“How dare you carry a gun in my court?” he indignantly asked.
The man answered: “I have a permit to carry a weapon at all times. I am the security officer of the German scientists in Egypt.”
He identified himself as H. Mann—the man who has been contacted by Heidi Goerke after Joklik’s phone call, and who actually had alerted the German police.
An undercover Mossad informant left the courtroom at once and reported the incident to his superiors. As he heard the report, veteran Mossad agent Raphi Medan jumped aboard the first train to Vienna and hurried to the home of the famous Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal immediately agreed to help the Mossad.
“Do you know anything about a German named H. Mann?” Medan asked.
Wiesenthal went to work in his overflowing archives. After a few hours, he returned to Medan with a file in his hands. “He was an SS officer during the war,” he said. “He served in a commando unit under Colonel Otto Skorzeny.”
Medan brought the information to the omnipresent Rafi Eitan and to Avraham Ahituv.
A balding, sunburned man with mustache and glasses, Ahituv was born in Germany as Avraham Gotfried and immigrated with his religious parents to Israel at the age of five. At sixteen, he already was a member of the Haganah; and at eighteen, one of the founders of the Shabak. Extremely intelligent, he had completed his studies during his service, and graduated from law school summa cum laude. In 1955, he had caught the most important Egyptian spy in Israel, Rif’at El Gamal, who operated under the Israeli identity of Jack Bitton. Ahituv turned El Gamal, making him one of the Mossad’s best double agents, who fed the Egyptians expertly doctored information for more than twelve years. In 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War, El Gamal would inform the Egyptians that Israel would launch a ground attack before sending its aircraft into battle; the resulting laxity of the Egyptian Air Force facilitated its destruction on the ground by the Israeli jets. In the future, Ahituv would become one of the best Shabak directors, mostly appreciated for his efforts to integrate Israeli Arabs into the mainstream of Israel’s society.
On this evening in May 1963, Ahituv listened to Medan’s report about Mann and Skorzeny, then turned to Eitan: “Why don’t we try to recruit Skorzeny?”
The idea seemed bizarre at first, but it had its inner logic: if Skorzeny turned on Mann, he had a chance to obtain highly classified material from his former subordinate. Now the question was how to contact Skorzeny. A quick check revealed that Skorzeny’s estranged wife had stayed very close to him; she was now managing a company that specialized in metal trading. The Mossad agents found an Israeli businessman, Shlomo Zablodovitch, who was in the same line of business, and contacted him. Yes, he said, he knew Ms. Skorzeny. He introduced them to the lady, who told them all they needed to know.
That was how Eitan and Ahituv showed up in Skorzeny’s office in Madrid. They now asked the former Third Reich hero to become their agent and provide the Mossad with information about the activities of the German scientists in Egypt. Besides H. Mann, Skorzeny knew quite a few leaders of the German community in Egypt, many of whom were his former fellow officers.
“How can I trust you?” Skorzeny asked. “How can I be sure that you won’t go after me later?” He feared that Israeli avengers would find him as they found Eichmann, and his fate would be the same.
Rafi Eitan found the solution right away. “We are authorized to offer you freedom from fear,” he said. He took a sheet of paper and wrote Skorzeny a letter, in the name of the State of Israel, which guaranteed him “freedom from fear” and assured him that he would not be subject to any kind of persecution or violence.
Skorzeny perused the document, then fell silent. He got up and paced back and forth, immersed in thought.
He finally turned to the Israelis. “I agree,” he said.
In the following months, Skorzeny brought to his Mossad handlers priceless intelligence about the activities of the German scientists in Egypt. With the help of H. Mann and his other former cohorts, he obtained detailed lists of the German scientists and their addresses, reports about the progress of their projects, plans, and blueprints of the missiles, correspondence about the failures to assemble a guidance system for the missiles.
But Isser Harel wasn’t there anymore to read Skorzeny’s reports.
In the meantime, the Israeli media had been set loose. Shrieking headlines, editorials, cartoons, and even poems announced that Germany of 1963 was the same as Germany of 1933; and the same Germany that had massacred 6 million Jews was now helping Egypt prepare a new Holocaust. In the Knesset, opposition leader Menahem Begin shouted at Ben-Gurion in an inflammatory tirade: “You are selling Uzis to the Germans, and they are sending germs to our enemies.” In a speech, Isser’s ally Golda Meir accused the Germans in Egypt of producing weapons “whose aim is to destroy all living things.”
These accusations were exaggerated, almost totally detached from reality. Amos Manor, head of the Shabak and a close friend of Isser, would tell us later: “During this period, when Isser directed the campaign against the German scientists, he was an unbalanced man. It was much deeper than obsession. You couldn’t have a normal conversation on this subject with him.”
Deputy Minister of Defense Shimon Peres, who returned to Israel on March 24 from a trip to Africa, immediately perceived the tremendous danger that could arise from Isser Harel’s crusade. He also realized that the stories about the weapons “that kill any living thing” were simply ludicrous. Aman, the IDF’s intelligence branch, presented him with a totally different estimate. “We gathered all that we could collect,” said the IDF intelligence chief, General Meir Amit, “and slowly a picture emerged: this story had been blown out of any proportion . . . Our people said that this couldn’t be true; it couldn’t be something serious.”
Amit’s people didn’t find any indication that the German scientists were developing chemical or bacteriological weapons; the stories about doomsday weapons seemed borrowed from science fiction; the quantities of cobalt brought to Egypt were infinitesimal. It was also established that Dr. Otto Joklik, whose testimony had played a major part in the whole business, was no more than an opportunist who could not be trusted.
The Aman report reached Ben-Gurion’s desk on March 24. He immediately summoned Isser Harel and questioned him about his sources. He demanded full and accurate answers. Isser admitted having sent reporters to Europe, after a thorough briefing; he also admitted that he had no information about poison gas, radiology, or cobalt bombs.
The next day Ben-Gurion met with Shimon Peres, who came with the chief of staff and General Amit. The Aman chief made a detailed report that painted a clear picture: the scientists working in Egypt were mediocre, and they were building obsolete missiles. Their activities were dangerous indeed, but the panic that had spread in the governing circles in Israel, including the Ministry of Defense and the IDF, was utterly out of proportion.
Ben-Gurion summoned Isser again. Their conversation was tense, and Ben-Gurion expressed doubts as to the accuracy of Isser’s reports and assessments. The total trust that characterized the relations between the two men was replaced by an angry debate that also touched upon the other aspects of German-Israeli relations. Isser, furious, returned to his office and dispatched a letter of resignation to Ben-Gurion.
Ben-Gurion tried to talk him out of leaving, but Isser was adamant. I resign, he said, and that’s final.
This was the end of an era.
Ben-Gurion then asked Isser to stay until a replacement was found. Isser refused. “Tell Ben-Gurion to send somebody right away and take the keys,” he said to Ben-Gurion’s secretary. The prime minister had to find a replacement for the legendary ramsad right away. “Get me Amos Manor at once,” he said to his secretary, who rushed to the telephone.
But the head of the Shabak was unreachable; he was on his way to kibbutz Maagan in the Jordan Valley to visit relatives, and cell phones had yet to be invented.
“Then get me Me
ir,” Ben-Gurion said impatiently. General Meir Amit was on a tour of inspection in the Negev, but was reached by radio and summoned to Tel-Aviv. On his arrival, he learned that he was being appointed acting Mossad director until a new chief took charge of the organization. A few weeks later, Amit’s appointment became final.
Following Peres’s discreet letter to Franz Josef Strauss, Germany charged a respected expert, Professor Boehm, to devise the means of bringing back the scientists from Egypt. Germany indeed succeeded in tempting many of the scientists by offering them employment in research institutions on its territory. The others gradually left Egypt. They didn’t finish building missiles, their navigation systems failed, the missile warheads were not filled with radioactive materials, and even Messerschmitt’s plane never took off.
One of the authors of this book traveled to Huntsville, Alabama, and met there with NASA’s blue-eyed boy, Dr. Wernher von Braun. Von Braun went over the lists of German scientists in Egypt and their alleged projects and concluded that there were very slim chances that these second-rate scientists would have ever been able to build effective missiles.
Herr Doktor Mahmoud’s Egyptian endeavor ended in complete failure.
The affair of the German scientists brought about the fall of Isser Harel and the rise of Meir Amit. Harel developed a deep loathing toward his successor, and bitterly fought him during his years as ramsad. The affair of the German scientists also undermined Ben-Gurion’s political power, and he resigned from office a few months later.
In Cairo, the Egyptian secret services unmasked Wolfgang Lutz, the “Champagne Spy,” and arrested him in 1965. Yet they failed to crack his German cover; he was sentenced only to jail and released after two and a half years.
The end of the affair was also the end of the Mossad’s work with Otto Skorzeny, the most improbable agent who ever spied for the Jewish state.
Chapter Nine
Our Man in Damascus
My dear Nadia, my dear family,
I am writing to you these last words, hoping that you’ll remain united forever. I ask my wife to forgive me, to take care of herself and give a good education to our children . . . My dearest Nadia, you may remarry, so that our children will have a father. You are absolutely free in that respect. I ask you not to mourn the past but turn to the future. I am sending you my last kisses.
Please pray for my soul.
Yours, Elie.
This letter reached the desk of the new ramsad, Meir Amit, in May 1965. Elie Cohen, one of the boldest spies in the history of espionage, had written it with a trembling hand, just a few minutes before his life came to an abrupt end on the gallows of Damascus.
The secret life of Elie Cohen had begun more than twenty years before. A young, handsome Egyptian Jew, Cohen was on his way home one humid afternoon in mid-July 1954. He was thirty, of medium height, sporting a neat black mustache and a disarming smile. On a Cairo street he bumped into an old friend, a police officer. “Tonight we’ll arrest some Israeli terrorists,” the officer confided. “One of them is called Shmuel Azar.” Elie faked awe and admiration, but as soon as he parted with his friend, he ran to his rented apartment and removed the handgun, the explosives, and the documents he kept there. Elie was deeply involved in clandestine activities. He planned escape routes and prepared false documents for Jewish families that wanted to emigrate to Israel. He also was a member of the Jewish underground responsible for an ambitious operation known as the Lavon Affair.
In early 1954, Israel’s leaders learned that the British government had decided to pull out of Egypt completely. Egypt was the strongest of the Arab countries and a sworn enemy of Israel. As long as the British Army was present in Egypt and maintained scores of army bases and military airfields along the Suez Canal, Israel could count on its moderating influence over the military junta that governed the country. With the decision to evacuate Egypt that influence would evaporate at once; besides, modern bases, airfields, and huge stores of equipment and war materials would fall in the hands of the Egyptian Army. Israel, then only six years old, could be the target of an aggressive attack by a larger, better equipped Egyptian Army that wanted to avenge its shameful defeat in the 1948 Israel Independence War.
Could the British decision be revoked? Ben-Gurion was not at the helm of Israel anymore; he had retired to kibbutz Sdeh Boker. He had been replaced by a moderate but weak leader, Moshe Sharett. Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon openly disputed Sharett’s authority. Without Sharett’s knowledge, and without informing the Mossad, Lavon and Colonel Benyamin Gibli, the head of military intelligence (Aman), concocted a dangerous and foolish plan. They found a clause in the British-Egyptian agreement that allowed Great Britain to return to its former bases in case of a grave crisis, and naively concluded that if several terrorist bombings were to sweep Egypt, Britain would conclude that Egypt’s leaders couldn’t maintain law and order. Therefore the British would cancel their decision to pull out of the country. Lavon and Gibli decided to carry out several bombings in Cairo and Alexandria, targeting American and British libraries and cultural centers, cinemas, post offices, and other public buildings. Aman’s secret agents in Egypt recruited some young local Jews, fervent Zionists, who were ready to give their lives for Israel. By doing that, Aman broke a sacrosanct rule of Israel’s intelligence community: never use local Jews in hostile operations, as that could cost them their lives and place the entire Jewish community in grave danger. In addition, the young men and women had no preliminary training for such operations.
The bombs were rudimentary, made out of eyeglass cases in which a chemical substance had been placed. Another substance was poured into a condom introduced into the case; highly corrosive, the chemical would burn its way through the condom and come into contact with the other substance inside the case, producing a minor burst of fire. The condom was used as a timing tool, to allow the person placing the incendiary device to escape before the explosion.
The plan was doomed from the start. On July 23, after a couple of minor operations, one of the bombs exploded in the pocket of Philip Natanson, a member of the Zionist network, at the entrance of cinema Rio in Alexandria. He was arrested by the police, and in the following days all the network members were caught.
Elie Cohen was arrested as well, but the search of his apartment failed to discover any incriminating evidence; he was released, but the Egyptian police opened a file on him. It included three photos and the record of Elie Shaul Jundi Cohen, born in 1924 in Alexandria, to Shaul and Sophie Cohen who had emigrated to an unknown destination in 1949 with Elie’s two sisters and five brothers. The suspect was a graduate of the French college, and a student at the Cairo Farouk University.
The Egyptians didn’t know that Elie’s family had emigrated to Israel and settled in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
In spite of the arrests, Elie decided to stay in Egypt and not run away. Fearing the worst for his friends, he collected every bit of information about their incarceration, beatings, and torture in Egypt’s jail.
In October, the Egyptians publicly announced the arrest of “Israeli spies,” and on December 7, their trial opened in Cairo. Max Bennet, an Israeli undercover agent who was arrested with the group, killed himself by cutting his wrists with a rusty nail he had pulled out of his cell door. At the trial, the prosecution asked for the death penalty for some of the detainees. Pleas for mercy streamed from the papal nuncio, the French foreign minister, the U.S. and Great Britain’s ambassadors, members of the British House of Commons Richard Crossman and Maurice Auerbach, the chief rabbi of Egypt . . . All was in vain. On January 17, 1955, the Extraordinary Military Court announced the sentences: two of the accused were found not guilty; two were sentenced to seven years of prison with hard labor, two to fifteen years, and two to life. The two leaders of the network, Dr. Moshe Marzuk and the engineer Shmuel Azar, were sentenced to death and hanged, four days later, in the courtyard of Cairo prison. In Israel, a tremendous political scandal shook the government. Who had
given the stupid, criminal order for that operation? Several boards of inquiry failed to reach a clear-cut answer. Lavon and Gibli pointed fingers at each other. Minister of Defense Lavon was forced to resign and was replaced by Ben-Gurion, who came back from retirement; Colonel Gibli was never promoted and after a short while had to leave the army.
In Egypt, Elie Cohen had lost some of his best friends. Although still a suspect in the eyes of the authorities, he stayed in Cairo and pursued his clandestine activities. Only in 1957, after the Suez War, did he immigrate to Israel.
The Cairo Martyrs is the name of a quiet, shady street in Bat Yam. Elie walked that street every day when coming to visit his family. His first steps in Israel were not easy. For a few weeks he was looking for a job. Thanks to his fluency in languages (Arabic, French, English, and even Hebrew) he found a position: translating weekly and monthly magazines for Aman. His office on a Tel Aviv street was camouflaged as a commercial agency. Elie was paid a modest salary: 170 Israeli pounds ($95) a month. After a few months he was fired. One of his friends, also an Egyptian Jew, found him a new job: accountant at the department store chain Hamashbir. The job was boring, but the pay was higher. At that time his brother introduced him to a pretty, smart young nurse of Iraqi origin. A month after meeting her, Elie wed Nadia, the sister of a rising intellectual Sami Michael. One morning, a man walked into Elie’s office. “My name is Zalman,” he said. “I am an intelligence officer. I want to offer you a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“Quite interesting, actually. You’ll travel to Europe a lot. Perhaps you’ll even have to go to Arab countries as our agent.”
Elie refused. “I just got married,” he said. “I don’t want to travel to Europe or to any other place.”
That was the end of the conversation but not the end of the affair. Nadia got pregnant and had to leave her job. Hamashbir had to restructure and fired a few employees, Elie among them. He couldn’t find another job. And then, as if by chance, an unexpected visitor knocked on the door of his rented apartment.
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