Hugh Pollard (intelligence officer)

Hugh Pollard
Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard. Author, firearms expert and secret service agent
Born	(1888-01-06)6 January 1888 London, England
Died	March 1966 Midhurst district, Sussex, England
Citizenship	British
Occupation	Intelligence agent, Writer
Notable work	A History of Firearms, Automatic Pistols, The Book of the Pistol and Revolver, The Story of Ypres, A Busy Time in Mexico: An Unconventional Record Of a Mexican Incident, Fox Hunting - The Mystery Of Scent, British & American Game-birds, The Secret Societies of Ireland, Their Rise and Progress, Hard Up on Pegasus, The Keeper's Book; a Guide to the Duties of a Gamekeeper
Spouse(s)	Ruth M Gibbons

Major Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard (born London 6 January 1888: died Midhurst district March, 1966) was an author, firearms expert, and a British SOE officer. He is chiefly known for his intelligence work during the Irish War of Independence and for the events of July 1936, when he and Cecil Bebb flew General Francisco Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco, thereby helping to trigger the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. He was the author of many published works on weaponry, in particular on sporting firearms.

During the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), Pollard was Press Officer of the Information Section of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Together with the Section secretary, Captain William Darling, he produced the Weekly Summary, a weekly newspaper distributed to the police forces in Ireland. The crudeness of this paper and its ambivalent attitude toward reprisals 'resulted in much negative publicity for the Crown forces and the Irish Administration'.

He was also directly involved in two particularly bungled attempts at 'black propaganda'. One was the attempt to produce and distribute a fake version of the Irish Bulletin, the gazette of the Irish Republicans. The fraud was quickly exposed and the reliability of information emanating from Crown sources in Ireland severely damaged. A second incident involved the bizarre attempt to fake a military engagement in County Kerry (reported as the 'Battle of Tralee'). The press-release included photographs of the purported scene of the battle. These were republished in a number of Irish and English papers before the actual location was identified as Vico Road in Dalkey, a quiet seaside Dublin suburb. The entire event had been staged by Pollard and Captain Garro-Jones, a colleague of Major Cecil Street, and was without foundation. In December 1920 in the House of Commons, the British government denied any knowledge of these pictures or the circumstances in which they were produced.