Great Spies of the 20th Century

resume his post as soon as possible.

Roger Faligot and Remi Kauffler

⁶⁶

Nadia Cohen found her husband on the edge that last time she saw him in November/ October 1964. His superiors were about to send him to his death. His trial began on 28 February [1965] and Eli Cohen was hanged in a public square on 17 May. Everyone, even his enemies, agreed that he died bravely. In Israel, he was celebrated as a hero for his sacrifice. In Syria meanwhile, his arrest and trial resulted in a chronic wave of mistrust, re-enforcing the tendency to harden the regime: if Kamel Thaabet had been a Mossad agent, then anyone could be. In this respect, the legacy of Cohen's case was particularly long-lasting. Even today, Nadia Cohen still criticizes the Mossad chiefs, who according to her, should not have sent an agent on a mission who was ‘on the border of collapse'.

Chapter 12

Blackmailed by a false Resistor

It has been a taboo subject for a long time: you must not touch the Resistance! To attack one of its members was to question the courage and honour of all involved.Worse still, it is difficult to break the myth of a France that completely resisted the Occupation when we know today that the majority of the French people, rather than be entirely pro-Vichy or against, preferred instead to wait. This does not, of course, demerit those who did have the lucidity - or the audacity - to chose the right camp and be anti-Nazism.

As the country began to be liberated, it was important to line up as quickly as possible on the winning side. One could easily imagine the future that would belong to those who could prove they had been in the resistance. There were those who joined up in the last hour and even right at the final moments; men who rushed to don the armband of the FFI⁶⁷ on their jacket sleeve. Yet there was something far worse than this: the real false resistor. Men who in order to escape the law and their past, entered into the Resistance unopposed, manufacturing false service records, buying witnesses or even inventing imaginary networks. Collaborators one day and resistors the next, they consequently managed to slip through the net. For years they were untouchable, as the real men who were committed to defending France's honour had ensured that, like Caesar's wife, the Resistance could never be suspected. It was all at the risk of protecting the traitors who had fraudulently infiltrated the ranks.

When the affair broke in the 1960s, Maurice Lorrain⁶⁸ was a Prefect with an array of decorations. Just like Papon, at the Liberation he had managed to slip through the net. Before the war he had been a modest Deputy-prefect in the police. Not a particularly remarkable man, an officer like any other it was assumed that he would have an ordinary career and would in all probability rise through the ranks wisely enough. However, Lorrain was an extrovert who loved the good life, and was not afraid to elbow people out of his way. He was ambitious and had a high opinion of himself.

When war broke out, he was working as the general secretary of a prefecture on an interim basis, but had been tenured by the end of 1940. He was in no way hostile towards Vichy and joined all those officials who were happy to obey Petain without question. In the prefecture, the ‘Jean Moulins' of the world would only cause trouble. Very quickly, however, Lorrain dared to go even further and established regular contacts with agents in the local Gestapo. This Deputy-prefect became an agent himself, and was registered as such by the German authorities.

Naturally, Lorrain participated in the Nazi policy of repression against the Resistance. Yet cynically, and probably at the instigation of his German counterparts, he also approached a resistance network. This may have been as a way of covering both bases, although in those early years of the war, anything other than a complete German victory seemed unlikely. Still, the wind can always change direction...

From now on, Lorrain was a double agent. However, he seemed to favour his German employer more, as by infiltrating the resistance network, he was able to send back valuable information about the organisation's plans. But soon he would no longer be able to choose who to favour: fate would decide for him.

Lorrain was a victim of politics: there had always been a fierce rivalry between the Abwehr (the intelligence service headed by Admiral Canaris) and the Gestapo (the regime's secret police). The Abwehr had also sent an agent to infiltrate the same resistance network that Lorrain had joined and during the summer of 1943, the Abwehr agents had organised a roundup of resistors operating in the area where Lorrain worked as the prefecture secretary general. Consequently, he was arrested along with the ‘true' resistors in the network. He might well have been a Gestapo agent, but those working for the Abwehr did not want to know and were more concerned with protecting their own mole.

Lorrain was arrested, tried, and received a relatively light sentence, which involved his deportation to Germany. Powerless to prevent his departure, the Gestapo did make some effort to help their agent: they included a special mention on his record stating that he was to be ‘treated with care, due to services rendered'. However, even with preferential treatment, deportation to places such as Dachau or Buchenwald remained a terrible ordeal.

Paradoxically, by deporting Lorrain, the German's actually did him a big favour: when the Liberation came, the former Deputy-prefect was now a genuine resistance member. Who would think to accuse a man of treason who had just spent nearly three years in a concentration camp?

On his return to France, Lorrain was welcomed back with honours and decorations, and was immediately reinstated in the police. He was, however, denounced by a woman who had been the former secretary and mistress of his handler in the Gestapo. Summoned before a judge,