ANY great wartime intelligence that might have been gained from Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess when he baled out over Eaglesham near Glasgow, was lost because of the Dad's Army-style interrogation he received from local Home Guard
officers, it emerges today.
Intelligence papers released by the Public Record Office detail how Home Guard officers took it upon themselves to conduct an interrogation in their HQ - a former Scout hut.
MI5 officers were also shocked to learn that a Polish national was brought in to act as official interpreter during the amateurish inquisition.
The papers reveal that Hess, who was taken into custody by the farm worker who found him, was totally composed and relaxed throughout.
At the time, Hess insisted his name was Alfred Horn. He wanted to speak to the Duke of Hamilton to bring the war to a close on terms that would have meant the overthrow of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Having lost the initiative in interrogating Hess, it was suggested to MI5 that a ''truth drug'' be administered to pick his brains. The suggestion came from a radio engineer who had been treated with Evapan Sodium after a mental breakdown.
Among other episodes covered by the newly-released papers, it emerges that a 21-year-old Greenock seaman was prepared to put at risk the lives of thousands of fellow seafarers through lust, greed, and the promise of personal aggrandisement if Germany won the war.
In the end, however, Duncan Alexander Croall Scott-Ford's life ended on the gallows in Wandsworth Prison in 1942 after a secret Old Bailey trial.
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