Bazna, Elyeza

Bazna, Elyeza (1905–71),agent of the Nazi security service, the Sicherheitsdienst or SD (see RSHA), which gave him the codename CICERO. In July 1943 he was employed as the manservant of the British ambassador in Ankara and in October 1943 he began photographing documents in the ambassador's safe and selling the film to the Germans. In return he received the equivalent of £150,000 in Turkish currency (which the local SD representative obtained by selling forged British currency supplied by Berlin) and in December 1943 Bazna received £50,000 for impressions of the ambassador's keys. The documents were mostly summaries of meetings between the British and Turkish foreign secretaries and between Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Turkish president, Inönü, but there were also numerous diplomatic telegrams. This material gave the Germans insight into Allied negotiations for Turkey to enter the war on their side, but as Allied policy was well known in this respect little damage was done.

The British first knew there had been a leakage in December 1943 and in January 1944 a German agent working for the Office of Strategic Services in Switzerland (see Dulles) produced German foreign office telegrams that confirmed it. However, Bazna was cleared in the ensuing investigation (he was thought to be too stupid) and at the end of February 1944 he left his post and did not work for the Germans again, although he continued to receive a monthly salary from them. The full story emerged only after the war when Walther Schellenberg and others were interrogated. Not all the documents that Bazna photographed have been identified, but none referred to the Normandy landings (see OVERLORD) or to any Allied conference, nor did they enable the Germans to break the foreign office cipher. See also spies.