In the BBC television series, "Churchill's Bodyguard" (original broadcast 2006), it is suggested that ("Abwehr") German intelligence agents were in contact with members of the merchant navy in Britain and were informed of Churchill's departure and route. German spies watching the airfields of neutral countries may have mistaken Howard and his manager, as they boarded their aircraft, for Churchill and his bodyguard. "Churchill's Bodyguard" noted that Thompson wrote that Winston Churchill at times seemed clairvoyant about suspected threats to his safety, and acting on a premonition, he changed his departure to the following day. The crux of the theory posited that Churchill asked one of his men to tamper with an engine on his aircraft, giving him an excuse not to travel at that time. Speculation by historians has also centred on whether the British code breakers had decrypted several top secret Enigma messages that detailed the assassination plan. Churchill wanted to protect any information uncovered by the code breakers so the "Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" would not suspect that their Enigma machines were compromised. Although the overwhelming majority of published documentation of the case repudiates this theory, it remains a possibility. Coincidentally, the timing of Howard's takeoff and the flight path was similar to Churchill's, making it easy for the Germans to mistake the two flights.