Operation Damocles by Roger Howard

Author:Roger Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Egyptians Press Ahead

By launching the Shavit 2, Israeli chiefs were hoping to do more than just steal the limelight from the Egyptian premier. For by the summer of 1961, the Mossad chief Isser Harel judged that he had enough information on the Egyptian rocket and aircraft programs—supplied courtesy of agents such as Malkin and Lotz—to approach the West German government and voice his concerns.

Harel’s first move was to personally approach his old acquaintance from the world of intelligence, his West German counterpart, Reinhard Gehlen. The Mossad chief flew directly to Bonn and within just hours of arrival had arranged to meet Gehlen at his office. Using some of his information about German expatriate activity in Egypt that his spies had provided, he accused Gehlen of deliberately ignoring the issue. Surely Gehlen must know about what his fellow Germans were doing in Egypt, he argued strongly, and surely he could do something to stop them from continuing? Gehlen retorted that Germany was using the scientists to gather intelligence on Egypt, but Harel did not believe him. “I want them stopped and stopped now,” he demanded. “I am not interested in long-term efforts. For us there is only the short term. The long term can mean after their rockets have fallen on our heads. In the long term we are dead men.” He finished the meeting by warning Gehlen that the Israeli secret service was ready to take the matter into its own hands unless the West Germans took some definitive action of their own.172

There was one reason Gehlen was being very ambivalent, and perhaps not entirely truthful, about the matter. For at this time West Germany was in the awkward position of not wanting to alienate either the Israelis or the Egyptians, knowing that one wrong move could serve Soviet purposes at a time when Cold War relations between East and West were very tense. In particular, the construction of the Berlin Wall, which started in August 1961, had created a real crisis between the two German states.

On the one hand, Gehlen had become increasingly concerned about the growing communist infiltration of the Middle East at a time when President Nasser had openly shown signs of leaning away from Washington in favor of Moscow. As a result, he had started to regard Israel, always quick to emphasize its credentials as a Western-leaning democracy, as an important regional ally for West Germany and other NATO allies, one that it could not afford to alienate. This gave Harel a huge negotiating advantage, which he doubtlessly knew he could exploit to the full: unless the German government made more effort to help Israel, he may have hinted, then Israel could not do its utmost to help the West.

On the other hand, if the West German authorities clamped down too heavily on the scientists, then they risked pushing the Egyptians further toward the Soviets. This was partly because Cairo might react spitefully, strongly resenting foreign—particularly Western—interference in its own affairs. But it was

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