Catalogue description ''Selected Historical Papers from the CELERY Case'': CELERY was a notional sub-agent of...

''Selected Historical Papers from the CELERY Case'': CELERY was a notional sub-agent of the Security Service Double Agent SNOW, and directly involved in the events in Portugal in February-March 1941 which led to the ending of the SNOW case. Having served in Air Intelligence during the First World War, between 1921 and 1931 CELERY acquired a string of convictions for confidence trickery and seems to have lived on his wits, precariously and often illegally, both here and overseas. In March 1940 he chanced upon SNOW, with whose outlook on life he had much in common, in a South London pub. According to CELERY's account he was heavily cultivated by SNOW, who hinted strongly at his intelligence role. In April 1940 CELERY attempted to report his suspicions of SNOW as a possible German agent to his former Air Intelligence employers, ostensibly wishing to restore his good name and to obtain worthwhile wartime work. In October 1940 CELERY was recruited by the Security Service as a roving collector of intelligence to be provided to the Germans notionally by the SNOW network, and to report on SNOW himself. Having been formally proposed to the Germans by SNOW as a sub-agent, CELERY visited Lisbon with SNOW to meet RITTER, SNOWS's case officer. SNOW later said that RITTER had accused SNOW of working for the British and that SNOW, having confessed, warned CELERY: CELERY denied he had. Either way CELERY went to Germany as a guest of the Abwehr, was closely questioned but claimed to have survived without damaging admissions, and returned to the UK through Portugal. SNOW and CELERY were extensively interrogated, together and separately, about these alleged events. No definitive conclusion was reached but the SNOW case was terminated