Operation Jungle

Operation Jungle was a program by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) early in the Cold War (1948–1955) for the clandestine insertion of intelligence and resistance agents into Poland and the Baltic states. The agents were mostly Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian exiles who had been trained in the UK and Sweden and were to link up with the anti-Soviet resistance in the occupied states (the Cursed soldiers, the Forest Brothers). The naval operations of the program were carried out by the Royal Navy and German crewmembers of the German Mine Sweeping Administration. The American-sponsored Gehlen Organization also got involved in the draft of agents from Eastern Europe. However, the KGB penetrated the network and captured or turned most of the agents.

History

In the late 1940s the MI6 established a special center in Chelsea, London, to train agents to be sent to the Baltic states. The operation was codenamed "Jungle" and led by Henry Carr, director of the Northern European Department of MI6, Baltic section head Alexander McKibbin. The Estonian group was led by Alfons Rebane, who had also served as an Waffen-SS Standartenführer during Estonia's occupation by Nazi Germany, the Latvian group led by former Luftwaffe officer Rūdolfs Silarājs and the Lithuanian group led by history professor Stasys Žymantas.