Pre-Mission Briefing
A SELECTION OF RECOMMENDED READING TO PREPARE FOR YOUR MISSION
Tangier: From the Romans to the Rolling Stones - Richard Hamilton
Written by a former BBC North Africa correspondent, this serves as an excellent background primer on the city. Pay special attention to the description of Dean’s bar and its shady regulars.
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FDR'S 12 Apostles: The Spies Who Paved the Way for the Invasion of North Africa - Hal Vaughan
The compelling story of US intelligence operatives working out of Tangier and other north African cities in the early days of the OSS, preparing the ground for Operation Torch in 1942. The group were an eclectic bunch, including a former jewellery salesman, a Harvard anthropologist, and a Parisian playboy...Â
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Burning Bright - Edward Wharton-Tigar with A. J. Wilson
The autobiography of the SOE operative sent to Tangier in 1941 under the cover of a Consulate-General cipher clerk, His mission - the planning and execution of Operation Falaise. The success of the operation, which destroyed a German outpost monitoring shipping through the Strait of Gibraltar, won him an MBE. After the war, his claim to fame was amassing a world record-breaking cigarette-card collection.
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A North Africa Story: The Anthropologist as OSS Agent, 1941-1943 - Carleton S. Coon
The memoir of the Harvard anthropologist who was one of FDR's Apostles. He used his anthropological fieldwork as cover for his espionage work.Â
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Here are a few ideas to pass the time in your hideout in the socco, sipping mint tea and monitoring goings outside...
Safe House Suggestions
Let It Come Down - Paul Bowles.
A thriller that perfectly captures the post-war paranoia of the Interzone. A descent into the world of the early Cold War, a Soviet agent and CIA operative are the backdrop to Bowles’ protagonist entering into a hashish-induced madness.
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Tangier - William Bayer
Set in the 1970s, Tangier is psychological noir novel features a burnt-out former Soviet agent, ageing former Nazis and various corrupt and degenerate expats. Well worth a read.Â
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If you prefer to keep the shutters closed and watch a spy movie, why don’t you try one of these (though be careful to download with your VPN switched on, standard operational security!)
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The Bourne Ultimatum - Universal Pictures
Jason Bourne is on the trail of a missing CIA station chief, culminating in a dramatic foot chase through the alleys and across the rooftops of the Medina. Our walk through Tangier was much more leisurely...
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The Living Daylights - MGM
If you didn't have the chance to catch this one in Gibraltar, Timothy Dalton’s Bond follows us to Tangier, and like Bourne, finds himself involved in a chase across the Medina’s well-trodden rooftops!  We never made it up there, but we did pop into the Gran Café de Paris which can be spotted in both films.
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For those seeking further inspiration, we recommend checking out Spybrary
Key Locations
Globales Reina Cristina, Paseo de la Conferencia, Algeciras
Strategically located between Gibraltar and Tangier, this atmospheric four-storey Victorian-Moorish hotel with white stucco, a red terracotta roof, and arched windows sits in 20 acres of subtropical gardens. On a clear day Gibraltar is visible across the bay from its sea-view terrace, demonstrating why this hotel has been the staging post for every surveillance operation in the region for over a century. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, based himself here with a reconnaissance team to survey Gibraltar for Operation Felix - Hitler's plan to seize the Rock.
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El Minzah Hotel, 85 Rue de la Liberté, Tanger
Built in 1930 at the command of John Crichton-Stuart, the 4th Marquess of Bute, a British aristocrat with extensive interests in the International Zone, this iconic North African hotel is a must visit. Push through the iron-studded wooden doors on Rue de la Liberté and into its magnificent Andalusian courtyard, you may feel you've arrived in a different century entirely. You'll be following in the footsteps of Ian Fleming, who stayed here on a wartime visit, and returned to write.Â
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L’hôtel Continental Tanger, Rue Dar Baroud N° 36, Ancienne Medina
The oldest surviving hotel in Tangier, opened 1870, it is built into the old city walls on the port-side edge of the medina, exactly where any agent arriving from the sea would have come ashore. During the International Zone period, the Continental served the working level of the intelligence world - not the Abwehr generals who stayed at the Reina Cristina, nor the senior OSS officers who used the Legation, but the middle tier: couriers, cutouts, journalists, and the various 'businessmen' whose business was rather difficult to define.
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Tangier American Legation Museum, 8 Rue d’Amérique
A five-storey whitewashed building embedded deep in the old medina, whose street frontage belies the series of beautifully restored 19th-century rooms, courtyards, and exhibition spaces that lie behind. America's oldest diplomatic property outside the United States, continuously owned since 1821, it houses a fascinating exhibition on the Legation's role during World War II. Visitors can see the restored listening room, which the wartime OSS staff called 'the closet', because of its small size. Here radio intelligence was coordinated during Operation Torch - the Allied landings in Nrth Africa in November 1942.
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