In 1971, the British politician Rupert Allason, writing under the pen name "Nigel West", became interested in Garbo. For several years, he interviewed various former intelligence officers, but none knew Garbo's real name. Eventually, Tomás Harris' friend Anthony Blunt, the Soviet spy who had penetrated MI5, said that he had met Garbo, and knew him as "either Juan or José García". Allason's investigation was stalled from that point until March 1984, when a former MI5 officer who had served in Spain supplied Pujol's full name. Allason hired a research assistant to call every J. García—an extremely common name in Spain—in the Barcelona phone book, eventually contacting Pujol's nephew. Pujol and Allason finally met in New Orleans on 20 May 1984.