Josephine Baker was famous long before she was a spy. The Missouri native was a celebrated singer and dancer in jazz-age Paris and made France her adopted country. Yet it was her clandestine work gathering information on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy that earned her the Légion d’honneur and a place in the Pantheon. Far fewer people have heard of her intelligence handler, Captain Maurice ‘Jacques’ Abtey, a counter-espionage officer of the French secret services, the Deuxième Bureau, and one of Baker’s lovers during the war. What is known about Abtey comes mainly from his bit-part roles in books on Baker. After the Fall of France in 1940, he joined the Secret Services of Free France under General Charles de Gaulle and, alongside Baker, worked to undermine the Axis war effort. Yet there’s an even more secretive side to Baker and Abtey’s odyssey, one that previous books have struggled to explore.

Some of the most secretive operations the pair undertook were aimed not against the enemy but an ally. In the Middle East, Abtey and Baker confronted a clandestine campaign of subversion from the British, aimed at ousting France from the region. In a rollicking if self-serving memoir, Abtey describes how he and Baker worked to counter moves against the French empire. Though Abtey’s account of this rivalry has been largely ignored, it can now be partly corroborated – changing the image of Baker and of Allied relations during the war.

Few intelligence officers publish memoirs. Fewer still do so immediately after their service, as Abtey did, when he published La guerre secrète de Joséphine Baker in 1948. Even Abtey’s superior, Colonel Paul Paillole, the renowned leader of French counterintelligence, waited until 1975 to publish his memoir; even then he took pains to justify breaking the intelligence profession’s code of secrecy.

Yet Abtey remains an obscure figure in intelligence history. There are a lot of reasons for that. Though he features in key works about Baker, no previous books focus on the pair’s work against British subversion, which was key to his fate. His obscurity comes in part because of his partnership with Baker. In fact, that was the point. Baker’s celebrity was their cover: Josephine wowed the crowds and no one noticed her ‘secretary’, Abtey. Furthermore, Abtey’s memoir does itself no favours. It’s self-serving and polemical. By the end of the war, Abtey was briefly sacked and had scores to settle with important French figures. In contrast to calculating politicians, he and Baker ‘were feared because we always placed the interest of France above particular interests, above our own as above those of others… who often did not forgive us’. Most of all, Abtey remained obscure because in the past it has been difficult to reckon with his more sensational claims.

Thanks to the release of new intelligence archives, it is now possible to see more of the secret contest between Britain and France in the Middle East. On the one hand, we have records from French intelligence in Syria and Lebanon, the French Levant States, some of which are at the Centre des Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères in Paris. These give an idea of what was reaching key figures, such as de Gaulle, leader of the Free French movement.

On the other hand, we have material released by the British intelligence services. In particular, there is French wireless correspondence, intercepted and decrypted by the UK’s Government Code & Cipher School (GC&CS), forerunner of today’s GCHQ. Communications Intelligence or ‘Comint’ such as this was produced at Bletchley Park; for example, Alan Turing’s work on the German ENIGMA machine. Spying on friends was sensitive work. The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), Major-General Stewart Menzies, or ‘C’, warned of the consequences if the espionage was revealed.

These new archives don’t just speak to Abtey’s claims about British subversion, they shed light on de Gaulle’s account, too. By the time the General published his memoirs in the 1950s he was a towering figure. A former and future president, he was the face of France’s liberation – the man who had escaped the Fall of France in 1940, who had rejected the armistice with Germany along with the collaborationist Vichy Government, and who had, with the support of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, established the Free French movement in London. His memoirs highlight his rocky relationship with the British as he fought to advance his view of French interests (and his position as leader of a government-in-exile).

One key dispute was over the Middle East. Throughout the war, the French complained of subversion conducted against them in the region by British political and intelligence officers. Yet their complaints fell on deaf ears in London, in part due to perceptions of French ‘hypersensitivity’. When it came to the Levant, the French saw British schemes at every turn and living with them was like ‘trying to live amicably with a jealous, touchy and domineering wife’.

A turning point came during the Lebanese crisis of November 1943. When Lebanon’s Prime Minister Riad al-Sulh moved to unilaterally end the French mandate, the French Delegate-General, Jean Helleu, overreacted. On 11 November, he suspended the constitution and arrested the Lebanese government. The crisis rocked relations between the Anglophone allies – the British and the Americans – on one side, and de Gaulle’s government-in- exile, the Comité français de libération nationale (CFLN), based in Algiers, on the other. The allies were aghast that the French would risk unrest in a strategic theatre like the Middle East. Churchill wanted to finally break with de Gaulle, and only Allied pressure forced the French to accept a humiliating climb down.

Without a doubt, Helleu had behaved poorly, but the French blamed the crisis on the British. In particular, they blamed it on British political and intelligence officers who they suspected had worked to see anti-French candidates like al-Sulh elected. French intelligence reports understood the Lebanese crisis as part of a subversive campaign to oust them from the Middle East. De Gaulle did, too, and he took personal control of France’s Levant policy. Intelligence was a guide in this. In 1944 a French officer, Colonel Fernand François Oliva-Roget, recruited agents in the Syrian government and the British legation in Beirut, feeding de Gaulle with stolen documents. This stunning intelligence success illuminated a subversive campaign by British officials to undermine France in the Levant.

Franco-British tensions reached a climax during the Syrian Crisis of May-June 1945. When French troops under Oliva-Roget bombarded Damascus to quell popular uprisings, larger British forces occupied the Levant States. The crisis did a lot to crush French influence in the region, once and for all. De Gaulle was incensed. He blamed Churchill and the British publicly in the press. Yet most of de Gaulle’s evidence came from secret sources, which he was unable to mention in public, and few took him seriously. De Gaulle told Britain’s Ambassador, Alfred Duff Cooper: ‘We are not, I admit, in a position to open hostilities against you, but you have insulted France and betrayed the West. This cannot be forgotten.’

These secret struggles have been underexplored, along with their impact on Allied relations. De Gaulle did not forget. His memoirs feature fiery accusations about England’s determination to ‘dominate the East’ and how during the Syrian crisis he knew that ‘England was preparing, in the Levant, the decisive manoeuvre’. And that’s where Abtey and Baker come in. The pair dove intentionally into the clandestine Franco-British struggle in the Middle East and the Lebanese crisis in particular. Yet key works on Baker don’t deal with Abtey’s references to British subversion at all. Abtey and Baker’s counter-subversion says a lot about how the French understood and responded to British subversion, or didn’t, and for showing how these events have been viewed historically. Abtey’s memoir opens a rare window into some of the most secretive activities that states conduct: counter-espionage and covert political action against allies.

By the summer of 1943 Abtey was in Algiers, soon to embark on another mission with Baker. ‘But this activity’, he wrote, ‘was no longer going to be directed against the Axis services.’ Baker had just returned from a tour singing for allied troops in North Africa and the Middle East. After dealing with highly placed individuals, including Helleu in Beirut, she was convinced that events were ‘being prepared in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt that no one seems to suspect… I can affirm that France will soon have to suffer blows from which she risks not recovering, if she does not prepare now to ward them off now’. In effect, Baker was serving as her own intelligence collector, analyst, and policymaker; assessing the material she had gathered, recognising the threat in the form of the Lebanese crisis, and recommending a course of action.

Yet when they brought Baker’s concerns to their superiors, the results were mixed. De Gaulle’s then Chief of Staff, Colonel Pierre Billotte, was keen that they investigate her information, but others objected. Abtey reserves most of his venom for de Gaulle’s then Director of the Cabinet, Gaston Palewski. According to Abtey, he doubted Baker’s assessment and thought the Levant was secure. By Abtey’s own admission, he and Baker were considered renegades, and called ‘adventurers of French heritage’. Abtey claimed that their actions in the Middle East would lead Palewski to develop a hatred for him, and that he actually threw away Abtey’s cables to Algiers at the height of the crisis – cables the GC&CS would intercept. Nevertheless, Abtey and Baker embarked on their undercover mission, apparently with the blessing of de Gaulle.

Officially, Abtey and Baker were on a propaganda tour to raise money for the French Resistance. But their clandestine mission was to gather intelligence on the threat facing France in Lebanon and Syria. In Beirut they met Helleu. In Damascus they met Oliva-Roget, the intelligence officer who would develop such exceptional sources on British covert political action. It is perhaps no surprise that Abtey called Oliva-Roget ‘the most clairvoyant Frenchman and at the same time the best informed of the political evolution in the Middle East’.

Abtey and Baker got back to Cairo just before the Lebanese crisis. As the Middle East rumbled with nationalist discontent, Abtey blamed Britain for driving these forces at France. ‘The problem of the Middle East had its roots in Cairo, the seat of the Arab Union in gestation, which, directed as adroitly as it was discreetly by the representatives of Great Britain, was testing the first manifestations of its potential.’ Faced with impending disaster, all Abtey could do was transmit their intelligence to Algiers using a wireless encryption code they had been given before they left. For Abtey this was ‘a deplorable obligation’, because their information needed to be acted on without delay.

Enter British intelligence. In early November, cryptanalysts at the GC&CS started picking up Abtey’s cables from Cairo. On 3 November, just five days before al-Sulh tried to end the mandate, Abtey told Algiers that the group would return soon and ‘bring irrefutable evidence regarding deficient French politics in Egypt and Levant’. He got no answer. On 6 November, he warned Algiers that they should expect a proposal from the British. Whatever that would be, he urged his superiors to refuse it and play for time: ‘Very serious reasons, great danger. Give orders for our return [to] Algiers on a French plane.’ He got no response. Three days later, on 9 November, the day after al-Sulh proposed to end the mandate, Abtey begged for the ‘repatriation [of] our mission by all priority means. Have very important information. Situation to exploit without delay or too late’.

By this point Abtey was alarmed. He thought he had developed a means to counter British subversion, but he had yet to get a response. He did not know then that Palewski was keeping his cables from de Gaulle. On 10 November, one day before Helleu suspended the constitution and launched the Lebanese crisis, Abtey demanded orders to fly back ‘tomorrow at the latest, if not useless’. He and Baker had been ‘mandated by [a] very influential member of the board of directors of the Arab Union to propose to you: [an] immediate solution in favour France, Lebanon, Syria [of the current] current serious dispute’. Revealingly, in light of the impending crisis, he added: ‘Maintain at all costs army orders not to shoot. Do not take action before my arrival.’

He was too late. The next day, on 11 November, Helleu arrested the government and suspended the constitution. The crisis was on and would quickly ignite the Arab world and reach the heads of allied government. The same day, Abtey finally got a response: ‘Return immediately to Algiers by next French plane.’ But Abtey and Baker didn’t leave and instead continued working to salvage the situation.

By 13 November the Lebanese crisis was at its peak. Abtey wrote his last, desperate and intercepted message, which is particularly revealing. He warned that the British were pressuring the Egyptian government to sever relations with the French Committee over the Lebanese crisis – a way to increase the pressure on de Gaulle. There was, however, ‘very favourable ground for secret negotiations with ministers opposed to the English’. But time was short. If he and Baker were to pull off an operation this sensitive they needed a superior to join them. If this didn’t happen, the group would rush back to Algiers with their information.

When they received no response, Abtey and Baker drove across the desert to hand the proposals they had received to their chiefs. But when Abtey spoke to his superior, he was informed that complaints of his and Baker’s activities had reached Palewski – apparently related to a propaganda event rather than their intelligence work – and that he had been dismissed from the intelligence service. When he informed Baker she said: ‘When we acted, we knew well what we were exposing ourselves to.’ Eventually Abtey was shunted off to a desk job in Oran. Josephine, too famous for a bureaucratic wrist-slap, left Algiers and followed allied troops into Italy.

Abtey’s cables from Cairo are fragmentary, but when read alongside his memoir they offer a fascinating glimpse into his and Baker’s desperate effort to counter British subversion against France in the Middle East. Equally remarkable is that they may only exist today because they were intercepted and deciphered by British cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park.

In the final accounting, Abtey’s memoir throws up as many questions as it does answers, but there’s no doubt that it is powerful evidence of British policy in the Middle East and the role of Franco-British rivalry in the Lebanese crisis. Abtey’s polemical memoir is most useful when it’s corroborated by his cables. In particular, his account reinforces claims made by the French about British subversive activities which, at the time, London was able to shrug off.

The episode also illuminates de Gaulle’s intransigence over the Middle East during the Lebanese crisis. His effort to protect France here may have been deficient, but it was not baseless or done simply out of pride. Without a doubt, de Gaulle was an ‘adventurer of French heritage’, just like Josephine Baker and Jacques Abtey.