Frauenknecht offered to personally oversee the meticulous operation, although he pointed out that there were still risks during the transportation. Consequently, he volunteered someone he trusted, his cousin, to act as the driver. This was a risky move: at the time he was on the verge of committing treason. However, his offer was accepted with no reservation.
The plan was carefully put into operation. The photographer took images of each document: slow and tedious work when you consider that the documents numbered in the tens of thousands. He was then searched every evening before leaving the studio. Day after day, the security agents then carefully arranged the documents in their crates. Once a week, these crates were loaded onto a van bound for the incinerator, driven by Frauenknecht's cousin and supervised by Frauenknecht himself. This was not really in the job description of such a senior manager, but no one was surprised at his actions. Rather, people admired his dedication and the fact that he wanted to count the number of crates himself, before the security officer threw the plans in the incinerator and handed him a duplicate of the receipt for Sulzer's records.
Admittedly, Frauenknecht's system was actually rather ingenious, but for quite different reasons. The drive from the factory to the incinerator lasted for about fifteen minutes. Imagine there was somewhere along the route, such as a garage, where the crates could be unloaded and replaced by similar looking ones, before the van continued on its journey. This operation would only take around two or three minutes at most. These new boxes would contain old plans that Frauenknecht had collected from here and there. The security guard at the incinerator was not an engineer and so had no way of uncovering the deception. What is more, the documents were marked as ‘confidential', so he could not be too curious in any case.
The plan worked successfully for weeks, with no questions asked. Every Saturday, Frauenknecht and his cousin went back to the garage where the substitution had taken place and prepared more crates with fake plans for the following week. As for the crates containing the real plans, these were loaded into a car and were sent towards Germany, where they were unloaded in an industrial warehouse, close to the border. Once there, a driver from the warehouse, who regularly crossed the border and so was very familiar with the customs process on both sides, took charge of the crates and drove them into Germany. Afterwards, the driver (Strecker), would go to a small private airfield where the boxes were loaded onto a small plane. From here they would be flown to an airport in southern Italy where an El Al plane would be waiting. Under this careful operation, almost all the Mirage plans arrived in Israel. There were a few exceptions: even the best-laid plans have flaws.
In this instance, it was a case of human error. Still sticking to the official version, it was the driver's fault. On a beautiful Saturday, the owner of the warehouse near the border had decided to make an inspection of his company. In front of the hanger he saw a car, waiting inside was one of his drivers, Strecker. The man was surprised to see him there on a Saturday as the business was closed. What's more, as soon as the driver saw his boss, he was startled and quickly disappeared. Intrigued, the owner decided to inspect the hangar, where by chance he discovered a crate marked ‘confidential'. Naturally, he immediately alerted the Swiss authorities and fairly soon, the police discovered the root of the issue. Frauenknecht was arrested and freely admitted what he had done, claiming that his conscience was clear. Everything he had done was to help Israel and he had in no way intended harm his country's interests. His actions were legally, not morally wrong. He was very confident and even dared to declare during his trial that in reality, far from causing harm to France, the whole affair had provided great publicity for the Mirage aircraft and for the Dassault company.
The story of the warehouse owner's ‘accidental' visit to the hangar should obviously be taken with a pinch of salt. In reality, the man, who was also a local deputy, clearly went to inspect the warehouse after being told that something suspect was happening. We do not know who alerted him, but there were certainly many who had an interest in preventing the documents from flying to Israel: it's enemies, which included the Arab states or even the KGB. French whistleblowers can probably be excused from the list for at least two reasons: firstly, because the intelligence agency had worked so closely with Israel for a number of years, it felt rather sympathetic towards it. This resulted in a general hostility towards the embargo imposed by de Gaulle. In addition, they were fully aware of the plans, which were no doubt approved and even favoured by some.
The French services had therefore secretly helped Israel in this matter. It is even possible that the idea to circumvent the embargo via Switzerland, where Sulzer were manufacturing the Mirage, was suggested by Mossad agents working in the intelligence bureau. This means that the version of the story proclaiming that Frauenknecht was acting on his own initiative to help Israel, is certainly fabricated. He undoubtedly had sympathy with the Jewish state, but it should not be forgotten that this seemingly selfless character was paid quite handsomely for his work. He was not greedy, however, and could have asked for much more than the $200,000 he received.
The idea to steal the plans was therefore by no means his alone. This story was later dreamt up to lessen the severity of his actions, but also to conceal Israel's responsibility and to avoid a diplomatic incident. Indeed, the Swiss are quite touchy when it comes to illegal activities taking place in their territory, so it was out of the question for Mossad to appear to visible. This is why Frauenknecht claimed that he had stolen the plans in order to rescue Israel, which being seriously threatened by its Arab neighbours. Even though this deception could not last forever, he could still save a little of Switzerland's dignity, which is why the stolen plans were shipped from a German airfield, not a Swiss one.
In reality, the whole affair was conducted by Mossad. The driver, Strecker, who had claimed to be an East-German refugee, was actually an Israeli agent. He was the man charged with transporting the documents from Switzerland into Germany. He had disappeared even before Frauenknecht was arrested, as soon as he had been surprised by his boss on that Saturday.
The ingenuity behind the how the operation was planned and executed (the pretext of the microfilm, the use of the garage between the Sulzer company and the incinerator, the fake plane etc.), certainly carries the mark of the secret service. Is it possible that one man alone could dream up and carry out such an arrangement? The Swiss, who understood exactly what had taken place, expelled the local Mossad agent in retaliation.
It appeared that in total, out of the twenty-four crates of plans, Frauenknecht had managed to steal twenty. According to the Gazette de Lausanne, Alfred Frauenknecht sent around 2,000 drawings of thrusters, 80-100,000 descriptions of manufacturing methods, 40,000 drawings of equipment and 15,000 specifications concerning various elements and procedures. This equated to hundreds of kilos of documents.
Steve Eytan75
In fact, immediately after the Six Day War, the top priority for Israel was combat aircraft, which was intended to act as a ‘brother’ to the Mirage, but what everyone in the country called the ‘Super Mirage’.The ‘Commodore Jet’, which was built by the IAI Arava, provided them with the necessary know-how, as well as the fact that they could procure the necessary tools and equipment from Europe, particularly France, not to mention the rare material needed to manufacture special alloys. Despite the embargo, the French customs generally turned a blind eye. However, a serious problem quickly arose: it would not be enough to simply own a Mirage already and consequently work out how to build others. You also had to know what tools should be used to make each piece of equipment and where exactly those pieces needed to be fitted. This was where the business operation in Switzerland came in. Here the Israeli engineers could see how an important piece of equipment could be manufactured at a sub-contractor such as Sulzer, using a machine that was normally used for making watch cases. Despite the premature arrest of Alfred Frauenknecht, the operation had been successful and had enabled the Israelis to be ne
arly three years ahead of their initial forecast for production. Al Schwimmer, the man in charge of the project, had planned for the first prototype flight in 1974. By the end of 1969 he was in a position to announce to Moshe Dyan that the first one would be ready by the end of 1971.
It was a long time before western military attaches took this Israeli Super-Mirage, known as Kfir (young lion), seriously. The idea that a small country could build a supersonic and sophisticated device so quickly was neither logical nor reasonable. Yet the brilliant operation to steal the plans had clearly worked: the Israelis were able to design and build an aircraft that looked suspiciously like the Mirage III-S in record time.
As for Frauenknecht, the full charges against him were yet to be determined. He could be charged with treason for helping a foreign power, seen as the plans themselves were not Swiss but French: Sulzer, had merely been the custodian. This meant that Frauenknecht had not acted in direct violation of Swiss interests. The judges had the choice between a section of the penal code that punishes the disclosure of economic information and another that punishes espionage and the divulging of state secrets. In the first instance, Frauenknecht risked three years in prison. For the second, twenty. His lawyers obviously did their best to ensure that the first charge was maintained, but they failed.
Nevertheless, Frauenknecht did not receive a harsh punishment, as surprising as that may seem. He must undoubtedly have benefitted from some form of sympathy. After all, while he did receive some money from the Israelis, it was little in comparison to what he could have demanded.
The morale dimension of his actions was also emphasised. In this instance, his lawyers relied upon the magistrates' pride by recalling an embarrassing story for Switzerland, whereby a Swiss citizen called Gruninger had been convicted after the war for allowing more than 3,000 Jewish refugees to find shelter in the country, despite the orders of his superiors. Frauenknecht's lawyers compared the two cases by arguing that their client had acted out of necessity. The state itself was in a particularly uncomfortable position, in that its own secret services had clearly failed and been outplayed by Mossad.
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One can question the relatively moderate sentence that will allow Alfred Frauenknecht to be freed in the course of 1972. It seems the court took into account that, according to the deposition, the Sulzer engineer was not an ‘ordinary spy’. Despite the considerable sum of money he received (which has now curiously been withheld by the state), Frauenknecht was not motivated primarily by greed. Nor did he want to harm Swiss interests. Finally, we can assume that the bias towards Israel that exists in our country had some role to play in the decision.
The Israelis, of course, expressed their gratitude to Frauenknecht, but in secret. Rewarding him was tantamount to recognising Mossad’s full involvement in the affair, so how to do it was difficult.They decided to unofficially invite him to Israel: an ordinary citizen wrote to him and asked him to visit, promising to cover his accommodation costs. However, it is possible that the Israelis found another way to quietly thank the man who had allowed them to build their own version of the Mirage aircraft as quickly as they did.
Chapter 14
Gabriele Gast: West Germany’s Juliet
We call them ‘Romeos', a title given by a western journalist to East German agents, who were responsible for seducing secretaries in West Germany and instead making them work for the intelligence agencies of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). It was a very successful business, which during the Cold War allowed the eastern camp to glean a great deal of confidential information. Indeed, the secretaries were actually chosen based on their roles: as assistants to ministers or politicians, for example, and the man who was in charge of this operation was none other than Markus Wolf, the head of East German Intelligence.
By launching his ‘Romeos' into the West, Wolf was adapting and strengthening the Soviet system of using ‘honeytraps': women of little virtue who were tasked with trapping western agents stationed in the USSR - a proven method in the world of espionage. They seduced, slept with and then photographed the agent, provided that any spouse did not arrive unexpectedly and threaten to provoke a scandal. This was what had happened to the French ambassador to Moscow, prompting scathing remarks from General de Gaulle.
What was the real role of these Romeos and Juliet, and in particular, a certain woman called Gabriele Gast?
Before coming to the story of Gabriele Gast, we should first mentioned Markus Wolf, the creator of what would be known as the Romeo system. Wolf, the great man of German intelligence, was the stuff of legend and for once, the term is not misused. He was born in the early 1920s, in Stuttgart, to a family of Jewish artists: his father was a playwright and one of his brothers was a filmmaker. Immediately after Hitler seized power and they became aware of the growing threat in Germany, the Wolfs decided to leave the country. As communists they naturally headed to the motherland of socialism, the USSR. There, the young Markus, now called Misha by his friends, attended the Comintern (Communist International), an international communist organisation that advocated a worldwide communist revolution. Markus then worked for a Soviet radio station that broadcasted in Germany. The young man, who was already very committed to the cause, was supported very early on by the ‘organs' as they were called at the time, meaning Soviet bureaucracy and its leaders. The proof of this is that in 1945, Wolf was among the first German communists who were allowed to enter Berlin after the Nazi surrender. His career then progressed very swiftly: he was a journalist, then a diplomat for the new GDR and worked for the Communist Party Central Committee.
In the early 1950s he was told he was to be one of the future leaders of the East German intelligence bureau. Upon leaving for Germany and despite what he may have said later, Wolf remained a Moscow man. The ties were unbreakable. What is more, the service he was to lead played an essential role in Soviet intelligence operations in Europe, perhaps even the most important. In spite of its subordination to the KGB, his department was in direct contact with the West: there was no easier way for an East German to go into West Germany and become a spy. In the early years of the GDR the borders between the two countries were still open and the eastern agencies consequently had an active policy of infiltrating West Germany's main administrations and even its political parties. Thousands of spies took up their positions in the West. Some were active, while others remained dormant for a long time, giving them the opportunity to set up an ideal situation for themselves. This spider's web was woven so densely that it was estimated that no information could remain secret for more than a few days in West Germany. Even today, there are men and women living in a unified Germany that have never been exposed.
When he was in his early thirties, Wolf became the head of the HVA,77 the GDR's intelligence agency, an organisation that reported directly to the Ministry of State Security. According to the activities imposed by the KGB on the intelligence agencies in communist countries, the HVA was entrusted with infiltrating and providing false information in West Germany and NATO. This was in contrast to the Stasi, which was solely responsible for domestic intelligence, despite also reporting to the Ministry of State Security, but was devoted more to spying on East German citizens. In spite of these distinctions, there were no doubt links between the two, regardless of Wolf's subsequent denials.
Wolf was a man of amazing qualities. A zealous communist and even a Stalinist, he was nothing like the other East German civil servants. He was cultured, very intelligent and throughout his long years as head of East German intelligence, always attached great importance to the human side of his business. Without going so far as to say he was a philanthropist, it is true that Wolf certainly paid a great deal of attention to the psychological aspects of being a spy. Oddly enough, he never hesitated to sacrifice someone in order to maintain contact with his agents, or to move them out of the GDR completely. This would be particularly true in the case of Gabriele Gast.
Wolf reigned as the head of the
intelligence service for over thirty years, even though he enjoyed a very strained relationship with his minister in charge. He owed his longevity, in addition to his talent, to the strong ties he kept with Moscow and had rendered such service to the his Soviet KGB comrades that he had shown himself to be irreplaceable. He had also carefully built up his legend of being a man who lived in the shadows, so much so that Westerners did not see a picture of him until the end of the 1980s, at a time when he had already stepped down as the head of his department.
But how did Wolf manage to have such a successful career as a spy? In order to weave such a veritable cobweb in West Germany, he had to develop particularly effective methods of recruitment. Naturally, he used all the traditional methods used in the intelligence world, such as blackmail. It must not be forgotten that at the end of the war, the KGB had raided the Nazi Party's archives, and by blackmailing those who had Nazi secrets to hide, he was able to recruit a large number of East German agents. On the other hand, Wolf and his agency also used more conventional means of blackmail: money and sex. Above all, Wolf was an innovator and in almost a Machiavellian fashion, ordered his department to search systematically for potential recruitment targets. Consequently, thanks to his contacts in West Germany and West Berlin, he was able to identify thousands of possible targets. The HVA also used wiretaps, with some experts estimating that Wolf and his agents were able to listen in on hundreds of thousands of telephone conversations in West Germany. In an even more subtle tactic, Wolf realised that it was often easier and more useful to recruit a subordinate rather than a manager. A good secretary often knows as much as their boss: they type their letters or forms and sometimes even know the combination to the safe. If the secretary or soldier works in an organisation where information is continuously circulating around, he or she would have easier access to these documents than a higher-ranking official. What is more, no one pays any attention to these people, which is how Wolf managed to recruit dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these people.
Great Spies of the 20th Century Page 16