Tomás Harris

Tomás Harris
Tomás Harris
Born	10 April 1908 Hampstead, London, Great Britain
Died	27 January 1964 Majorca, Spain
Cause of death	Motor accident
Nationality	British
Other names	Tommy Harris
Occupation	Spy
Employer	MI5
Known for	Operation Fortitude

Tomás (Tommy) Joseph Harris (10 April 1908 - 27 January 1964) was a Spanish-speaking officer with MI5 during World War II who worked with Garbo, an important double agent for the British.

Together they made up a fictional team of 27 fake sub-agents, who were created in order to convince German intelligence that Garbo was a reliable spy. This resulted in what became known as the Garbo deception.

In August 1962, during a reception at the Weizmann Institute, Flora Solomon told Victor Rothschild, who had worked with MI6 during the Second World War, that she thought that Tomás Harris and Kim Philby were Soviet spies. She then went on to tell Rothschild that she suspected that Philby and his friend, Tomás Harris, had been Soviet agents since the 1930s. "Those two were so close as to give me an intuitive feeling that Harris was more than a friend."

As a result of this information Kim Philby was forced to resign from the SIS. However, before Harris was interviewed by MI5 he was killed in a motor accident at Llucmajor, Majorca. Some people have suggested that Harris was murdered.

Chapman Pincher, the author of Their Trade is Treachery (1981), agrees that it is possible that Harris had been eliminated by the KGB: : "The police could find nothing wrong with the car, which hit a tree, but Harris's wife, who survived the crash, could not explain why the vehicle had gone into a sudden slide. It is considered possible, albeit remotely, that the KGB might have wanted to silence Harris before he could talk to the British security authorities, as he was an expansive personality, when in the mood, and was outside British jurisdiction. The information, about which MI5 wanted to question him and would be approaching him in Majorca, could have leaked to the KGB from its source inside MI5." Pincher goes on to argue that the source was probably Roger Hollis, the director-general of MI5.

Harris was an avid collector of Spanish prints, which were mostly acquired by the British Museum after his death.

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Wikipedia