- LONDON (AP) - British intelligence interrogated sultry spy Mata Hari
twice during World War I, but couldn't force her to admit she was working
for the Germans, according to secret government papers published Wednesday.
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- Although she later confessed to the French
and was executed, the files from MI5 note that there was no evidence Mata
Hari ever passed on anything of military importance.
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- The British domestic intelligence service
is releasing files dating from World War I, which it considers too old
to be a security risk.
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- Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden,
The Netherlands, the tall, beautiful Mata Hari was first arrested by British
officials in December 1915 at the southern English port of Folkestone just
before she caught a boat for France.
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- Under interrogation, she admitted she
was heading for The Hague to live near her lover, a Dutch colonel.
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- "Although she had good answers to
every question, she impressed me very unfavorably, but after having her
very carefully searched and finding nothing, I considered I hadn't enough
grounds to refuse her embarkation,'' noted her MI5 interrogator, Capt.
S.S. Dillon.
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- The report noted that the woman who titillated
prewar Paris with her exotic dancing and libidinous lifestyle was "handsome,
bold ... well and fashionably dressed'' in a costume with "raccoon
fur trimming and hat to match.''
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- MI5 monitored her as she settled in The
Hague, and soon an informant revealed she was being paid by the German
embassy.
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- An intelligence report from February
1916 noted that Mata Hari was "in relation with highly placed people
and during her sojourn in France she made the acquaintance of many French
and Belgian officers.''
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- "She is suspected of having been
to France on an important mission for the Germans,'' the report said.
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- In November of that year, British authorities
took her off a steamer in the southwestern English port of Falmouth, believing
she was another German spy, Clara Benedix.
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- She told MI5 she had been recruited by
a Belgian officer, Capt. Ladoux, to work for his country's intelligence
service.
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- "One day the captain said to me
'You can do so many things for us if you like.' I thought a long time.
I said I would,'' she told interrogators.
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- She also alleged that the French consul
in Vigo, Spain, had asked her to spy on Russian forces in Austria.
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- Mata Hari returned to Spain and was executed
by firing squad in Vincennes, France, in 1917.
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- A French intelligence report dated May
22, 1917, shown to MI5, noted: "Mata Hari today confessed that she
has been engaged by Consul Cremer of Amsterdam for the German Secret Service.''
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- She admitted sending "general information
of every kind procurable,'' but mentioned no military secrets, it said.
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- Other documents released Wednesday showed
that MI5 considered using a so-called "truth drug'' on Adolf Hitler's
deputy, Rudolf Hess, when he was captured in Scotland in 1941 during an
unauthorized attempt to broker a peace deal.
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- A War Office official suggested that
the drug, evapan sodium, could be used to pick "whatever brains that
gentleman may still possess.''
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- MI5 turned down the offer, concluding
Hess was "a poor type completely devoid of intellectual (or even intelligent)
interests.''
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