by Vikas Khatri
By late 1961, Lotz was back in Egypt, with 17 trunks of luggage and a Volkswagen car. A police colonel escorted him down the gangway from his ship at Alexandria to a typical Arab embrace from General Ghorab. His trunks were waved through customs, and a police escort gave him VIP passage off the crowded quayside. The new German immigrant brought expensive presents for his new friends – stereo record players, tape recorders, coffee makers, food mixers. He also imported something he told no one about – a secret radio transmitter hidden in the heel of one of his riding boots. And, to the delight of the Egyptians, he had acquired a wife.
Marrying Waltraudt Neumann, a busty, blonde who looked typically German, was something of a feat for Lotz because he was already married, to an Israeli girl, the mother of his two children. It took delicate persuasion from Mossad to convince her that Lotz’s ‘wedding ceremony’ in Munich was purely a marriage of convenience, necessary to perfect his cover in Egypt. And Waltraudt proved an invaluable ally for Lotz, helping him host the lavish parties at which champagne loosened tongues, and asking questions which, from Lotz, would have been highly impertinent and suspicious. The Egyptians treated her like a queen, and many would do almost anything for her.
The Lotzes established their stud farm in the fashionable Cairo suburb of Zamalek, on an island in the Nile, and lived first in a nearby apartment, then in a luxurious eight-bedroom villa in Gizeh. They slipped easily into the upper class social round, riding in the morning, lazing by the Cavalry Club swimming pool, sipping cocktails at sunset, partying almost every evening. Lotz stabled some horses at a riding school in Abbasia, and established the habit of climbing a tower by the school’s race track to watch them being exercised. From the tower, he also had a perfect view of the Egyptian army’s biggest tank depot next door, and could see when tanks were mobilised for action, and which direction they were sent. Livestock deals were also a good excuse for Lotz’s periodic trips back to Germany, to pass on what he learned to his spymasters. And his high-up contacts helped him learn a lot.
General Ghorab introduced him to the governor of the Suez Canal zone, and all three toured military installations there in the governor’s car. General Osman invited him to inspect rocket bases in the Sinai and Negev deserts and even posed for a portrait in front of one of the rockets on its launching pad. He believed Lotz was just a keen amateur photographer. Once, and Waltraudt took a chance and drove their car down a prohibited road in the desert between Cairo and Ismailia to check out reports of a secret base there, guards who arrested them were so impressed with the names Lotz gave as people who would vouch for him that the couple were entertained to lunch at the base by the commanding officer.
Top Egyptian army men felt free to share ultra-secret plans at Lotz’s parties. Colonel Anwar Sadat, later to succeed Nasser as president, was among the guests coaxed by Lotz to chat about Cairo’s intentions against Israel, and the prospects of concerted military action by Middle East nations. Germans working on the feared rocket projects were equally forthcoming. Lulled into a false sense of security by Lotz’s pretended nostalgia for the Third Reich, they moaned about technical hitches and the problems of working with Arabs. Lotz was able to monitor progress on the weapons, and pinpoint key workers who were targets later of an Israeli terror campaign involving letter bombs, anonymous phone threats and gun-point warnings. Lotz was so close to the German workers, and so trusted by the Egyptians, that he was asked by General Osman to report on some of the immigrants. When Lotz alleged that one brilliant scientist had no sympathy for Nasser and was working only for the money, the German’s six-year contract was cancelled and he was expelled.
Then, quite suddenly, the bubbly life of Israel’s champagne superspy went flat. He shrugged off a dinner party conversation in which a West German embassy attache said he could not remember Lotz being a member of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. But on February 22, 1965, counterespionage agents were waiting for him and Waltraudt when they returned to their villa after spending the weekend with General Ghorab. The Egyptians had discovered the couple’s new radio transmitter, a larger and more powerful model concealed in a pair of bathroom scales. And they had a complete dossier of their messages to Tel Aviv over three years. Their praise – ‘You were the best spy ever to work in Egypt’ – was small consolation to Lotz for being caught.
The Egyptians later claimed that Lotz gave himself away through carelessness. They said security men checking every house along the route to be used for an official visit by East German leader Walter Ulbricht had been let into Lotz’s villa by a servant, and found the radio and codes lying about. A more likely explanation for the spy’s demise is that Lotz was ‘blown’ by one of the Russian agents who infiltrated West German intelligence in the 1960s. The Israelis needed German help to establish Lotz’s bona fides in Egypt, and later cooperated closely with Bonn in the hope that the government there would persuade Germans not to work for Nasser. And by 1965, Russia was anxious to impress the Egyptian leader.
Once he realised that the game was up, Lotz concentrated on saving his own life and protecting Waltraudt. He knew that if the Egyptians discovered he was an Israeli, he would be executed, just as Elie Cohen was a few months later in Syria. In his favour was the fact that, unusually for a Jew, he was uncircumcised. Both he and Waltraudt were tortured, but both maintained they were West Germans, and Lotz convinced his captors that his ‘wife’ had little to do with the espionage. Shortly before the trial, he grabbed the chance of a propaganda TV appearance to declare: ‘If the Israelis want to spy in Egypt, they should send their own people there.’ It confirmed his non-Jewishness in Arab eyes, while telling Tel Aviv that his cover had not been broken.
Though playing the role of the remorseful agent saved him from death, Lotz was still sentenced to 25 years hard labour in the notoriously tough Tura penitentiary near Cairo. Waltraudt was jailed for three years as an accomplice. West German consul officials visited both, helping to maintain the fiction of their nationality. And Bonn was also involved in the delicate negotiations which resulted in Lotz being freed on February 3, 1968. He and nine Israeli servicemen were exchanged for 500 of the 4,400 Egyptian prisoners-of-war held by Israel.
The Cairo authorities insisted as part of the deal that Lotz be returned to West Germany as a German citizen. And he was duly handed his airline tickets to exile by the West German consul. But when the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt stopped over in Athens, Lotz and Waltraudt left the plane and secretly returned to Tel Aviv, unsung heroes whose information had played a crucial part in Israel’s stunning Six Day War victory eight months earlier.
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Ramswaroop Scandal
An astonishing tale of a man who was charged on the grounds of international espionage. During his thirty years stint in espionage, he was said that he amassed wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income. Not only that, he had contacts with the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai and many foreign dignitaries. This spy scandal left the entire country shocked as the evil deeds of foreign powers were exposed.
Ramswaroop somehow got to know that the government knew about his nefarious activities. The officers of intelligence agencies were in hot pursuit and the time was not far off when they would tighten the noose round his neck. He also knew that he would be arrested under Official Secrets Act or Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA). To avoid such an eventuality, he started moving the courts for anticipatory bail.
It was on 28th October, 1985, that the police could trace him in a guest house in New Friend’s Colony. He was staying there under the assumed name of Prem Kumar Chopra. It was found that he had been hiding himself at different places under different names for some time. The police started investigations into his antecedents.
Pran Nath Lekhi came forward as defence counsel for the accused Satwant Singh in the Indira Gandhi murder case. For security as well as many other reasons, the intelligence department thought it fit to keep the activities of Lekhi under surveillance. During this surveillance, it transpire
d that Lekhi had close contacts with suspect Ramswaroop. When the matter war further investigated, the spying activities of Ramswaroop were laid bare for all to see.
Ramswaroop, aged 55, had come to Delhi from Lahore after the partition. He stayed in a servant’s quarter near the residences of the members of the parliament on North Avenue. For a living he started fixing punctures in cycles. He courted a Chinese woman and persuaded her to marry him. It is another matter that this alliance did not last long.
According to the information gathered by the intelligence agencies, he was working for the American intelligence agency CIA for at least fifteen years. He used to offer the bait of foreign travel to people in exchange for divulging secret information to him.
According to the charge sheet presented in the court, Ramswaroop seemed to have come into big money in the early part of the seventh decade. He had become very popular with American agents because of his capacity for hard work, perseverance and dedication to espionage work. In 1967, his case officer Schneider had so much confidence in him that he entrusted Ramswaroop to work on Morarji Desai and persuade him to resign from Mrs. Gandhi’s cabinet. It is said that when the American diplomat Harry C. Weatherbee was asked to leave India in the aftermath of Larkins’ spy scandal, he did so after instructing Ramswaroop. Ramswaroop was getting a salary of Rs. 20,000 per month apart from another substantial amount per month for expenses. He had even floated a news agency and under its cover sent cuttings of important news to Helsinki, Frankfurt and America for evaluation and analysis.
Ramswaroop met one agent, code-named King at the
American Information Centre some twenty years’ back. He used to go there for collecting necessary material. King offered to pay him Rs. 400 for bringing details of the personal lives of the employees at the centre. Subsequently, King induced him to work for CIA. Ramswaroop supplied his American masters many secrets from various ministries. He spied upon political parties as well.
While rejecting his anticipatory bail application, the Delhi High Court observed, “Ramswaroop hardly had any concern or regard for India’s unity, security and welfare. He was working as if he was a citizen of Taiwan though domiciled in India. He had been sending all types of information to Taiwan and other countries. It is apparent from the documents that he stole most of this information which had direct bearing on delicate matters like the nation’s defence and security.”
During interrogation after his arrest, Ramswaroop was made to undergo Polygraph lie-detection tests. He admitted that apart from Taiwan, he was spying for Israel, West Germany and America. During a raid on his office, it was discovered that he had earned a lot in foreign exchange. Prior to this, China had sent a protest letter to External Affairs ministry about his activities. During the raid on September 7, Ramswaroop was abroad. He was taking part in a meeting of Asian-Pacific Anti-communist League in Dallas in America. This body was supposed to be a front organisation of CIA.
Another raid was organised on 28th September at his residence and office situated at Sujan Singh Park. The officers of intelligence agencies found thirteen important files there. These files were kept in an orderly manner and had headings superscribed on them.
However, he defended the charges laid on him saying
that – the information passed on to the foreign organisations was nothing more than the clippings from print media; the foreign currency found at his residence during the raid was collected by his late son who had a hobby of collecting old and foreign notes; and finally, the records and files found at his Sujan Singh Park office contained no such secret information. All that information was taken from the printed material only. None of it can be secret, he argued.
Ultimately, in the early 1990 after the new government has come to power, Ramswaroop scandal has taken a sudden twist and he was acquitted of all the charges levelled by the C.B.I.
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How a Bunch of Flowers Trapped Eichmann
One of the most callous war criminals of all time was trapped by an alert spy – because of a bouquet of flowers. Ricardo Klement bought the blooms in the Suarez suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 21 March 1960. Just over two years later, he died on the gallows in Tel Aviv, Israel. For the bouquet was final proof that Klement was Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi most hated by Jews all over the world. And it ended an astonishing 15-year hunt involving the espionage organisations of three nations.
Eichmann was the SS lieutenant-colonel with overall responsibility for Hitler’s extermination of 6 million Jews. At the end of the war, he destroyed his records and personal file, burned all his photographs, and disguised himself as a Luftwaffe private. American forces who arrested him in May 1945 were not too interested in ordinary airmen, and in the confusion Eichmann managed to slip out of
sight – but not out of Jewish minds.
The intelligence services of the new state of Israel were at first too busy with its baptism of fire – the 1948 war of independence against Arab neighbours – to settle old scores. But in 1950, a Mossad agent in the North African port of Tangier reported that 30 high-ranking Nazi fugitives had fled Europe via Spain and Italy – and one, Ricardo Clementi, had headed for Latin America on refugee papers issued by Vatican City authorities.
Then, in 1957, a German half-Jew who settled in Argentina after going blind in Dachau concentration camp told German secret service men investigating Nazi escapes that a schoolmate of his daughter had made anti-semitic statements praising Hitler for murdering Jews. The boy’s name was Nikolaus Klement. And when the girl described her father, the ex-prisoner was convinced he was Eichmann. His hunch was reported to Dr Fritz Bauer, chief prosecutor in the German state of Hesse. Dr Bauer, himself a Jew, passed the news secretly to Tel Aviv, giving the Israelis Klement’s address: 4261 Chacabuco Street, Olivos, Buenos Aires.
It was confirmation of a lead Mossad had established for itself. Espionage chiefs knew Eichmann’s wife Veronika, who disappeared from her home in Linz, Austria, with her two children, at Easter 1952, would have to return to Vienna to renew her passport. When she eventually turned up, Mossad men were waiting, and shadowed her day and night before losing her trail Argentina.
Israel’s supreme spymaster, Isser Harel, now took charge of the Eichmann operation. His team had two priorities: to establish beyond all doubt that Klement was Eichmann – seizing the wrong man would make Israel an international laughing stock – and to do it without alerting their target, or Nazi sympathisers who might help him to escape. Delicate negotiations with the Argentinian secret service revealed that Buenos Aires knew Klement’s real identity, but the authorities were prepared to let Israel deal with him quietly to avoid the embarrassment of extradition proceedings, which would disclose to the world that Argentina was knowingly harbouring war criminals.
Revenge was not the only Israeli motive. Anti-communist hysteria in America had led to a neo-Fascist backlash, and some people were already reappraising Hitler’s regime, and claiming his oppression of the Jews had been exaggerated. The world was beginning to forget. For the same reason, simple assassination of Eichmann would not do. Simon Wiesenthal, the concentration-camp survivor who had later dedicated his life to tracking down war criminals, said: ‘If you kill him, the world will never learn what he did. There must be an accounting, a record for history.’
Mossad watchers in Argentina began a discreet round-the-clock surveillance of Klement and his family. Long-range photographs were sent back to Tel Aviv to be shown to death camp survivors. None could positively identify Eichmann. It had been so long ago, they had seen him only fleetingly.
The longer the watch continued, the greater became the chances of discovery by ex-Nazis or Argentinians not in the know. Then came the breakthrough. Klement was photographed buying flowers on 21 March as he left his work at the Mercedes Benz factory in Suarez. He was still carrying them when he arrived home in Olivos. One of the watchers made the vital connection between the date and the action. 21 March was Eichmann’s wedding anniversary. If Klement was
Mrs. Eichmann’s second husband, he would hardly celebrate his predecessor’s special day.
Harel now had the go-ahead to put into operation what was later described as the best-organised kidnapping ever made by a secret service. With the Argentinians agreeing to a neutral role, neither overtly helping nor hindering the operation, he hand-picked an eleven-strong team, including a doctor. Some of them made their own way to Buenos Aires by different routes, and established two safe houses, one for holding Eichmann, the other in case the first was discovered.
The rest of the team arrived in Argentina disguised as air crew on an El AI plane which flew in on 12 March 1960, carrying top Israeli diplomats to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of Argentina’s independence. By that time, Eichmann was already in Israeli hands. Three agents bundled him into a car seconds after he stepped off the bus from work on the evening of May 11. He was rushed to the safe house, stripped, and examined carefully for distinguishing marks. The appendicitis scar, the scar above the left eyebrow, and the SS giveaway, the blood group tattoo under the left armpit, were all there. The spies had their man. A pre-arranged code alerted Tel Aviv to the good news.