XXXX "Bob"

From: nu-monet <nothing@succeeds.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Reply-To: like.excess@sex.org
Date: Thu, Jul 5, 2001 10:38 AM
Message-ID: <3B447BF6.72A9@succeeds.com>

"Bob", a womaniser and thief who double-crossed the Nazis

ONE of MI5's most colourful wartime double agents was
admired equally by his British and Nazi controllers and
was seemingly irresistible to society women, according to
files released today.

One MI5 officer said of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, codenamed "Bob":
"The story of many a spy is commonplace and drab. The story
of Dobbs is different. In fiction it would be rejected as
improbable.

"The subject is a crook, but as a crook [he] is by no means
a failure and in his own estimation is something of a prince
of the underworld. He plays for high stakes and would have
the world know it. Of fear he knows nothing. Adventure to
Dobbs is the breath of life. Given adventure, he has the
courage to achieve the unbelievable."

Dobbs, whose exact origins are unknown, was first known
to authorities in the 1930s after taking up with West End
gangs of safecrackers.

His MI5 personal file, released to the Public Record Office
today, discloses new details of his improbable life before
he became a spy.

He had served a series of prison sentences, mostly for
crime although one came after "he behaved in Hyde Park in
a manner likely to offend the virtuous public and was caught
in flagrante delicto".

The file added: "He attracted women on the fringe of London
society, indulged in violent affairs with them and then
proceeded to blackmail them by producing compromising
photographs taken by an accomplice.

"He did not blush when he related how, having infected a
girl of 18 with VD, he blackmailed her by threatening to
tell her parents that she had given it to him."

Dobbs was arrested in Scotland after blowing the safe of
the headquarters of the Edinburgh Co-operative Society but
fled to Jersey where he was eventually jailed for cracking
the safe of a large dance hall.

After the Germans occupied the Channel Islands in 1940,
he was moved to a prison in France where he used the skills
of his former trade to make keys that allowed him to move
freely at night between the men's and the women's prisons.

Eventually he offered his services to the Germans as a spy
and was sent back into Britain with orders to blow up the
De Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield, Herts.

He handed himself over to MI5 who decided to play him back
against the Germans, using him to provide false information
as part of the Double Cross system.

They staged a fake explosion and Dobbs returned to Germany
a hero. "The Germans came to love Dobbs," the MI5 officer
said. "But although he went cynically through all the forms
he did not reciprocate. Dobbs loved himself, loved adventure
and loved his women, probably in that order."

Dobbs was sent to Norway to teach at a German spy school
in Oslo. But in the wake of D Day, the Germans sent him
back to Britain to check on the damage caused by the V
Bombs.

He was parachuted back into Britain happy to continue his
double cross activities for MI5 and to return to Oslo with
more false information.

But he confessed to having fallen in love with a Norwegian
girl named Connie and to having told her that he was working
for the British secret service.

It was therefore thought too dangerous for him to continue.
Dobbs was retired with a Pound6,000 payment from MI5, allowed
to keep Pound1,000 of the money the Germans had given him, and
had all his outstanding convictions quashed.

But he was seen "in fashionable places in London always
in the company of beautiful women of apparent culture",
the MI5 report said.

The report added: "The drain on his bank account was
watched with apprehension. He has been keeping the bad
company of some professional pugilist with whom he has
been hitting the high spots.

"What will happen when Dobbs, embroiled again in crime,
as he inevitably will be, stands up in court and pleads
leniency on grounds of highly secret wartime service?
The last chapter remains to be written."

--
"There is no nu-monet. There is only Zuul."

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Original file name: XXXX "Bob" by nu-monet - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:25