by Isser Harel
In Egypt another Mossad agent, Wolfgang Lotz, posed as a horse trainer.14 His newly founded riding school attracted many of Cairo’s politicians, as well as former Nazi officers who were employed in training the Egyptian army. Lotz supplied the Mossad with masses of information on Egypt’s armed forces and their preparations to attack Israel. He was captured due to carelessness in recruiting agents to his network and jailed, but was later exchanged and returned to Israel. Cohen and Lotz were but two of many Mossad agents who operated in Arab countries.
Isser Harel’s downfall and resignation in 1963 came over an issue reported by Lotz and other Israeli agents in Egypt. Since 1959 German scientists, formerly employed in the Nazi missile programme of the Second World War, were employed in Egypt in a secret programme to construct missiles aimed at attacking Israeli population centres. The Mossad warned of these developments, but the political leadership took notice only when the missiles were paraded on the streets of Cairo in Egypt’s 1962 independence-day celebrations. As Egyptian President Nasser boasted of his ability to destroy any target ‘south of Beirut’ Mossad teams were dispatched to Germany and Egypt to investigate the matter.
Their findings horrified Harel. The Egyptian missile programme was well underway, and field tests confirmed the missiles’ range. The Mossad discovered that many of the German scientists were officially employed by various research institutes funded by the German government. Harel presented the information to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and pleaded with him to take the matter up with the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Harel saw this as a political problem to be dealt with in public at government level rather than by the intelligence services.
But Ben-Gurion had other plans. For many years he had been pushing for reconciliation between the Jewish state and Germany. Despite tremendous internal public opposition Israel was receiving reparations from Germany, and Germany was about to supply the Israeli army with weapon systems unavailable from any other source. Not wanting to arouse public reaction against Germany further, Ben-Gurion refused to act publicly.15
Despite demands by the Israeli military to assassinate the leading scientists, Harel wanted to operate by less violent means. In an attempt to get the scientists to leave Egypt offers were made to them promising financial rewards and new jobs. Other scientists were ‘advised’ that their families were in danger if they would not stop their work in Egypt. In March 1963 a Mossad agent was arrested in Switzerland after meeting the daughter of one of the scientists to demand her father’s return. The publicity of this arrest brought about an intense public debate in Israel on the scientists’ issue, whose work seemed to threaten the very existence of the state of Israel. Ben-Gurion’s policy towards Germany was severely criticised in the Knesset.
Ben-Gurion was furious. He accused Harel of leaking details to the press in an attempt to pressure him to take a harder stand against Germany. In a stormy meeting with the prime minister Harel reiterated his conviction about the missile threat and his belief that only political means would bring the issue to a close. Ben-Gurion rejected Harel’s advice.16 After returning to his office Harel dispatched a note of resignation to Ben-Gurion, packed his few belongings and left the Mossad for good. He could not accept that the head of the intelligence services and the prime minister should disagree on such a crucial issue. Despite numerous pleas from politicians on all sides to change his mind, Harel refused to back down.
The Israeli intelligence community underwent changes after Harel left. The posts of heads of Mossad and of Shabak were separated. The Mossad, under its new head, Meir Amit, embarked on a campaign of assassination against the scientists. Relations between the Mossad and the Shabak, which under Harel co-operated closely, began drifting apart. But the legacy of Harel has remained, and today’s Mossad still operates under many of the norms and doctrines applied by Harel. All his life he shied away from publicity and honour. His immense contribution to the security of Israel was recognised by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion years later. In a special dedication to Harel, Ben-Gurion wrote: To Isser Harel, responsible for the state’s security, honour and secrets’.
After his retirement Harel went on to a brief career in politics. He was elected to the Knesset and served as a member of parliament in the years 1969–74. He then retired from public life, and turned to writing. To date Harel has written ten books on intelligence, but by far the most famous of them is The House on Garibaldi Street, written by Harel in 1965, upon the request of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, but published only in 1975. It is a detailed account of the operation mounted by the Mossad to locate, capture and smuggle Adolf Eichmann out of Argentina. This unique book was the first true account of an Israeli intelligence operation told by its principal commander. Strict censorship regulations govern what former intelligence officers may write in Israel, and very often they are discouraged from writing memoirs at all. But after ten years of struggle Harel obtained official approval by the government censor for publication of the The House on Garibaldi Street. The book had to be approved twice in government meetings since it not only contained secret information on the Mossad but was written by a former head of the Mossad, a precedent the Israeli government wished to minimise.
Harel’s determination to publish the account was based on his wish to let future generations understand the motives and aims of this singular operation. This mission was criticised by many as a needless waste of valuable Mossad resources, at a time when more important issues threatened the national security. But Harel’s incessant urge to bring this Nazi criminal to justice, not for the sake of punishing the individual but for history and the education of a generation, contributed this unique chapter in the history of Israeli intelligence.
The House on Garibaldi Street is a classic intelligence book. Its account of this complex and successful operation has all the suspense, action and drama of traditional spy novels. The difference is, of course, that it is a true account of an operation rather than the escapades of a mythical James Bond. But the book goes beyond a mere description of the facts. It lets us into the private world of the intelligence operators. Their fears, hopes, dilemmas and conflicts are succinctly told by Harel, who attended all stages of the operation. It is the story of these people which gives the book its unique character.
Upon publication the book received very warm appraisals. Its first hard-cover English-language edition of over a quarter of a million copies, published by The Viking Press in the United States, was sold out in a very short time. Since then well over a million English-language copies of the book have been sold, with special editions being printed by the Book Digest and the Literary Guild Club. It was translated into 20 languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese and Russian and published by leading publishing houses all over the world. Even in communist China The House on Garibaldi Street received special attention, when it was published in 1982 in a special edition commemorating the ‘World struggle against fascism’ and sold over a quarter of a million copies. A copy of the book in Chinese was obtained by Harel and examined by experts, who concluded that the translation was accurate and reliable. After the demise of communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union the book was published in Russian by ‘Dankom’ publishers in Moscow.17
For the The House on Garibaldi Street Harel was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America Association, and elected an honorary member of the Mark Twain Society, in recognition of his ‘outstanding contribution to history’. Surprisingly, the original English language edition was allowed to go out of print in the late 1980s.
When The House on Garibaldi Street was originally published most of the names of Mossad agents and other Israeli officials were changed for security reasons. Also, since Argentina was at the time under a military dictatorship, the then Israeli government’s policy was not to admit that the Eichmann kidnapping was an officially sanctioned Mossad operation. Rather, it was described as an action undertaken by an i
ndependent group of Jewish people determined to bring Eichmann to justice. For this reason many of the political issues relating to the approval of the mission by Ben-Gurion were omitted from the original edition.
This new edition of The House on Garibaldi Street in the ‘Classics of Espionage’ series of Frank Cass Ltd is designed to bring this important book back into print in English. It has been revised by Isser Harel and contains three new elements. For the first time the real names of all intelligence officials connected with the operation are revealed. Also the official Israeli governmental approval for the mission is set out in its political context. But the most significant revelation in the new edition is the official involvement of the German government in providing the Mossad with the information which ultimately led to Eichmann’s capture and trial. Previous editions described the source of the information as Dr Fritz Bauer, a Jewish lawyer who held the position of state district attorney in the German state of Hessen. It was assumed that Bauer provided the information on his own personal initiative.
In this new edition Harel reveals for the first time that the prime minister of Hessen at the time, Georg-August Zinn, a leading figure in Germany’s Social-Democratic Party (SPD), had approved the transfer of the information and was kept informed on Bauer’s contacts with the Mossad. Zinn was the first person to be informed by Bauer of Eichmann’s capture. Taking into account Zinn’s political standing, as well as the possible public repercussions if it became known that German officials provided secret information on one of their countrymen to a foreign intelligence service rather than demanding his extradition to Germany, it would be difficult to assume that Zinn would authorise such an exchange without first consulting the Social-Democratic Party leadership.18
West Germany at that time was struggling to find a way of reconciling its relations with the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Despite the Reparations Agreement of 1951, under which Germany paid Israel compensation for the property of Jews robbed during the Holocaust, public opinion in general, both in Israel and the US, was against closer relations with Germany.19 Under pressure by the Arab states not to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, Germany sought to strengthen relations by clandestine arms transfers to Israel. Within this political context, the transfer of information regarding Eich-mann may well have been undertaken by the German Social-Democratic leadership as a goodwill gesture which would strike deep at the heart of the Holocaust memory issue. If German officials were to be seen as actively assisting the capture of Eich-mann, it would send a clear signal to policy-makers in Israel that the Federal Republic of Germany not only recognised its responsibilities over the Nazi crimes of the past, but was ready to act together in the future. In this regard the official German involvement in the Eichmann operation, so crucial to its ultimate success, must be viewed within the overall context of the bilateral relations between both countries.
The West German intelligence service, the BND, also had its own interest in the Israeli capture of Eichmann. In 1961 one of General Gehlen’s closest aides and a leading BND official, Heinz Felfe, was unmasked as a Soviet mole. Felfe betrayed to the KGB secret information which effectively eliminated most of the BND’s agent networks behind the Iron Curtain. Practically overnight, the BND had lost most of its sources in Eastern Europe, and this blow paralysed its work for years. In desperation Gehlen turned to other Western intelligence services to assist him in rebuilding his organisation20. Gehlen considered his relations with the Mossad to be important in that rebuilding work, and may have been willing to see the Eichmann information passed on to Israel, despite the objections of former Nazis still in the BND.
After Eichmann’s public trial and imprisonment in Israel a small delegation came to see Isser Harel in his office. These were the remaining Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. In tears they thanked Harel for bringing Eichmann to justice. ‘Before the trial nobody wanted to hear of the Holocaust’, they explained. Now the legacy of the Holocaust would be very different, after the horrors, the plans and the machinations of this satanic genocide were fully exposed by its leading architect. The young generation in Israel learned through the trial a crucial lesson on its history and heritage, a lesson which is now passed down through the generations. Isser Harel’s contribution to the security of Israel was as wide and as complex as his career, but in history he will always be remembered as ‘the man who captured Eichmann’.
Jerusalem 1996 Shlomo Shpiro
Notes
1. The protocols of the trial were published in full by the Israeli Government Publications Office, and make chilling reading. Although the protocols are in Hebrew, an English language summary is available. Trial documents are also available at the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem. For the biography of Eichmann see Encyclopaedia of the Third Reich and similar publications.
2. Harel’s biography, Hamemuneh (The One In Charge), was published in 1971 in Tel-Aviv by Michael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli writer who was very close to the intelligence services. Due to censorship restrictions, however, it does not include any reference to the Eichmann operation.
3. For the story of the Shai see Ephraim Dekel, Alilot Shai, Maarchot, Tel-Aviv, 1956 (Heb.), and Yoav Gelber, Growing a Fleur-de-Lis, Israeli Ministry of Defence Press, Tel-Aviv, 1992 (Heb.).
4. There are many detailed biographies of Ben-Gurion, and his personal diaries are available for perusal at the Ben-Gurion Archives in Sde Boker, Israel.
5. See Isser Harel, Security and Democracy, Tel-Aviv, 1989 (Heb.).
6. So sensitive was Harel to the political repercussions of intelligence work that when a leading figure of the MAPAM left-wing party was unmasked by the Shabak as a Soviet agent he consulted MAPAM leaders before making an arrest, and even gave them the chance to question the traitor themselves to prevent any political misunderstandings. See Isser Harel, Soviet Espionage in Israel, Tel-Aviv, 1987 (Heb.), pp.26–92.
7. For Harel’s career at the head of the Mossad see Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, London, 1991, pp.134–205.
8. On the relations with the US intelligence community see Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, New York, 1991.
9. Although Angleton headed the CIA’s counter-intelligence branch for over twenty years, he kept the liaison with Israeli intelligence under his personal control. Angleton was forced to retire in 1974 for obsessively leading a manhunt for Soviet moles within the CIA. See John Ranelagh, CIA -A History, BBC Books, London, 1992, pp. 134–44, and Jeffery Richelson, The US Intelligence Community, Westview Press, Boulder, 1995, pp.286–90.
10. For details on this operation, code-named Operation APOLLO, see Shlomo Shpiro, Operation APOLLO – Israeli Intelligence and Khruschchev’s 20th Communist Party Congress Speech, in Z.J. Kapera (ed.), HUMINT and TECHINT, Warsaw, 1996.
11. For details on the Ber case see Isser Harel, Soviet Espionage in Israel, op. cit., pp.93–168, and Yossi Meiman and Dan Raviv, The Imperfect Spies, London, 1989, pp.122–5.
12. Michael Bar-Zohar, op. cit., and personal interviews of the author with former intelligence officials.
13. For the stories of Cohen and Lotz see Stanley Blumberg and Gwinn Owens, The Survival Factor, New York, 1981, pp. 197–224.
14. For Lotz’s own account of his work for Israel see W Lotz, The Champagne Spy, London, 1972.
15. For the political issues see Isser Harel, The German Scientists’ Crisis, Tel-Aviv, 1982 (Heb.),pp.l4–81.
16. Ben-Gurion did agree to have Assistant Defence Minister Shimon Peres write to his German colleague Franz-Yosef Strauss over this matter, but Strauss’s reply failed to offer any German assistance. See Harel, The German Scientists’ Crisis, ibid., pp.27–33.
17. Interviews by the author with Mr Harel, 1996.
18. New research by the author, soon to be published in English and German, shows that close contacts between the Mossad and German parliamentary parties developed in the 1960s and 1970s. These relations assisted the Israelis not only in matters direct
ly relating to intelligence but also influenced other bilateral issues between Germany and Israel.
19. For details on the Reparations Agreement see Nana Sagi, German Reparations, Magness Press, Jerusalem, 1980, pp.5–201.
20. Gehlen was wary of his dependency on the Americans, and wanted to balance this limitation by expanding relations with other intelligence organisations. He did not rely on the British or French services since he considered them to be too much associated with colonialism and, after the Suez fiasco, unable to operate effectively in the political field in Third World countries. Interviews by the author with former German and Israeli intelligence officers, 1995–96.
Dramatis Personae
1. The Start of Operation Eichmann
DR. WALTER EYTAN-Director-General of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry; conveyed to Isser Harel the information from Germany about Eichmann’s presence in Argentina.
DR. SHINAR – Head of the Reparations Mission in West Germany, who received the information about Eichmann in Argentina from Dr. Fritz Bauer, Public Prosecutor of the Province of Hesse.
DR. FRITZ BAUER – Public Prosecutor of the Province of Hesse in West Germany, who, by means of Dr. Shinar, passed on the information about Eichmann’s presence in Argentina to the Israeli authorities.
