral Wilhelm Canaris : head of the Abwehr (Military Intelligence)
• Prince Maximilian Egon von Hohenlohe : Austrian royalty
• Maria Francesca (Pimpinela): daughter of Prince Maximilian Egon
• Hans Lazar : German press attach (Madrid)
• Princess Maria Agatha Ratibor and Corvey : German royalty

• Barnaby Conrad : American vice-consul and bullfighter
• Major William Fairbairn : OSS close-combat instructor
• Gloria Rubio von Frstenberg : Mexican socialite (Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon)

Hemingway said that nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters. He was wrong.

Spies do as well.

Their existence is an admixture of drama, intrigue, danger, and double-dealing. In most cases, a spy cannot survive without being a consummate liar.

What are we to think, then, about those World War II spies who went on to write memoirs or give interviews for biographies? Were they lying? After all, they had proven during the war that they were skilled at creating an alternate reality. For many war buffs, the testimony of spies is presumed false until proven true. If they really did that, the thinking goes, if that really happened, it would be in the files of the intelligence agency. The problem is that most of the things spies did and saw, and conversations they had, were never recorded. That should be common sense, since the last thing a spy would want is to be caught with something in writing. Even in their post-war debriefings, spies generally did not recount the details of their missions.

The historians job, then, is essentially one of jurisprudence: applying the rules of evidence to ascertain what is credible, what is inadmissible hearsay, what is circumstantial, and so on. This is done by comparing what the spy claimed with the testimony of other primary sources (i.e., eyewitnesses), and with files found in intelligence archives.

Typically, since former spies are restricted by oaths of secrecy and classification, they dont produce memoirs until thirty or more years after their active service. And over such a stretch, memoriesparticularly regarding dates and detailsfade. In many instances, their recollections are inaccurate, sometimes with evident embellishments.

Accordingly, many of the heroic deeds performed by Allied spies during World War IIagents who risked their liveshave been challenged by historians. And that is certainly the case with Aline Griffith, whose extraordinary experiences working for the OSS I have tried to capture in this book. A few years ago a friend mentioned her name to me and I was intrigued: a thriller-type story about an American woman who had been a spy in Spain. But there was a caveat: he wasnt sure if her story was true. I could dig into her file at the National Archives, of course, but I started with what she had written about her own life.

Aline wrote about her experience as a spy in five booksThe History of Pascualete (1963), The Spy Wore Red (1987), The Spy Went Dancing (1990), The Spy Wore Silk (1991), and The End of an Epoch (2015)as well as in an article (The OSS in Spain During World War II) she submitted for inclusion in The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II, a book published by the National Archives and Records Administration in 1992.February 1944and that her code name was BUTCH.