Word: pintos
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When Eisenhower was boss of SHAEF, he dubbed Colonel Oreste Pinto "the greatest living authority on security." After the fall of France, when Britain was overrun with refugees, it had been Pinto, a Dutch intelligence officer, who put them through the security sieve to pick out the spies and the phonies; and when the Normandy invasion was roaring ahead, Pinto panted along behind, dowsing for underground traitors and saboteurs...
Until late 1942, Pinto was assigned to British Counterintelligence, a body which requires gentlemanly behavior of its agents. British spycatchers are not permitted, as Gestapo agents were, to pull out fingernails and toenails, or to crack open stubborn skulls with screw-hoops of steel. In some cases they are not even permitted to call a suspect a liar; they must say politely: "I suggest that your answer to my last question contained certain inaccuracies." Moreover, since no confession obtained under duress is valid in British law, the catcher must take care not to hector or bully his man beyond...
Swedish & Swahili. Pinto, who had hunted spies in World War I, had first-rate qualifications for his job. He could ask, look and listen in Dutch, Flemish, English, French, German and Italian, and also had "a competent working knowledge of Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Rumanian and Swahili." For places, faces and cases, Pinto's memory was tenacious: he can still remember "not only what presents were given to me on my third birthday but who gave them and at what time of day they arrived." Stored in his mind like a library of microfilms were detailed pictures...
...into the inside. The Allies caught on to this trick; but 25 years after, in World War II, the Germans were still using the boiled-egg device. The British, on the other hand, depended so much on their brilliant powers of improvisation that they often neglected the simplest details. Pinto, who used to inspect British agents before they were parachuted into enemy territory, was pained to find one of them wearing a tie labeled: "Selfridges, Oxford Street, London...
...suspect has a book in his bag gage, the spycatcher has a dreary task ahead. The volume must be taken apart and every line of every page put under the microscope. Pinto's toughest example: "a closely printed dictionary, 700 pages in length," brought into Britain by a "Dutch refugee." Not until page 432 did Pinto find what he was looking for -"a tiny pinprick" under one letter. Other pinpricks followed under other letters; when written down in order, they gave the addresses of Nazi agents in Stockholm and Lisbon...