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Folkert van Koutrik, who was employed by MI6 and MI5, was uncovered as a German agent
after the war.
The treachery of the first German agent to penetrate MI5, a Dutchman who hoodwinked
Britain's security and intelligence throughout the second world war, is spelt out in the files
released on Friday.
Folkert van Koutrik was taken on by MI6 before the war. He was subsequently recruited by
Germany's military intelligence service, the Abwehr, which gave him the codename
Walbach.
On 9 November 1939, two MI6 officers, Richard Stevens and Sigismund Best, were called to
a clandestine meeting at Venlo, on the Dutch-German border. They were expecting to meet
German army officers plotting to get rid of Hitler. Instead, they were seized by the Gestapo.
Van Koutrik might have come under suspicion already as Wolfgang zu Putlitz, one of MI6's
German agents in The Hague, had already fled to Britain, warning that MI6's network in the
Netherlands had been breached.
After Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Van Koutrik left for Britain and
approached MI5 for a job. So convincing was he that a British security official said: "His
great success has been as an agent he has always been very resourceful and I should say
that he has always displayed perfectly genuine faithfulness."
He later returned to work for MI6 at a refugee reception centre in the UK. He was soon out of
favour with MI5 and MI6, not because he was suspected of being a double agent but because
of his prickly and arrogant nature. He vehemently complained after he was made redundant.
He asked if he could have a pistol to protect himself the request was refused and even
asked to be considered for a postwar job with the British army on the Rhine.
His treachery was discovered after the war. The MI5 files reveal MI6 was reluctant to give
Dutch officials evidence to try him: "It might have been impossible in law to present an agent
of the British intelligence service for treachery on Dutch soil, especially if the actions took
place while Holland was still nominally neutral."
In a memo from a senior MI6 officer named Valentine Vivian to MI5 dated February 2 1948
more than three years after the end of the war and after Van Koutrik had been released by
the Dutch authorities reflected the depth of frustration and anger about the apparent
inability to punish Van Koutrik.
Vivian described Van Koutrik's request for a job with the British army as a "piece of brazen
affrontery". Vivian added: "It would be utterly grotesque if he were ever employed in any
capacity by any British concern, governmental or private."
Best and Stevens were imprisoned in Germany until the end of the war.
The historian Christopher Andrew says in his official history of MI5 that Van Koutrik
penetrated the agency in London in May 1940, a month before it recruited the Soviet agent
Anthony Blunt.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/feb/17/mi5-files-nazi-agent





Folkert Arie Van KOUTRIK, alias WALBACH

Catalogue ref: KV2/3643

Date: 25/05/1940 - 01/03/1949

Van Koutrik was a Dutch double agent who was first employed by the Secret Intelligence Service
(SIS - commonly known as MI6) in the Netherlands from 1937 and then by the Security Service
(MI5) in 1940 in the UK. Van Koutrik was then re-employed by SIS in 1942 at a refugee reception
centre in the UK. In 1946 it was discovered from interrogation of German prisoners that he had
been 'turned' by the Abwehr in 1938, and had operated as a double agent using the codename
'Walbach'. The information he had given the Germans led to the kidnapping of MI6 officers Richard
Stevens and Sigismund Best by the Gestapo at Venlo in 1939. Van Koutrik's employment at MI5
was brief, not least because of his 'antagonistic' attitude towards other officials, but significant as
it represented the first time the Security Service had been penetrated by a German agent,
according to Christopher Andrew's authorised history of MI5. A post-war inquiry by the SIS
concluded that Van Koutrik had 'blood on his hands'.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/german-intelligence-agents-feb-2012.htm