Khalil, supported by Brandner, then turned his attention to rockets; an area in which there were numerous German specialist engineers. Wernher von Braun, the inventor of the infamous V1 and V2 rockets, had already fled to the USA, but there were others that were still in Europe. These men were recruited by Brandner and subsequently agreed to work in Egypt. One of these men was Wolfgang Pilz, an engineer who had already helped with the development of the French Veronique rocket, which is the ancestor of the missiles currently used by the French Army.
These specialists were to work in a top-secret base, known only by its codename:
Factory 333. To help maintain their cover and provide the necessary equipment, Khalil set up two dummy companies in Switzerland.
Israel was fully aware of Egypt's plans to develop its missile projects and even knew about the existence of Factory 333. But that was all. When the Egyptians fired their missiles in July 1962, Tel Aviv had no idea that their opponents would have progressed so quickly. From the information that they were able to gather, Jewish military experts believed that if these missiles were to be fired from Sinai, then they could cause great damage to Israel, even if the navigation equipment meant they were not particularly accurate.
In any case, the news of these missiles led to serious fractions in Israel. The secret service were torn: the Aman (Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate) accused Mossad of incompetence and the on-going rivalry between the heads of these two services, Meir Amit (Aman) and Isser Harel (Mossad) was reignited. The two men did not like each other and had always been at loggerheads. But the worst was yet to come.
Geoffroy d’Aumale and Jean-Pierre Faure
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Born in 1912 in Vitebsk, Belarus, Isser Harel (who at the time was called Halperin), emigrated to British-administered Palestine in 1928, aged 16. He worked in the Sfaim kibboutz as a shopkeeper and later became involved in the Haganah. His observational skills and knowledge of Arabic, which he had mastered in only a few months, meant that he quickly became a valued intelligence agent. In 1936 he joined the Sha’I, the Haganah’s secret service and the paramilitary force that protected the Jewish settlements tolerated by the British.
Harel commanded Sha’I in Tel Aviv during the War of Independence in 1948. He also kept an eye on Irgun members, who were part of a Jewish extremist paramilitary group who refused to comply with the directives of any new Israeli government.
In 1948 Lieutenant- Colonel Harel was part of the group that decided to dissolve Sha’I and instead create four Israeli intelligence services: the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Mossad (foreign intelligence), Shin Mem (the precursor of Aman) and Shin Bet (domestic security and counterintelligence).
He was first appointed as director of Shin Bet, with the priority of combating the Israeli communist party, Mapam, who were backed by the Arabs. After the fiasco of trying to encourage Iraqi Jews to flee to Israel, in 1953 Harel was appointed head of Mossad, but also kept his position at Shin Bet.
‘Little Harel’, so-called due to his small stature, was now the all-powerful chief of Israeli intelligence. He would hold all of the country’s secrets for nearly fifteen years and even be responsible for the capture of Adolf Eichmann.
At the same time, an Austrian scientist recruited by the Egyptians called Dr Otto Yoklik, made contact with Mossad and his revelations would prove to be of particular concern to the Israelis.
Yoklik claimed that the reason he decided to approach them was a matter of conscience. According to him, the Egyptians were trying to develop weapons of mass destruction: Nasser and his generals were planning to fill the missile heads not with conventional explosives, but with bacterial poisons and even radioactive waste. This information was taken particularly seriously when the Mossad branch in Switzerland discovered that Egyptian officials had recently purchased cobalt in Zurich.
General Gehlen, who had an excellent intelligence network in the Arab countries, was bound to be aware of the secret work being carried out by German scientists. However, he never did anything to stop them. This is all the more curious, as at the time, the two countries of Israel and Germany were close. The German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli prime minister Ben-Gourion had signed a secret agreement in which Germany agreed to provide Israel with military equipment worth $50 million every year, including tanks, planes and helicopters.
These ‘gifts' from Germany were clearly intended to atone for the crimes committed against the Jews during the Third Reich. However, there had actually already been an agreement regarding compensation to the Jews and the Jewish state that had been signed by Gourion and Adenauer. This agreement stated that West Germany would pledge one billion marks to Israel, but the German Chancellor obviously wanted to do more, although it had to be done secretly, so as not to alienate the Arab countries. Ben-Gourion was also keen to keep it secret; he did not want to scare his fellow citizens (who were still extremely anti-German) and he also did not wish to alert his Arab neighbours.
Another equally secret and surprising coming together of these two countries happened in the field of intelligence. This was despite the fact that Gehlen's network was riddled with former Nazis, who much preferred to work with the Egyptian intelligence agency, Moukhabarat, or with the Syrians. Alois Brunner was the head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency in Damascus, but a new generation of agents were arriving in Pullach, the headquarters of Gehlen's network. Strongly encouraged by the Americans, these new agents were keen to establish relationships with Mossad. Gehlen had to play both sides, as one of his deputies sided with Israel and he with the Arabs. Gehlen
