Arthur Owens

Arthur Graham Owens, later known as Arthur Graham White (14 April 1899 – 24 December 1957), was a Welsh double agent for the Allies during the Second World War. He was working for MI5 while appearing to the Abwehr (the German intelligence agency) to be one of their agents. Owens was known to MI5 by the codename SNOW, which was chosen as a play on his last name.

Recruitment by the British and the Germans Owens ran a company that made batteries for ships. As such, he was a civilian contractor for the Royal Navy and also had regular contact with the Kriegsmarine in Kiel. His first experience of espionage occurred in 1936 when he had been briefly employed by the Secret Intelligence Service to provide information on what he had seen in the German shipyards.

In 1938, Nikolaus Ritter, an Abwehr agent in Britain under the name "Dr Rantzau", made contact with him. His work also provided a cover for any foreign trips he might have to make. He visited Germany that year and was recruited by the Abwehr. His Abwehr reference was A3504 and was given the codename JOHNNY, during the previous war and had since served several prison sentences for fraud. Unable to trust Owens, MI5 had instructed Dicketts to verify Owens' bona fides and get himself infiltrated into Owens’ network, where he could be run as a separate, and if necessary, alternative source of information. Dicketts was instructed by Tar Robertson, head of the double agent section in MI5, to take his WW1 Staff Appointment with the Air Ministry Ritter instructed Dicketts to purchase a boat when he returned to England, so he could ferry German spies and sabotage equipment from the Nazi occupied Channel Islands into England. Owens claimed to have informed Dicketts before he even went into Germany, that Owens had told Ritter that both he and Dicketts were working for MI5, a fact which Dicketts strenuously denied. Owens viewed the fact that Dicketts had nonetheless gone willingly into Germany as proof that he had been 'turned' by the Germans. MI5 spent countless hours interrogating each agent, and in the end Dicketts' account was believed by some in MI5, and not by others. Owens was imprisoned until the end of the war for having endangered Dicketts' life and for having revealed secret information that his pre-war German radio transmitter was being operated by MI5.

The collapse of the Snow network ended the careers of double agents, Snow, Charlie, GW, Biscuit, Summer and Celery, although GW was able to re-establish himself through another network. Dicketts continued to work as an agent for MI5 until 1943, undertaking a further mission to Lisbon to help an Abwehr officer defect, and spent six months in South America until March 1942.