#The sheer amount of aliases Tobias has by the time he turns 21 almost rivals L's own 😭😭😭

[yeonban]

The man, the myth, the legend, who inspired some of my takes for Tobias' rapid rise to opulence:

"During the early stages of World War II, Pujol decided that he must make a contribution "for the good of humanity" by helping Britain, which was at the time Germany's only adversary. He approached the British Embassy in Madrid three different times, but they showed no interest in employing him as a spy. Therefore, he resolved to establish himself as a German agent before approaching the British again to offer his services as a double-agent.

Pujol created an identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official who could travel to London on official business; he also obtained a fake Spanish diplomatic passport by fooling a printer into thinking Pujol worked for the Spanish embassy in Lisbon. His instructions were to move to Britain and recruit a network of British agents. He moved instead to Lisbon; – using a tourist's guide to Britain, reference books and magazines from the Lisbon Public Library, and newsreel reports he saw in cinemas – created seemingly credible reports that appeared to come from London. He claimed to be travelling around Britain and submitted his travel expenses based on fares listed in a British railway guide.

During this time he created an extensive network of fictitious sub-agents living in different parts of Britain. His reports were intercepted by the British Ultra communications interceptions programme, and seemed so credible that the British counter-intelligence service MI5 launched a full-scale spy hunt. The British had become aware that someone had been misinforming the Germans, and realised the value of this after the Kriegsmarine wasted resources attempting to hunt down a non-existent convoy reported to them by Pujol.

Pujol wrote 315 letters, averaging 2,000 words, addressed to a post-office box in Lisbon supplied by the Germans. His fictitious spy network was so efficient and verbose that his German handlers were overwhelmed and made no further attempts to recruit any additional spies in the UK. The information supplied to German intelligence was a mixture of complete fiction, genuine information of little military value, and valuable military intelligence artificially delayed.

For radio communication, he needed the strongest hand encryption the Germans had. The Germans provided him with this system, which was in turn supplied to the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. His encrypted messages were to be received in Madrid, manually decrypted, and re-encrypted with an Enigma machine for retransmission to Berlin. Having both the original text and the Enigma-encoded intercept of it, the codebreakers had the best possible source material.

On occasion, he had to invent reasons why his agents had failed to report easily available information that the Germans would eventually know about. For example, he reported that his (fabricated) Liverpool agent had fallen ill just before a major fleet movement from that port, and so was unable to report the event. To support this story, the agent eventually "died" and an obituary was placed in the local newspaper as further evidence to convince the Germans. The Germans were also persuaded to pay a pension to the agent's (also fabricated) widow. The Germans paid Pujol US$340,000 over the course of the war to support his network of agents, which at one point totaled 27 fabricated characters."

#muse: tobias. #* tobias. / development. #ask to tag #This man was such an icon I can't even UADUISADHSAD8AIDU #Tobias 1000% did something similar except on a much larger scale (not just 2 countries; and not only in the military dept) #The sheer amount of aliases Tobias has by the time he turns 21 almost rivals L's own 😭😭😭 #If one day Wammy's decides to hunt him down it'd be such a hilarious experience bc they'd realize he's intrinsically tied to EVERY #field you can possibly think of; and has allies that'd stop any investigation on his behalf thru any means necessary w/o him asking them to #Some of these connections are genuine; some are completely fabricated like above ^; some are thru blackmail; some are thru other allies etc #'Which country is he loyal to?' None; next question! ADHSAUIDSJASDK in theory it should be the UK bc of his upbringing but #precisely BECAUSE of his upbringing it isn't the UK. His only allegiance is to Wammy's House and even that is... dependent on the context #I mean he accomplishes his role as a 'safeguard of peace' as per Wammy's wishes/goals; but he has Such a chaotic way of doing so... #He considered the US for a bit too but the vice president cheering on Kira irritated him enough that he dismissed that idea