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Robertson knew that Owens had been to see the air attaché at the British embassy after his first meeting with the Doctor. This was before Dicketts had arrived in Lisbon, and he had mentioned nothing about the Doctor confronting him. This led Robertson to the conclusion that it was very
possible
Owens had made the whole thing up.

During his next interrogation Owens revealed that he and Dicketts had come to an arrangement not to reveal that the Doctor knew that they were working for British Intelligence. Perhaps significantly, Owens had only decided to disclose this at the end of his interrogation and after it had been suggested by Robertson himself. If such an arrangement had been made, Robertson believed that it would have been amongst the first thing, that both men would have said.

Despite the fact that Owens’ demeanour under interrogation gave
Robertson
the impression that he was telling the truth and that Owens himself seemed to believe that he was telling the truth, Robertson concluded that it was highly unlikely that the Doctor knew Owens was working for British Intelligence. He ended his summary of the interrogations, ‘I am more than ever convinced that S
NOW
’s is a case not for the Security Service, but for a brain specialist.’

Despite the doubts about the reliability of Owens’ testimony, MI5 could not ignore the fact that a Nazi invasion was imminent. As such, plans had to be made for anyone who might have knowledge of the double-cross system including their agents’ families. As a result Marriott was told to make his way to Weybridge where he would pick up Lily Bade and her baby daughter Jean,
along with Dicketts’ wife Kaye. He would then make sure that they, along with Owens’ son Robert, were taken to North Wales. All the documents relating to Owens’ activities were to be burnt and his wireless transmitter was to be packed up and removed from the house. Marriott had instructions that if it looked likely that Lily might fall into enemy hands then he was to take ‘any steps necessary to prevent this from occurring’. If it looked like Robert Owens was going to be captured then Marriott was to assist him in preventing this from happening and was to take with him not less than £10 in cash; petrol coupons for £20; a revolver and two pairs of handcuffs for Lily and Robert Owens.
Marriott
was instructed to burn these orders once he had learned them by heart.

Such was MI5’s concern about Owens that on 4 April 1941 a Harley Street doctor was contacted to assess his physical and mental health. MI5 believed that Owens would agree to Robertson accompanying him in the guise of a friend, but if he did not the doctor agreed to tell MI5 ‘whether he regarded him as the sort of person whose word could be at all trusted.’ It was also mentioned to the physician that, ‘if the subsequent treatment of S
NOW
was a matter of doubt, it would be an advantage to us if the possibility of sending him to a nursing home were not excluded by the medical advice.’

Before meeting the Harley Street doctor there was further evidence of Owens’ decline when he claimed to have overheard the barman at his local pub, the Otter, talking about him. The barman was apparently of the
opinion
that the people living at Homefields where Owens, Dicketts and their MI5 minders were staying, were working for British Intelligence. According to the barman, he also knew that there was a wireless transmitter operating from the house. This had thrown Owens into a state of panic and he claimed that the game was up and the whole operation was now blown. He also asserted that his life was now in danger along with that of his wife and child.

Robertson thought the whole thing a smokescreen, full of Owens’ usual embellishments, and Masterman considered it highly unlikely that the
Germans
would bother sending over anyone to kill Owens, and told him to go home and forget about it.

Up to this point Owens and Dicketts had been kept apart to prevent them discussing what had really happened in Lisbon and the discrepancies in their stories. However, it was decided that one way of bringing the matter to a head would be to force them to recount their differing stories at an interrogation session at which they were both present. Before MI5 brought Owens and Dicketts together there was one more attempt to obtain at a more consistent version from Owens. To achieve this MI5 took a different
approach and let Owens tell his story in his own words and write down what he said. The result was a more coherent story which added a few more important details. His description of his first meeting with the Doctor was the same as on previous occasions, with Owens confronted by the Doctor and admitting that he had been walked in on by MI5. Then Owens claimed that the Doctor had asked him about C
ELERY
and Owens had told the Doctor that the reason he had picked him was because he was an Air Force pilot who had fallen out with the authorities and he was very pro-Nazi in his beliefs. Where Owens’ story became more logical was in his
explanation
of why he did not trust Dicketts enough to tell him that the Doctor had confronted him. Owens claimed that when he had first met Dicketts in Lisbon, Dicketts had been in a bad mood because of the terrible boat journey he had been through, and that he had received news about what was going to happen to Owens when he returned. Owens claimed that before he could tell him anything about his meeting with the Doctor, Dicketts had revealed that Robertson had told him that Lily and baby Jean would be held hostage and that Owens was going to be shot when he got back to England. Dicketts had supposedly told Owens that before he left Britain he had been taken to a meeting with Robertson and instructed to find out as much as he could about Owens, and to record the serial numbers of any banknotes that Owens gave him. Dicketts is then supposed to have said ‘it looks like a double-cross to me. What do you think?’ Owens had replied that he did not think that Robertson would do anything like that, but Dicketts thought that Robertson acted scared. Dicketts claimed that Robertson had told them that there would be no censor in Lisbon and so they could say what they liked – and to tell the Doctor that Robertson would like to see him.

Owens now claimed that he had told Dicketts in the presence of the Doctor that he knew Owens had been approached by MI5, although he added that he was very drunk at this meeting and could not remember everything that had happened. He did, however, recall that the Doctor had asked Dicketts if he was with him, and Dicketts said that he was, and had added ‘I shall not sell my country and I am going to do everything in my power to change the system and get rid of certain people who are no use to the country and people who I do not like.’ Dicketts is supposed to have told the Doctor that he only received £3 a week, to which the Doctor had replied that he ‘was taking a big risk for so little money’.

Owens also remembered that Dicketts had told the Doctor that Owens was going to be shot when he got back to Britain, to which Owens had replied that
he thought they were probably trying to fool Dicketts by saying this. Owens claimed that the Doctor had offered him the possibility of going to Germany to work for him, and then being Dicketts’ contact in the Channel Islands. Owens claimed to have turned this offer down because it would mean abandoning Lily and the baby. The whole situation regarding Dicketts seems to have worried Owens because he had sent a wire to Lily asking her to get in touch with Robertson to prepare a quick exit from Portugal if he should need one.

In this version of his testimony, Owens claimed that Dicketts had asked him not to mention anything about his trip to Germany to MI5 when they got back and Owens had agreed to this. When Dicketts asked if Owens was going to tell MI5 about the £10,000 he had been given, Owens said ‘I shall tell Robby as soon as I get back.’

Owens also appeared to remember more about a conversation he had with someone at the British embassy concerning Dicketts. Owens now claimed that he had been told, ‘Between you and me, some of our people on the other side don’t like the man and what is more, one of the German
Intelligence
in Lisbon revealed that a cable had been sent to Madeira asking their people there to trace a man who was on the
Cressado
as this man was a major in the RAF. His name was believed to be Dicketts and that he is one of our best men, and had given valuable information.’ Upon hearing this Owens claimed that he nearly had fallen through the floor in surprise. The man at the embassy had then told Owens to watch his step, and that if there was any sign of danger they would get him out at once.

One area in which Owens seemed to have regained considerable recall was the vexed question of what happened when Dicketts had returned to Lisbon from Germany. Owens was now able to recall the conversation and reported that Dicketts had said:

Having related this conversation, Owens then recalled that Dicketts had bought ‘some dope’ which he said was called Veronel and that the bag in which the drugs were contained was from a store in Hamburg. Owens then repeated his accusation that Dicketts said that he and Owens were supposed to go and see Winston Churchill in order to bring the war to an end. This was supposed to earn Owens some sort of decoration and would put them in such an important position that they would be able to take their families to live in Germany.

Owens also claimed that Dicketts had been to the house of a Doctor Rossin who worked for the German diplomatic service in Lisbon and while there had listened to conversations with Roosevelt, Churchill and Hitler which had been secretly recorded in the house.

Whilst certain elements of this statement brought some clarity to Owens’ story, there was still the knowledge that he had now been through several interrogation sessions and could fit his story to what he thought would serve his own ends. There were also elements of this statement that seemed to go further than he had previously gone, but whether these new elements were real or not was unclear.

On 5 April 1941 Guy Liddell wrote in his diary about the importance of understanding exactly what had happened in Lisbon:

On 9 April 1941 Owens was interrogated by Dick White, who was then Guy Liddell’s personal assistant, and explained that he had been brought in because he had not met Owens before and might be able to form a more objective opinion about what happened in Lisbon. White then proceeded to go through the whole interrogation process again with much the same results. However, after he had gone over the main points he returned to the matter of whether Owens had told Dicketts what had transpired between him and the Doctor at their first meeting in Lisbon.