12. A Spy Catcher Who Exaggerated His Expertise
In 1905, Kenneth Barnard Thomas Folkes was born in Gloucester, England. By the time WWII began, he had worked for a dozen years as a law clerk for a firm that handled many criminal cases, before he got a job with a carpet manufacturer in the Midlands. In 1940, he enlisted as a private with the Corps of Military Police, but mentioned only the legal work in his background questionnaire. Between that, a sharp mind, and a fair knowledge of French, he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps and commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Folkes was a self-promoter. He claimed that within a few months of enlisting, he had interrogated a prisoner of war and outsmarted him “until he told me what he wanted to hide“. Nobody questioned his claims, and by late 1940, he was offered command of New Zealand’s fledgling Security Intelligence Bureau (SIB), and a promotion to major. Once in Wellington, NZ, Folkes inflated his employment background. He presented himself to the locals as a former Midlands lawyer, now devoted to the security of New Zealand’s war secrets. What followed was a medley of unexpected plot twists that came close to upending the country.